If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things. Jon McGregor

said I know but I can’t get it out of my head.

      It keeps coming back I said, just recently, I don’t know why.

      She was quiet, and I waited for her to say something.

      I straightened the flowers in the vase on the table, pulled out the dead leaves.

      I watched the traffic lights changing in the street outside.

      She said what I always remember is the way everything carried on afterwards.

      There were still buses going past on the main road she said, and some of the people on them turned to look for a moment but some of them didn’t even notice.

      I wanted everything to stop she said, even if it was only for a little while.

      There was nothing about it on the news she said, I knew there wouldn’t be but it didn’t seem right.

      It just kind of happened and passed she said, and then we left and there was nothing to prove it had happened at all.

      I said, you know, it’s the noise I can’t forget.

      I still have dreams about it sometimes I said.

      The way it echoed off the houses, and, oh, it just, I said.

      And then we stopped talking and I could hear her breathing.

      She said actually can we talk about something else now.

      I said yes, sorry, it’s just I’ve been thinking, you know, lately, and she said well it’s a long time ago.

      She said so anyway are you seeing anyone at the moment, and we talked about recent possibilities and failures, comparing notes.

      And she said look my dinner’s nearly ready I’d better go.

      I said oh sorry I didn’t realise, you’re eating late aren’t you and she said oh I do these days and we both said I’ll speak to you soon then bye.

      I didn’t say who are you eating with are you eating on your own.

      I sat there for a long time, after I put the phone down, the letter and the appointment card on the table, unmentioned.

      I don’t know why I didn’t say anything to her about it, I don’t understand how I became fearful and closed off like this.

      I sat there, watching the flowers quivering each time a lorry went past, feeling the tremble echo along the bones of my spine.

      I saw the moon appearing, low and white over the park by the river.

      I remembered the time Simon had called me through to his room, saying look out of the window, a dark night and the moon was bright and crisp away to the left, a thin crescent like a clipped fingernail.

      And he’d said no no no but check this out, look over there, look over that way.

      Pointing away to the right, to a second moon as bright and crisp as the first.

      I’d looked at him, and he’d giggled and said how mad is that.

      I’d looked at the two moons, each as clean and thin and new as each other, the same size, like twins of each other.

      And I’d swung his window closed, and the reflection of the moon on the right swung away into the room with it and he said oh right yeah I thought it would be something like that.

      I remembered this, and I wondered what he’d been doing the last few years, I wondered about all the people I haven’t seen or spoken to properly since then.

      All the emails I get these days start with sorry but I’ve been so busy, and I don’t understand how we can be so busy and then have nothing to say to each other.

      I read the letter again, and I sat very still, barely breathing, the streetlight striping the darkening room through the blinds.

      I took off my shirt and bra and began touching my skin, very slowly, tracing the contours, pressing against the ridges and lines.

      Running my fingers across all the marks and scars and spots, as though I could read my blemishes like braille.

      I’m not sure what I was looking for.

      I think I wanted to find something new, something visibly changed, something I could point to and say this is what it is, this is where it’s beginning.

      But I couldn’t find anything.

      I pressed the palm of my hand against my chest and tried to count my heartbeat.

      It felt faster than it should be, and my skin felt hot, shining red, as though the blood was rushing to the surface and gasping for air.

      I sat there for a long time, I fell asleep in the chair and when I woke up in the morning I was late for work.

Chapter 4

      In the backyard of number nineteen, a woman is hanging out her washing, murmuring a song to herself and squinting against the light. She can see people sleeping in the back room of next door, she is glad they are quiet now, it means perhaps her children will sleep more.

      She stoops for a handful of pegs and adjusts her headscarf. She hangs out a row of salwar kameez in different sizes, bright swathes of colour printed on thin fabric, she hangs out shirts, trousers, endless variations of underwear. And when she is done, and the whole yard is heavy with wavering lines of wet bunting, she straightens up and puts her hand to the hollow of her back, curves her face upwards. She interrupts her murmured song and listens to the muffled rumble of the morning. She breathes slowly and deeply, and for now the air smells clean, infused with the bright wetness of clean laundry.

      The young man at number eighteen, with the dry eyes, he’s not dressed yet but he’s awake and he’s busy, he’s crouched on the floor, arranging a collection of objects and papers.

      A page from a TV guide. An empty cigarette packet. A series of supermarket till receipts, stapled together in chronological sequence. Leaflets advertising bhangra alldayers and techno all-nighters. Train tickets. Death notices cut from local newspapers. An unopened packet of chewing gum.

      He lays them all out on the floor, lays them out in size order, rearranges them in date order, blinking quickly. He stands back and looks, and writes out a list of the objects in front of him.

      He turns on the television and picks up a polaroid camera. As soon as the screen warms up he takes a photograph of it, scribbling the time and the date on the back of the blank printout, seven a.m., thirty-one, oh eight, ninety-seven.

      He lays the polaroid next to the cigarette packet, watching the shapes darken into colour and light. He turns back to the television, blinking, and watches Zoe talking about pop music in a London park, the soft morning light flitting through the trees and lighting up her hair, she says we’ll be having it large and he turns the television off.

      Next door, in the bedroom of number twenty, an old man is lying awake beside his sleeping wife, he is holding his cupped palms close to his face and looking at the tiny flecks of blood he’s just coughed out of his lungs. He is fighting to control his breathing without waking his wife and he is looking at the pictures of their nephews and nieces, their great-nephews and greatnieces, propped up on the dressing table. He feels old, and he feels afraid. He listens to the steadiness of his wife’s breathing, and he thinks about the first night they spent together, a smuggled liaison in a seaside hotel nearly sixty years ago. He remembers the pattern on the wallpaper, the luxury of a three-bar electric fire, the view of the hills from the window. He remembers their shyness, standing awkwardly at the foot of the small bed and reaching out very slowly, kissing once, twice, moving uncertainly to hold each other and gradually allowing their curiosity to prevail. He remembers her insisting that the light be kept on until they slept, and that their clothes be folded neatly. And most of all he remembers how wonderfully startled they both were by their eventual intimacy.

      He lies still, listening to his wife,