The Width of a Corridor

Philippa lay on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. After a few minutes, the textured Artex began to swirl in front of her eyes, making her feel that at least something was moving in the flat, even if it was an imitation of life.  Her hands lay across her chest, clasped together, but not in prayer. The only noise came from revellers in the square five storeys down. A few shouts, some singing, punctuated with a blast from a police car siren. 

Philippa took in a long deep breath through her nose and then exhaled slowly. She focused on the noise outside, but there were no longer any people in the square, and all she could hear was the gentle hum of cars driving slowly on the wet road. The sound reminded her of the sea, and she closed her eyes and, for a moment, tried to imagine herself underneath a parasol on a foreign beach in the baked air of a summer afternoon. Yet, like trying to remember a dream, the harder she fought to bring the image into focus, the more it slipped from her mind. She opened her eyes and was back on her bed on New Year’s Eve, alone. 

Another deep breath. Another slow exhale. 

With her ears fixed on the background noise, the sound of her phone vibrating on her nightstand caused her to jolt. After two buzzes, it stopped. A message, not a call. Philippa didn’t look over. It didn’t matter who it was. She didn’t want to give her attention to anyone else. This was her night. This was how she spent this night. Every year for the past four. This way. 

And yet. 

Hadn’t she told herself she wouldn’t this year? Hadn’t she promised herself that she would try, at least try, this time? In the run-up to Christmas, she had tried. She really had. She had arranged to see her sister on Christmas day, and then she’d agreed to go to Sarah

and Steve’s for New Year’s Eve for dinner and drinks and games. When she made the plans, she really thought she would stick to them. 

But Christmas Eve came and she couldn’t find the strength to walk out the front door. She even had her bag packed and her coat on, but that final step of walking out of her home was too much. She had to stay in the flat. She had to stay where the memories were, where she’d been with him. 

He is still here, Philippa thought. He is still in the walls and in the bath and in the space and in the furniture and in his toys and in his bed and in his little slippers. He is more here than anywhere else. 

Philippa turned onto her side and stared at the wall. She felt a tear leak from her eye and run over the bridge of her nose. She had tried. Not just over Christmas but before then, all throughout the year. Last year, on January 1st, she had vowed she would not spend her New Year’s Eve this way, that she would finally clear out his room and give the toys and books away to children who can play with them. Wouldn’t that be good? Taking the things that had made him happy and letting them make someone else happy? Wouldn’t that be a lovely way of ensuring that, in a way, he was still bringing joy to people? 

She had tried to think of it that way. She hoped by leading with her mind, her heart would eventually follow, but she just couldn’t do it. Just like she couldn’t bring herself to watch her sister’s children open presents on Christmas morning. Just like she couldn’t bring in the New Year in a house with Sarah and Steve’s children. She had wanted to do these things, but no. Her resolution - is that what it was? - to try to move on had failed. Because you can’t move on, and you can’t forget. Grief is a tattoo you never asked for and you can never cover up.

New Year’s Eve. Alone. Like every New Year’s Eve since he died. And tomorrow, Philippa would resolve to somehow make progress over the next 12 months. To clear out the room. To stick to plans. But she knew she wouldn’t. 

A new sound entered the flat. A knock at the door. 

Philippa sat up. The knocking stopped, which made the silence of the flat seem starker. Then another sound - only slight, only brief, but it hung in the air. The sound of a piece of paper being pushed under the door. Philippa didn’t move, staying in her upright position.

There was no more knocking, and the silence in the flat that had momentarily seemed so stark felt normal again. Philippa lay back down on her side, but she was unable to slot her brain back into the groove of grief it knew so well. She rolled over to the other side, picked up her phone, and – ignoring the numerous message notifications – saw it was just before 11 pm. 

With a sigh, she rolled onto her back. “Hello ceiling,” she muttered. The ceiling ignored her. The Artex remained stubbornly still. Philippa carried on staring. “Well, fuck you then,” she said and raised her middle finger. She shifted her body on top of the duvet, trying to work herself back into the mould she had created over all these years. But she couldn’t. The shape was off, only by a fraction, only by the width of the piece of paper that had been slipped into her flat, but it was enough. “FINE!” she shouted and dragged herself up from her bed. 

Philippa walked to the front door and saw the folded paper on the floor, a few inches inside the short hallway. She picked it up, opened it, and read the words.

“Hey neighbour! Chris and Sally from 302 here! We moved in just before Christmas and are having a few drinks to celebrate and welcome in the New Year! Please do join us for a glass of bubbly! It would be great to meet you!” 

Flat 302 was opposite Philippa’s. She had heard them moving in a week or so before Christmas but had not really paid much attention. There was a fairly high turnover of people living in the block, and it wasn’t one of those places where people normally introduced themselves to their neighbors. She scrunched up the paper and dropped it on the floor. Not tonight, she thought as she returned to the bedroom. 

Back on the bed, Philippa tried once again to regulate her breathing. The ceiling was still refusing to play with her, and the wave-like sounds of the traffic outside seemed to be a couple of notes higher in pitch, ruining its soothing ability. She wriggled around, trying to get comfortable in her skin, but she felt like she was wearing a sweater that had been shrunk in the wash.

With a loud sigh, she sat up again and reached over to her phone. Messages from Mum, Dad, her sister Eleanor, and her friend Sarah. She scrolled through, not taking in what they said, and sent the same message back to each of them: “I’m fine. Happy new year.” As she was putting her phone down, she heard another knock, but this time not on her door. Walking on her toes, she made her way over to her front door and peered through the peep-hole just as the door opposite opened and the new neighbours enthusiastically greeted those who had knocked. 

“That’s..erm..Brittany and Damon from 307,” she whispered to herself as she watched them disappear inside the flat. Philippa liked Brittany. She always knew what books to read or what to binge on Netflix. She had lived in the flats longer than Philippa, at first alone, and then Damon moved in a couple of years later. Brittany had been lovely when it happened and had asked if she needed anything done, like shopping or cooking. That’s what people tend to do in these situations. They offer practical help because that’s something tangible and they can tick it off and say to people, “Oh yes, I was there for her. I went and got her some milk and bread.” Really though, what Philippa wanted to do was just talk constantly about him. Just talk and talk and talk about how he liked to play MarioKart and how he loved a song by Bruno Mars because he had heard it in an advert and how he would write things on post-it notes like ‘why does Harry want to be my friend?’ and he would stick them on the patch of the wall underneath his cabin bed. 

She wanted to talk about how he always wanted chocolate pancakes on Saturday mornings and how just the sight of Nutella makes her want to cry now. She wanted to talk about how he used to sound like a purring kitten when he was asleep if he’d had a particularly tiring day and how he used to steal pens and pencils and hide them in a small box originally for printer cartridges under his bed. 

But after a while, people don’t want to listen. They do at first but then the weeks and months and years go by and they don’t want to listen anymore because they’ve heard it all, and then they talk back and they say things like: “I know it’s tough but you have to keep going” and “He wouldn’t want you to be sad, he would want you to be happy.” 

Brittany had never said those things, but Philippa was convinced she was thinking them. Daniel had thought them and said them. And he was Philippa’s husband. If even he had thought and said them, then someone like Brittany, someone in the outer orbit of the misery, must have thought them too. And Daniel had left because he wanted to move forward and not be stuck in a flat with someone who still cried when they looked at a frying pan that once made pancakes for a little boy who died from Strep A when he was six years old.

Philippa was on the floor in the hallway, in the dark, with tears down her face again. A band of light leaked in under the door, and she could hear the sound of laughter and music from the flat opposite. 

“Next year, I’ll go,” she whispered to herself.