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I do exist, don’t I? It often feels as if I’m not here, that I’m a figment of my own imagination. There are days when I feel so lightly connected to the earth that the threads that tether me to the planet are gossamer thin, spun sugar. A strong gust of wind could dislodge me completely, and I’d lift off and blow away, like one of those seeds in a dandelion clock.
They hate me, but they don’t actually wish me dead. I don’t think so, anyway.
“I’ll write you a prescription for some more painkillers, Miss Oliphant,” he said, talking over me and typing. “Strong ones this time, please,” I said firmly, “and plenty of them.” They’d tried to fob me off before with tiny doses of aspirin. I needed highly efficient medication to add to my stockpile.
I have always taken great pride in managing my life alone. I’m a sole survivor—I’m Eleanor Oliphant. I don’t need anyone else—there’s no big hole in my life, no missing part of my own particular puzzle. I am a self-contained entity.
there was that palpable sense of Friday joy, everyone colluding with the lie that somehow the weekend would be amazing and that, next week, work would be different, better.
insects can provide such useful insights. If I’m ever unsure as to the correct course of action, I’ll think, “What would a ferret do?”
“There,” she said, removing the gloves and wiping her brow with the back of her hand, “now doesn’t that look so much better!” She passed me a hand mirror so I could look at myself. “But I’m completely bare!” I said, horrified. “That’s right, a Hollywood,” she said. “That’s what you asked for.” I felt my fists clench tight, and shook my head in disbelief. I had come here to start to become a normal woman, and instead she’d made me look like a child. “Kayla,” I said, unable to believe the situation I now found myself in, “the man in whom I am interested is a normal adult man. He will enjoy
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Raymond saluted, and heaved himself to his feet. A man with a less military bearing was hard to imagine.
His eyes were light brown. They were light brown in the way that a rose is red, or that the sky is blue. They defined what it meant to be light brown.
The backs of my hands were tattooed with black ink, his name written there over and over, inscribed inside love hearts, so that barely an inch of skin remained unsullied.
The music business, show business, is all about image,
It doesn’t bother me at all when people react to my face, to the ridged, white contours of scar tissue that slither across my right cheek, starting at my temple and running all the way down to my chin.
These magazines could tell me which clothes and shoes to wear, how to have my hair styled in order to fit in. They could show me the right kind of makeup to buy and how to apply it. This way, I would disappear into everywoman acceptability. I would not be stared at. The goal, ultimately, was successful camouflage as a human woman.
I understood that assisted conception was the antithesis of careless, spontaneous or unplanned parenthood, that it was the most deliberate of decisions, undertaken only by women who were serious and dedicated in their quest to be mothers.
?
“Donor? Did I really say that? It was simply a metaphor, darling,” she said. Another word I’d have to look up. “I was actually trying to spare your feelings. It was more of a . . . compulsory donation, shall we say. I had no choice in the matter. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
??
I’d been so looking forward to sharing my news, dropping it at her feet like a dog retrieving a game bird peppered with shot. Now I couldn’t shake the thought that she would pick it up and, with brutal calm, simply tear it to shreds.
I have my own mug and spoon, which I keep in my desk drawer for hygiene reasons. My colleagues think this strange, or at least I assume so from their reactions, and yet they are happy to drink from filthy vessels, washed carelessly by unknown hands. I cannot even countenance the notion of inserting a teaspoon, licked and sucked by a stranger barely an hour beforehand, into a hot beverage. Filthy.
She stopped, unable to go on because she was laughing so much, still performing a strange backward walk. “Morning, Wacko Jacko,” Billy called out to me. “What’s with the white glove?” So that was the source of their amusement. Unbelievable. “It’s for my eczema,”
Two people wander around John Lewis picking out lovely items for themselves, and then they make other people pay for them. It’s bare-faced effrontery. They choose things like plates, bowls and cutlery—I mean, what are they doing at the moment: shoveling food from packets into their mouths with their bare hands? I simply fail to see how the act of legally formalizing a human relationship necessitates friends, family and coworkers upgrading the contents of their kitchen for them.
I started to dial 999, and then a memory punched me full in the face. I couldn’t do it again, I realized, I simply couldn’t live and listen to a voice saying Which service do you require, caller? then to approaching sirens. I touched my scars, and then threw the phone back at Raymond.
But here in Glasgow .
Heather used to do that too; I assume that it’s part of the job, checking to make sure that I’m not storing my own urine in demijohns or kidnapping magpies and sewing them into pillowcases.
“No, I meant . . .” she trailed off, looking awkward, sad, embarrassed. Ah, I knew them well—these were the holy trinity of Oliphant expressions. I shrugged, having no idea whatsoever what she was talking about.
“Everything’s fine here,
“You’re still of the view that you don’t want to know anything else about the incident, or about your mother, I understand?” No smiling this time. “That’s right,” I said. “There’s no need—I speak to her once a week, on a Wednesday evening, regular as clockwork.” “Really? After all this time, that’s still happening? Interesting . . . Are you keen to . . . maintain this contact?”
a blood relative of the woman the newspapers still occasionally referred to, all these years later, as the pretty face of evil.
She looked rather disconcerted, perhaps even slightly frightened. I was disappointed. I’d been aiming for pleasant and friendly.
I closed the door with excessive gentleness behind her.
Her class teachers had reported that she was quiet and well behaved during lessons, but did not participate in discussions, although she was an active listener. Several members of the staff had noticed that Eleanor was very withdrawn and isolated during break times, and did not appear to socialize with her peers.
Mummy said that we were empresses, sultanas and maharanis in our own home, and that it was our duty to live a life of sybaritic pleasure and indulgence. Every meal should be an epicurean feast for the senses, she said, and one should go hungry rather than sully one’s palate with anything less than exquisite morsels.
There was an incident with an over-inquisitive teacher who suggested a trip to the school nurse, after which Mummy decided that said teacher was a barely literate, monolingual dullard whose only worthwhile qualification was a certificate in first aid. I was homeschooled after that.
At Danielle’s house, her mother gave us each a Munch Bunch yogurt for pudding, and I snuck the empty pot into my school bag so that I could study it afterward. Apparently, it was merchandise pertaining to a children’s television program about animated pieces of fruit. And they said I was weird! It was a source of disgust to the other children at school that I couldn’t talk about TV programs. We didn’t have a television; Mummy called it the cathode carcinogen, cancer for the intellect, and so we would read or listen to records, sometimes playing backgammon or mah-jongg if she was in a good
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It was one of the innumerable ways in which my old life and my new life differed. Before and after the fire. One day I was breakfasting on watermelon, feta and pomegranate seeds, the next I was eating toasted Mother’s Pride smeared with margarine. That’s the story Mummy told me, at any rate.
I tried to remember the nicest gift I’d ever received. Apart from Polly the plant, I couldn’t think of anything. Alarmingly, Declan came into my mind. My first and only boyfriend, I’d very nearly succeeded in erasing him from my memory altogether, so it was rather distressing to be reminded of him.
The ward was large, with two long rows of beds, one down each wall. All the inhabitants were interchangeable: hairless, toothless old men who were either dozing or staring blankly ahead, chins slumped forward.
I hummed as I worked, and couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt like this—light, sparkly, quick. I suspected that it might be what happiness felt like.
It seemed unlikely that he, a popular, handsome man with the world at his feet, would be at home on a Saturday night, so, just to see how it felt, I gently touched his buzzer with the tip of my index finger. There was a crackle, and then a man’s voice spoke. I was somewhat taken aback, to say the least.
I stood as near as I dared. I could hear nothing from within, and there was no visible movement. I could almost make out the shape of a bookcase, and a painting. A cultured man. How much we had in common!
In the half dark, in the full dark, I remember, I remember. Awake in the shadows, two little rabbit heartbeats, breath like a knife. I remember, I remember . . . I closed my eyes.
was actually quite a pleasant feeling, thinking that I might be able to help an elderly person who was suffering due to inadequate nutrition.
feeling—and then, blissfully, no feelings at all. I had also seen the date on Sammy’s newspaper and remembered that today was, in fact, my birthday. Annoyingly, I’d forgotten to ask the nurse where she had purchased her wasp socks—those could have been my present to myself. I decided that I might buy some freesias instead.
one of the receptionists had hosted a party at her flat and invited all the women from work. It was a beautiful flat, a traditional tenement with stained glass and mahogany and elaborate cornices. The “party,” however, had merely been a pretext, a ruse of sorts to provide her with the opportunity to attempt to sell us sex toys.
I have often noticed that people who routinely wear sportswear are the least likely sort to participate in athletic activity.
none of the PE teachers (most of whom, as far as I could ascertain, would struggle to tell you the time) could furnish me with an answer. All of these seemed strange activities to impose on young people with no interest in them, and indeed I’m certain that they merely served to alienate the majority of us from physical activity for life.
“Do they live close by? Any brothers or sisters?” “No, unfortunately,” I said. “I would have loved to have had siblings to grow up with.” I thought about this. “It’s actually one of the greatest sources of sadness in my life,” I heard myself say. I had never uttered such a sentence before, and, indeed, hadn’t even fully formed the thought until this very moment. I surprised myself. And whose fault is that, then? A voice, whispering in my ear, cold and sharp. Angry. Mummy. I closed my eyes, trying to be rid of her.
“Don’t be so nosy, Mum,” Raymond said, drying his hands on the tea towel. “You’re like the Gestapo!” I thought she’d be angry, but it was worse than that; she was apologetic. “Oh, Eleanor, I’m sorry, love, I didn’t mean to upset you. Please, hen, don’t cry. I’m so sorry.” I was crying. Sobbing! I hadn’t cried so extravagantly for years. I tried to remember the last time; it was after Declan and I split up. Even then, those weren’t emotional tears—I was crying with pain because he’d broken my arm and two ribs when I’d finally asked him to move out.
She was, quite simply, a nice lady who’d raised a family and now lived quietly with her cats and grew vegetables. This was both nothing and everything.
I was used to waiting, and life has taught me to be a very patient person.
excitement. There was only one way to find out. With my animal grooming regime in mind, I would turn my attention to my talons.
The gilded confines of the Beauty Hall were not my preferred habitat; like the chicken that had laid the eggs for my sandwich, I was more of a free-range creature.
