But when I opened the front garden gate, the dog took off like a shot, his long nails scritch-scratching on the tarmac. He quickly disappeared from sight.
‘Wait! Roger!’ I called after him.
‘Shhh,’ Meena hissed. ‘If his owners are in, we want to give him a head start.’
‘But—’
‘He’ll be okay on his own,’ she said. ‘He needs to be free.’
As we walked home, Meena started dry heaving. Nothing was coming out though, and she stood bent over the grassy patch on the pavement not far from our house.
‘We’re nearly home,’ I told her, stroking her hair.
We clattered up the stairs to the shared bathroom. The less said about the state of that bathroom, the better. The inside of the toilet was permanently stained brown, as though someone had been using the bowl to brew tea.
As soon as we got the door open, Meena ran for the toilet, let out a burp and heaved vomit into the bowl.
I flushed the toilet for her, ran some cold water over my hand and held it to her forehead.
‘Ugh,’ was all she could manage before it began again – her body tensing as she threw up.
I stayed with her, and when she was finished we both sat on the floor, leaning against the bath. It wouldn’t be long before the guys from the bedsit above us would need to get ready for work.
Then she knelt up and leant her head over the loo, holding her own hair at the nape of her neck. Nothing happened and she spat into it.
After a little while, Meena, her head still over the toilet bowl, begged, ‘Tell me something.’
‘What?’
‘Tell me something I don’t know.’
I thought.
‘I’ve never met anyone like you.’
‘I knew that. Tell me something I don’t know.’
‘I think I love you.’
She turned. Her eyes met mine and it made my shins tingle. And we looked at one another for a moment before she heaved again, her whole body convulsing as she retched up a bright green liquid into the toilet.
Lenni and Margot and Things You Can’t Say
‘LENNI, YOU CAN’T say that!’ New Nurse whispered. ‘Jacky’ll kill me. She’ll kill us all!’
‘She’ll also kill you for saying that she’ll kill people.’
New Nurse clapped a hand over her mouth.
‘How did you find out about our argument?’ I asked.
‘Oh, I have my ways.’ New Nurse tapped her nose. Then she sat up properly. Her shoulders fell, her smile faded, and she fixed me with a searching smile that she sometimes uses when she’s trying not to cry. ‘Was it really that bad?’
I thought about it. Yes, I cried. Yes, I made a bit of an idiot of myself, but it wasn’t that bad. It was mostly embarrassing.
‘The security guard was very nice,’ I told her.
‘Jacky said you cried.’
‘Yep.’
‘I’ve never seen you cry,’ she said.
‘I got to see Father Arthur in the end anyway.’
‘Did you?’
‘He snuck in later.’
‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,’ she said.
I smiled.
‘Lenni,’ she said, still searching, perhaps hoping I would open up. Maybe wanting to witness some of my fabled tears that she was yet to see. ‘Was it really bad?’
‘I was just having a down day.’
New Nurse nodded. But she wanted more. People do.
‘Is Jacky going to get fired?’ I asked.
She looked away, out of the gap in the curtains around my bed and into the cold lighting of the corridor.
‘Is she in trouble?’
‘I can’t say.’ She kept her eyes fixed on the nurses’ station, where a porter was making one of the student nurses laugh out loud.
‘Did you shout at her?’
‘I can’t say.’
I had a feeling that she probably did shout at Jacky, because there was just the hint of a smile at the corner of her lips.
‘Have you booked your flights yet?’ I asked.
‘My flights?’
‘To Russia.’
‘Not yet.’
‘Why not?’
She gave me a look that was apparently supposed to tell me everything, and yet it actually told me nothing. And so I pulled the poorly person upper hand and told her I was tired.
Somewhat unhappily, she climbed off my bed and shoved on her white trainers. She laced them up in silence and drew the curtain around me. I wasn’t even slightly tired. Well, no more than usual. I just wanted to make her stew a bit, and to punish her for her secretive ways by forcing her to go and have the rest of her break at the nurses’ station. Then maybe she’d appreciate me a bit more, and realize that annoying people with the teaser trailer to a story is not the way to keep friends.