Panel One: beside myself with glee

All we are looking for—all we are ever looking for, honestly—is a little illumination, some light to ease our way down this dark narrow path. We are not greedy and our ambitions are modest. So, bearing that in mind, do you think it would be, as it were, enlightening to have a sneakful (?) peek at her search history?

There’s bound to be lots of the usual.

When does absent mindedness become dementia

Is light headedness when putting on shoes an indication of a propensity to strokes

No need for question marks; if you are searching for answers then all punctuation is implied.

And some that, we imagine, will be very specifically hers.

What are the obvious signs of pedantry

What is the etiquette when correcting someone’s English

Are standards dropping in schools

In public

In the home

Also on her phone there appeared to be an app that she used for taking notes, for jotting down those random thoughts that occurred to her when she sat in that hateful little coffee shop or stared at the blank wall above her television set. There were hundreds of these things, we can say with almost certainty. From time to time we have seen Gillian flicking through them, often visibly appalled at the rubbish she had thought worthy of being recorded. Occasionally—we can say it because we know she never would—she impressed herself. Was that really me? That’s quite clever. The look on her face, though she tried to hide it, was sinful pride.

Have you ever tried sitting in that coffee bar on the beach? We can’t stand it—weird claustrophobic tiny place, made only more ghastly by the barely audible cool jazz and poppy reggae that drips from its pathetic speakers. Well Gillian, believe it or not, likes it. And it was in that darkened cramped would-be hipster hellhole, sitting amongst the vegan croissants and home-baked pastel de nata (there is a Portuguese mother-in-law somewhere in the management mix), that she sipped her green tea, bag still in the cup, when she had most recently decided to trawl through those past thoughts that she recorded on her phone.

We can just imagine.

What does a loss of sensation between knee and ankle in the left leg signify

Is it possible to have arthritis in only one toe

How do you know you are a snob

We mean you can’t even see the sand or the sea from in there, facing, as it does, the back of a few broken down beach huts. Hardly our idea of the perfect space to unwind, but still . . .

That was where she chose to sit the day she cleared her search history—a pity for us as this was a rich (and, we thought, amusing) seam of info but clearly a source of regret or embarrassment for Gillian—and opened that notes app she was so keen on. We have to say that what she read there seemed positively strange to us but clearly our mind works in a very different way to hers. We mean our minds work.

Before I die I really don’t want to be interviewed as part of a true crime documentary because somebody I know has killed his wife. You might say that perhaps my wish should be that nobody I know kills their wife but that isn’t my fear. Fear needs to be more specific, personal, if we are to be honest. There will never be world peace? Meh. My waist line as of now is the best it’s ever going to be? Just kill me. And it’s the interview that I dread. This is how I will be remembered: being tangentially connected to some misogynist murdering bastard for all the world to see just because we used to share a car to the garden centre from time to time.

Before I die I hope not to be rescued from off a mountainside or out of the sea.

Before I die can I please not be forced into making a speech wherein I must say thank you to my parents. Nor do I wish to take any part in a medical trial or be the first to try out some ground-breaking equipment.

Before I die I don’t want to say sorry more than another thousand times.

An odd bird, Gillian.

We thought it typical of her that she would jot down what she doesn’t want to happen rather than something she does. We often think, when we are thinking of her, why doesn’t she just do something? If you are not a joiner, Gillian, we say in our imagined conversation with her, then how can you possibly know what you are not? If you don’t pit yourself against your peers then how on Earth can you find out who is better than you? It’s all very well showing off, enumerating some ridiculous fantasies that you wish to avoid and, in the process, poking fun at the rest of us, but what is it that you actually want to do?

But she was no hobbyist. Nothing of the kind. We, for example, know from bitter fun experience that we are not poets. Nor are we photographers, athletes of any description, or accomplished pastry chefs. We have actual evidence that we are not potters, water colourists, gifted gardeners, competent morris dancers, socially acceptable salsa dancers, knitters. Ce n’est pas bon, our conversational French. We were Zumba disastrists. That list—more than any thoughts that Gillian might tap into her phone—seemed endless. Our cold water swimming was an embarrassment few would recover from; our quizzing the stuff of legendary ignorance. What skills we do possess, no longer in use, are no match for our non-accomplishments, making for a very uneven ledger: one column what we can do, the other our many failures.

Gillian didn’t want to try her hand at amateur dramatics or surfing but . . . we shall say it out loud and therefor force ourselves to go through with it . . . we cannot wait. Even though we know the results are all but inevitable. That’s the difference between us and her.

You’ve noticed, have you, that there are no people around her? There used to be, we’re sure. We have a clear memory of stepping aside on the narrow path that leads to our house, making way for her and another.

Was that the impetus for the cat? We have no idea. Maybe altruism is her thing. (Hardly, we can almost hear her saying, bless her.) But shortly after that particular day in the awful café she was walking past one of the charity shops in the High Street (so many of them!) and was taken, seemingly, by a photograph pinned to its message board. Maybe it was goodness on her part or maybe she was making amends for some wrong, who knows? Loneliness even. (A selfish motive then, Gillian would doubtless say, but we think that would be harsh.) But the cat in the picture was soon installed in her home where, as far as we could see, it proved itself to be a little more active than her snow globe from Riga on her windowsill but slightly less so than the giant croton that sat in her conservatory.

She wished she could name the cat Carbury but he already had a name so this is what she whispered to him whilst he sat, immobile, next to her on the sofa. Those times when she had examined the space on the wall above the television had gone. Now she looked down on the sleeping cat beside her. And called him by a name she found distasteful.

One of us understood the Carbury reference by the way; one of us is a philistine.

She could, in all likelihood, come up with hundreds of witty names for animal companions that would bamboozle us both. Gillian is ever so cultured, in case we haven’t made that clear. (And where did it get me, we hear her saying, which is, again, typical of her, but still seems an awful shame.)

We went to school together, you know. Not with you, silly, with Gillian. No, you would have remembered us, wouldn’t you?

Have we made her sound awful? If so, nostra culpa. She really isn’t.

We couldn’t stop wondering what she saw in the place so we decided to give it another go. It turned out, as everything always does, to be exactly the same. Barely audible trumpet that may as well be tinnitus dripping into our ears, that view of the unpainted backs of old tatty beach huts, a kitchen argument raging in . . . we want to say Portuguese. God that place is bleak. Why does she keep coming back? What does someone like Gillian see in a place like that? She’s a strange one.

On our phone we thought we’d make a few searches.

One of us swore it was Chet Baker.

Fool, the other one said, it’s Miles Davis.

How do I go about adopting a retired greyhound

What are the pros and cons of adopting a retired greyhound

What’s the worst thing that can happen if you adopt a retired greyhound

We drank our coffee and nibbled at the tiny little custard tarts.

There was a great deal of chatter, we noticed. Party noises in a radio play. It felt as if we were the freaks, the only ones who didn’t get it and that’s never, you know, comfortable, is it?

Safe places for our eyes to linger included: coffee surfaces . . . the yellow rim of the saucers . . . ceiling . . . those sad beach huts . . . each other’s eyebrows.

Don’t fret the black bag is not a dead dog, one of us said.

Don’t fret the black bag is not a dead dog, the other said.

Don’t fret the black bag is not a dead dog, we said.

And we breathed. We breathed with our mouths like deep sea divers.

And we looked down once more.

Her forehead is the shape of our phone, one of us said.

We looked at it with greater intent, lying between us on the round blue-tiled table.

It seemed harmless enough. But suppose Gillian had chosen that moment to return to what after all is her favourite café. Suppose she had been overcome with an (admittedly uncharacteristic) bout of rudeness and curiosity and she had picked up our phone and tapped its screen so its light shone on her face. The next thing we know she has cleared her throat theatrically, giving every indication that she intends to speak. She looked confident and just a touch malicious at that point. She wanted the whole coffee shop to hear and it seemed to us that when the moment came her voice was almost deafening. Her shouting drowned out the sounds of banal community chatter, the Iberian off-stage bickering, the weedy mournful trumpet. It’s not an exaggeration to say she screamed out what she saw there.

WHAT ARE THE FULL LYRICS TO I DO LIKE TO BE BESIDE THE SEASIDE

When we were little one of us thought it was wiggly.

Panel Two: exactly why

The word—which he knew he knew perfectly well—remained just out of his reach. Unwanted? No. Unbidden? Well that worked but it wasn’t the word he was trying to remember. Invasive? Seemed close. He decided to ask her.

What is that word for when you have thoughts in your head that you’d prefer weren’t there but no matter what you do you can’t stop thinking them? he said.

And I would know this exactly how? she said.

Intrusive, he said to an empty room.

When the thoughts first began he had tried to make light of the whole thing. He claimed it did little more than irk him. It was irksome, he would say, making use of an amusing term beloved of those types who make a virtue out of downplaying their emotions. Those silly merchants who pass off self-deprecation as personal culture. Until this new thing gripped him, he had enjoyed being one of those types. Impossible now when they recognised him but he couldn’t tell them apart and there are words for what this brought out in him but none of them is irksome.

You see he knew that they didn’t all look the same, clearly if they could pick him out of a crowd then they would have the means to distinguish between each other. The urge came on him to share his annoyance with somebody else, another one of his own kind. He needed to know if it was the same for everyone and if it bothered others as much as it bothered him.

Because it bothers me, he said.

I couldn’t care less, she said.

They can tell us apart but to me and you they appear identical, he said again.

This affects my life how, she said and he cursed her phrasing.

You do realise that they are not identical, don’t you? You have grasped that? To them they are as easily distinguishable as you and I are to each other. You do get that? Except they can also, apparently, distinguish between you and me with the same ease. See? Differences between each other, totally clear. Differences between you and me, no problem. Clear differences, clear, clear, clear, that we, idiot us, cannot see, he said.

And I’m supposed to care, why? she said and her syntax forced him to leave the room.

There’s a field by the clifftop that overlooks the bay. He walked beside it once a week when he needed to chase unwelcome thoughts about his life from his head. But that strategy is doomed now because that field was always full of the bastards. Hundreds of them, all identical though apparently not. Of course, common sense and an article he had read online told them that this could not be.

The last time he walked along the clifftop by the field they looked at him, each of them, this legion of them, and they knew him. He focused on three that stood nearest to the path that separated the field from the cliffs. He considered their features closely as they considered his. The three made it as obvious as they could that they knew he was a different specimen to the woman who walked her dog up ahead or the young couple who squeezed past him with their pram. We know you and remember you, they implied, from last week at around this time. But also many other occasions.

He saw nothing. He checked their size and shape, searched for features around their bodies, heads and feet. Nothing. He examined their attitude, how they held themselves, their current mood. All identical. All the same, definitely. But he knew that they were not.

What they were, though, all of them, was relentless.

The day that followed that distressing walk saw a couple of them parade around his garden. Their curiosity was apparent in each inclination of their heads. First this way then that. They examined and explored the lawn, the plants along the borders and those in pots before they turned their attention to him.

They mocked, it seemed to him, his lack of savvy. They doubted—blatantly—his ability to survive should he be left to his own devices in extreme circumstances. What are you gonna do, they said, when your plane comes crashing down in the rainforest? What will you eat? How will you shelter? What are the essentials you will need to keep yourself safe? Or when your ship sinks just off the coast of a deserted island, what skills do you bring to the party of survivors? Who are you, they said, in this world that we get but you don’t? What can you do? Look at us foraging here. Look at us making use of the scraps you have left lying around and building houses with them. See how we know you. See how we know her. Look at us fucking fly!

And there was an office in a grey building on one of the industrial estates that surrounded the small town. He drove to it five days a week and sat at a desk from 8.30 till around 5pm, sometimes a little earlier and sometimes a little later depending on his day’s workload. On that desk there were two computers, one of which showed columns of streaming numbers that appeared almost as soon as he switched it on. The other was for words. Next to the keyboard by the numbers computer he placed his home phone, the one he used to let her know if his workload meant he was going to be a little later or a little earlier than agreed before he left the house that morning. By the words keyboard sat another phone that was used for some communications allied to his workload. There, too, was a notepad and pen that he used for drawing pleasing geometric shapes whilst the numbers streamed past and the words flooded in.

Until recently his comfort with the words and numbers and the pleasing doodles had meant that the hours between 8.30 and approximately 5pm had, as they say, flown by. All had been well and good for many years, in fact, but lately, since the horrible problem of being recognised without being able to return that recognition had consumed him, though the numbers continued to flow and the word count rose and rose, he had found it difficult to concentrate. And his focus was showing no sign of a return. He still made geometric patterns with the pen on the notepad but they had ceased to be pleasing. He hardly noticed them now, nor did he bother to intervene with the information that piled up on the computer screens even though he must have, somewhere at the back of his mind, realised that this would lead to an increase, a backlog, in his workload that should have resulted in a stay at the office beyond his normal working hours. He didn’t worry about a future text to her from the phone that sat next to the numbers computer that would apologise for how late he would be one night, that work had just piled up and up until there was no alternative but to sit there at his desk and knuckle down and clear that workload of numbers and words once and for all or at least until it all began again the next day. He wasn’t worried about that at all. He was far too worried about the other two objects on his desk. All his attention was monopolised by these.

Behind the computer that collected the words for him to deal with there was a framed photograph of two smiling faces in extreme close up. The faces were the faces of two people well known to him. They were him and her. He couldn’t remember who took this picture nor where it was taken. There were no clues he could see. No sky was visible nor any buildings. No clothing that may have let him in on what season it was. No reflections in the eyes of either him or her that might have shown, say, bright sunlight. There was nothing to help him.

And next to this photograph was a snow globe that showed a street scene with a church in its centre. This ornament had the word Riga attached to its front.

As far as he could remember he had never been to Riga and he could think of no friend, acquaintance or colleague that had ever mentioned the place.

Much of the time between 8.30 am and around about 5pm he stared at these objects and his hand that held the pen over the notebook made decidedly unpleasing shapes. These were now awful nightmarish scrawls that an observer prone to cliché might have said were a reflection on his state of mind.

He let the pen drop and turned off the computer screens. The numbers and words did not disappear, he knew, but he would not see them again till the next day. He managed to drag his attention away from the photograph and the snow globe and left the office on the industrial estate just outside the town.

On his drive home he swerved to avoid a dead dog lying in the middle of the road. When he had righted the car he looked in his rearview mirror and saw that it wasn’t an animal, just a black bin bag. To calm himself down, to try to bring his heart within some acceptable beating boundary, he said, Don’t fret, the black bag is not a dead dog. And that seemed to work.

You’re talking about what now, she said.

This photograph on my desk, he said.

And to be clear you want me to what? she said. Follow you to your office one morning before work and, like, examine some snapshot that you describe as what? Us two? Where are we? And I’d do this why?

To help me, he said. It’s annoying me.

And you can’t just bring it home to show me for what reason? she said.

BECAUSE I DIDN’T THINK. BECAUSE THINKING IS HARD NOW.

And shouting at me helps exactly how? she said.

They sat on the fence at the side of the road, knowing him as he drove past. They knew everything but they were unknowable. Every single one of these bastards knew the difference between a dead dog and a bin bag.

He had resolved to bring home the framed photograph that showed a smiling couple in extreme close-up and that had sat next to his words computer for who knows how long. But he forgot. So he resolved to remember to do it the following evening but some forces seemed to be working against him and he forgot again. He acknowledged defeat and gave up. Whatever they were, these forces, they were stronger than him. Whatever their aims, they brought something—no word for what it was—out in him.

He sat at his desk in the office on the industrial estate and he couldn’t see the numbers and words that flowed from the screens to his left and right and filled the room. He was ankle deep in workload and he was trying to think of what to call these feelings that the forces brought out in him. What do you call this feeling of helplessness that went hand in hand with a heightened awareness that his veins were a sci-fi subway system? It was one of the bad ones, he knew enough to know that. Anxiety. Despair. Anger. Depression. Fear. Panic. It was definitely one of the Top Six. And Inadequacy was there, lurking just outside the hit parade.

For now there was no such thing as a quiet sound nor any outlet for all of the light that poured into his eyes.

There were no faint scents.

Arms were nothing but broken wings.

He dreaded the idea of leaving that room and having to face questions from people he didn’t know that needed answers that he didn’t have.

What is it you do exactly?

When did you go to Riga?

Where was this taken?

Some words on the computer almost came into clear focus and he tried to take them in before they melted away then slithered down the screen before dripping off the table and forming part of the mass that lay at his feet.

Both computer screens stared back at him, sneering now and bereft of any information that could help him. They had both become stubbornly resistant to any form of interpretation. They defied understanding. What they knew they kept from him and they remained unknowable.

He looked down as the chaotic doodle he had made with the pen on the notebook. The opposite of pleasing is what. And my name is what, she said. He picked up the snow globe and shook it so that the street scene disappeared and, for the moment, ceased its torment. But when he waited for the snow to stop and the street to disappear, it never happened. It just kept falling until there was no such thing as gravity. So he placed it beside the supercilious numbers computer and picked up the framed photograph.

He peered at the two figures captured there.

They must have their own unique lives, their own different outlooks, their own private thoughts. Even there, smiling for an unknown photographer in an unknown place, they were trying to convey something to him. And his inability to grasp what that was must have frustrated them. Or made them mock him. He wanted to know what they wanted him to know but it was impossible.

As impossible as telling them apart.

Panel Three: dive, thoughts

I’ve bagsied us rather handsome digs, I say.

Smart chap you, you say, thank you.

You’re welcome, darling, I say. I’ve certainly been in much worse.

I’ve heard all the tales before so let me stop you before you start, you say.

Do you remember the time when you went away somewhere and you were extremely unhappy with your accommodation? You called me up in absolute despair, asking me what should you do. I quickly reeled off five possible solutions to your problem and you were so grateful, immediately calmed. You went to fetch paper and pen so you could write down the five alternatives and asked me to repeat them. But I could only think of four. Weeks later I was still trying to recall the fifth but it never came to me.

Your mates woke me up early this morning. My God they make their presence felt, don’t they? Screeching like they own the place.

They do own the place, you say.

So between them and the waves making that whooshwhoosh sound that old Krapp might relish, I’ve not had much kip. Not feeling what you might call refreshed for our big day.

The racket nature makes when it wants something.

Do you want to see me heave myself out from under the duvet and across to that bay window in one balletic movement? Of course you do. And once there you can watch me take a few moments to bend at the waist and cough up my lungs.

See me standing there in my vest and underpants with one bollock, typically, making a run for it.

See me survey the scene like a tuxedoed spy, scanning the casino for opportunity and threat.

A horseshoe bay, I say, expanding from the harbour arm to the tidal pool. There are kids there with little fishing nets sifting for crabs. Vile creatures, you say, and I know you don’t mean the crabs. The sea seems a little less Wagner and a little more Debussy now. There are trampolines. Dogs of both the wet and the fearful variety. Overweight hearty swimmers strain the possibilities of their wetsuits. A giant inflatable, it goes without saying, giraffe. Licensed chippy, licensed caff trapped behind the beach huts, harbour bar, a pub-like airport bar, beach bar, pub like a pub. Four places for ice cream. Four places for chips.

What else? you say.

Sand. And sky. Yellow. And blue, I say.

Like the Ukrainian flag, you say.

The things you know, I say.

I’ve been looking at your books, I say. Books in boxes, on windowsills, piled up next to the bed, the settee. I decided to set aside those that were memoirs by women writers, don’t ask why, and I have been working my way through them these past weeks. Enjoyable stuff, for the most part, though I have my doubts about whether your ladies always tell me the truth. Of course, they can never have an opinion about me and whether I can be trusted so, in a way, I have all the advantages in my relationship with your favourite writers. I hold all the cards. I’m winning.

Shall we get down amongst it? Get showered and dressed and maybe have a coffee and croissant in the unfriendly shade of those gruesome beach huts?

Do you remember that gig I had touring the Baltic states with some farce? I was drinking so much in those days that I was always forgetting to buy you a present. Hence that odd collection of tourist souvenirs from airport gift shops that takes up a boxful of space in our loft. Well my thoughtless gift to you from Riga mysteriously appeared on the Reception desk downstairs, or an exact replica of it at least. I meant to tell you last night after we checked in but sleep must have overtaken me.

No need for socks today. A boon.

Do you remember when those weird ghoulish Canadian chaps tracked you down because you had the same surname as them? One of those internet atrocities, I suspect. They came in for a cup of tea and they asked you if you had any family pictures you could show them. I have no effing time for c-word nostalgia, you said. Glorious.

I must stop asking you do you remember.

The rule is that you are allowed to curse but I am not. Thank you for that, a tiresome excess avoided. You have so much more self-control.

Ah. Two of your friends are here to greet you. Should I describe them? Well they are sitting side by side and all their attention is, naturally, focused on you. I realise I am surplus to requirements in this particular encounter. The one on the left, our left, is long and supermodel sleek. She really is gorgeous. But shy, not quite timid, but less forthcoming than her partner. He is a cocky brute, absolutely full of himself, built like a Victorian bare knuckle scoundrel and eyeing you up like a new parlour maid.

There they go. Up and up. We have served our purpose. Which you know but won’t tell me, you tease.

Shall we walk up and down the beach? Do I dare to eat a peach?

Eliot wrote part of The Waste Land near here, you say.

The things you know, I say.

What about that Murder In The Cathedral in the spooky old church in Suffolk? I say. Me growling along as the Fourth Knight. God you have had to sit through some dross, haven’t you, darling? Clarence in Clwyd. I’d cringe but that was by no means the worst.

Some buffoon has left a large black plastic bag on the sand. I think I would pick it up anyway but your being with me means I have no choice. I pull up the wretched thing, sopping, gritty, and look around for a waste bin.

One of those wiry dogs runs out of the water and shakes itself near us so I can feel the droplets on my bare ankles.

I can feel the sun beating down on my bald patch like the malevolent god he has always been.

They’re all malevolent, you say. All shits.

Once . . . though I choose not to remind you of this, not in your current mood . . . once I played God in the Mystery Plays at Chester. He was a kindly soul with a drink problem, as I remember.

Are you doing OK? Is this the right place?

Sometimes you do not answer and I understand.

I can see what attracts you to this place, I say, why you wished to be brought here. The sort of good old fashioned fun that appeals to your democratic soul, it’s a great leveller, isn’t it, the seaside? Kids are equal to, or able to escape from, their owners. Pets . . . so-called pets, you would have it . . . are able to play at being wild animals. And the actual wild animals are not skulking about, hiding behind any available flora waiting for us to leave. They’re ruling the joint, allowing us a little fun on their territory. I can see why you approve. We exist here for their pleasures and needs, Tudor courtiers living it up at the grace and favour of the monarch but surely with the same niggling thought at the back of all our minds. Our life expectancy is not of our choosing; we’re all for the chop.

Yes, you say. I love that. I love the very idea of that.

Your friends circle around above us, crying to each other. It is a crying beyond my ken and one that you choose not to explain. I am reminded of a misjudged Captain Hook in Coventry many years ago, my villainy reducing the toddlers to hysterical tears in the afternoon dark.

More appear just above our heads and fly in a sympathetic circle. They are whooping like Vikings at a warrior’s funeral.

I love that sound, you say.

And my aches and pains have gone for a little break, too, I say.

That’s good, dear, you say.

I take a stage breath. An old king on the moor.

And my lungs feel filled with something nutritious, I say.

Ozone, you say.

The things you know, I say.

Crying for all of us.

I cast an eye around the careless crowd.

I could ruin it for them, of course, I say. I could spoil their hols if I wanted to. I could plant my feet wide apart and stand four square and centre stage and face the waves and rail at the sea in my ridiculous booming voice. I could summon up some mishmash of Titus A and what I can remember from that dementia patient in Holby City. I could scare them to death. If you like . . .

No, dear, you say. It’s a lovely thought, but no thank you.

Circling like critics, understanding before the rest of the audience gets it that I am in need of a prompt.

You’ve gone very quiet, you say.

Just a little lost, I say. Just trying to decide on the spot.

I know, you say.

Where to leave you, I say.

I know, you say. It’ll come to you.

I don’t know how to leave you, I say.

Like falling off an effing log, you say.

I don’t . . . I say.

Like riding a c-word bike, you say.

Cries of impatience from your friends above. They, like you, want this to be over with.

I want you to choose, I say.

That’s just you being silly, dear, you say.

I want you to choose, I say.