Falling Over Read Online Free PDF

the same as them, for I am surely the only one not riding to work. The idea and desire that one day I will be feels oddly remote, like an advert for something that you can’t possibly imagine ever being able to afford.
    ~
    The hospital is another building of identical corridors, painted with seemingly the same colours as my own halls of residence, lit by the same dusty strip-lights. There is an extravagant shop on the ground floor, where you can buy flowers, books, cuddly toys; but otherwise the place appears shabby and out of date. Nevertheless the receptionist I speak to is friendly and smiles at the box of chocolates I am clutching – she thinks I am some considerate boyfriend. But what boyfriend goes to hospital worrying that his girl might be someone else entirely? Worrying that the ring-line will have faded from her fingers? But I am getting muddled here, and anyway I didn’t win Michelle that ring.
    I find out from the friendly receptionist that Grace had been kept in overnight only as a precaution, because it was a head wound, and that she only needed a couple of stitches. There doesn’t seem to be any concussion, she says, but you can never assume.
    When I find Grace she seems very surprised to see me, and I can’t stop myself from grinning. Because it is her – the certainty, the authenticity of her is so strong that it clarifies all my fears and feelings about Michelle. The mind makes shit up yes, but as I sit besides Grace and give her the chocolates I know it isn’t making this up; and not my doubts about Michelle either (although I am not so certain if my doubts are any longer about her identity, or merely my own feelings towards her). Grace looks her usual self, with no bandages around her head; her stitches are faint and lost beneath her thick hair.
    We talk for hours, Grace and I, and although I sense she is hurt and wary because of the way I went off with Michelle the other night, she doesn’t mention it, and of course neither do I. In fact Michelle and Christophe aren’t mentioned once, despite the fact that we have spent all our time with them these last few weeks, cut adrift in that pokey halls of residence. Nor do my body-snatcher theories get a mention; nor do they seem important. Instead we have the conversation we should have had the night before, the getting-to-know-you conversation. Not small talk, not the forced mini-biographies of those meeting for the first time, but a conversation that manages to be both relaxed and shy at the same time, a conversation where the embarrassment of revealing your real fears is balanced by the easy acceptance of them at the other end.
    She wants to go travelling, Grace. Not just being a tourist (which she can’t afford) but maybe doing some relief-work too. She says maybe she doesn’t want to go alone. I ask her why she wants to go.
    “Because the alternatives...,” she pauses, looks away. “Everyone knows the world’s got to change, but everyone just carries on as normal...” She shrugs and tries to make her tone light again. “Besides, it’s a stop-gap if nothing else.” And I know what she means – so what if it’s a stop-gap? Why should your life be fixed and decided by twenty-one? There is no mention in our talk of us becoming a couple, and I realise I have yet to prove myself, after I basically slept with her friend. And besides that I am not blind to the practicalities – once the student loans run out neither of us really know what we’ll be doing where – the travelling is a pipe-dream that hasn’t been planned for yet. Nevertheless I feel happier and more purposeful that I have done for months. Maybe if we do things different, other things could change too.
    About halfway through visiting hours, Michelle and Christophe turn up.
    They have bought lavish presents from the hospital shop downstairs, and their obvious expensiveness makes my chocolates look cheap, unthoughtful. The two of them are smiling secret little smiles, and I