Working Draft : Thea – Sandra

The light from the window brushed her face in soft yellow, and picked out the gold in her chestnut hair. She was reading a book, absorbed in its world and he thought she isn’t here, she’s somewhere else. The long black dress and black ribbon in her hair gave her an old-fashioned air, as if she belonged in a different time, and in the coffee shop surrounded by a uniform of jeans and a top, or young teens in a variety of sweatshirts and joggers, or office workers, like himself in a shirt and black trousers, she was a curiosity. It was more than her attire, though; he saw others cast sideways glances at her, taking her in. She wasn’t beautiful in the normal way; if he was being critical, he thought her nose was too long, but she had something interesting.   The teenage group were looking over and laughing, brave in their flock, but the others, men especially, were admiring. Or at least he was.

This was the third time he had seen her; she, like him, must be a regular at the coffee shop, and like him she sat in what was her favourite spot. The light was good for reading there, whereas the phone scrolling patrons had their own baleful blue light from their screens, their faces sickly anaemic, throwing her gold-halo shine into sharp contrast.

As if aware of being watched, her eyes flicked up from the book and met his, and he flinched, looking away, suddenly embarrassed to be caught watching her. I’m not like that, he wanted to say. You’re in my eyeline that’s all, but even as he said the words to himself, he knew they weren’t true. He had been watching her, had even had to turn slightly off centre of his chair to do so. He feigned a fascination with the generic coffee bean pictures on the wall featuring the obligatory back story of the cup he was letting cool in front of him. Images of wide smiles around open coffee sacks and handfuls of glossy brown beans covered the walls like religious icons. He risked a glance back at the woman and felt his face flood hotly when she met his gaze; still in the same pose, she hadn’t moved, she had waited for his gaze to return. Now she gave the barest smile, and lifted one eyebrow. Was that an invitation? He was out of practice at this stuff, and after Amanda he wasn’t really looking, but now he raised his brows in response, gestured to his coffee and then to her, the universal sign for shall I come over?

Her smile widened and she gave a curt nod and as he walked to her, he saw her move a velvet cloth bag off the chair opposite the small, low table. He gave an awkward laugh, as he arrived, not sure what to do. What did all those men do in the countless rom-coms he’d sat through with Amanda? Of course, they were all devastatingly handsome and although he wasn’t bad looking, he was self-aware enough to know he wasn’t stunning, and, his confidence deflating slightly, he’d found his first grey hair only the other week. He sucked in his stomach.

‘Hi, please. Sit,’ her voice was soft and well-modulated, the accent neutral.

‘Thanks, er,’ he plonked his cup down, nerves making it a little too forceful, wincing inwardly as coffee spilt onto the table. He held out his hand, ‘Er, Colin. Nice to meet you.’

‘And you,’ as she spoke, she slowly folded the book shut, and he saw the worn leather cover, some faded gold lettering.

‘Good?’ he asked, pointing to it, annoyed his voice was a bit too high.

‘Oh, yes,’ she smiled again.

‘I didn’t, er, catch your name.’ he took a sip of coffee and coughed as some of it went down the wrong way. 

‘No,’ she gave a sly smile, ‘but then I didn’t give it to you.’ Her head tilted to one side as if weighing him up, ‘but you can call me Thea.’ Now her smile widened and he changed his mind about her beauty. Her hair was darker than he’d thought from across the room, almost black and she had the deepest blue eyes he’d seen. She was stunning.

She did seem a bit strange, with the name thing; he wasn’t stupid, it was obviously not her real name, but she probably got men trying it on with her all the time and she was naturally cautious, he got it. So, he nodded, smiled back and said, ‘Thea, lovely name. Unusual. So, do you come here often?’  he laughed acknowledging the awful line, but genuinely curious. ‘I’ve seen you here a few times. You work near here?’

She nodded, circling her cup with a finger, ‘Here and there. You?’

He pointed in the general direction of his office block, ‘The insurers? Been working there a lifetime, it feels like. Not very exciting I know.’ He coughed, embarrassed as always at his admission he worked in the job that was synonymous with boredom.

‘Well, we all need insurance, it’s an important job, isn’t it?’ she looked at him, suddenly serious, ‘I mean, if your house burnt down, and you weren’t insured, you’d be homeless, wouldn’t you?’ He frowned. Odd she would choose that exact example, but as he stared into her eyes, he saw only two blue pools of innocence. And she was right of course, ‘Exactly, accidents happen all the time. You can’t be too careful. In fact…’ he wriggled to get more comfortable as he hit his stride, ‘ many homes are underinsured for contents, or they don’t check the small print and aren’t covered for things they think they are, and that’s not even counting the number of homes that aren’t insured at all,’ he finished indignantly, then looked at her nervously. He knew he tended to get carried away when he talked about his job, Amanda had told him so often enough. But Thea looked fascinated, leaning forward, her lips (he imagined their softness yielding under his) slightly open, as if to draw in the information. She brought the straw of her orange juice up to them and slowly closed her lips around it and he lost track of his thoughts for a second. He cleared his throat.

‘Of course, what people don’t realise is the widening gap between rebuild costs and…’ he rattled off more statistics, encouraged by Thea’s enthusiastic nodding. What an amazing woman; beautiful and intelligent. He watched as she nibbled the edge of a biscuit although even as he was talking part of him wondered how he hadn’t noticed the plate in front of her, surely what wasn’t there a minute ago?

‘…and that’s why you have to have smoke alarms on every floor. Absolute life saver.’ He finished, suddenly laughing self-consciously. He seemed to have been talking for a while, had got carried away as usual. Amanda’s voice seemed to talk inside his head, ‘God, Colin, can’t you think of anything interesting to say?’. Bitch. He checked his watch; it must be time to get back to the office. His eyes faltered over the watch face, his brain rejecting the evidence of the hands, instead conjuring up explanation for the mismatch in expectation and reality; it was broken, it had stopped. It must be one of those, because it said 8pm, and he had only come in for some lunch.

He looked around, aware of a silence, and of the dark. The coffee shop was empty, utterly empty, not even staff clearing up. Chairs were stacked on tables, and there was a faint smell of floor cleaner. Outside, night had fallen and the only movement was the rain, and an occasional car on the main road. He looked at Thea, who was smiling again, as if waiting for a particularly slow pupil to arrive at the obvious answer.

‘I…I don’t underst….What is happening?’ he wondered if he was having an episode, he’d seen a programme about this once. Epilepsy or migraine induced hallucinations. He hoped it wasn’t a stroke.

Thea leaned forward, and said, ‘That was all so very interesting, Colin. I do have one small question.’

Colin shrugged numbly, this was obviously a dream. He was in his bed at home and dreaming. Fine, he didn’t mind dreaming about being with Thea. ‘Sure.’

‘Why do you think Amanda hadn’t insured her house? With you being so careful about these things, working in the industry and so on?’

Why was she talking about Amanda? How did she know about Amanda? But dreams weren’t logical, of course, so he answered,

‘She didn’t pay the premium. She was stupid there. Careless.’

‘Care-less,’ she repeated, slowly, the eyebrows raised. He felt like a schoolboy. He squirmed; he didn’t want to talk about this. But then dreams don’t play fair, so he explained,

‘Yes. She was a bit scatty, you know. Didn’t keep on top of the admin.’

Thea nodded slowly, up and down, up and down, until Colin felt sea-sick. ‘So, it was her fault?’

‘Yes, I said so didn’t I? What is this anyway? What’s happening? How did it get so late?’ he looked around. Outside the night was darker than ever, the stars even brighter, and the sounds of life outside had disappeared.

‘Oh, its not late, Colin. Its not early either. Right now, we are outside of time.’

Of course they were. He wondered if he should give up cheese at night.

‘Okay. How do I get back?’ he wondered if he should click his heels together. That was the tried and tested method, wasn’t it?

‘You answer me. Honestly.’ There was a note of warning in her voice, and her eyes had deepened to a  darker blue.

‘I have,’ he said, licking his lips nervously. What was wrong with her? What was she on about? He had been on at Amanda to sort out the insurance for ages. Bloody hell, he didn’t need this. He got to his feet, he’d had enough. He strode to the door and pulled it open, the handle this side retaining the warmth of the coffee shop, but the street outside had gone, to be replaced by the inky black cold nothingness of the universe, the space between stars. His breath plumed and froze, tinkling to the floor. It was a dream, he knew it was, but his heart didn’t understand, and it sputtered like a faulty engine. He slammed the door, panting with fear.

Back at the table, Thea, looking bored, sighed and crossed her legs. ‘Colin. It’s much better to get it off your chest.’

Colin slapped his cheeks to wake himself up, he’d heard that somewhere too. His face stung with repeated slaps, until his head was dizzy. ‘Amusing as it is to watch you do that, Colin, shall we continue?’

He slumped back into his seat. Fine, play along, whatever, it didn’t matter here, he would wake up tomorrow and all would be well.

‘I reminded her,’ he shrugged, unconcernedly, ‘Repeatedly. Then…’

‘Then?’

‘Look, we weren’t getting on by then. She was so miserable all the time; and bossy. I felt like her kid sometimes. Whenever I stayed over it was, ‘Move your shoes, Colin. No feet on the coffee table, Colin. No thank you, Colin, not tonight, Colin.’ He mimicked Amanda’s high finicky voice.’ I couldn’t make her happy, no matter what I did.’

‘And so?’

‘So, she asked me to do the insurance.’ The eyebrows raised higher. ‘And…I kind of, forgot.’

The eyebrows again. He sighed, ‘Ok. I didn’t renew it for her. Ok? That’s it. Big deal. Why should I do it? I wasn’t her skivvy.’

‘But it was a big deal, wasn’t it, Colin?’ She pressed her fingertips together, like his HR manager did when trying to sort out a tricky staff problem.

‘Don’t you start with the ‘Colin’ stuff,’ he muttered, shaking his head in disgust. This was the problem with women, right here. Endless nitpicking and never satisfied.

‘We won’t be going anywhere until you’ve told me the rest of it. Colin.’ He threw her an ugly look; she was being deliberately malicious.

‘It was unfortunate, that…that well, there was a fire.’ He looked down at his shoes, unwilling to meet her eyes.

Thea laughed, startling him. ‘I do so love your turns of phrase, Colin.’

Sarcastic cow; he’d had enough, ‘Well, so what? So what if I did what I did. She had it coming.’ He stared at her with loathing.

There was a sudden roar of flames, and searing, flesh-roasting heat, and he threw himself back in his chair, but he couldn’t escape the screams; my god, the throat-raw screams and he knew it was Amanda. Amanda had been there. He covered his ears, folding over into a protective huddle, but the screams got louder, more urgent, the desperate howls of someone in mortal pain.

‘Stop,’ he gasped, ‘Please, stop. Please.’ The flames disappeared, the heat dissipating, leaving the stench of burning. It couldn’t be a dream; you couldn’t feel heat and smell burning, in a dream.

‘She deserved that?’ Thea’s face was hard, her eyes looked at him in disgust, and he wondered how he had ever been attracted to her.

‘No! I didn’t mean… I didn’t mean it to happen like that,’ he whined, desperate now to make Thea understand, ‘She was supposed to be out. She was supposed to be out. How could I know she’d come back? She must have changed her mind.’

Thea’s stare was implacable, as much emotion as a block of granite. He swallowed, ‘Ok. Ok, so I set the fire. I wanted to punish her. She wanted to break up; said she’d met someone else, wanted to move on, blah blah. Said we weren’t compatible. She wanted to break with me,’ he was still incredulous that Amanda could think that she was the one in control in their relationship. ‘She didn’t get to decide that.’ Despite his fear, he couldn’t help the indignation creeping into his voice. ‘I only wanted her to lose the house. Teach her a lesson.’ Even to his own ears he sounded whiny.

There was a pause, and he stared at Thea, eyes narrowed trying to work her out, ‘Who are you, anyway?’ he hissed.

In answer, she gave a slight smile and her hair moved as though there was something living in it. ‘It doesn’t matter who I am. I am here to hold you accountable for what you did.’

‘What, all this?’ his gaze swept the silent coffee shop and the window onto space. ‘For me? I mean ok, I did wrong. Do you think I don’t regret what I did every day? But there’s worse than me out there. What about them? Why do I get this special treatment?’

He saw her upper lip curl in contempt and squirmed.

‘You don’t get to ask why. You deserve it, that is enough,’ her eyes looked away from his for a brief second, and for the first time, he sensed a crack in her armour; an evasion.  There was something else, some reason behind this.

‘How did you know about it anyway?’ he asked and saw a new stillness settle over her. ‘Where is Amanda now?’ he was firing questions at random, feeling his way. ‘Is she in…hell?’ his voice rose, in disbelief, but he checked himself. No, she was too goody-two-shoes for hell. But he couldn’t imagine her being in heaven either, that was for saints, wasn’t it? and Amanda wasn’t a bloody saint that was for sure.  

Thea interrupted, ‘Amanda is safe.’ She stood up, ‘And now, I must be going.’ He stood up too, to follow her. She turned with an amused look, ‘Not you, Colin. You stay here.’

He looked around at the coffee shop, closed and dark, lit only by distant starlight, and outside the burning cold of space. ‘What? For how long?’ He figured he could make it to morning; it couldn’t be that far away by now.

Thea smiled at him, before opening the door, and stepping through.