When I Was Invisible (41 page)

‘I really missed you,' I say.

Carefully, without drama or venom, she tugs her hand out of mine. I am cold now we're not touching. ‘I didn't miss you,' she says.

‘Wow, thanks.'

‘I didn't. I simply kept finding other fucked-up humans to take your place.'

‘I only have one duvet because I don't have visitors to stay,' she says. The walk back to her flat has been silent. It reminds me of the time we walked back to the bus stop from Big T's house and the silent disappointment that Nika seemed to be carrying with her. As we have walked her body language has changed, cooled. She seemed to be regretting the decision to let me into her life so soon, possibly worried that I will believe it is all forgiven.
I
certainly don't believe that. I realised how puny, insignificant and inadequate the word ‘sorry' was when it left my mouth earlier. I do not think I am forgiven at all.

‘I'll use my coat, it's fine.'

‘If you want, you can sleep in my bed.'

I can tell this is one of the first times she's let someone in here. The flat is barely decorated. It has stuff – sofa, TV, armchair – fully equipped kitchen area off the living room, but nothing personal. She could be a nun, her surroundings are so sparse. She has CDs lined up along the mantelpiece, lots of brightly coloured spines on either side of a portable CD player and radio. The alcove on the far side of the fireplace has a few novels stacked up, most of them old and well read. There is no rug on the floor, the curtains look like they come with the flat. She has a guitar propped up by the armchair, a newspaper discarded on the sofa, a neat stack of mail on the bar that separates the kitchen from the living room.

Everything is orderly.

‘You live like a nun,' I say. ‘Actually, it's like you don't live here at all.'

Nika rubs her hand over her eyes. ‘You can always leave. If you want to be insulting and rude, I will happily point you in the direction of the door and we can wait another twenty-odd years to catch up, yes?'

‘No. Sorry. Sorry. That came out really, really wrong. I'm a little overwhelmed with seeing you. Almost seeing
them
. Can I hug you?'

She shakes her head, and takes a definite step away from me. ‘No, no you can't.' She takes another step away, until she is at the entrance to the kitchen area. ‘Do you want a cup of tea or coffee? I have milk and sugar and everything so I can make it properly.'

‘I'm sorry,' I tell her.

‘You said that already. Look, I'm going to make a cup of coffee. It'll probably keep me up all night but I don't care.' Nika is nervous, I think. Her movements are agitated, she can't keep still: while she waits for the kettle to boil, while she lines up two mugs, heaps coffee into both, takes out the milk, she jiggles, moves. It reminds me of the conversation with Mother Superior and the way my leg would not stop jiggling. It reminds me of the way her leg jiggled when she told me
he'd
come to her house and had charmed her parents into sending her back to him.

I hear a short, electronic buzz and seconds later she reaches into her back pocket and takes out her phone. She stares at it, obviously reading the message. Rather than reply, she tosses the phone on to the side, shaking her head in what looks like despair. Boyfriend? Lover? Fiancé? Husband? Which one has sent her even further into a spin? The rolling boil of the kettle fills the room and then the steam billows out of the spout and she turns it off before it automatically shuts out.

‘I was scared,' I try again. I think of Judas, of
what
he did,
why
he did. Why I think he might have done what he did. ‘No, that's not right. I was terrified. I was—'

‘Can we not do this now?' Nika interrupts. She almost throws the kettle back on to its stand. ‘I thought I could talk to you and listen and stuff like that, but I can't. I can't. It's as simple as that.' Nika tosses the teaspoon she is stirring the coffee with on to the side. ‘You can sleep in my bed, we can even go and sit in there right now with our coffees and chat about our lives, but let's not do that other bit now. Not tonight.'

When?
I want to ask.
This truth is burning a hole in my soul, it needs to be let out. When? When will I be allowed to do that?

‘No boyfriend or anything on the scene then?' I ask her.

Her bedroom is just as empty and devoid of any love or emotion as the living room. It is functional, like my cell in the monastery and my rooms in the various convents I lived in. She is choosing to live like this. I wonder why. Is that what happens when you are like me, when you are like her: you strip yourself of nice things, you shed all the shackles of ‘stuff'? The side lamp is on, and we are at opposite ends of the bed, our knees drawn up, and coffee mugs in our hands.

She glances briefly at the phone that now sits on the bedside table. ‘No. Nothing like that.' She's lying. It's so obvious there's someone, but it's not viable. ‘What about you?'

‘Yes, well, I used to wear a wedding ring, of course, since I was a bride of Christ. Not any more, obviously.'

‘Why did you leave?'

‘You don't want to know.'

‘What, were you caught shagging one of the priests?'

‘No! The very idea!'

‘Why then?'

‘Because of you. I wanted to make things right with you. I didn't know how I was going to do that, or where to find you, but I did know I couldn't do that and be a Sister or a nun. I was a nun in training, then became a Sister and then went back to being a nun. Either way, I couldn't do it if I wanted to make things right.'

Light from the side lamp doesn't radiate very far, but her discomfort at the idea I did something because of her is clear. She stares down into the depths of her cup, strokes a lock of her hair behind her ear. ‘Why did you become a nun in the first place?' she asks. She is still staring into her cup as a distraction from the woman sitting at the foot of her bed, as a way to avoid looking at me.

‘That's a long story.' She probably doesn't want to know how she features in it so I decide to cut that bit out. ‘I met a nun. I don't know what she was doing in a park late at night, but there she was.'

‘What were
you
doing in a park late at night?'

I hesitate. Will she think less of me for knowing I was chasing the silence, the escape from the raging in my head? Probably. I still judge myself for it. I have been taught over the years to have compassion, for myself as much as anyone else, but that is one of the things I struggle with. That and what I did to Nika. Honesty, though, is necessary if I'm going to tell the story properly. ‘I'd stolen my mother's bottle of sleeping pills and I had a bottle of wine and I was going to kill myself. I was sitting in the park contemplating it.' It seems such a long time ago that I had those feelings swirling through me. I was so desperate. The need in me to stop the noise, find the silence, was like nothing I'd ever felt before.

She doesn't seem to react to what I have said, except for the wince of what looks like remembered pain. Was she there, too? Did she get to the edge like I had? ‘The nun – and she was dressed like a nun with the robes, the tabard and the wimple, not a Sister – sat down beside me and asked me to swap my bottle of pills for her book. Two days later when I finished the book I wanted to become a nun.'

‘You read the Bible in two days? Impressive.'

‘She didn't give me the Bible. She actually gave me
To Kill a Mockingbird
, said every word was a blessing and she read it whenever she felt like I did.'

‘
To Kill a Mockingbird
made you want to become a nun? Bloody hell, I never got that when I read it! Not sure I want to read it again now.'

‘No, it wasn't specifically the book. Well, it was, but it wasn't. It was the power of the book. There was something inside it that felt so real, like I could be anyone in the book, I could be anyone I wanted to be ever. And it was so silent in my head when I was reading. There was this bit where the pretty-much atheist character in it said it was a sin to kill a mockingbird and I realised what the nun meant when she gave me the book about every word being a blessing. I had another option because I would be killing a mockingbird if I killed myself. Then I thought of the woman who gave me the book. She knew what was going on in my head and being a nun gave her the confidence to speak to me at such a desperate time. If an ordinary person had given me that book I would have told them where to go, I think. I listened to her because of who she was, what she was dressed like. I wanted to explore what it was like to be like that.

‘It wasn't completely out of the blue, I've always believed in God, I've always been interested in what was “out there” and there seemed to be so much beauty and peace in God. The nun and the book reminded me of that.' And it was another way to chase the silence. After reading the book, I knew that God and the silence would find me. I would also be able to atone for what I had done to Nika while living the simple life and chasing the silence.

‘It's safe to read
To Kill a Mockingbird
, then? It won't make me want to give up my life to God or anything like that?' Nika says. I know she's said it to break up the atmosphere of seriousness and solemnity that's built up in this room, but still, it makes me bridle a little that she seems to be mocking me slightly.

‘I have just told you some of my innermost thoughts and motivations for taking one of the biggest steps in my life and all you can do is make a quip about being able to read a book?' Maybe more than bridle a little, actually. It hurts. That is my pride talking, though. My ego. Since I left my life of holy orders I have noticed how hard it is sometimes to live in and with humility.

‘What else do you want me to say?' Her laugh is gentle and lights up her face. She isn't mocking me, she is trying to deal with what I have said. ‘What am I supposed to say? I asked you a question and you answered, that's how conversations work.'

‘All right then, Miss Conversation, where did you disappear to when you left that man you were going to marry? Todd, that was his name, wasn't it? One minute you were all over the magazines, being snapped going into wedding boutiques, and the next you'd dropped off the face of the Earth. What happened?' I'm not going to tell her that I used to keep track of her because I liked being able to watch her life without intruding – she might take it the wrong way. She might think I relished in any way that she seemed to behave like I had a few years earlier.

She smirks, but not nastily. She smirks as though I won't believe her if she tells me. ‘I slept rough for a few years. Bought a car and lived in that for a while. Met a guy, lived with him for about three-and-a-half years, probably about three years longer than I should have because it was nice sleeping inside night after night. After that ended I started sleeping rough again and in another car, and in various hostels before I was finally able to get a room in a homeless hostel. Then I moved to Brighton and came to this flat after a very short stint lodging in a person's house.'

I look around the room again: I understand now the bare surfaces, the lack of ‘stuff', the functionality of everything. She had nothing for many years and that is a hard habit to break. At my parents' house, in my temporary room, I have nothing that isn't essential, either. Poverty was one of our vows and that is another habit that is hard to break.

‘You were homeless?' I ask.

‘I was homeless,' she confirms.

I ministered with homeless people over the years: worked in soup kitchens, sometimes carrying out late-night meal runs where we went around giving food and hot drinks to the people who were sleeping out. Some years, when the temperatures dropped particularly low, we would open up the local church hall so people could sleep inside. There were so many sad stories that I heard, so many damaged people who ended up alone and frightened with nowhere to go. I hate to think of Nika living like that. She must have been in so much pain, she must have been so scared half the time. Maybe that is why there's a hard edge to her. I can't imagine you'd survive very long being homeless if you were as giving and generous as she used to be. Anything could have happened to her and it probably did. The things I saw … the young girls who fell into prostitution, the men whose mental illness drove them out of their family homes, the women who had lost their children after leaving an abusive relationship, the young women with anxiety and depression unable to get recognition for their silent, hidden conditions. The physical, mental and emotional toll it took on the people I met was overwhelming and difficult to observe. No matter how long I did it for, how experienced I became at helping the homeless, I would go back to my cell and sob with the pain I had witnessed. I would pray for peace for the people who I had been with. I would ask the Lord to watch over them, to ease their suffering. I would pray for her, too: every night Nika was in my prayers and I had no idea she was one of the homeless people I cried for. She was out there.

‘What are you crying for?' she asks me while rubbing her eyes with her forefinger and thumb.

‘I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry,' I tell her. I don't want to keep crying in front of her. I don't want to make this all about me. ‘I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.'

‘Please stop saying that. You didn't make me homeless.'

We both know that's not true. If we retrace our steps, skittle backwards along the winding, rocky path of our lives, I know the point where the most significant fork in the road is. Where our lives diverged, and where she probably began on that path to meeting Todd, leaving him, becoming homeless. Spending years and years out in the cold, all alone, doing all sorts to get herself through. She probably took drugs. She probably prostituted herself. All because of what I did.