The Woman in the Wall

I practice my story a lot at home. Tonight is no different.

'Tell me where you're from,' asks the woman in the wall and I do. She knows
the story well enough now to correct me if I slip up. I know the story well
enough not to.

'Just outside Glasgow,' I say.

'I ken Glasgow very well,' she says.

'Not Glasgow so much,' I say. 'Past the outskirts.'

The wall is ordinary. Wallpapered with faded old-people wallpaper, to match
the speckled Formica kitchenette and pink bathroom suite. When I moved in I
thought I might renovate, make it into a home, but it doesn't bother me.
It's not like I've ever lived anywhere nice.

For now I just like that when I lie on the floor on my back and look up out
of the windows I can see the air, real air that's invisible all the way up
to the sky. Not second-hand city breath, but air as clean as a sheet on the
line and smelling as fresh. For that alone, the cottage is worth the long
bus trip to work in Edinburgh.

'I ken the outside of Glasgow too,' says the woman in the wall.

'I went to boarding school down south. I was a complete bookworm ­ I even
loved maths.'

'An accountant from an early age!' says the woman in the wall and I smile
like it's the first time I've heard anyone say that. 'You're showing too
many teeth,' she says and I press my lips together, hiding the black scars
of cheap fillings, put in too late. The price of a childhood of jeely pieces
and gobstoppers.

The afternoon light is fading, adding blotchy grey shadows to the pale roses
and creeping vines of the wallpaper. Usually I'm not home until after dark,
even in summer. The woman in the wall says I work too much, but I tell her
it's my life. She says that's daft and life should include a social life. I
tell her she's my social life and then she'll stop talking, but I know she's
pleased.

I start to cough. I've been coughing for a few days, hacking coughs that
stoke a fire in my chest that burns constantly now, even when I'm breathing.
Stuart sent me home early from work today; told me to see a doctor, but I
stay away from doctors, because the last thing I want to do is discuss my
family history. 'And what did your mother die of?'

I just need a good sleep. I'll be back at work tomorrow. At work I matter.
'It's a shame bonuses are only for client management this year, Jac,' Stuart
had said at my appraisal last month. 'If they were for technical knowledge,
you'd have got one for sure.'

'That's an awful cough,' says the woman in the wall. 'Got a hanky?' I wave a
tissue at the patch of wall where the paper is peeling away from the cracked
plaster. Her window. Some days she mutters about a nice cotton hanky, but
today she's satisfied with the tissue and moves on through the litany.

'Jac?' she asks. 'Unusual name for a girl.'

'Short for Jacinta,' I say. Kirsty Watt, the payroll clerk knows about
Jacqueline-Marie Thomson, but Kirsty's down on the third floor where the
elevator lets out women in chain store suits and men with soft-soled shoes.
Jac Thomson works on the sixteenth floor, where the air conditioning works
properly and the men wear silk ties.

'Shouldn't it be Jass or Jace?' the woman in the wall goes on, and I'm ready
for this too.

'I know, I know,' I say, rolling my eyes. 'My parents wanted a boy. Continue
the family name and all that.'

The only place our family name has ever appeared is the drunk's cell at the
local police station. Eck McKinnon wrote Dad's name over the door in Magic
Marker one night. 'It seemed only right,' he'd said when he dropped him off
the next morning. 'He's had that much use out of the place.' Eck always
dropped Dad off in the morning if he'd been on the night shift when Dad was
brought in.

'You went too far with the name,' the woman in the wall says.

'Nobody's ever going to ask me,' I say, but my words are lost in a fusillade
of coughing that rips at the burning insides of my lungs.

'Honey and lemon,' says the woman in the wall. 'I told you that.'

'I just need sleep,' I gasp eventually.

'But we haven't got on to your parents yet. That's the most important bit.'

'I know.' I have to turn my back to get her to shut up.

'You've no' had your tea, yet,' she mutters as I pass by the kitchenette.
'Again,' she points out as I close the bedroom door on her.

I lie in a sweat of fever and chills that doesn't feel like sleep, but still
makes me late for work the next day. I'm never late, I'm never sick, I'm
never moody, but today I have to plaster on a breezy smile in the lift.

The breeze freezes when I see Maddy Cooper at my desk. Not just at it, but
inhabiting it with her furry gonks and family photos, the uneven china
pencil holder one of her kids made and the computer screen decorated with
multi-coloured post-it notes like a tacky Christmas tree. Desks like that
make me feel itchy. I keep my desk clean and clear. I even put my coffee cup
on the floor and fold my jacket in a drawer. Now the back of my chair is
draped with Maddy Cooper's jacket and her blue-skirted cushion bottom is
oozing over the edge of the seat.

'That's my desk,' I say.

She looks up at me, sticks out her lower lip and puffs out some air as if to
say it's none of her business. 'You've to talk to Stuart,' she says and
rearranges one of her gonks.