Hot Stew by Fiona Mozley (most interesting books to read .TXT) 📕

Big Mac, and he bought for himself a Filet-O-Fish meal with Fanta because he’d never had a McDonald’s before and he didn’t know what to order, and thought the name sounded funny.

Glenda had returned home the previous evening to discover that she had been evicted from her room.

“It was all dodgy anyway,” she said, “and I knew it would all come to an end sooner or later. I just didn’t think it would be so abrupt.”

“Isn’t it illegal to just kick you out like that?”

“Well, it was illegal that I was there in the first place, so I guess there’s not much I can do.”

“There must be. It wasn’t you who was breaking the law; it was them. Do you have any lawyer friends?”

“Must do.”

“If not, my dad’s one.”

“You don’t have to ask your dad for help, it’s okay.”

“It’s not okay. You don’t look okay. I mean, are you literally homeless now?”

“No, don’t worry. I’ve got a job and a safety net. I’m lucky. I’ll never be homeless. I’ll just move in with my aunt in Barkingside or back up north to my parents. It’s not like it’s working out here anyway.”

“Maybe it’s a good idea to get out of London for a bit,” he said. “You could go and stay with your mum and dad. You don’t like your job anyway.”

Glenda shrugged then agreed, then thanked him.

They sit on the train together. Bastian recognized some of the landmarks on their way out of the city: a football stadium, a university, a block of flats where he’d once been to a New Year’s Eve party. Now they are in the countryside, and the landscape is new. There are low hills, and gnarly copses, and empty fields. The train bisects them, splitting the scene into neat sections that fill the window frames. When they pass beneath a bridge, or slice through a short tunnel, there is a flicker of darkness followed by a flash of bright color.

After a while, Glenda starts talking.

“The thing is though, I can see how ridiculous it all is. It’s like I have these constant multiple out of body experiences. I’m me, feeling all these things, and then I’m also outside myself looking in, aware of how lucky I am in the grand scheme of things or whatever. And then beyond that there’s the realization that everything actually is pointless, and that if I fundamentally don’t enjoy my life there really is no point in living. And then of course, there’s the thing that actually keeps me alive: the awareness of how much pain I would cause to my family and friends by ending my own life. So I’m just stuck here, I guess. Stuck here feeling shit but unable to do anything about it. Like, I’ve never completed a single project I’ve started and that includes suicide.”

All this is said very quietly so as not to alarm the other passengers.

“What would it take for you to begin enjoying your life? I mean, I know that’s a really difficult question, but—”

“It’s not a difficult question. It’s a really easy question with some really easy answers. I’d like to find a person to love who loves me in return. I’d like to find somewhere to live with her. Nothing fancy, but it would be lovely if it had a little garden. And yeah, in terms of a job, I just want to have a job that pays a modest amount and lets me bumble around and achieve some tasks and then go home and be with the person I love; whoever that person is. I don’t need loads of money and success; I don’t need lovely clothes and luxurious holidays. I don’t want to run fucking marathons for charity. I just want simple things. They just seem so unbelievably out of reach. They seem so far from achievable it’s like I can’t even see the path towards them.”

“Is there a chance of you meeting someone?”

Glenda gives him a look that’s something like a grimace.

“Is that really such an awful suggestion?” he asks.

“No, it’s just. Look, do you really want to chat about this stuff? I feel like such an oversharing twat.”

“Yes, I actually want to chat about this stuff.”

As soon as Bastian says this, however, he wonders if he might come to regret the statement.

“I feel like I should re-establish my personhood or whatever before I try to meet someone new. I hope it can happen eventually, but the thought of intimacy with another human being isn’t really something I can contemplate right now.”

The train trundles along. The conductor comes around and checks tickets. Glenda continues, “It would probably be easier if I put myself in lots of dangerous situations and just died from a natural disaster. Like, maybe I should take up mountaineering, which would greatly increase my chance of dying in an avalanche. That would be a glamorous way to go. Nobody would be like—Oh, that Glenda’s died of an overdose what a loser, they’d be like, Oh, that Glenda died in a mountaineering accident. And other people would be like, Oh, how ghastly.”

“I guess the fact you’re imagining being celebrated in death means you don’t really want to die.”

Glenda makes a face. “Good one,” she says.

Bastian returns to looking out the window.

“Is your relationship with Rebecca over, then?” she asks him.

“I think so.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. Really, it’s been over for a while.”

Bastian escorts Glenda all the way to her parents’ house.

“You’re so kind for doing this,” she says.

“To be honest, you probably owe me some sort of blood debt now.”

Glenda can’t bring herself to laugh. Maybe deep down she believes that she does. She says, “You’re coming in, yeah?”

He shakes his head. “I’m off to Wakefield.”

Glenda pulls out her phone, touches the screen with her thumb a few times, then sends him a message with an attachment of the address and the phone number he needs.

They hug. It’s a proper hug, the kind where you feel the warmth of the other person’s body.

Glenda goes inside