Free B009Y4I4QU EBOK by Sonali Deraniyagala

make them understand why they should not stay on in the house. We played The Smiths at the memorial service in the chapel of my old school, Ladies’ College. Of course it had to be “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out.” For Steve.
    I didn’t succeed in ousting the Dutch family. A couple of months into my terror campaign, they changed their phone number,
our
phone number. And after that first anniversary I began living my days once again in a haze of vodka and Ambien. I was back in my bed, no strength to stand up, let alone to drive a car and go gate-bashing. At times I was mad at Steve. Why don’t
you
go to the house for a change, Steve.
You
can rattle their beds and yowl through the windows and send them packing. Having me do the dirty work as usual. Why do
I
have to be the fucking ghost?



 
    LONDON , 2006
    I
was dizzy in that room. I felt faint with disbelief. I held on to the seat of my chair to stay upright. I knew what was going on, but I couldn’t absorb any of it. This is London, I kept telling myself. Pall Mall. A room at the Royal Society. That’s where I am. During the two hours I sat in that room, my eyes tried to dodge the screen in front of me. “Stephen Lissenburgh Memorial Lecture,” it said. Steve?
    It’s over now, the lecture that Steve’s research institute organized. I could only gaze vacantly at the speaker on the podium. I didn’t hear many words. I was calm while chatting with that crowd at the reception after, though, had a glass of white wine, a quail egg. Maybe I didn’t look stunned.
    Now I am with friends at a bar near the Royal Society, the ICA bar. It was my idea to come here. I suggested it, not stopping to think that this is somewhere Steve and I often came.
    I am in England? I can’t grasp the truth of this. This is the first time I’ve come back to England, and it is now almost two years since the wave. Butthe reality of being here eludes me, I can’t focus, I am dazed. And I want to stay this way. If I have too much clarity, I will be undone, I fear. I was in a panic when I walked up Piccadilly on the way to the lecture this evening. I didn’t look around, wanting to somehow disregard my familiar surroundings. I am only staying a couple of nights, I reassure myself, I won’t even notice I’ve been back. And our home in North London, even the thought horrifies me, I won’t be going anywhere near it.
    But I am at the ICA bar? I don’t want to know this. Steve and I would come here before going to a movie at the Curzon Soho. We’d have a drink here first and stroll up Regent Street. At the cinema, Steve always had a black coffee, I had a ginger and honey ice cream. Now I stop these thoughts. Because I am about to say, No we don’t have time for another drink. The film starts at seven. Let’s get a move on, Steve.

 
    ENGLISH COUNTRYSIDE , 2007
    I
t was the light that did it. It was the angle of the sun at five o’clock on a Sunday evening in early March on a country road somewhere in Shropshire. It was those sinking rays slanting against a yew tree and glinting on the wing mirror on my side of the car, dazzling my eyes. The hawthorn hedgerows on either side of the road throw long shadows in this light. This light that is so very familiar unexpectedly makes me forget. It makes me forget that I am driving back from Wales with my friends David and Carole. It sends me into our car, Steve at the wheel, the boys at the back. The four of us drive the gentle curves of an English country road as we have done innumerable times before.
    For three years I’ve tried to indelibly imprint
they are dead
on my consciousness, afraid of slipping up and forgetting, of thinking they are alive. Coming out of that lapse, however momentary, will be more harrowing than the constant knowing, surely. But now I am unmoored simply by the familiar light. This is different from remembering them, warily, as I usually do. This is tumbling into them, into our life, into our car. This is slipping