The Accidental by Ali Smith Read Free Book Online Page B

hadn’t. Then she wouldn’t have. Then she might still.
    That noise is someone knocking on the door of this room. He lifts his head out of the duvet. Above the door is the jut of a roofbeam. It is probably not original. His jeans are in a pile on the floor. His long-sleeved shirt is piled next to the jeans. All the clothes he brought here are in a pile by the sink. She goes through the door of a bathroom. She sits on the edge of a bath. She is surrounded by shower curtain. What would there be a smell of? Toothpaste, soap, clean things. There would be carpet under her feet. Maybe the carpet would still be damp from the last person who had a bathor shower. She must have been quite resourceful. There aren’t that many obvious places in a bathroom. It is a strange room to choose when you first think about it. But after you think about it for a while it makes perfect sense. You go in then you go out of a bathroom. You don’t stay for any length of time. It’s where you empty all the shit out of yourself. It’s where you get clean. She looks at him from the edge of the bath. She is polite, bright. She is wearing her school clothes, like in the photo. She looks straight at him. She nods. It is the least she can expect. She expects it. No she doesn’t. She’s dead. She isn’t looking at him, she can’t look at anyone. But there she is, sitting on the edge of the bath, looking at him. She holds up the showerhead like it’s her who’s got the stiff, not him. She waggles it at him. She gives him the eye.
    That noise is someone knocking again. Someone is shouting something. It sounds angry.
    Right, Magnus calls. All right.
    His voice sounds strange. It seems to come from his stomach. It is surprising to him that there is still a connection from his middle to his head.
    Magnus, the voice behind the door had called. How long ago did it call? It had been his mother’s voice. The words weren’t angry in themselves but the sound of them was. Come downstairs now. All right. All right. It is all he has been saying for days. He is monstrous, a liar. All right.
    Magnus gets up. He feels dizzy from standing. He walks across to the door. Then he notices his bare arm above his hand. He notices his chest. He looks down. He isn’t wearing anything. He turns back into the room. He pulls on the shirt. He takes a button, lines it up against a buttonhole in the shirt’s other side. But he can’t get the button to go through the buttonhole. He can’t get his hand to do it. He pulls on the jeans. He tucks himself in. He takes the zip, finger there, thumb there. He makes an effort. The zip goes up.
    He unlocks the door. Above the keyhole the door has a latch. It is pretending to be an authentic old latch. The door is pretending to be an authentic old door. Maybe everything there is isn’t authentic any more. Maybe everything there is is a kind of pretending. Magnus opens the door. The hall is too bright. This is the kind of bright that goes dark. Over there is the door to the bathroom. It has a little rectangular plaque stuck on it that says the word Bathroom in swirling writing with an illustration of a watering can next to the word. Flowers are growing out of the word, through the letters, the capital B. Magnus shuts his eyes. He is sweating. He feels across to the wall with his hands, feels with his toes for where the floor turns into the stairs. He opens his eyes a crack when he knows he must be past the bathroom door. He goes down the stairs.
    Down in the hall he turns to face the door of the room where they eat every night. He steps towards it, stands in front of it. He raises his chin off his chest. All right. He opens the door.
    There’s his mother. She doesn’t know anything. She is saying something. Magnus nods. He picks up the plate from a place at the table with no one sitting at it. His sister takes the plate from him. She doesn’t know either. She is putting something on the plate out of a dish on the table. It smells of