Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely - Gail Honeyman Page 0,94

filled with yellow tulips. There was a note propped against it.

Some food in the fridge. Try to drink as much water as you can. Call me when you’re up Rx

He’d scrawled his phone number at the bottom. I sat down and stared at it, and then at the sunshine brightness of the flowers. No one had ever bought me flowers before. I didn’t much care for tulips, but he wasn’t to know that. I started to cry, huge quivering sobs, howling like an animal. It felt like I would never stop, like I couldn’t stop. Eventually, from sheer physical exhaustion, I was quiet. I rested my forehead on the table.

My life, I realized, had gone wrong. Very, very wrong. I wasn’t supposed to live like this. No one was supposed to live like this. The problem was that I simply didn’t know how to make it right. Mummy’s way was wrong, I knew that. But no one had ever shown me the right way to live a life, and although I’d tried my best over the years, I simply didn’t know how to make things better. I could not solve the puzzle of me.

I made some tea and heated up the ready meal that Raymond had left in the fridge. I was, I discovered, very hungry indeed. I washed the cup and fork afterward, stacked them beside the other clean crockery he’d left to drain. I went into the living room and picked up the phone. He answered on the second ring.

“Eleanor—thank God,” he said. Pause. “How’re you feeling?”

“Hello, Raymond,” I said.

“How are you?” he asked again, sounding strained.

“Fine, thanks,” I said. This was, I knew, the correct answer.

“For fuck’s sake, Eleanor. Fine. Christ!” he said. “I’ll be round in an hour, OK?”

“Really, Raymond, there’s no need,” I said calmly. “I’ve had some food”—I didn’t know what time it was, and didn’t want to risk guessing whether it had been lunch or dinner—“and a shower, and I’m going to read for a while and then have an early night.”

“I’ll be round in an hour,” he said again, firmly, and then hung up.

When I answered the door, he was holding a bottle of Irn-Bru and a bag of jelly babies. I managed a smile.

“Come in,” I said.

I wondered how he had got in before, had no recollection of opening the door to him. What had I said, what kind of state had I been in? I felt my heart start to pound, jittery and anxious. Had I sworn at him? Had I been naked? Had something terrible happened between us? I felt the Irn-Bru start to slip from my grasp and it fell on the floor and rolled around. He picked it up, gripped my elbow in his other hand and guided me to the kitchen. He sat me at the table and put the kettle on. I should have been offended that he was commandeering my living space, but instead I felt relief, overwhelming relief at being taken care of.

We sat on opposite sides of the table with a cup of tea and said nothing for a while. He spoke first. “What the fuck, Eleanor?” he said.

I was shocked to hear the wobble in his voice, as though there were tears lurking there. I simply shrugged. He began to look angry.

“Eleanor, you were AWOL from work for three days, Bob was really worried about you, we all were. I got your address from him, I came round to see if you’re OK, and I find you . . . I find you . . .”

“. . . preparing to kill myself?” I ask.

He rubbed his hand across his face, and I saw that he was very close to crying.

“Look, I know you’re a very private person, and that’s fine, but we’re pals, you know? You can talk to me about stuff. Don’t bottle things up.”

“Why not?” I asked. “How can telling someone how bad you’re feeling make it better? It’s not like they can fix it, can they?”

“They probably can’t fix everything, Eleanor, no,” he said, “but talking can help. Other people have problems too, you know. They understand what it feels like to be unhappy. A problem shared and all that . . .”

“I don’t think anyone on earth would understand what it feels like to be me,” I said. “That’s just a fact. I don’t think anyone else has lived through precisely the set of circumstances I’ve lived through. And survived them, at any rate,” I said. It