Aria Remains
CHAPTER THIRTEEN

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She saw him again.

It was another sweltering day, and he was dressed in a white tee-shirt and faded blue jeans, walking slowly along the path at the bottom of the hill. Aria had been feeling confined, exiguous, stuck inside her boiling-hot house, inside her tired head, and so had decided to return to the park where she and Sam has shared their picnic. She had followed no calling, had not decided upon any kind of solitary vigil in his memory; it was just that, by default, the park had become the nearest thing she could think of, by the time she had walked the half-mile into town, where she might replace some peace. She had wandered up and down the cambered grassland, the mid-afternoon sun beating down upon her relentlessly, until she felt that she needed to replace some shade in which to rest. She had loved this spot for as long as she could remember, beneath the enormous oak at the brow of the hill that looked down upon the arboretum, and so had headed for it almost without thinking.

And there, appearing just as she had arrived, was the man she saw everywhere.

Subconsciously she rearranged her dress, pulling its thin cotton over her crossed legs, and watched as he went by. As usual he seemed to be going somewhere specific, unlike she, who had been walking for the sake of walking, having had no real direction in mind. He was looking straight ahead, not turning to watch the squirrels playing in the trees to his right, not looking round at the sound of the excited screams of a small child being lifted onto her father’s shoulders. It was as though he were removed from everything around him, disconnected from all things other than what he was doing, what he had on his mind.

Who is he? Aria wondered again. What is he doing? Where is he going? Has he been here all this time, since I was last here, just walking around?

As he approached the point in the path where he would disappear from sight, where it twisted around to the right and would eventually replace its way past the duck pond and out to the street, Aria was struck by the idea that she should follow him. She didn’t know why, didn’t know what she might say should she catch up to him but still, something inside her was driving her on, telling her to see where he was going.

She stood, flattened her dress, grabbed her small, green faux leather bag and carefully picked her way down the hill. It was quite steep, and any slip would see her bounce and tumble ungraciously, and not without injury, to the path below, but still she did not take her eyes from him as she went. Her heart began to beat more quickly, more solidly, as the idea of replaceing out what he was doing brought her a shiver of excitement. By the time she reached the bottom of the hill he was already out of sight, having followed the direction of the path, but she was soon able to reduce the distance between them so she could see him again.

It seemed that he had no idea he was being followed. Still looking straight ahead, his pace remaining steady, he didn’t look at the quacking ducks as he passed the pond, complaining to one another about the way so many people had been past throughout the day yet none of them had thrown them anything to eat, and he didn’t even seem to have noticed the group of teenage boys who almost knocked into him as they cycled past. It was as though he were in a world of his own, so preoccupied by whatever it was that was engrossing him and what was now, despite her best intentions, becoming of great interest to Aria.

As she walked she tried to reason with herself, to understand what it was that was making her feel such interest in him. It still wasn’t any degree of attraction, of that she was certain. Having only just been able to drag herself up from the pit of sorrow the deaths of Sam and Robert had thrown her into, she had already concluded that there was no way she wanted to feel anything for anyone again, at least not until the perpetrator of such heinous crimes had been detained. It had been almost three weeks since Sam’s murder and, even though the police seemed no closer to catching the killer, she had managed to breath again, had managed to sleep without issue, had even been able to do some work. The memory of the murders would intervene occasionally and at times, as the sun began to set with its majestic and unrivalled beauty, or when she would gaze up at the moon, listening to the stars, or when she would visit Ruby and sit on the sofa she and Robert had shared, these remembrances would tighten around her heart, squeezing it until it became an impotent, flaccid thing, making her feel that it was able to do nothing more, that it had no other use than to continue its remorseless throb-throbbing, ticking away the minutes and hours and days and months and years that she would be alone until, having become frigid, spurned and shrunken, it would slowly cease its activity, its steps heavy, its burden too great for it to bear any longer. And she would close her eyes for the final time, an old woman who had never been able to move on from the terrible summer when she had been only twenty-five years old, when all the things that were in front of her, all the promise and hope that lay before her were blocked, demolished by two senseless murders that, at the same time, had executed her so that the rest of her life had been spent in a kind of limbo, an empty void from which no light or heat or life could escape.

Five minutes later the man she saw everywhere was only a few steps from the gates that led to the street and, as he reached them, he paused and looked first to his left, then to his right. Aria ducked behind one of the trees that lined the wide, shingled path at the park’s entrance, just in case he should turn to look behind him, but he looked to his left again and then, as a breeze swept across the open expanse of grass at her side, he started walking to the right. Aria picked up her pace, almost skipping to the gate and then, the thick brick wall half-obscuring her, she leaned out to see where he was.

Maybe I should say something to him, she thought, watching him waiting at the zebra crossing a few yards away. Maybe I should just say hello, just tell him I’ve seen him all over the place and thought it would be nice to meet him, just to make his acquaintance, just to…

The traffic slowed, the crossing started to beep and the man, alongside a young mother pushing a pram and an elderly couple using walking sticks to support them, made his way towards the other side. Aria weaved between the stopped cars directly in front of her then followed along the path, past the tattooist’s, past the small shop that sold overpriced and underwhelming local art, past the shop that used to be a bakery but was now closed and onwards. He turned at the corner, where the library used to be before it relocated to larger premises a few hundred yards further on, and again Aria had to quicken her steps so she didn’t lose sight of him.

I’ll just introduce myself, she thought again. Just say hi, it’s funny, and you might not believe it, but you’re there, almost everywhere I go.

Reaching the corner and seeing him continue along the path, this side of the street bathed in shadow and consequently much cooler and more comfortable, she paused, asking herself what she was doing, what she hoped to gain from finally meeting this stranger, this man who was so average, so unexceptional. What could she possibly have to gain from saying hello to him, from talking to him about nothing for a few moments before they went their separate ways? She could think of nothing, not one thing she wanted from him, nothing she could offer to him, yet still she followed as he passed the Tuscan restaurant and the tiny coffee shop where she had once bought a hazelnut pastry that was so hard, so stale it almost broke a tooth.

He is an electric light, she thought. That must be the reason, that is what’s so important about him. He is a flame, he is the north star, holding me in position so I know where I am. It is transverse orientation, and I am held within his beam. But what is he getting from the deal? He doesn’t ever even see me, doesn’t even know who or where I am. But maybe that’s the point, maybe he doesn’t need to know, just as the moon is oblivious of the moth. It’s not his job to know about me, the same as it’s not the role of the stars to guide the sailor back to shore. He just has to be here, just has to be seen so that I know where I am.

Her phone rang, and she almost stumbled from the edge of the narrow path. She rummaged through her bag and brought the device to her ear.

‘Where are you?’ Ruby asked.

‘I am where I should be, where I’m supposed to be,’ Aria replied, still watching the man ahead of her.

‘What? What are you talking about? Is everything okay?’

Aria wasn’t really listening. She was, instead, still thinking about the relationship she had with the man, the commensalistic symbiosis in which they were engaged. Suddenly he seemed very important, a vital part of her life, and she was flushed with the impression that if it wasn’t for him she would have been cast much further adrift.

‘Aria? What’s going on? Are you all right?’

Ruby sounded as though she was getting worried.

‘Yes, sorry, everything’s fine. I just had a bit of a eureka moment, I think.’

‘What the hell are you talking about? Look, do you want me to come and get you? Where exactly are you?’

‘No, no, it’s fine,’ Aria assured her. ‘I’m just in town, just been to the park and now I’m just walking. Needed to clear my head, you know? It’s all fine. I’ll give you a ring later.’

‘Hmmm, okay,’ Ruby said, sounding unconvinced. ‘Well, just make sure you do, okay?’

‘I will,’ Aria promised.

I have to speak to him, she thought, slipping the phone back into her bag. I have to tell him this, have to let him know how important he is.

She wasn’t sure whether he had sped up a little, or whether the phone call had caused her to reduce her pace somewhat, but the distance between them was now considerably larger than it had been. She began walking more quickly as he approached the next corner. She was going to talk to him. She was going to introduce herself, to ask what he did for a living, to replace out where exactly he called home, just so she might have some idea where to replace him should she need him again, so she wasn’t reliant on fate, so she could make it happen for herself.

By the time he reached the turning she was just a few feet behind him but, as she got to the corner, he was suddenly gone. Vanished. She stood and squinted into the bright, sunny street, at the shop doorways, at the small groups of people meandering along in both directions, but there was no sign of him. She looked down, trying to think what could have happened, where he could have gone, rubbing her brow, breathing heavily.

‘Are you okay?’

A man’s voice. It must be…

She looked up quickly, but it wasn’t him. Just some young guy, nineteen or twenty, maybe, wearing an off-white singlet and a self-impressed grin.

‘You look thirsty,’ he said. ‘Want to go for a drink?’

‘No,’ Aria said, shaking her head. ‘No, thank you.’ She shuddered, involuntarily, shaken from the oblivion into which she had followed the man she saw everywhere, unequipped for any interruption to her single-mindedness.

The young guy’s grin tripped and fell as she turned from him and began walking along the street, looking everywhere for the man, in every shop window, amongst every gathering of people, but he wasn’t there. Eventually, after stopping to rest on a bench halfway along the pedestrianised street, the passion of the sun at its height, she realised she wouldn’t see him again today, wouldn’t replace him purely because she was looking for him, that this symbiosis didn’t work that way. She just had to focus on the idea that she would see him again soon, that she wouldn’t become untethered, wouldn’t become undone again just because he wasn’t within her reach.

‘Aria? Aria, is that you?’

She looked up, not recognising the voice. As a slightly overweight woman appeared from the confines of a small group of people, smiling broadly and waving as if they were at either end of the street, Aria frowned.

‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ the woman asked, still smiling, taking a seat on the bench beside her, knocking her arm as she landed. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, I’m just so clumsy.’

‘Hello,’ Aria said noncommittally, looking at the woman’s too-tight tee-shirt, the words ‘hot stuff’ written across it in glitter, and too-short shorts. ‘No, sorry, but then I have a terrible mem…’

‘It’s me,’ the woman said brightly, pointing to her own face just in case Aria wasn’t sure what she could possibly mean. ‘Kelly. From school. Remember? Kelly, from school.’

Aria had no idea who this person was. It wasn’t very often that people would approach her in this way, introducing themselves as old school friends, which was a consequence of never having been particularly close to anybody throughout her school days, but it did happen from time to time and, each time, Aria never had even the slightest recollection of them. She did remember, when she really concentrated, really tried, a couple of girls she used to hang around with but, as for the rest of the class, the other members of the school band or the other cool kids she would meet at weekends, she had absolutely no clue.

‘I’m sorry,’ Aria said, ‘but as I was about to say, I do have a dreadful memory.’

She tilted her head, trying to imagine Kelly as a teenage girl, trying to picture this curly-headed, flush-faced person wearing their school uniform.

‘Used to go out with Jonathan Rakeman, used to see you Friday nights down Allison’s, you remember, the club, Allison’s, the music and the gin, we’d sit around on the grass outside when it was hot like this, you remember, Allison’s.’

Just hearing this sudden torrent of information left Aria breathless, yet still Kelly continued without drawing any of her own.

‘So, how are you? Do you remember Terri and Julie? Well, I still see them, not all the time anymore since I got married and then got divorced, you know how it is, people drift apart, lose touch, but I still see them sometimes. Oh, wait until I tell them I’ve seen you. They’ll hardly believe it. And you look so good, not like me, put on a few pounds I don’t mind admitting, used to say it was from the baby but of course he’s almost five now, so can’t get away with saying that any more…’

Kelly laughed, a shrill, piercing laugh as false as the varied shades of peroxide in her hair. A pair of seagulls, perched at the edge of a roof opposite, stopped what they were doing and looked down at her, irritated by the sound.

‘Baby?’ Aria said, just to say something.

Kelly nodded enthusiastically, as if being granted permission to continue her relentless intrusion.

‘Little John-john, he’s nearly five now, or did I just say that?’

She laughed again.

’Five going on twenty-five, if you ask me, wants the newest trainers, the latest phone, the latest games, but I s’pose it’s my fault, like my dad says, ‘cause I always give in, always get him what he wants but what harm can it do, what kind of mother would I be if I didn’t get him what he wanted, what kind of life would he have if he didn’t have the latest stuff, how would he turn out if…?’

She suddenly stopped talking, a look of horror replacing the wide smile.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ she said, touching Aria’s arm. Aria moved it away quickly, not just because she didn’t want to be touched by Kelly from school but because she didn’t want to be touched by anyone. She was off-limits, restricted. Eyes only. Trespassers will be persecuted.

‘What for?’ she asked with a tone that, if Kelly from school had been blessed with any social grace, any humanitarian insight, would have been a clear signal that this was not a conversation she wanted to be having. She knew she was being rude, knew that this counterfeit blonde meant no harm, yet she had no desire to spend any time with her or to receive a potted history of her life thus far.

‘Well, me going on about John-john, about him getting everything he wants, and then there’s you, never had a mother, never knowing where you came from. I can’t imagine what that must have been like, growing up the way you did, after being found like you was, left all alone like that…’

‘I’m sorry,’ Aria interrupted, ‘but I really have to get going now.’

She rose from the bench, hoping Kelly wouldn’t follow.

‘It was lovely to see you again, though, and do say hello to, um, John-john for me.’

The wide smile returned to Kelly’s face.

‘Oh, I will, I will. Lovely to see you, too. Hopefully see you again soon.’

As she walked away, Aria reflected on what Kelly had said, wondering if it had been the subject of discussion throughout the entire school. It had been a long time since she thought about the way her life had begun, and she shivered as she imagined what they must have said about her. Aria the Foundling, Aria the Phone Box Baby. The call nobody wanted to answer. Aria without a proper mummy. Aria without a proper home.

It had never been an issue, not really, because she had never known anything different and, apart from such unusual beginnings her life, as far as she could remember, had been filled with as much happiness and love as any other could possibly have been. Adopted before she was even two months old by a lovely couple with a lovely house, she had been taught the difference between right and wrong, had learned the egalitarianism that applied to the lives of all living things, had been introduced to literature and music and philosophy and art, and was guided in all other ways through her early life with care and honesty.

She thought with great sadness, as she walked away from the town centre, of the day she moved away from home and of how, just a few weeks afterwards, her parents had been killed, the driver of an HGV losing control and pushing their Austin Metro over the side of a bridge and into the river below. A freak accident, they described it as, the circumstances aligning in such a way as to ensure it was unsurvivable. Part of the bridge’s wall was missing, having been damaged by a storm two days earlier, while the river was much deeper than usual following the heavy rainfall and the bursting of a dam two miles downstream. The driver of the lorry, an otherwise impeccable operator, had taken his eyes from the road for the merest moment as a wasp flew through his open window, repeatedly stinging his arm as he tried to wave it away. It was, as one police officer had told her with neither sympathy nor consideration, just one of those things.

By the time she had reached her front door, memories of her past life having been replaced by thoughts of what she might prepare for dinner, Ruby was calling her on the phone again.

‘Are you sure everything’s okay?’ she asked. ‘I’ve been worried about you.’

Aria closed the door behind her and thought of the mysterious man, the man with whom she now realised she shared something significant, something that might even help her replace her way through this strange period of trauma and inertia.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes, everything’s okay.’