Graceful Abaddon

Tiananman Square (7)

8:47pm

Chris meditates as he pisses. Short of taking a dump, it is the only time his mind is free to wander unhinged from the anchors that surround him. The trickling urine may as well be clean, cascading water from a natural spring.

His eyes are closed. Goddamned nearly nine o'clock, he thinks. Where are these arseholes? Who asks to come over for dinner then doesn't even call when they change their mind? If he did not dread their meeting, he'd have been furious rather than mystified. Had they just forgotten? Maybe their GPS was playing up? Say it had them scouring random country lanes up in the Chilterns somewhere? Poor bastard is probably copping an earful from his wife: "You're supposed to be a psychic!!" she might be shouting.

Hell, there might have been an accident. Both of them Picassoed by a lorry coming off the A23. Oh well, baby, we can take some leftovers to the hospital. Roast chicken and potatoes, à la intravenium. You bet it's Halal.

Chris shakes his head and chuckles. He shakes his dick dry, flushes the toilet then rinses his hands. Before heading back downstairs he grins into the mirror. Last time he and Susan dined with friends, he got spinach stuck in his teeth. There was Susan, rampant with her subtle gestures, kicking him under the table. Somewhat drunk, he'd explained from the passenger seat on the drive home, "I thought you had restless-leg syndrome or something". It was the downstairs couch for him that night.

His teeth, this time, are spotless. He adjusts his belt.

The solitude of the bathroom tempts him. Adam, though: he knows his friend needs him. They both know of Susan's quest to get her sister married. That Pett Catholic upbringing has not worn off entirely. Neither woman will be happy, Chris believes, until they have both borne children. Like the world is not overcrowded with vapid narcissists already.

He leaves the bathroom. Ivon's shrill laughter travels up the stairs. Dido, at least, is boringly unnoticeable. Not that she's still with them. Pausing for a moment, realising he has had five beers in less than two hours, Chris tries to make out what the music is. Some other woman, all mumbly and sad in her own complexity. Some folksy crap – right down to the tokenistic banjo. Who the hell knows? Who the hell cares? He sighs into his trouser pockets. Slumps across the landing.

Plush carpet. Vacant walls. No matter what he and Susan do, something about this upstairs landing just feels off, somehow inauthentic, like it's been arranged by a real-estate agent before an open-house viewing. An artificial construct of the perfect family home. A place of life and memories, amazing sex and midnight fights, sick kids, dead dogs buried in the yard.

Sometimes this landing, for a reason he has never been able to define or bring up to Susan, gives him the creeps. Sometimes, especially when he's home alone, he cannot get into his room or onto the stairs faster. Sometimes, walking down the stairs on early winter mornings, even though he turns the light on, something makes his back hairs bristle. He walks on, knowing he is being silly. He walks on, not looking back, because he hasn't yet decided what he'd do if, upon turning, he saw what he felt was sometimes there: a presence, faceless, watching from the top.