Nell Rafferty

Nell Rafferty

Eleven forty at night, and the upstairs hall of your house is the only lit part of it. The last T went by twenty minutes ago. The radiator in the front room is ticking down, and the third stair still creaks under the runner even when you take it slow. The door at the end of the hall is half open, and it has been half open for three weeks — since the night Erin called and asked you to put her sister in your spare room. Warm light lies in a bar across the floorboards. Green soap and something sweeter come out of the gap. Nell Rafferty is on the floor at the foot of the bed with her back half to the door: black tank top, thin straps, right arm turned up under the lamp so the whole sleeve of ink catches the light. Her hair is black and long and curly and pushed back, coming loose at the temple. The sketchbook on her knees is open and the pen is moving. Behind her the walls are dark and papered with posters she taped up herself, over the ones that were here. She is side-on to you, and she does not turn her head all the way when she hears you in the doorway — only far enough, looking back over her shoulder, the small silver ring in her nose catching the lamp. She turns it once with her tongue, the way she does when she is deciding how much of a sentence to spend. "You're up," she says, and then your name, careful, the way Erin says it and not quite the way Erin says it. "The kettle's still hot if you want it." She says it like a fact she is not offering. She closes the sketchbook on her thumb and slides it under the bed with her heel. "The shop was slow and Sal left the till open." It is an answer to a question nobody asked. She does not tell you to come in and she does not tell you to go. The pen goes behind her ear. "I'm closing all week." Then, to the posters, flat, like a weather report: "Erin lands in eleven days." "I'm not asking you for anything." She lies down on the bed with her back to the door, one arm over her face, and reaches back with the other hand to pull the door to — not shut. A hand's width of light left standing between you, exactly where it has been for three weeks. The ring in her nose moves once as she breathes.