Free Corpsing by Toby Litt Page A

out some more about the baby.

24
    When I got home, there was a message on my answerphone from Anne-Marie. She was suggesting we meet up for coffee. She’d left all her numbers, work, home and mobile.
    I wanted distracting. I didn’t want to be alone. Anne-Marie, or so I thought, was the right kind of person for that moment.
    With Anne-Marie, I’d always got the feeling that we were standing on the foredecks of parallel-coursed ships, trying to send signals with brightly coloured flags, neither of us having any knowledge of semaphore. So there we’d always stood, making desperate jerking motions – motions which conveyed, if nothing else, a certain desperation to communicate.
    I remembered one particular incident, which hardly counted as an incident proper at all.
    We had been to see a film (I can’t remember what) and then to have a meal (I can’t remember where). We were sitting four-in-a-row in a Tube carriage: Lily, me, Anne-Marie, Anne-Marie’s long-term boyfriend. Lily and the boyfriend were slouching, their feet braced against the floor. Anne-Marie and I were sitting up straight with our legs crossed in the same direction, right over left. We were relaxed. We were a bit drunk. We were talking. And I noticed, as the carriage jolted round tunnel bends and bumped over joints in the track, that our feet – Anne-Marie’s and mine – were moving with perfect synchrony. It reminded me of when, as a child, I’d discovered that, if I strapped two pencils together with a rubber band, I could draw parallel lines – and so I had started drawing parallel lines everywhere. Watchingour feet dip-lift-dip together was like watching some inhumanly perfect choreography – as if nothing else we could ever physically do would be as minute and exact and intimate. As soon as I noticed this, I became very embarrassed. I felt as if in some obscure way I’d been unfaithful to Lily by even noticing. Quickly, I uncrossed my legs – and crossed them the other way. But I didn’t realize that Anne-Marie had been looking where I’d been looking – and had noticed what I had noticed. She uncrossed-recrossed her legs, too.
    ‘It’s funny the way they do that, isn’t it?’ she said.
    Lily would never have perceived such a thing. Lily didn’t operate on such a scale.
    So, when the long-term boyfriend (Will, I think he was called) asked, ‘What do what?’ and Anne-Marie told him, Lily was a bit perplexed – until we demonstrated, and they both joined in.
    (Anne-Marie obviously had a far less guilty mind than mine. I would have died rather than give such a secret away.)
    For the rest of the journey, we sat there, four-in-a-row, Lily, me, Anne-Marie, Will, watching our feet jog-jog-jogging.
    And I felt terrible: First, by creating this intimacy, I’d been unfaithful with Anne-Marie; then, she’d been happy to betray our intimacy to others; and then, finally, we’d both joined in with a crude parody of that intimacy – a parody which destroyed it.
    I called Anne-Marie on her work number.
    Delight greeted my voice and acceptance my suggestion. ‘Tonight?’
    ‘Um,’ she said. ‘Wow! Quick. Yes.’
    When I told her I found getting into town a bit much, Anne-Marie said she was more than happy to go out locally for a curry.
    ‘See ya,’ she said.
    My first date, post-Lily. Six months plus.
    I wondered how long I would have waited before seeing someone else had Lily still been alive. Much longer, I suspected– what with me not being able to watch TV for fear of her humph.
    The breakfast cereal company had – I heard – shown the final Brandy and Cyril ad once, with a black border, out of respect for Lily – but after that the entire campaign had been shelved. Lily’s death had had no discernible effect on the sales of the bran-heavy cereal.
    Anne-Marie arrived just after seven.
    She stepped forwards to give me a kiss, but when she spotted my wheelchair – just where I’d placed it to be seen – she changed the kiss to a