Sam: Over The Threshold

I managed to hide the tears until the funny old man and his grandson had left me, but when I got inside the flat, they burst out. Holding them in just seemed to make them bigger and louder and for a few moments all I could do was stand there, leaning against the cheap plywood door, clutching the stupid bloody standard lamp, taking in huge sobbing gasps of air like a two year old having a tantrum. I had thought that naming the rabbit after Si would take away the power his name had over me, but there was something about the old man’s words, however rude, that brought it all crashing back. Not a virgin? He’d said. Like I had wasted my life, thrown away something precious on Simon the Shagger.

And now here I was in this, this place. And he was gone. The bastard. The shagger.

Calm. Keep calm. I had to hold it together for my lovely boy. I pulled the sleeves of my hoodie up over my wrists and used the crinkly fabric to wipe my eyes dry and look around me. The flat was even worse than I’d imagined. Patches of frayed carpet clung to the concrete floor – in places it had worn away completely leaving black and rotting bits of underlay behind. The windows were silted up with ages worth of dust, a streak of green slime running down one of them. In the corner of the room it looked like someone had once made a fire with an old television set. And everywhere there was a strange, dank smell. Foul and earthy, not the sort of smell you’d expect at the top of a tower block, in the middle of a city.

But the strangest thing of all was the ceiling. It curved and bowed almost cartoonishly, as if there was a big lake of water on the floor above, about to burst through. In the centre of the room, a sad little pink lampshade hung like an outie belly-button, wires all exposed. Just then, another one of those huge rumbles came, shaking the cruddy floor underneath me. It felt closer now – I prayed to god that noise wasn’t coming from the boiler.

I couldn’t let myself think about it, or the sobs would come back. Instead I groped in my hoodie pocket for the reassuring square of my phone, my anchor to the world. I didn’t need to dial, the number for the housing authority was programmed into my phone’s memory now.

“Hello? Yes, my name’s Sam Hedley. No I can’t hold…” I sighed and waited for the familiar strains of Kenny G to fade, and the receptionist came back on the phone. “Yes that’s right, I was rehoused today. But you promised me the third floor, and switched it to the 18th at the last minute – and there’s something wrong with it.
“Well there’s this smell, and the ceiling’s funny. We can’t stay here.
“What do you mean nowhere else? I know it’s a Friday but… But this place…” No good, the tears were coming back, and a soon as the first sob gargled out of my throat I knew I’d lost the argument. The same old routine would start again – calling the council, sitting on hold, begging to be rehoused. Alex and I were stuck here.

This is all your fault, Si.

I pulled the kettle out from my bag and made my way through to the dilapidated remains of the kitchen, grinding my teeth together as I remembered the words of the housing officer – I suppose he thought it was a funny joke, that it would lighten the mood. “The 18th floor, eh? Ooh, welcome to the mile high club!”