He can’t see me like this, not Hugh. I try to put a brave face on it, try to think of something clever, something funny, something to say to detract from what’s happening, but instead I feel myself shatter like the glass on the floor and I crumple to the ground.

  ‘Alice!’ he shouts.

  He holds me in his arms and I want to move, to smile, to tell him I’m fine, but I can’t do any of those things. I feel paralysed, completely numb, trembling from the inside as if I’m in a million pieces on the floor.

  ‘I’ll call an ambulance. Where’s your phone? No. I’ll get my phone, okay? Don’t move.’

  He leaves me to rush to his bag and I rest my face on the ground.

  ‘No, Alice!’ he yells.

  I need to close my eyes.

  ‘There’s glass.’ He puts the phone down and comes to me again, brushing the glass away.

  I hear banging on the door.

  ‘Not now,’ Hugh calls.

  ‘Let me in, I’m a neighbour, a friend!’

  He runs to the door and I hear Naomi enter, I feel her.

  ‘I’m calling an ambulance. She collapsed.’

  ‘Why is she bleeding?’

  ‘She fell on the smashed glass.’

  ‘Alice, darling, open your eyes,’ Naomi says. ‘Come back to yourself now.’

  I open my eyes and look up at her.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I say, teeth chattering. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘No cause for sorrys, you just get yourself better. Breathe in and out.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Stop with the sorry,’ she says, smiling. ‘I don’t think there’s any cause for an ambulance, but you do what you feel, Hugh,’ she says. ‘I’m Naomi – I’m a neighbour. I’m a friend. I can help her.’

  ‘She’s told me about you. Okay, whatever you think,’ Hugh says, coming to the floor and sitting beside us. ‘What happened?’ he asks her gently as I breathe in and out slowly.

  ‘The wall tumbled down,’ she says. ‘All the bricks have crumbled. And she’s weak inside. She’s got to build herself up from the inside out.’

  I look at her.

  ‘We all tumble, we all fall, we get ourselves back up again. Thank goodness you were here, Hugh,’ she says, rocking me back and forth. ‘Also, I think I kneeled on some glass.’

  I start laughing. It takes them by surprise. I can’t stop, it’s bordering on manic. Then as quickly as it arrives, it turns into uncontrollable tears.

  Gospel was right about the characteristics of my arch-nemesis. I remained wary, on the lookout at all times for the person who could take me down, the person who lacks empathy, compassion, who shows no remorse, who manipulates and charms. He warned me that my nemesis would pull me to them over and over in my lifetime, that they would be so clever, I would never know who they are. He told me, if a nemesis is a mirror reflection of you, then in a way that makes them part of you.

  In all the scenarios I envisioned, all the people I watched like a hawk, never for a second did I think my arch-nemesis could be myself, that I could tear myself down so viciously while I wasn’t paying attention.

  I was overconfident. I manipulated my aura for too long, pretended to be somebody I wasn’t, and every single time I altered myself to become someone I wasn’t, it ravaged the real part of me. It didn’t take Hugh seeing me to realise that, but it did take seeing how he looked at me, my life from his perspective, to understand I couldn’t hide it anymore.

  I dispense with the shield, feeling naked without my shell, but on a positive note, lighter. I accept that I must learn to cope without it. I return to wearing sunglasses because my pain has meant I can see it even more brightly than before in others. After my own troubles, other people’s emotions are even clearer and in sharper focus.

  I was numbing myself to the effect other people have on me, but I cannot numb myself to my own. You can’t shield yourself from yourself, not without becoming ill. Ironic, that my own actions would be the thing to make me feel worse. I can’t keep trying to handle other people, I need to handle me when I’m with them.

  I hand in my notice at work. I’m taking my time. My savings will keep me afloat for a short time while I find my feet again, and I’m taking baby steps. A walk in the park every day feeds my soul. I start taking care of my balcony garden again, and as I nurse my plants, I nurse myself. Today is day one on the Tube without my comfort blanket. I feel weak and vulnerable, shield gone completely. I feel like my insides are shaking, that at any moment I will get off and run home. I hate this frail young woman I’ve become, but I need to be her for a while.

  Instead of standing by the door on the Tube, I move to a seat. A teenager looks up from her phone and stares at my trainers. She sends out hateful jealous green comets across the carriage at me. A man directly opposite me is reading a rag, he’s spending a lot of time on page three, where a young woman with enthusiastic boobs smiles back at him, inviting him to create all kinds of fantasies. Red swirls around his crotch, mixed with black. I’ve never seen it before but it’s like a diseased desire. I’m reminded right there of why I hate the Tube and wish I could wear my mask again and put up my shield. But I can’t, I told myself I was constantly under urgent psychological attack every day, submerged in strange bodies, but I need to wean myself off it.

  A man who appears never to have seen the inside of a bath or shower sits near me. His head swirls with an ever-changing cloud of colours. A strung-out young woman listening to dance music on headphones, whose jaw is working overtime, with pupils so big they almost fill her eyes, has disco lights flashing round her head. A couple sit together, holding hands, sharing pinks. Tired and resting their heads on each other, looking as though they’re not long out of bed together. I don’t mind being close to them; they’re not interested in sharing their colours with anyone else, if they even notice there’s anyone else in the carriage. Mine, their pinks say to each other. A man with predominant blue colours stands up to allow a pregnant woman with a gold torso to sit.

  I’m so close to chickening out and putting my shield up when I see a guy further down the carriage. He’s wearing large headphones and he’s reading a book. How he does both is beyond me, but maybe there’s no music on or he’s not really reading. He turns a page. I watch his face. He’s lost in the story. He’s wearing a light grey suit, with no tie, the top buttons of his shirt are open, he wears trainers and a bag across his body, which rests on the empty chair beside him.

  I keep looking at him. I can’t figure him out. Reading and listening, a suit and trainers with no tie. I don’t know if he’s enjoying the book, if he likes the music he hears. I don’t know if he’s tired, or lonely, or happy, generous of spirit and mind. I don’t know if he’s grieving or excited about something. He reminds me of the couple twisted around each other – like them, he’s in his own world and doesn’t seem to notice anybody else – but the similarity is striking for a different reason and I can’t put my finger on it.

  The Tube stops. The doors open. A crowd gets off, a crowd gets on. A person squeezes her large hips beside mine. Somebody blocks my view of the man. I lean forward. I realise now what is so different about him, I realise why I have no sense of who or what he is.

  He has no colours.

  But that’s impossible. Maybe they’re faint; some people have very insipid wishy-washy colours. I remove my sunglasses.

  He has no colours.

  No colours.

  I have never seen anyone without colours, not since I was younger than eight years old, not unless they’re on television – and he’s not on television. He’s right in front of me. I can’t stop staring at this freak of nature. I’m probably looking at him the way most people look at me.

  All of a sudden he glances up from his book, at me, then down again. No doubt he’s unnerved by the intensity of my stare, but if he is, I can’t tell. I can’t tell! I don’t know if he’s rattled, irritated, or if he noticed me at all.

  I examine him for colours, all over his body, but there’s nothing. No hidden swirls or mists, no rolling, no fireworks, no sparks or pops, no slow sleepy spirals. Absolutely nothing.

  He glances up again, and out the window at the platform. Suddenly realising where he is, he jumps up and runs off the Tube, just before the doors close. Stunned, I leap for the doors but they’re closing. I press the button over and over again, but they won’t open. Hands to the glass, I watch him run through the crowd on the platform, dodging through the commuters, weaving in and out of colours as though they’re puffs of smoke from a steam train. As the Tube pulls away, my hands remain on the glass as I watch the lone man jogging through the colourful crowd emitting no colours at all.

  I tap my fingers impatiently on the kitchen table, waiting for Hugh to log on.

  ‘Hey,’ he says, finally. ‘Are you okay?’

  He’s worried. I’d told him to call me urgently; he was in the middle of a class, I had to wait. He had to wait. No doubt we’re both blobs of stress.

  ‘I saw someone today.’

  ‘Yeah?’ He moves closer to the screen to see my face. I see the teacher’s room in the background.

  ‘A guy on the Tube.’

  ‘Don’t fall in love with a guy on a London Underground,’ he warns playfully.

  ‘He had no colours.’

  He takes this in for a moment. I appreciate this about him, that he processes the things I tell him, to see how they fit, to see what they mean, rather than dismissing them as insanity.

  ‘Maybe it was a faint colour?’ he says. ‘Beige. Maybe he’s really boring.’

  ‘No, I checked. I looked at every part of him. There was nothing at all. I didn’t know how he felt, who he was, I didn’t know … anything.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Stared at him and freaked him out? I didn’t know what to do. Then I lost him.’

  I’d gotten off at the next stop and gone back to the station I lost him at. I wandered the platforms even though I knew he wouldn’t be there. Then I went up to the surface and walked up and down. It’s a big road, with streets streaming from it on both sides, buildings crawling to the sky on both sides, endless numbers of businesses, shops and offices. He could be anywhere.

  ‘What is a person who doesn’t have colours?’ Hugh asks. ‘A sociopath?’

  ‘I’ve seen plenty of sociopaths: they’re full of colours, they feel a lot, just not the right feelings at the right time.’

  ‘Do you think your gift is disappearing?’

  I smile. He’s always called it a gift when I always felt it was a curse.

  ‘No, if anything it’s gotten stronger since you left. What do you think I should do?’

  He ponders this. ‘I think you need to be very careful.’

  I nod, feeling my heart sink. ‘Yeah, I should just leave it.’

  ‘No, Alice.’ Unable to raise his voice in the staff room, he moves closer to the screen. ‘You absolutely have to find him.’

  Find the man with no colours.

  I had ended up in that particular carriage of that Tube due to a series of errors – deliberate errors, I suppose. I was wandering, I was trying to get lost, I didn’t have any particular destination other than trying to feel better, to feel my version of normal again. I wasn’t supposed to be on it, the odds of me ever encountering him were slim, but I did it once. I need to find him again. I spend the next few days getting the same Tube, as close to the time as I can remember, and then, recalling how he was running when he disembarked, I guess he was late and should have been on an earlier Tube. So I get on the earlier one too, moving up and down the carriages, fighting the temptation to raise my shield, even if I had the energy to do so. Then I change tack, I give up on the Tube and instead stand at the entrance to the Tube station where he got off, monitoring everyone who comes and goes.

  I don’t find him.

  I then reason that the odds of me being on that Tube were so low that the same could have been true of him, and he may never be on that Tube, or at this station, or on this street ever again in his life. So after three weeks I end my stalking and obsessive behaviour, feeling embarrassingly grief-stricken.

  I’m a regular at the local garden centre, have been since my arrival in London, even when I couldn’t afford to buy anything. I enjoy browsing. I notice a table of orchids are as miserable as can be; they are alive and beautiful, seemingly perfect to the consumer, but they are sad. There’s no one around and so I quickly start to move them to the next table. I had killed many orchids in my time. I would bring them home and wander around with them in my hand to every part of the house, trying to figure out where they’d have the best chance of survival.

  ‘Excuse me,’ says a woman behind me.

  I’m caught red-handed. I turn around, ready to apologise.

  ‘Could you tell me where the dahlias are. I’m going to visit a friend in hospital and I want to give her dahlias.’

  I suppose I do look as though I work here, dressed in black, wearing gloves. I direct her to the dahlias, but she looks confused, so I walk with her while she tells me about her friend, who slipped and broke her knee, which is unfortunate as she was just starting to get used to her new hip. She’s a pleasant woman and I guide her to the dahlias then return to the orchids, where a young guy is staring at the half-empty table of orchids and little bit too crammed table of geraniums.

  ‘They don’t like it there,’ I tell him.

  ‘Did you move them?’

  ‘Yeah. They don’t like it there,’ I explain. ‘Look.’

  I point up at the pipework on the wall beside them with a fan and hot air coming out from the café that faces in the opposite direction. ‘It’s like putting them beside a radiator.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he agrees. ‘I’ll move them, thanks.’

  I beam all the way home with a sad orchid that I had to save.

  Everyone needs time to find their place, and that’s also true of plants. Sad Orchid takes her time, a little bit stubborn at first, a little bit pouty and moody. But I quickly grow to love my temperamental friend. She wants to be moved continuously to have the best of everything at all times. She refuses to settle in one place when there’s another corner with better light at another time. She won’t settle, she always wants the best for herself. She teaches me.

  I return to Crystal Palace training grounds. I have been there many times already, each time observing him, just feeding some sort of need, not necessarily for him but for something familiar, warm, comforting. I go to him to ease the loneliness, which he does without knowing it, but I always walk away. I used to change my energy so that he wouldn’t notice me, or I’d leave, but I’m not doing that anymore.

  He signs the posters, programmes, his autobiography and whatever merchandise the fans have for him. Again he looks up as he’s signing, over their heads because he’s so tall. I’m wearing my shades, gloves, a long coat. I hold his book in my hands, hugging it to my chest, actually.

  His eyes narrow suspiciously.

  ‘Alice?’

  The group of fans turn to look at me.

  I hold his book out. ‘Sign my book?’

  ‘Alice Kelly!’ He gives the fan his book back and then places one hand on the barrier and with a light bounce, he leaps effortlessly over the metal bar and runs to me.

  ‘Alice?’

  ‘Yes,’ I grin, his excitement contagious.

  He lifts me up and spins me around and I laugh, delighted and embarrassed at the same time.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘What do you think? I came to see you. I didn’t know how else to get in touch with you.’

  ‘Oh my God, this is amazing,’ he puts me down and studies me. ‘Still wearing the glasses.’

  ‘Yep.’

  He places a finger and gently pulls down the centre of the glasses so that they slide down my nose. He doesn’t take them off completely, just stares deeply into my eyes.

  ‘Yep. There she is. Right!’ He claps his hands. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Where?’

  He grabs my hand, notices the gloves, but doesn’t say anything.

  ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘Train, why …’

  ‘You’re coming with me.’

  ‘Excuse me, excuse me,’ he says, pushing his way through the gang. ‘This is Alice Kelly, my best friend from school. Let’s go.’

  I laugh as the group cheer and he brings me to the car park to an expensive black jeep.

  ‘Come to my place?’

  I look at him.

  ‘Not like that. If we go anywhere else, we won’t get any peace,’ he says, referring to the fans. ‘And I don’t want to miss a second of hearing all about you.’

  My heart skips a beat. ‘Uh, there’s not much to tell.’

  ‘Shut up, get in the car.’

  I laugh and climb up into the enormous Range Rover.

  ‘Gospel, how much did this thing cost?’

  ‘Two hundred grand,’ he says with a cheeky grin. ‘Can you believe it?’

  We both start laughing and I feel like I’m back in school with him.

  ‘I got two of them.’

  We roll around laughing. He wipes his eyes and starts the engine.

  His house is even more impressive than the jeep. An enormous house in the countryside, with a guest house, and loads of land, a long drive and a sweeping car park with a water fountain.

  ‘Whoa.’

  ‘You like it?’

  ‘Like it? I love it. It’s incredible.’

  The door opens and a little boy comes running outside, followed by a petite blonde woman. ‘Daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy,’ he shouts, running straight at him.

  Gospel opens his arms and scoops him up, smothering him with kisses as he wriggles in delight.

 

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