It was the day the first bombs were dropped that the sickness returned. She felt it in the unbearable weight of her body, the cold blade of tension that reached deep into her hip joints — gravel in her stomach, slick wet mud in her skull. She reached out a trembling hand and turned off the morning news. Outside, the sky was brooding, a heavy grey blanket which matched, in colour, the livery of the scattered corps of houses and high rises it draped heavily above. She watched an advert on her phone for a cream to defeat stubborn fine lines, an image of her face transforming from that seen by the screen-side camera to become brighter, younger, happier: the teeth of the smile not quite right. Once permitted entry to her weather app, it warned her about the high pollution levels, the fumes held captive by the cloud cover, something unnatural in the rain.
The woman heaved herself from the sofa. There was a girl, according to Channel 41, trapped under the rubble that was once her family home, alone but for her mother’s hand extending outwards from the dusty debris. The girl’s face had been shown on the television screen, a photograph sent in by a petrified aunt seeking safe passage for rescue workers into the death zone. In the photo, the girl smiled at the phantom behind the camera as she clutched a cake adorned with a number so small the woman did not want to think about it—to imagine her alone in the dark. The woman left the room. She flicked on the hallway light switch, illuminating the sickly stains that spread across the plaster, reaching down to encircle the corner of the narrow passage, radiating outwards from a mottled brown patch on the ceiling. With a pencil, she traced the stain’s border, a half inch beyond the scribbled date from the week before. She took a photo, adding it to the end of a long email chain to her landlord, and clicked send.
Her coat pulled on, keys slid into her pocket, she heaved open the fire door, thick in its frame from the lingering damp. Outside, on the gantry of the block of flats, the air felt close. No rain fell yet, but she felt as though thin water was all around, suspended from the pavement below up to the gunmetal sky, filling her lungs, resisting her movements as she pushed her body through. Worse than the photo of the girl had been the audio of the phone-call made to what was left of local support services, which the producers had played over the photo of the child. A young man—his voice breaking—stayed on the line with her as she begged someone to come for her, the beat of further explosions faintly audible in the background. Outside the woman’s flat, a row of trees hissed as they waved their branches slowly in invisible currents, weeds in the deep. She went down to join them on the street below and oriented herself towards the high street.
She walked past the charity shop, the boarded up local bank branch, the chain bakery, the neon-bright vape shop, the off-license, the funeral directors’. Past the betting shop, the empty unit, the health food shop, the letting agency. Past the café with the empty tables under the moss-covered awning and the woman with bright yellow hair and black roots, shouting at nobody as she pushed the small dog in the pram with its manic eyes popping, tongue lolling. Past the pub with the windows littered with the silhouettes of the solo, silent morning drinkers with bloodshot eyes and empty pint glasses. Past the three girls in school blazers and short skirts, weaving in sync like a flock of young birds, their flightpath traced by the gaze of the men in the pub window. Past the man cross-legged on the ground with his cardboard sign: talk to me about a job; next to him, a duvet with a pair of boots sticking out at one end, the pale palm of a sleeping figure extending motionless into the cold air at the other. On the advertising board on the corner the woman watched as the recorded image of herself walking down the street transformed. The people and buildings around her faded away as the screen showed her on The Strand, expensive cars soaring by, leaving trails of light hanging in the air as her doppelganger smiled, dazzling, and turned to enter the large glass, gold-framed doors beneath the glittering sign of a musical that had been playing every night for twenty-six years: Be a part of the magic. The woman turned away and down the street towards the GP Surgery.
After some time pleading with the receptionist, cheeks wet and hands trembling, she was told to sit down and wait, they’d see what they could do. For the first hour there were no chairs available, so she leant on the wall next to a noticeboard covered in flyers: Remembering the signs of meningitis saves lives! Does your husband ever do this to you? Talk to us about your flu jab. The second hour she spent sat next to a well-dressed elderly man whose eyes looked straight ahead, hardly blinking above generous, pink eyebags, revealing the soft, wet flesh of his lower lid. He sat with his mouth slightly open, his breath slow and body unmoving as a small boy on the chair beside him slept, his head on the man’s knee.
At the end of the third hour, her name was called. Inside the small office, perched on the wipe-clean, fake leather chair, she told the young male doctor about her sleepless nights, the endless dull aches in her joints, the tightness in her chest, the sharp pain in her head and the twisted knot of her gut. The doctor nodded sympathetically, eyes fixed on the wall behind her as she spoke about the coldness in her hands, the dizziness in the mornings and the thickening fog of her memory. She spoke quietly and quickly about the sudden crying spells, and the equally unnerving stretches of feeling nothing at all. He mechanically strapped her arm with the impossibly tight band and measured her blood pressure, her hand numb until the flow was restored, pulsing. He shone a light in her eyes, illuminating flashes of webbed capillaries otherwise unseen. He held a cold stethoscope against the woman’s back and listened as she took three deep breaths and dutifully coughed. As he rolled his office chair back over to his computer and noted down his observations, she wondered that he said nothing at the clouds of dust that still hung in the air, that had come up and out of her body from somewhere deep, dark and quiet within, somewhere she could hear the high, pleading voice of a small girl. The doctor glanced at the clock as he clicked through her records on his computer and tapped at the keys. He printed a prescription and left a scribbled signature. “One in the morning and one in the evening”.
When she arrived back at her flat, her body weight pitted against the swollen door, she was hit by a cold, chalky smell. She winced as she turned on the light: bright gloss was drying on the walls and ceiling, amplifying the effect of the bare electric bulb. A fly struggled as it slowly died, adhered to the sticky finish which extended partially across the light switch, leaving dusty stains on her fingers that would resist soap and water for days to come. Up on the ceiling—mostly dry now—at the former central point of the now obscured stain, a tiny bulge swelled outwards from underneath the fresh coat. Her phone, rejoining the Wi-Fi, announced an email from the landlord: “Sorted”.
She sank, slowly, onto her sofa, picked up the remote control and turned the television back on to find that Channel 41 was only snow: ancient, hissing static from the violent birth of stars. She felt relieved in a way, as she turned to Channel 2 where the news was reaching the end of the headlines. She watched a feature on a boy returning from the distant war, his dog meeting him at the door, its tail wagging its whole body with joy. The boy’s mother embraced him, weeping, and his father sternly shook his hand. The boy showed photos of his friends, laughing together to the camera, now all lying cold in their military coffins. He spoke of their bravery, the savagery of the enemy, his determination to make the good boys’ deaths mean something, while the bleach-blonde interviewer nodded, face soft with empathy, skin free of fine lines. The little girl, silent now, was not mentioned. An ad break arrived, and the woman watched herself boarding an aeroplane to a beautiful coastline, opening a new, better account at the national bank, buying groceries at a major chain. She saw herself sip champagne with laughing, faceless friends; sign life-changing documents with a flourish; lovingly squeeze-test tomatoes fat and fit to burst. Milk and honey flowing, smiling, always smiling, teeth so white they could blind you.