Falling Over (2 page)

“Listen,” I say. “I need to talk to you. It’s Michelle. Have you noticed...” I pull back on my words, on their insanity. How can I voice my concerns, when I know they must be ill-founded? But I need to tell someone, if only for them to laugh at me, to confirm I am a loon.

“It’s Michelle,” I say again, talking over the TV financials. “She’s different... I mean she doesn’t
look
different but she just is... different.” I am aware that my words aren’t quite satisfactory for what I have to express, but can find no others.

“Hallelujah,” Christophe says. “It’s about time.” He looks bored, unconcerned, still watching TV. I am somewhat taken aback, for this isn’t the reaction I expected.

“Huh?” I say. “You mean... You’ve noticed it too?”

“Course,” he says, then swears as static cloaks the screen for a second. “Months ago.”

Months ago – but that’s not right, that is before she went to hospital; before she fell. I don’t say this, but Christophe sees me looking at him.

“When I stopped fancying her!” he says loudly. “And now
you
don’t fancy her either, because now there’s you and Grace.” He grins evilly. “Of course she seems different, now you’re not blinded by her, after all these months, now you’ve got your head out of her arse.”

“No, that’s not it...”

But Christophe is half-drunk and insistent. He seems intent on the idea that me and Grace should get together. I realise it’s pointless to continue to talk to him, but I need to bring the conversation back to some kind of normality before I can leave. So I ask him when
he
stopped fancying Michelle.

“Well I still...,” he begins, blinking as if making an internal adjustment. “But she’ll never
amount
to anything mate! Not with all her... views. Getting in the way.” Just then his mobile rings, and I am glad. I don’t know why I am angry – because Michelle was being criticised, or because I know he was levelling some of the same criticism at me. But he is wrong – my ‘views’, such as they are, seem flimsy and ill-founded, unable to guide me. They don’t stop me buying things I don’t need, just make me uneasy afterwards.

Christophe leaves the room to take his call – he takes a number of such calls, secretive, but not like he doesn’t trust us. Just like there are certain things that you don’t talk about in front of children.

I sit and watch TV and try to relax. The beer has been left and now I help myself, gulping quickly even though it is better than the own-brand supermarket piss I am used to. I channel-hop but nothing on any of the stations suits my mood. After I have flipped round twice I feel somewhat numb. I make an effort to get up before I settle into an acceptance of something I don’t even want to watch. It is night outside by now, but the sky still seems the wrong colour; just like the ones on this brute of a TV.

I still need to talk to someone – Grace it is then. I will just need to get her alone, away from Michelle... away from the thing that
isn’t
Michelle I mean – I must remember to keep that distinction clear in my mind, or things will only get confusing. She still has that smile that sends tremors through me: the only sensations that have seemed unmediated recently. I must be wary, now that I know the truth about her, or recognise some of the lies at least.

I leave the TV room and see Christophe, quoting numbers into his mobile. He looks up at me and I realise if I go straight to find Grace he’ll believe his little theories. So I pretend to head to my room instead; but Michelle finds me first.

~

“Thank Christ for that,” she says. “I finally managed to shake her off.” For a moment I have no idea who she means, not with the confusing distinction of two Michelles in mind – who has thrown off whom? But then I realise she means Grace, and I shrug sympathetically.

“Ever since I got back she’s been
following
me,” Michelle says. She unconsciously raise a hand to touch her bandage (like she used to with her hair).

“She means well,” I say. “And she’s lonely. I mean, not just lonely because everyone else has left. Proper lonely.”

“I know but why me?” Michelle says. “Why do these people always fixate on me? I was thinking about this in hospital, and I decided I don’t need it. Thinking about a lot of things actually. I figured some stuff out.”

Her words unnerve me, perhaps because this little speech is the first time Michelle’s double
hasn’t
sounded like the real thing; the first time her words haven’t tallied with my memories. She seems genuinely annoyed as she speaks and I imagine a vein underneath her bandage, pulsing, like something independently alive.

“Like what other things?” I say, thinking: the hospital was where it happened, so maybe that’s where the clues lie. And I think, why didn’t we go and
visit
her, why couldn’t we escape these shipwrecked halls of residence even once, and go and see our friend in hospital? I have not thought this before, and I feel a chill, as if the conspiracy that I am caught up in is also one that I am unwittingly responsible for.

“Oh the future,” Michelle says, “things people have said.” Her tone is vague but the look on her face isn’t – she stares me straight in the eye. Things
I
have said? What have
I
ever said?

Michelle reaches out and takes my hand.

And I look down and think: there was a tan-line on your finger before. All summer you wore that plastic toy ring that some boy won for you at the fair, some guy we never even met but was obviously important to you, because despite the fact that you tried to laugh off the ring as plastic kitsch, and pass off your wearing of it as ironic, you keep pushing it up your finger because you were afraid it might slip off. And then one day it was gone, and the tan you’d got from your days outside in the sun was in contrast to the white that remained underneath. And that tan-line
hadn’t yet faded
, despite trips to the sun-bed when your student budget would allow it. But now when I look down at your hand it’s not there, not just faded but gone, your skin one-tone. As if you had been created afresh. Created anew from the original design, minus any blemishes that occurred later...

But even as I am thinking all this, even as I realise this is the first real
proof
– physical evidence – that what is happening isn’t all in my head – even as I am thinking this I am allowing Michelle to take my hand, and somewhat shyly lead me down the corridor to her room. She is still talking about some of the realisations she had in hospital after her blow to the head, but I am not listening because my heart is giddy. As Michelle fumbles the key one-handed into the lock, I look away and realise Grace is standing at the top of the corridor, watching us...

Grace, I think. I was on my way to find Grace. And not just because I wanted to explore my conspiracy with her, but because I am lonely; proper lonely. But Grace seems such a long way away at the other end of the corridor, and I am not sure which of us the look of accusation in her eyes is directed at anyway. She could just as well be mad with Michelle as me. My head is somewhat fuzzy from Christophe’s beer, and Michelle is talking about the future to me, and
she
isn’t even drunk (she isn’t allowed alcohol because of the pills) and I look away from Grace and allow Michelle to lead me into her bedroom; allow this even as I look again at the hand that pulls mine again, and become convinced that this isn’t Michelle at all, and that I might actually be in danger.

~

The next morning I awake in Michelle’s bed, and she is asleep beside me. Our exertions in the night have caused a few faint specks of blood to stain her bandage from underneath, and I feel a moment’s distaste.

The dawn outside is dull, but still manages to find its way through her cheap curtains, as does the noise of the rush-hour. I look to one side and on Michelle’s bedside table there is a collection of Get Well cards that she has retrieved from hospital. I nudge them open with my fingers so that I can see the names inside – her parents; her sister; Christophe. So one of us did visit her in hospital after all. My paranoia finally catches on that I am awake and I remember; I look at Michelle but her hands are underneath the covers and I can’t see the  uninterrupted tone of her skin, the clear-cut evidence of the night before.

Grace, I think, I was on my way to find Grace and you distracted me. As if I not only believe in body-snatchers, but mind-readers too now.

I look again at the card from Christophe – what he has written inside is nothing beyond the usual clichés:
Get Well Soon
– yet I can imagine his voice dwelling on that “
well
”, implying we weren’t just sick but lazy, feckless, losers. Later on in life people like Michelle and I will just be small pluses on Christophe’s asset sheet (or someone very much like him). In abstract I hate people like Christophe; yet ever since everyone else left he has effectively been my best friend. It is like one of those TV documentaries where two diametrically opposed people are made to live with each other: the budding capitalist and the... what? Because our beliefs are not opposed at all, for I have no beliefs strong enough for anyone to oppose. I am just the soon to be ex-student, adrift.

But goddamn Christophe! Yesterday he claimed he didn’t fancy her! Yet I know him well enough to know he doesn’t invest without hope of return – he wouldn’t have bought that card unless he liked her. Maybe that’s why he’s been so intent that Grace likes me. His comments to me were misdirection, moves in a game I didn’t even know we were playing.

But if it was a game then I won didn’t I? I got the girl. And she wasn’t drunk and it won’t be a one night stand. So fuck you Christophe, with your sneering looks whenever I sketch out my ambitions. Because I got the girl –
whoever
she is.

I look at her again, at the bandage across her head. Dare I lift it up; would I wake her? What am I expecting to see but slowly healing stitches anyway? But although Michelle’s face is the same as I remember I am overcome by a feeling of fakery at the sight of it, and I suddenly have to move, to get away from her.

“Where y’going?” Michelle mumbles, eyes still closed, as I hunt for my clothes.

“To get us some coffee!” I say brightly, and I feel the fakery in my own voice too, in the whole interaction.

Just then there is a bang at the door; Christophe shouting.

“Quickly,” he says. “Grace is hurt.”

~

I dash out into the corridor wearing just my boxer-shorts, while Michelle hurriedly dresses. The usually unflappable Christophe is looking fazed – every time he moves towards Grace she bats him away. Grace herself is standing in a beige dressing gown, which is stained with blood. I cannot see the source; she has blood on her hands and keeps rubbing them against the material of her dressing gown. Guiltily, I half-expect her to turn her hands wrist upwards and for me to see twin cuts there, one for Michelle and one for me, after Grace saw us together last night. That is why she is repeatedly beating Christophe’s attempts at help away – not because she wants to die, but because she wants Michelle to be here, for her to see as well as me.

But getting closer I see her wrists are fine; the blood is in fact coming from a cut to the scalp, and when she runs her hands through her hair she keeps bloodying them. Scalp wounds bleed a lot, so it probably isn’t as serious as it looks – nevertheless Grace is very pale and obviously afraid. Her grey eyes fasten on mine and she pushes past Christophe towards me.

“I don’t want to go to hospital,” is the first thing she says.

“Stop being idiotic,” Christophe says, “your head’s bleeding!” He shakes his own head at me, then makes another attempt to put his arm around Grace’s shoulders so that he can lead her down the corridor.

“I don’t want to go to hospital!” Grace shouts this time, and twists away from him. I move in front of her, for Christophe’s irritation obviously isn’t helping. I try and hold her gaze and ask her what happened.

Her eyes flicker as if she were about to tell an untruth, or at least something of which she is uncertain. “I... I don’t know what,” she says, brow furrowed. “I was just walking and I... I was daydreaming I guess and I just... fell over. Like I was pushed but there was no one there.”

Michelle is out of her room and hurrying towards us now; Christophe is telling her what happened.

“Don’t let me go to the hospital,” Grace says quietly, making it between me and her. “Not like Michelle...” I wipe blood from her forehead because I don’t know what to say: although I know she needs stitches I am reluctant to tell her this. I should have spoken to her last night – has she had suspicions herself? Just because she was acting natural around Michelle doesn’t mean she hadn’t spotted anything; after all
I
tried to act natural too. Maybe we just fooled each other. But did we fool Michelle? I don’t know and now Michelle is here, hugging Grace, asking me if anybody has called a taxi. I take the opportunity to check her hand again, and the ring-line has definitely vanished. This is real enough, it isn’t all in my head. Whatever
this
is, for I still have no idea what is going on.

Grace repeats her request not to go to hospital, now that Michelle is here.

“Of course you’ve got to go,” Michelle says, all business, like a mother ignoring her child’s heartfelt fears of the darkness. “Don’t you agree?” she says to me, to get me to back her up. Grace looks at me and there is a plea in her eyes, but much as I see that pleading I also see the blood that isn’t stopping, dark red on her scalp. “You need to go,” I say.

“Will you come with me?” she says directly at me.

“Sure,” I say, “we’ll go in the taxi together...”

“I’ve got a car,” Christophe says.

I look up in some astonishment. “What?”

“Where the hell do you think I’ve been trying to lead her for the past ten minutes?” Christophe says, in the voice of one announcing the first checks of a forced mate.

“Since when did you have a car?” I’m angry because I can feel him taking over again, feel my own adulthood diminish next to his. I can’t even drive, another misalignment with the real-world that Christophe mocks. But he has never mentioned owning a car before – not that I am surprised. “Did Daddy buy it for you?” I add, before I’ve even given him chance to reply to my first question.