Falling Over Read Online Free PDF Page B

wonder if they were holding hands before the moment they came in here. Michelle is wearing a bandage around her wound, still hiding something that I am no longer interested in. Grace’s manner is polite yet distant with them, like with people you are told are your relatives, but whom you’ve never met before. I’m not sure whether this bothers them, or whether it’s my imagination.
    “Grace,” Michelle eventually says, “ do you mind if we have a moment alone?” – meaning me and her. “Christophe can stay here with you?” I look at Grace and our eyes meet; I see a little mental shrug in her glance – what harm can it do? We have reached an understanding, and as long as I am the person she thinks I am, neither Michelle nor Christophe can do anything about it (and if I’m not , why should she care?).
    “Sure,” Grace says. “Knock yourselves out.”
    ~
    I walk with Michelle back down the corridors, both of us silent. I don’t think her silence is any kind of ruse though, for she seems genuinely tense, building up to something. In the meantime I am content to keep walking, to keep quiet. She is wearing a ring again I notice – is that to hide the evidence, the mysterious vanishing of the tan-line? Has this body-snatcher read my mind, is it trying to disguise... – but these thoughts seem false, appended to my consciousness, unimportant. There’s no such thing as doppelgangers, no conspiracy – it was all part of the cracked and solipsistic paranoia I’d allowed myself to fall into because I was lonely... proper lonely. But now is the first time for months I’ve walked alongside Michelle (whoever she is) and not felt my centre of gravity slip. She has no power over me anymore, and this walk is a temporary pause in the conversation Grace and I were having. Whatever Christophe is doing or saying back in the ward doesn’t signify either.
    We have actually left the hospital, and are walking around the grounds in the fog. Michelle tugs at the collar of her long coat.
    “You know I still keep dressing for winter,” she says, “even though I know we’ll never have ones as cold as we used to again.”
    I keep quiet, although I am warm myself. Above us, there is the noise of a plane, but the sight of it is lost in the fog-like clouds. Grace and me, I think vaguely; but something about the idea of us on that plane, youthfully saving the planet while leaving a trail of pollution behind us, suddenly strikes a false chord in my thoughts. Have I merely fallen for another fantasy?
    “Have you decided what you’re going to do after university?” Michelle asks, looking at me. Something lurks in her polite tone, implying she knows my sudden plans, and that they will come to nothing. I am overcome with a sudden repulsion at her presence – why have I not questioned, even in my own head, the fact that she is still wearing that bandage? That she has put on any old ring to hide that vanished tan-line? It is all I can do not to flinch, to keep walking at a steady pace while my mind is racing: my thoughts become clearer in the fog, the realisation that potential happiness with Grace is no protection against this predatory thing that walks besides me, and is again going through the motions of flirting: doing that thing of hers with her eyes which she knows makes me want her. That works.
    Ahead of us I notice a solitary figure walking in the mist, in the same direction as us. I decide if I look at Michelle I might get angry, or worse get muddled again, and so I focus on that figure in front of me. He is going at the same pace as us, so we don’t get any closer.
    Out of the corner of my eyes I see Michelle smile to herself. “You see I’m wearing your ring again?” she says.
    I do look at her now, in surprise, for the blunder she has made is so glaring: I never won that ring for her from the fair did I? And the one she is wearing isn’t even the same one... What is she trying to convince me of; can this thing that I