Shattered Silence

It’s a Friday afternoon and the end of a hectic week at work. I sit at my desk trying to ignore my headache. I rub my temples in circular motions. It started out as a little niggling annoyance and is now a full throbbing pain. Waves of sickness wash over me as the pain intensifies. The pounding in my head is being compounded by my co-worker, Nina. She never stops talking to me. Never. Her voice is loud and constant, like a siren. I am the type of person who craves quiet and alone time, and today the craving is consuming me. I seem to have a natural way of attracting extroverts into my life. Maybe it’s because with me, they can talk as much as they want without much interruption. I respond to Nina with an appropriately timed ‘mm-hmm’ or ‘yeah’. The short period of respite that I do get from her rambling is filled with her click-clacking on her keyboard. That being said, it’s not that I dislike her, no one does. She’s just a little distracting. Nina is also the office ‘superstar’. A high-achiever who is likely to run the company one day. Ben, who also sits nearby, must sense my burning need for peace and distracts Nina with a question. He has sacrificed himself and I am eternally grateful. Then, for what feels like a lifetime, I watch every minute of the day pass until it’s finally time to go home.

When I arrive home, I collapse on my bed wishing I could stay there. My phone vibrates. It’s a text from Aaron, a guy I’d been seeing for about a month.

‘Lorna, I’m sorry but I'm going to have to cancel tonight. Something has come up. Free tomorrow?’

Oh, thank God!

My wish has been granted. I agree to rearrange. I put my phone on silent and allow myself to close my eyes for a few minutes. I wake to the sound of my cat Louie, he’s purring in my ear and pawing at my nose. I am in my dusk-lit bedroom, still in my clothes, with a dry mouth and a heavy head. My headache is gone. I go downstairs to feed him and gulp a large glass of water. I peel off my clothes and head towards the bathroom to run a bath. As I pour some bubble bath under the flow of hot water, I am looking forward to climbing into bed with my book afterwards and reading until my eyes won’t allow me to read anymore.

I slip my foot into the warm water and sink into fluffy white clouds of bubbles until only my head and feet are above water. I feel the lavender steam rising and close my eyes. The warmth of the bath is melting away the fuzzy feeling in my head and I lay there in the blissful silence and stillness. The only light in the room is coming from the candles I placed around the bath. The steam has clouded the mirror and the windows and the room is filled with a golden haze. I lie there in the warmth and the glow, satisfying my craving for quiet. Then I feel a flicker of frustration. I can feel it happening. When unoccupied, my mind sometimes has a habit of wandering. Thoughts enter my mind like an uninvited guest, intrusive and unwelcome. Before long, they’re spiralling, like a game of spin the bottle, whatever it lands on will decide what I’m going to overthink or worry about. It lands on Aaron, a person I hardly know. Why am I incapable of just enjoying the silence?

Then, I start replaying the conversation I’d had with my friend Emma. I’m the last in our friend group to be unmarried at thirty and she’s always willing me to meet someone and settle down, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. I tell her that I like my life the way it is. I don’t feel a need or desire to share it with somebody, anybody, for the sake of not being alone. I love living alone, just me and Louie. She looked at me, her expression a mixture of puzzlement and concern. I knew she was probably right, maybe I should try harder. She was so excited when I told her I met Aaron. He started talking to me at the gym but it took me a few seconds to realise. I removed my AirPods and we laughed about it. Sometimes I’m not even playing any music. Sometimes I use them just to cancel out the noise from the rest of the world. I can exist in my own headspace for a short time, listening to my breath and my heartbeat, not expecting or inviting conversation. Of course, I knew immediately that he wasn’t the type I normally go for, with his big biceps, broad shoulders and bronzed physique. Maybe it was Emma, maybe I was just flattered, but I said yes when he asked me out. The thing bothering me as I lay there was how unalike Aaron and I are. He chose where we went on our first date. It was a loud, bustling club that I’d never even heard of and he ordered champagne for both of us; an extravagant gesture that was entirely wasted on me. I did my best to hide the fact that I don’t particularly like champagne. I suggested where we went on our second date. It was nothing fancy, just a normal Italian restaurant that Ben had raved about. Aaron did his best to hide how underwhelmed he was. Aside from all of that, something else seemed off about Aaron. It was the way he only replied to texts at weird times, sometimes not for days, and a quick search on social media showed zero results.

I’m lying there in a mind spiral when a crash downstairs brings me back into the real world. The water surges against the sides of the bath like a tidal wave as I sit up. Wrapping myself in a towel, I creep along the hallway. There is silence in the house again, except for my own thumping heartbeat. I trail wet footprints along the wooden floor and hesitantly tiptoe down the stairs. I reach the bottom to find the living room exactly as I left it, the windows and front door are locked. The house is undisturbed. I walk into the kitchen, the glass I used earlier lies in pieces, shattered on the floor. Louie is in the living room.

‘Louie?’

He blinks slowly and looks away. He knows he’s not allowed on the counter. His paws stretch out and he yawns, then settles himself on the sofa. Clutching my towel around me, I clean up the mess and head back upstairs. I put some music on from my Relax & Unwind playlist and sink back into the water. I lie there, who knows how long for. I’m interrupted when my phone vibrates next to the sink.

For God’s sake.

I clamber out of the bath again and wipe a wet, bubbly hand on a towel.

‘Can you come pick me up?’

My younger sister, Kate. Yet again, she’s out drinking and doesn’t have enough money to get home. Irritated, I concede defeat. I empty the bath, dry myself off and pull on whatever clean clothing I can find. Louie is still asleep downstairs, his paws are twitching as if he’s running.

‘Hey!’ Kate opens the car door and gets in. God, she stinks of booze, but she’s not as drunk as I expected. ‘Do you mind if we give a couple of my friends a lift home?’

‘No problem’ I lie and Kate beckons her friends. Three girls emerge from a bus stop, wobbling and clutching on to each other. All of them, girls I’ve never seen before in my life, climb in and stuff themselves into the back of my car, bringing with them a dense cloud of perfume and alcohol. I chauffeur them safely back to their homes, enduring their laughing and singing all the way back. It’s around midnight when I drop the last of the girls home. Afterwards, Kate tells me she only knew one of them, the other two she’d never met before. Kate has always had a way of doing that, she meets strangers and instantly befriends them. She cracks a window, letting the cool night air blow the hair off her face. She complains that she’s starving and tells me to pull in as we approach a McDonald’s. 

I sigh and agree.

As usual, she insists on staying over at my house rather than going home.

I sigh and agree.

When we get home she sits on the kitchen counter, kicks off her heels and begins eating messily. When she’s finished she tells me she’s going upstairs to bed. She jumps down onto the floor and lets out a piercing scream of pain. Blood gushes from the underside of her foot. A shard of glass is sticking out. It’s too deep, I don’t dare extract it. Blood pools on the kitchen floor. I grab a kitchen towel, two, three, to mop up the blood. They’re soaked and blood is still pouring.

‘We need to go to the hospital’, I tell her.

Disturbed by the chaos, Louie slinks toward the back door and paws to be outside. I prefer to keep him inside at night time, but given the scene in the kitchen, I open the door and let him out into the still night.

At the hospital, I sit with Kate while she’s stitched up. I hear the normal sounds of an accident and emergency department at a hospital; ambulance sirens, frantic voices, pained cries. Despite all of this, Kate seems to be handling it well. She’s even laughing with the young doctor taking care of her. Is she flirting? I excuse myself and go to the vending machine to buy a cup of coffee that looks like mud. And - urgh - tastes like it. I am getting some water from the vending machine to get rid of the acrid taste when I hear a slurred voice behind me, angry and insistent. I turn to see a man wearing a blood stained t-shirt, he has a black eye that looks like a plum and a broken nose. He’s shouting at a nurse. In between his shouts, I hear a voice I recognise.

‘She has a rash and a raging fever’ I hear him say, ‘... My wife and I are really worried...’

Aaron is holding a little girl, around two years old. A tearful dark haired woman is by his side, stroking the child’s cheek. Aaron sees me standing there. I won’t make a scene, not now. I catch his eye and go back to my sister.

Later, I’m watching TV with Louie on my lap and my sister sleeping next to me. It’s 3:45 AM, the nap and the coffee has had the unfortunate effect of keeping me awake. All I wanted was peace and quiet. My phone rings. It’s Aaron. I ignore it. It rings again. I answer but I don’t get a chance to speak before he starts explaining himself.

‘We’re separated but…’

‘But?’

‘But… we’ve been talking. I think we’re going to try and work things out. I was going to tell you tomorrow.’

Too many words want to rush out all at once, yet none of them do.

‘I wasn’t really looking for anything serious, I thought I’d made that clear?’

After that, I’m not really listening to anything else he has to say. I just make appropriately timed noises, ‘mm-hmm’ and ‘yeah’ until we end the conversation. It was only a few dates. I was just an option so he didn’t have to be alone. I pull a blanket over Kate and head to bed. My mind is suddenly at rest and I’m finally able to sleep.

On Monday, Nina isn’t at her desk. Ben appears and puts a vanilla latte down in front of me. Somehow he knew it was exactly what I wanted.

‘Oh’ he says, ‘Nina got a promotion. She’s moving into her own office. Just thought you might like to know.’

‘She kept that quiet’, I say.

He laughs and walks away.

I sit and enjoy the warm, sweet coffee and the quiet.