Quiet and Undisturbed

Quiet and undisturbed; the world outside Sydney’s cocoon was silenced. The soft soapy water encompassed her body, gently rocking it back and forth within the confines of the tub. Sydney took a deep breath and dropped her head below the surface. On top lay a distorted world of liquid shapes, glaring in an out of white light.

“Syd, can I come in?”

Isabelle carefully entered her sister’s bathroom. She wiped moisture off the toilet lid and sat down.

Her sister’s body looked ghostly and translucent, drifting weightlessly in the tub. It reminded her of a news report she’d read that morning. Three students went out to the river for their annual camping trip. They set up their tents, unloaded their things and entered the water for a quick swim. The students immediately found a young woman’s body in the river. The shallow waters washed over her naked corpse. It took them three days to report the body. They carried on swimming, they played cards, they drank cider and they fell asleep each night, leaving the girl’s body to disintegrate further into the water. When the police finally arrived, she was almost impossible to recognize, all that was left of her: a wrinkled ball of flesh.

Isabelle returned her thoughts to the present. There were an infinite amount of questions she needed to ask. The chance that any of those would be answered was slim. You had to be careful with Sydney, one sentence, one word, one blink of an eye – if you rubbed her the wrong way, that was it, you wouldn’t hear from her again, she would ignore you. Isabelle decided to take the plunge:

“What happened at the wedding Sydney?”

Her body remained still beneath the cloudy water. Isabelle splashed her hand in the tub and poked a hole in a fluff of foam.

Sydney shot up.

“You scared the shit out of me!”

“Sorry I just wanted to talk to you”

“About what?”

“What happened last night, at the wedding?”

Sydney demolished the last foamy cloud with her big toe.

“What do you mean?”

“Sydney you were a mess this morning. Something happened.”

Sydney wiped her face with two wet hands, the feel of shrivelled fingertips sent nauseating prickles down her spine.

“I can help you if you just talk to me. What happened? Did you go alone? Did Petra say anything? You didn’t…you didn’t run into the church to…try and…to stop it…did you?”

Sydney rolled her eyes. She hadn’t run into the church because she knew that she hadn’t attended the ceremony. A cab arrived around nine pm and drove her straight to the reception. She remembered that, she was able to remember that, that trivial point of her night’s mysterious tale. When she thought about the rest of it, what happened when she got there, who she had spoken too, whether she had more to drink than those bottles that littered her living room, all she saw was blackness, a stark stubborn blackness. She would need to dig behind the memory loss, she would need to concentrate, but that letter, that sharp white envelope violently thrust under her door in the morning, that envelope suggested that whatever she would conjure up, well, it wasn’t going to be good.

Isabelle knelt down next to the tub and stroked her long wet hair.

“Did you have a lot to drink?”

Sydney pulled away.

“Obviously”

She shouldn’t have asked that. Isabelle reminded herself to tread more cautiously. Sydney’s bare body was giving all the signs: head tilted the other way, spine tensed, arms folded, face locked in a frown, a pair of red knees poked through the bathwater.

“I’m just trying to understand what made you go, I mean you knew…you knew it would hurt...”

Sydney stood up in the tub and wrapped herself in a large pink towel. She grabbed the shower curtain for support; the abrupt movement had sent white noise spiralling though her brain.

“Look, I just need to spend the day in bed, I’ll feel better tomorrow”

Isabelle swallowed hard. Sydney hadn’t yet realized what day it was.

Screw caution.

“Sydney, I’m sorry I should have brought this up earlier but we have to go to mum and dad’s today. It’s their anniversary barbecue, remember? We’re already late. I’m sorry. That’s why I’m here, I came to pick you up but then I saw you and you were such a mess I…”

“I can’t go, I’m sick”

“You’re hung over”

Sydney glared at her sister, her sister glared back, effortlessly matching Sydney’s intensity. She stepped out of the tub, forcing Isabelle against the wall.

“Watch it!”

The sisters stood head to head. Sydney finally dropped her eyes down. A deep and heavy sigh of surrender filled the foggy bathroom.

“Well you better leave so I can get dressed.”

Isabelle smiled and nodded over to the towel rack. Folded over the wooden bars lay what Isabelle had thought was an appropriate outfit for today. Sydney didn’t argue; her sister’s fashion sense was indisputably better than hers.

Isabelle left the bathroom and Sydney slid into a basic black dress and a dark green cardigan. She turned her back to the mirror, avoiding a confrontation with the bloated, make-upless ghost. She was going to need concealer, she was going to need a lot of concealer. Sydney opened the door ready to rummage through every corner of her apartment, scavenging bits of mascara and eye shadow she must have dropped last night. She heard a faint metallic ringing – Isabelle rattled the sequined make-up bag.

“Do it in the car.”

Isabelle stood by the door, a pair of green and black shoes set out behind her. Sydney knew she only had a couple of seconds before Isabelle would start a count down, a neurotic trait inherited from their mother. Sydney moved swiftly towards the door, slipped her feet into shoes she would never have chosen for herself and then – she stopped. Flashing dangerously on top of the bookshelf. The envelope.

It would be better to leave it, it would be better to neglect it for the day, occupy the mind with her parents and their chitter chatter but the thought of having that doomed letter waiting for her, with its sharp corners and threatening scribbles, that wasn’t great either. If she took the letter with her, it would be stripped of its importance, it would just be a note, a memo, a paper full of nothing. If she read it in the car or on the loo, it would become a trivial piece of reading material, nothing more.

“TEN – NINE”

Sydney reached for the envelope. She retrieved her hand, her arm hung suspended in the air.

“SIX – FIVE”

Her fingertips trembled.

“THREE – TWO”

Before Isabelle reached “one” she grabbed the envelope and fled her apartment, leaping down the stairs to catch up.