Ignorance

Ellen wipes her eyes with the sleeve of her cardigan.

The air in the small, dimly lit bedroom is thick with stale perfume. Heavy curtains, filter the weak streetlight into pale streaks of gold and grey across the room. Beneath her feet, the old wooden floor groans softly whenever she shifts her weight.

She hasn't long arrived home, although home is probably no longer the right word for it. Her shift at the bar finished an hour ago. Now she concentrates on packing, squeezing her life into three bags. A holdall, a suitcase, and a backpack. They sit open on the bed because the room is too small for them to sit anywhere else. She stuffs clothes into them. No separating, no organising, no folding. Every second spent packing feels like a second too long. She just needs to get out of here. She's barely holding herself together, and she refuses to give anyone the satisfaction of watching her break down.

There is an audience. Two people sit beneath the bed-covers, bare shoulders exposed above the duvet, their eyes following her around the room as she rummages through drawers. The open suitcase wobbles occasionally because it's sitting on somebody's legs, but she doesn't care.

“Ellen...” Tod says. There is something in his voice she can't stand. Pity. “It hasn't really been working for a long time. I think we both know that.”

She keeps packing.

“I never see you. You work, you study, you sleep. Then you do it all again. When was the last time we actually did anything together?”

Ellen pushes another handful of clothes into the holdall. “You're fucking her.”

Tod glances at Amy, then back at Ellen. “That's not what I'm saying.”

“No. It's what I'm saying.”

“I'm trying to explain.”

“I know what you're trying to do.”

Tod sits forward. “What am I trying to do?”

Ellen stops packing and looks at him. “You're trying to make this a conversation about our relationship so you don't have to have one about why you're naked.”

Amy pulls the duvet higher across her chest. “You don't have to be horrible.”

Ellen looks at her. “I'm being horrible?”

“I didn't say you don't have a right to be angry.”

“Thank you.”

“I just mean he's trying to talk to you.”

Tod closes his eyes briefly. “Amy.”

“What? She is being horrible to you.”

Ellen stares at them for a moment, then turns back to the holdall. Something about Amy defending him hurts almost as much as finding her there. It comes too naturally. Practised, almost. As though this isn't the first conversation they've had about Ellen.

Tod's face tightens. “Fine. You want me to say I fucked up? I fucked up. But don't stand there and pretend everything was fine before this.”

“I didn't.”

“You haven't wanted to be here for months.”

“I've been working.”

“You're always working.” 

He says it as though she has a choice.

It hadn't started that way. She'd taken the night shifts because they paid better. That was all. Then she'd realised they left most of her days free, and Tod was at work during the day anyway, so there hadn't seemed much point sitting around the flat waiting for him to come home. The community college was nearby. She'd looked through the courses, found the Patient Care Technician programme and thought, why not?

One thing had led to another. A couple of classes became a full programme. Free days became lectures and coursework, then the final months brought clinical placement at the local hospital. Sleep had been fitted around whatever time remained. A few hours after her shift, another few before the next one. By the time Tod came home from work, Ellen was usually asleep, getting ready to leave, or too exhausted to do much of anything.

She hadn't meant for that to happen. There had never been a decision to choose work or college over him. Each step had simply made sense when she'd taken it. She thought Tod understood it wasn't forever. A job at the hospital would mean better money and, more importantly, no more night shifts. They'd have evenings together again. Weekends. Something resembling a normal life.

And somehow, almost two years later, she'd completed the programme. She still can't quite believe they'd trusted her with real patients. Bar work has never been the destination, but until she'd started the course she isn't sure there had been a destination. Now there is. The hospital. It's only the first step, but it's a step towards the life she's been chasing for the past two years. She wants to help people. She can't think of anything more worthwhile. At least, that is how she felt up until a few minutes ago.

“I was paying my half of the rent.”

Tod shakes his head. “This isn't about rent.”

“No. Apparently it's about Amy.”

“Jesus Christ, Ellen.”

“What?”

“You do this. Every time.”

She looks at him. “Do what?”

“You just shut off. You won't argue. You won't tell me what you're thinking. You just stand there looking at me like I'm somebody you've already decided you don't need.”

Ellen feels something tighten behind her ribs. She turns back to the suitcase.

Tod watches her. “See?”

She doesn't answer.

“That. That's exactly what I mean.”

Amy's hand appears from beneath the duvet and settles against Tod's arm. It's a small movement, almost nothing, but Ellen notices how easily it happens. Tod doesn't look at her. He doesn't need to. Amy's thumb moves once across his skin before her hand disappears beneath the covers again.

“You turned up here after four dates with a bag of clothes,” Tod says. “Four dates, Ellen. You didn't move in because you loved me. You moved in because you had nowhere else to go. I know you were trying to get away from your dad—”

Ellen flinches. It is small, almost invisible, but Tod notices. His expression softens at once.

“I shouldn't have said that,” says Tod. 

“No,” Ellen says. “You shouldn't.”

“I didn't mean it like that.”

“How did you mean it?”

“I know things were bad. I know why you needed to leave. I'm just saying sometimes I honestly don't know whether you chose me or whether I was just there.”

Ellen looks at him.

For the first time since she walked into the bedroom, Tod seems unable to hold her gaze.

“I loved you,” she says.

He looks back at her. “Then why did I never know?”

The question hurts more than she expects.

Amy shifts beside him. For a moment Ellen catches something in her expression before it's hidden again. Not quite a smile. Nothing that obvious. Relief, perhaps. The uncomfortable satisfaction of hearing something confirmed that she has apparently believed for a long time.

Ellen returns to the suitcase and pulls the zip around it. It catches on a sleeve protruding from beneath the lid. She stuffs the fabric back inside and tries again.

Tod exhales. “That's what I'm trying to tell you. I don't think either of us has been happy for a long time.”

Ellen says nothing.

“And Amy didn't—”

“Don't.” Ellen interrupts.

He stops.

“Don't make her the thing that happened because I tried too hard. Tried to get a better job, a real job, in a hospital where I could leave the night shifts and drunks behind. You knew it wasn’t forever. Don’t you dare make it the reason.”

“I wasn't going to—”

“You were,” she cuts in.

“He wasn't,” Amy says defensively.

Ellen looks at her. Her thoughts clearly readable on her expression.

Amy hesitates, but only briefly. “He hasn't been happy for a long time.”

There it is again. Not I think. Not he told me tonight. The certainty of someone who has been discussing this subject for a while.

Ellen gives a small nod. “I'm glad he had someone to talk to.”

Amy's face changes. “That's not fair.”

“No?”

“No. You weren't here,” says Amy.

Tod turns towards her. “Amy, leave it.”

“Why? It's true,” she says.

Ellen looks from one to the other. “How long?”

Neither answers.

She waits.

Tod rubs a hand across his face. “Does it matter?”

“Yes.”

“Ellen—”

“How long?” Ellen asks again.

Amy looks at Tod. That is answer enough. 

“I don't know what you want me to say,” Tod says.

“I don't want you to say anything.”

“Ellen—”

“You had two years to tell me you weren't happy.”

Tod says nothing. Amy bites her lip, trying to hold back a remark.

She slips her arms through the backpack straps and hauls the holdall over her shoulder. The combined weight pulls against her small frame and she stumbles half a step before catching herself. She grits her teeth and straightens. She would rather drag the bags down the stairs one agonising step at a time than let either of them see her struggle.

“Just don't go yet,” Tod says. “Not like this. Stay until you've found somewhere. Wait until pay-day. One of us can sleep on the sofa.”

Amy turns sharply towards him. Her elbow catches him in the ribs.

“Ow. What?”

“Nothing,” Amy replies with her mouth, but not her eyes. She adjusts the duvet. “I just moved.”

Ellen almost smiles. Almost.

“You're offering me the sofa?” she says. “So I can fall asleep to the sound of you two fucking in our bed? No thanks.”

“No—no, I'd sleep on the sofa. You can take the bed.”

Amy looks at him again.

Tod notices and reads her expression clearly. “For a few days, Amy.”

“I didn't say anything.”

“You didn't have to.”

Ellen watches them having their first domestic disagreement from the doorway of what was, until a few minutes ago, her bedroom. The absurdity of it almost overwhelms everything else.

“I'll be fine,” she says. “I already have somewhere else to stay.”

It's an outright lie. A desperate one. But she says it with enough certainty that even she almost believes it herself. Ellen lifts her chin and gives him one final glance. “Goodbye, Tod.” Then she looks at Amy. “Goodbye, Amy.”

Amy holds her gaze. There's something different about her now. Ellen can't decide whether it's guilt or relief. Perhaps both. Whatever happens after Ellen walks through that door, Amy no longer has to wait.

Ellen turns away before she can think about that too carefully. Her legs carry her forward, step by step, out of the room and down the hall. The three bags make the narrow hallway awkward to navigate, catching against the walls as she struggles towards the front door. She manages to wrench it open. Beyond it is a dimly lit iron staircase. It’s raining. Typical.

Just as her footsteps ring out on the iron stairs and the bite of the cold night air touches her skin, Amy's voice cuts through the silence.

“I'm sorry, Ellen.”

Ellen stops. She doesn't turn around.

“Really...” Amy continues. Her voice is quieter now, but it still manages to traverse the length of the hallway. “I am.”

Ellen closes her eyes.

Then Amy says, “I love him.”

For a moment, the weight of those words is heavier than all three bags. Ellen understands now what she had seen on Amy's face. Not victory. Not exactly. Relief. She hears the click of the front door as it finally shuts behind her. A single tear slips down her cheek. 

She lets out a slow, measured breath. “I know,” she says quietly, to nobody other than herself. Then she carefully makes her way down the wet, iron staircase, balancing the weight of her three bags, and disappears into the night.