Lost Things

Loneliness woke me up.

Or was it the men on the tracks behind the garden?

They wear red vests. They look like lanterns in the dark.

I check the time. Past midnight. There's rustling and soft voices, and I stumble towards the window, expecting to see my neighbour Eva trying to get her cat down from the roof of the shed again. Or an intruder in the bushes.

Since Matthew left, I spend hours of the day watching television shows and eating my favourite foods. Almond slices are a comfort, particularly. I called my therapist after the separation. She said I had to learn to find ways of extracting joy from a place that has become an enemy.

Memories encroach on me in the kitchen and in the bathroom. Whenever I go into the living room I think of our first day in the apartment together, playfighting on the carpet.

I head out once a day, to see my friend in the park with her baby, or to go for a drink with an old colleague. I schedule viewings of the apartment. People come, they comment on the bathroom floor, marks on the wall, ask a few questions. They sometimes use a translation app to ask about bills, if there's a language barrier. Then they leave. I have done twenty viewings. I have been in the apartment on my own for twelve days.

I thought that the end of a relationship would leave me tied to nobody at all, not a thing, but now I am tied to this place instead, with its grey walls and creaking floorboards.

*

I have heard the men on the tracks before at night. They were sawing a branch that had fallen, in preparation for the overground journeys the next day. On this night in particular however, I am surprised to find that they are speaking softly to one another, with the occasional whimsical laugh. There's no machinery. No tools. Just their voices.

It sounds like they are both pleased and troubled by the scenario they are in. It’s difficult to see much, until one of the men with a beard and a hooded jacket turns on a handheld light, and as I peer forward towards one corner of the window, lifting my knee up to the sill, I can see exactly what their problem is.

Underneath their feet is a barn owl, with a particularly luminous white face. One of its wings is caught under a rock. They don’t want to startle it. So, they speak softly. They manoeuvre its frail little body, and throughout all of this the owl is completely silent.

Perhaps before they came the owl had come to a place of accepting its fate. The nightfall is a knife-edge, revealing so much of everything that has died, or will be dying. But this owl, with its heart-shaped face, was most likely investigating the tracks for mice, and will not die. It will be sent to the vets as soon as it is freed, I am sure of that.

I decide to boil the kettle, and bring some chamomile tea over to the window. I awkwardly drag the red armchair that Matthew is yet to pick up, pulling it from the living room into the bedroom. I now have a good view of the whole gathering.

There are three men with gloves on. They are trying their best not to startle the trapped owl.

*

Before Matthew left, on his last night here, we held one another tightly as frightened children. He was in tears, telling me to take back the decision that I had made, and that he didn't want to leave me after everything we had tried.

We didn’t sleep much that night, but when I got up out of bed in the morning, I felt numb. I felt hardly anything at all. I knew that I had broken someone’s heart, but I had been trapped in the situation for a while, knowing that my instincts were telling me something wasn’t right, continuing with it all for the sake of Matthew.

Twelve long days of being in this dingy, unforgiving apartment. I may not be stuck with the wrong person anymore, but I am stuck in this place, waiting for someone to take it off my hands so I can move on with my life.

I look down at the owl as the men in their red vests take it into their arms and place cloth around its wing. Now that it is free, lifted into the air, the men walk slowly off into the night, pleased with themselves, delicately embracing their broken hunter.

The garden at this time of night is so still. Branches leave no shadows. No cat asleep on the shed. So many leaves untread.

I finish my tea and leave it beside the bed on the chest of drawers. Tomorrow I have only one viewing of the apartment, and Matthew will come by in the evening to pick up his things.

I undress and get back into bed. I think of the owl a few weeks from now. Perhaps I will see it on the fence in front of the house, or in the field nearby, back to its normal wariness of human beings and their trappings. Just as majestic as ever.

For now though, I should try to sleep.