The Show Must Go On

Chapter Thirteen: Heat Waves

Chapter Thirteen Soundtrack: Heat Waves by Glass Animals

As I emerge from my shower an hour later, trying to scrub off the feeling of Nas's dark eyes, my phone buzzes insistently.

It's my mother.

Immediately my breath catches and my chest tightens. Sandra would tell me to slow my body down and focus on my heartbeats, but as always, the advice vanishes in my mother's presence. Even her name on my phone screen is enough to tense my legs, as though I can physically run from this feeling.

Try not picking up, I remember Sandra saying. You are allowed not to answer if it's inconvenient or if you need some space.

Maybe I will just not pick up. I will just put down the phone, walk away, and—

'Hi, Mum.'   

'Hi, darling. I didn't know if you were going to ignore me all morning.'

My heart skitters in my chest. 'No, Mum. I was just in the shower.'

'Slow start to the day?'

She has no idea. 'Late night working.'

'All you do is work, darling. I worry about you.'

'I don't want you to worry.'

'I don't worry because you want me to! You think I want to be worried?'

'No, Mum.'

'As if worry is good for me, at my age? You know your Auntie Sylvie had a heart murmur two weeks ago because of stress?'

'What?! Is she okay?'

'Of course she is, but she's three years younger than me. Imagine what my heart will look like when they cut me open.'

'Why didn't you tell me sooner about Auntie Sylvie? I would have called her.'

'What, now I'm your social calendar too? I'm supposed to send you daily health updates for all your relatives? You don't even text me back most days.'

This is so untrue that I feel my anger rising in the back of my throat, as though I am choking on a chunk of my own rage. I can't speak.

She continues, 'Have you cleared out your flat yet?'

Her voice is once again chirpy and curious. All her fury has vanished, in the breath between her sentences, and only this is enough to calm me down. She doesn't mean it, I remind myself. This is how she loves me. She doesn't mean it.

'Not yet.'

'Is it not getting too cosy for you?'

This is her way of saying I'm getting fat.

'I love my flat.' This is kind of true—I like my flat, definitely, but I don't love it. Not like Nas loves his. My flat is, in fact, the opposite of Nas's: a shrine to my past rather than a space just for myself. Because my flat is Ben's flat.

As my mother chats about the cost of moving, and how much cheaper houses near her would be, my ears fill with a faint buzzing. It's so easy to be drawn back into memories. I close my eyes, and as I tune her out, Ben's voice returns to me.

Just ignore her. She doesn't mean it. That was his advice about my mother, whenever she said something especially awful on a call. Then he would grab my phone, mute our audio, and swing me around the room until I was sick with laughter. Or he would squeeze my hand to remind me I wasn't alone. My engagement ring would press into my palm like a secret tattoo: I knew we would always ignore her together.

Outside, as each day shows me something Ben didn't live to see, I can almost forget my grief. I am just Ellie outside, not Ben's Ellie. But in our flat, everything is exactly as he left it. Some mornings I am halfway through my shower when the memory hits, because the shower gel is the same one he bought, and the running water washes away my tears. It doesn't take much to make me cry.

There are Ben's messy Xbox cables, which he promised to tidy away but never did. That's his favourite spatula, which he'd flip eggs with for our Sunday morning brunches. There are the rings on the coffee table from our champagne glasses, from the night he proposed to me and we stumbled back home together, drunk in love. This is our home. This is our home, and all the things I hated when we lived together are the things I can't bear to change. I can't even fix the countertops, which are always giving me splinters because he kept forgetting to sand them.

I know that my mother is right. I need to clear things out, to give them new lives, and to create more space for myself in my own home. But this is all that's left of him, now. I don't know where else it could go.

'My personal trainer could see you before the wedding. It's only a few weeks, I know, but she's a miracle worker.'

Somehow, my mother is still on her favourite topic—my weight—and has managed to remind me of the other thing I'm dreading most: Ben's sister's wedding. I've been invited because, as his parents said, it's 'not my fault I'm not really family.'

As if I didn't feel guilty enough for being alive.

I reach into my memories for Ben's comforting words, but he's left me again. I have to face this one on my own. 'No thanks, Mum. I've already bought my dress.'

'Do you want me to have a look? Do you know what's appropriate for weddings?'

I am twenty-seven years old.

But sometimes giving in is easiest. 'Sure.'

I hang up after sending her a photo of the steamed floral dress, with the anxiety firmly planted back in my gut. It's heavier than I remembered, because last night, despite its oddness, lifted the weight completely. All the stress of the outside world stopped at Nas's door, and I wonder, now that it's rooted itself back in me, how I didn't notice sooner.

*

happy friday! it was such a challenge to describe ben through ellie's eyes - what did you think of him?