Lurking in the Dark Beyond the Street Light

Niomi walked down the street on her way home. She had always enjoyed walking home at night after a show. It was her time to unwind. Tonight she had taken a loop around her block, trying to rid of the adrenaline rush that always cascaded over her when she got to the end of a performance. There was something about the role of Queen Margaret in Henry VI that had always invigorated her - even in high school, before she thought theatre was a viable career.

"Niomi."

She thought she recognized the voice coming from behind her. She turned. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up and she looked through the darkness. His dark blonde hair and dark clothing didn't serve to give any hints, but she felt her adrenaline rush through again and knew he was watching her.

The light shone on his face and shock darted through her. It was Ian. Ian who had been assumed dead when he disappeared in the Amazon the year before. Sometimes it didn't seem like it had been a whole year since he'd been gone, other times it felt like an age. She didn't want to think about him. Ian had abandoned her. They'd been dating when he'd disappeared and she had tried to forget him for months before Patrick had phoned her and asked if she wanted to be Queen Margaret in a new production of the three parts of Henry VI he was going to be directing at BAM in association with the RSC.

The idea that Ian felt like he had the right to track her down when she was finally in a good space made her more angry than anything. Ian have that right anymore. He'd lost it when he had chosen a photography trip in the Amazon over her closing night for Small Island. She had begged him not to go. She had yelled and screamed and requested that he stay, but going to the Amazon was a trip Ian felt like he couldn't turn down, and on some level Niomi understood that his art was as important to him as theatre was to her, but their relationship had always been about compromise, at least until that moment, that phone call and he took the opportunity, packed and left without a word.

To the theatre community, Niomi had performed that night and then dropped off the face of the earth.

She knew she was the reason BAM hadn't announced the cast list until a week after the tickets were released. The industry had started thinking of her as a flake and stopped calling her with jobs. She had lost friends who were tired of her attitude. The man who was reason for all of that, who was the reason Patrick had had to convince the casting director to take a chance on her, was standing before her like he'd never gone away. Niomi slapped him.

"I thought you were dead!" she snapped. "Do you knew the pain I've had to suffer and the questions I've had to field in the last year? Everyone wanted to know where you were. Everyone wanted to know if I was okay, because guess what, Ian, when you disappeared that messed with my head."

"I'm sorry."

"'I'm sorry'! Is that all you have to say to me?"

"It's all I can offer. I know you're not going to let me back in the house."

"There's no point in you coming up. I dumped your camera equipment in the dumpster the night you left."

"That was thousands of dollars of equipment."

"You were missing, presumed dead. Did you really expect me to keep your shit?"

"Let's go inside."

"No, I'm going inside and going to sleep. You are getting a hotel room for the night, we are having coffee at 8:30am tomorrow when we'll have our last conversation and then you're going back to Inverness or the Amazon or wherever the fuck you're living now and not contacting me again."

Niomi slammed the door.

***

Niomi poured a glass of red wine the second she got into her flat. She normally didn't drink when she got home from a show, but the shock and anger from seeing Ian again had shaken her. If there was a moment to drink alcohol at 1am your ex-boyfriend coming back from the dead was a pretty good reason. She wished he had stayed away and for the first time she wished had moved in with Olivia when Liv had thrown the offer on the table. Niomi hadn't wanted to upend anything else, but now she wished she had somewhere else to hunker down, somewhere where Ian wouldn't know where she was.

Why had he come back?

Why had he stopped by?

Did he want her back? Did he think she would want him back after all this time?

She felt like she was going insane; like whatever she did, whatever decision she was made, Ian was always going to be lurking there.

"He needs a dog," she muttered. "Someone who will be there for him when he leaves for a year."

Ian had brought her a cat before leaving. The cat had gone to the pound when the police had reported Ian as dead - or at least that's what they thought. Seeing him again with his dark blonde hair and leather jacket had made her think of the first time she'd seen him, and for a second the old feelings had come back. Mostly it was relief though. It was relief that the anger, which had lain dormant for months was still there.

Niomi thought about calling Liv, but Liv had been bothered enough by Niomi calling in the middle of the night that Niomi thought Liv deserved a break. Niomi took her wine and walked into the living room. She turned on the TV and started watching a soccer match she had recorded. She wasn't necessarily a fan of either team who was playing, but she recorded these matches so she would always have a distraction. Tonight it would get her mind off Ian who was hanging in the back of her mind.

Niomi didn't want to think about Ian anymore. He didn't have to right to be there with her. She would never deny they had had some good times, but they were over and she was ready to move on with her life. She liked the way it was.

She was grateful to Patrick for pulling her back into the theatre community. The stage had always felt like a home to her no matter where she was in the world. She was ready to put all of her energy back into that and right now she didn't have the energy for a relationship. She had Patrick, Olivia and the rest of their friends and that was enough.

For now at least.

And as she watched a Liverpool midfielder score a goal from eight yards out, she knew she had done the right thing by leaving Ian in the cold.

*BAM = Brooklyn Academy of Music in Brooklyn, NY, USA and RSC = Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, UK

*The play Small Island premiered in April 2019 at the National Theatre in London, UK