Between Victoria and Seven Sisters You Were Perfect

Five forty-five on a summer Wednesday at Victoria station, and I’m curious if closing my eyes and letting the sweating gyre of heat exhaustion drift me down onto the third rail counts as death by my own hand. Until a burst of diesel air and keening brakes tells me I’m still alive.

Of course, there are no seats, so I stack my limbs like Jenga blocks and grip the pole for dear life. Breathe through my teeth. Close my eyes as the train pulls out, and try not to think of time as syrup draining through a sponge. Try to breathe. Open my eyes.

There you are, in the mirror made for me from a train window and an ink black tunnel. Pale as cheese, and the nothing shade of your hair. You’re slouching—all my bones hurt—and your eyes could be pretty enough, if not for the shadows of sleepless nights. Your lips are bloodless, pinched in a lopsided crease of pain.

“I hate you,” I murmur in time to the rail track clangour of the train, “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.” And you have no voice, so you can’t answer back. Or protest when I begin to change you.

I stain your hair pre-Raphelite red. Smooth the twist of your mouth, and paint the lips into a cherry kiss. I blush away the walking dead complexion and the insomniac’s dark circles, show off the wide-set green eyes, irises ringed with black.

My clothes don’t suit you; you’ve no need for comfort over style. And now I’m Cinderella’s mice, Snow White’s birds, tailoring you the perfect three-piece power suit. I linger over colours, settling on plum over black silk. If I’ve sculpted you a little, so what? You work out now. Maybe you run marathons; I always wanted to try that. I give you black stiletto pumps I could never handle and a gliding, confident walk, and you laugh, pirouetting for me. Striking a pose.

A woman to my left explodes in a sneeze, and I feel the damp breath of it gush across the back of my neck. The man immediately behind me is listening to Lynrd Skynrd so loud it has to be because he’s deaf, or the reason he is, while a twenty-something sprawled in front of me plays a game on his phone completely without earbuds. I study the press of his spread knees into the women either side of him, one older, one young.

He must feel my eyes because he glances up. Seeing nothing worth his time, he’s immediately looking away again when his gaze catches on my stare.

“What?” His body language adds the fuck you looking at? His hands splay out, more of him wandering into the space of the women at his sides.

“You’ll die one day, you know,” I hear myself say.

It’s not only his body this time, it comes out of his mouth, “the fuck?”

“You’ll get old, get weak. Sicken, feel pain. And die. At least, if you’re lucky, that’s the order it goes.”

He looks at me. I stare. He looks away. Down at the now blank screen of his phone. His legs slacken, knees falling together. The women beside him aren’t looking at me, but I see one of them smirking. The people near me have eased away a little; I don’t so much see it as feel it. More space to breathe; the bitter, antiseptic taste of their unease in the air.

But you're still there, smiling back at my slide into madness. So I give you a job. Something with power, but creative. Senior copywriter at a bigshot advertising firm. No, better still. Architect.

Between Warren Street and King’s Cross, I win you some awards, commission you some famous buildings. Strut you across some crisp white marble foyers. Girlboss you some meetings.

It’s not enough, so I bump you into Him. He starts out vague and blonde until I put a little heart into it, and he takes on my weakness for tousled black hair that falls just-so into a pair of hazelnut latte eyes.

You get married in winter, at a flower-decked country hotel. Everything is midnight blue and gold, and the entire wedding party gets snowed into the reception. You don’t care. You sit up all night by the ballroom fire, drinking mulled wine and watching your guests slow dance til they drop.

You have kids, two girls. You name them after flowers, and your little family takes on the world. School and work. Home. The girls learn karate and ballet. They love each other fiercely, even when they fight; they learn how from their parents. And you travel. Beaches and Disneyland. Hiking and camping. Your husband teaches the girls to fish, you teach them to cook the fish, and you roll the words in your mouth over and over. Husband, Father. Wife, Mother. Daughters. They taste like sparkling rosé wine and a dream I hadn’t even thought to have yet.

But the train is slowing.

You blow me a kiss over your shoulder as you sashay away. You’re a little bit of a bitch maybe, but I like it. You’ve earned it, all that life you lived in a handful of my heartbeats. The lights flicker as the train jolts into the station. A quarter second of darkness; a magician’s hand over my eyes.

You’re gone. And there I am again, in the mirror made for me from a train window and an ink black tunnel. Pale as cheese, and the nothing shade of my hair. Sleepless eyes, moleish and sunken. I’m slouching. From the pain, and the meaty stink of the passengers churning my stomach. The voice of the announcer declaring my stop melts with the doctor’s still-ringing voice in my hollow, bell jar skull.

“… no cure yet. I’m sorry, there’s really nothing more we can do.”