After You

Chapter Three - After the Storm

"Don't dry your eyes on your sleeve. Time will dry them for you."
- Jude

I didn't go out on the river for the rest of the week. With Jamie gone, our crew was a man down, and with no obvious replacement in sight, it looked as though our boat had permanently run aground. I hadn't realised how much I depended on my crew - or the river - to keep me sane, but the luxury of a daily lie-in was unwelcome. Once upon a time, I'd have stretched out in a warm bed; you rubbing up against me, feeling frisky. Now all I had was a cold patch beside me; an undented pillow, and a flat that was silent, save for the sound of our neighbour screaming at her kids to get their school uniform on.

The bustle of life next door only served to show me how empty my own life had become; that without my friends and work, I was suddenly left with nothing. I knew I could give Tabby or Luke a call whenever I needed to, but I didn't want to need them, and they shouldn't have had to come running just because death had stolen my independence; made me needy for the company of others. And it infuriated me, because I didn't want to need anyone. I hated being smothered by my over-bearing mother, by your overly-attentive best friend; by my own best friend, who read every look I gave, saw through every lie, and from whom I could hide nothing.

"THEY'RE ONLY FULL-ON BECAUSE THEY CARE."
You're right, but sometimes I wish they didn't.

The realisation that I needed the constant hum of others to make my life seem a little less empty - that, despite my protestations, I might need my mother and best friends just as much as they said I did - made me determined not to need them. But I needed something, or perhaps, someone. That's why, when I went to the new exhibition at Rhian's gallery, I didn't invite Tabby as I'd planned to, but instead, went alone. Skip was going, offering moral support to Rhian. I knew I'd see at least a few familiar faces; hopefully people so far-removed from my private life that they'd offer friendship without suffocating me in the process.

That doesn't mean that I didn't feel awkward; standing in a gallery full of couples and clusters of high-brow ark folk, all dressed up and drinking cheap champagne as though they were celebrities. We used to loved doing that; pretending to know all about art. Nodding along to a smarmy, goatee-toting or faux-fur wearing, pedant's diatribe against plebeians - like us - who bought our "art" from department stores.

We loved to listen to those bizarre creatures lament the way in which consumerism meant that we uneducated commoners placed more value on mass-produced reproductions than we did on non-conformist, daring pieces, which "challenged" the modern concept of design. They would talk up anything they considered the antithesis of the tripe you could find in an interiors showroom; where everything matched and nothing had soul. I loved how we'd nod fervently, and say, "I concur", before going home to our Ikea furniture; the pictures on the walls the exact ones we'd seen in their "Market Hall".

"BUT THOSE PEOPLE HAVE MORE MONEY THAN SENSE. IT'S NOT THEIR FAULT."

And that's why I used to love those evenings spent at Rhian's gallery; the two of us secretly mocking the people around us, but there was no fun to be had in listening to them now - in eavesdropping on other people's conversations - because I had no one to turn to and smirk with. All I felt was an awkwardness at being the only person who appeared to have arrived on their own.

I gulped down Rhian's cheap champagne and eschewed the main attraction - a series of paintings which sought to re-imagine the notion of beauty - and made my way to the corner of the gallery. I tilted my head to one side as I studied a sculpture of a man on a bicycle. The thing was made of old bike chains, which lent it an industrial look. I liked it, but it'd never go with our flimsy Scandinavian interior. It needed a swish loft conversion or old farmhouse; something with exposed bricks, beams or cast iron - in the form of a wood burner, perhaps?