The Silver Skies 

PART ONE: THE GILDED SKIES

This blank page, I think, could very possibly kill me.

They say I have a Type A personality; a smorgasbord of drive and persistence, and a tendency to perfectionism. Not that they’d use the word smorgasbord, of course; that’s simply me being facetious and lacking a proper dictionary.

So they say, with sympathy, that my inability to cope with anxiety and the melancholy that strikes when I realise how inordinately screwed this world can sometimes be is a latent manifestation of baggage and bullying and childhood stress. Et cetera.

Hence, the blank page: write down the melancholy, splurge out the stress. Figure It out and Be Happy. A capital idea.

It smacks of hypochondria. I am not depressed; I am not prone to mania. All these mental health words get bandied about but, for the most part, I am fine. I am lucky – born of loving parents with issues, of course, a father chasing retirement, a mother with insomnia, both happy in middle class myopia in a little town in a little county in a little world. I shouldn’t cheapen them. They are wonderful people, human and imperfect and loving and hard working, and they have their struggles, like all of us. They gave what little they had growing up to ensure my brother and I were supported – and there was little, in those early years. Very little.  

What else is important? I would die for my brother, and very possibly for the family dog, who demonstrates madness of the finest calibre and is defiantly resisting house training.

I am a list:

I am pretty smart; an Oxbridge graduate. I am, at my core, a people pleaser. I love tequila almost as much as the idea of loving tequila. My enthusiasm for learning has gotten me into trouble many times. Blend curiosity with over-talking, a despised inability to keep thoughts inside together with an ability to never think right (who says it’s right? Who are these wizards that decide if something is acceptable, that facts are weapons and not truth? Who?), never to say the thing people won’t flinch at, won’t react to, and next thing you know you’ve irritated everyone in your immediate radius. So I usually say the wrong thing and then out come the knee-jerk demands for an apology, demands I can’t deny for fear of exacerbating the situation. And so, if I don’t concentrate, if I let the thoughts come out unchecked, I set a bad example. If I switch off for even a second, I cock it up. So I can never switch off. Never let go. Too many things go wrong if I do. Too many regrets when I try.

So I do a lot. I get things in return – tangibles. Certificates, awards, letters, licences, promotions, payslips. Stuff.

Hell, I even play chess. And sometimes, it’s with Britney on in the background.

I have no reason to feel like I’m drowning. Yet I do. My brain, as ordinary a brain it is, is a bloody fallacy of function. It throws out phrases like ‘fallacy of function’ and expects other people to have a clue what it’s on about.

I am extremely self-involved.

It doesn’t take a psychotherapist to read the contradictions here. I am hyper-aware of these contradictions; I could analyse the world to death and back. I am an inadvertent fan of hyperbole. And long words. Especially long words I mispronounce.

My entire life, I have wanted to make people happy. I couldn’t bear being disliked, or worse – unliked, that terrible whispering at the ostracised, the two-dimensional callousness that was absentminded, really, because no one really cared enough about you to hate you. The reminder of the school lunches in the library, my home because I knew no one would let me sit with them. The so called friends who pretended not to know me if they were caught talking to me. 

I digress; in fact, I’m probably depressing myself. I’m thinking how writing in the first person is self-centred. I am worrying that every word will strike me off someone’s Christmas card list.

I have no real reason to be unhappy. That is, possibly, the worst part.

~~~

Amelia put her pen down, took a moment to read back her words. Then she sighed, ripped the page free of her notebook and crumpled it, stuffing it deep into her bag.

She was sitting in a room typical of the National Gallery: high ceilinged, glossy and decadent. It always attracted her: the curve of cornices, the way light caught on rogue dust in the air, making it look like internal sleet. The cavernous space, the glow of stories witnessed and explored, of fabric squares that seemed to hold the secrets of the ages. The room she was in now – 46 or 52, she could never apply the neat little pamphlet map properly – was exhibiting recently found treasures from the Medici family, paintings swathed in the dramatic, bold colours of the Renaissance. The pamphlet was helpful on this, too: the collection was on loan from Italy for the winter, a so-called ecclesiastical anthology of history, and other words which sounded impressive but were ultimately self-aggrandising.

Amelia had been there for an hour, had, for the second time that week, found herself stood up by her best friend. In her hands was the newly acquired notebook, the manuscript on which she was supposed to spill her life. She wasn’t taking the task seriously, not yet; had a chronic suspicion of writing down anything she wasn’t prepared to defend in court. She had written the first page many times now, and each rendition had grown more self-deprecating, more bitter, until it hadn’t sounded like her at all.

“Ames!” The shout disturbed the room’s sanctuary, bounced off the gilded paintings. 

Amelia sighed, smiling in spite of herself. Henrietta had the subtlety of an American tourist, and was wonderfully shameless about it. She was phenomenally intelligent, ambitious, absent-minded to a point, and a nightmare to live with, due to her constant desire to be doing something more interesting than the washing up. Not that Amelia held that against her; not usually, not unless her OCD, sporadic as it was, decided to rear its head, and not since the women had parted ways as flatmates, many years ago.

‘You’re late,’ Amelia said mildly. Henrietta smiled sheepishly, shrugged and sat down on the wooden bench beside her.

‘The Gallery’s still open, isn’t it?’

‘You’re such a muppet.’ Amelia slipped her notebook into her bag, taking care to make sure that the crumpled paper was well hidden. ‘Can we have coffee now?’

‘Meh,’ Henrietta said. ‘I suppose another one couldn’t hurt.’

The Gallery was a usual haunt of theirs, a place where they could share the history of something much bigger than either of them. Unfortunately, on a Saturday afternoon the Gallery also enjoyed the mania of tourist attention, much to the chagrin of those looking for quiet respite.

The women talked emphatically as they walked to the coffee bar, discussing the election of the new pope and the riots in Europe; jumping from newspaper headline to headline. Henri’s excitement over the Medici collection was palpable; a flush to her cheeks, fevered talking. Amelia had spent three weekends in a row at the Gallery, keeping Henrietta company as she studied the antiquated treasures. Henrietta had been adamant they would finally pay for the main exhibit – a thirty foot painting, a dramatic crash of colour, merchants caught in an Italian harbour as a storm brought with it a shipwreck – above it, the gods of old, swirling in a dark cluster of thunderclouds, titans vying for the mortals below. Amelia amicably played along.

Coffee desires sated, they entered the private gallery and sat on the waiting bench, fell into shared silence. 

Amelia would watch Henrietta in those moments, watch as Henrietta got lost, pulled in by something intangible, as though there were some great secret, somewhere outside of the artist’s scope, that she could find if she looked for it hard enough.

Amelia craved that single-minded absorption, the possession, but never quite found it. A moment of quiet? Yes. Critical reflection? Perhaps. She could objectively remark on the beauty of Turner or Monet (although, frankly, found more satisfaction in a Magic Eye picture), give a few minutes of her life to it, but invariably start craving a game of Pacman on her phone. Sometimes, a painting hinted at the magic – then it would be gone, and the finery of the National Gallery would be eclipsed by the pressing need to re-write her to do list. She wanted time to stop, for just a little while her life to be bound by the gilt of the frames – and it never happened.  

Amelia reflected on all of this as she returned her attention to the renaissance painting, taking in the blended colours that were cracking in one corner, and trying desperately to see something more. 

Then she blinked, realising she and Henri were alone in the room.

‘Henri? What time is it?’ Her question was redundant; Henri didn’t wear a watch.

‘Shit,’ Henri said, glancing at Amelia’s wrist. ‘I’m late for work.’

‘Of course you are,’ Amelia murmured, standing up with her.

‘Till next week,’ Henri said, discarding the paper coffee cup and rushing for the exit with an enthusiastic wave. The woman was a part time waitress, career academic, and lecturer on behavioural psychology. She was the most intelligent person Amelia knew, well on her way to being the leader in her field, and troubled little by the casual anxieties that the rest of the world seemed to feel. Little, but enough. There had been moments, little moments, recently where Henri had been brought low – by men, by work, by academic fuckwits. Then, by happy chance, there would be wine to make it better. Such a trick rarely worked for Amelia. She hadn’t relaxed for a long time, and no longer trusted herself with alcohol. That made the inevitable indulgence – the rare moments when she felt she could handle the lowered inhibition – a source of guilt and regret. The emotional hangover was exhausting, and ever increasing in length.

Amelia usually enjoyed the quiet that settled over the cavernous rooms, welcomed the dissipation of visitors and their noise. Now, however, the silence seemed oddly foreboding. The room was open, full of space – and she suddenly felt exposed. 

A strange feeling, then, a strange, unnerved sense of being watched, pushing forcefully on her spine.

Amelia took a step back, surveying the rest of the room. Nothing had changed; the paintings were at peace, the air still. Not a shadow fell on the canvases; not a line seemed out of place. And yet the feeling lingered, a wealth of unease curling through her hands. There were pins in her blood, vibrating.

She counted, slowly, to ten, told herself it was simply that she felt small in a large space; she was being paranoid, nothing more. With a deep breath she hoisted her bag over her shoulder, pulled out her gloves, smoothed down her coat and headed for the exit, all the while the unease persisting.

By the time she made it outside she could breathe normally again. The winter sun was setting behind the Gallery with gentle ambivalence, painting the white stone and pillars in shadow. The perennial Trafalgar Square tourist crowds had thinned, and she headed thoughtfully through them, searching out a penny from her pocket and throwing it into one of the two water fountains that dominated the square.

She shared many traits with Henrietta, many more than she realised. One of those traits was her obliviousness – not for time, which was Henri’s weakness, but for faces. 

Had she noticed the man leaning against the top of the Trafalgar Square steps as she left the Gallery she may have been struck by his handsome, hawkish face. His eyes were intense, his chiselled jaw jutting towards her with scrutinising interest as he stood underneath the blood red banner hanging from the entrance. 

Had she seen him, she may have recognised him from within the Gallery earlier, watching her for the last two hours. 

And had she noticed him even once that day, had she paid attention to the coldness on his face, he might never have killed her.