Feeling curious?

Mark flicked up the indicator with his left hand, watching the cars roll past as he waited for a gap. The indicator’s metronome marked the passing of a mint green Vauxhall, a lumpy Nissan, a few snub-nosed white cars, a gun-metal grey SUV. The junction was busy this afternoon. As a black car drove past his window, he noticed a gap opening behind it and revved, casting a glance over his left shoulder as he turned right. At the traffic lights ahead in a lilac Fiat, a young woman with red hair stared, but almost as soon as he noticed her, Mark had slotted into third gear and joined the stream of traffic in the inside lane.

                   Cass?! Her name rang through his head like alarm bells, as metronomic as the indicator. That red hair, the squarish shape of her jaw – was that Cass? Mark scorched the brief glimpse of that woman into his mind’s eye and dissected its resemblance. Urgent panic like that of an inexperienced driver gripped him as he drove down the road, but there was nothing he could do but keep driving. She had looked so like Cass. The surge of adrenalin at this half-processed sight awoke a familiar haunting. The exact red shade of her hair like dark ale, the light strands that caught the light like copper, the way those strands followed the curve of her jaw and sat jaggedly along her collarbone. He could recall her hair perfectly, like her eyes or her nose or her hands. Cass.

                   It’s not her, Mark thought, adamantly; that’s not her car. It was a horribly disappointing thought, and a feeling sank into his stomach like a stone into a dark lake. Seeing that red hair, that face – it was like seeing her ghost or her future daughter. Something of her was in that glimpse, so inseparable was the sight of her and the sense of being near her that that perfect resemblance was a tiny return to feelings long lost.

As he drove home, Mark replayed the junction over in his mind, freezing the glimpse of the woman, slowing it down, sitting in the memory and how it felt to see Cass again, even in the wrong place. The novelty of this impression was thrilling, of course; a new memory of Cass, untinged by the longing which coloured the old memories of her. He parked the car and went round the side of his house, dropping his bag on the porch and staring into the garden. He saw Cass as reminiscence poured over him: smiling at dinner, lugging bags at the airport, brushing her teeth, petting the dog, walking through the trees. But he had seen her again now, he had felt how it had felt to see her in a moment of fallible recognition.

                   His phone rang in his trouser pocket. Mark sighed and let it ring twice before seeing who was calling him on his work phone after seven o’clock. He didn’t recognise the number, but it was a UK dial code. It could be important. He answered, half-hoping for a potential scammer to hang up after the first few seconds.

                   “Hello?” a woman finally asked.

                   “…Hello?” he replied. Not a scam then, but he still couldn’t quite place her voice.

                   “Yes, hello… Who is this?” she asked. Her voice was bright, with a slight south Belfast, upwards intonation.

                   Mark’s brow furrowed as he looked around the garden, up to the grey sky, then around the lawn again, perplexed.

                   “Sorry, who is this?” he returned, loth to answer first.

                   “I- What is this about?”

                   “I’m sorry, you called me? Where did you get this number?” he asked with an increasing smile.

This back and forth was the kind of farse reserved for sketch comedy and the apparent confusion of the woman on the other end of the call made the whole scenario increasingly amusing.

                   “I have no idea, I’m sorry. I wasn’t even on my phone”, she laughed, and Mark felt a jolt in his stomach. That laugh sparked adrenalin throughout his chest, a bolt of cold fear that drained the warmth from his fingertips as he heard Cass’ laugh echo back to him like the report of a shotgun. He could see her laugh in his mind as the other one died away, the white arch of Cass’ wolfish teeth and her head shaking. At once, the spectre of her laugh sickened him and shocked him into fervent, desperate hope, already slipping away like grains of sand pouring out between his clutching fingers

                   “What was your name sorry?” he asked urgently.

                   “That’s alright. This is a funny scenario, isn’t it? I think I’ll say bye-bye now then, I guess.”

                   It couldn’t be her, it definitely wasn’t her voice, but he ran over the memory of this woman’s laugh a hundred times at speed, as if the hundredth time would offer some new clue.

                   “Alright, bye now”, she hung up.

                   That laugh. Cass’ laugh. He relayed them back over again in a silent medley and couldn’t deny those similarities, repetitions of an exact sound or cadence or pitch that he couldn’t articulate. Mark stared at the withered leaves on the lawn as the puzzle twisted his stomach tight.

                   Evening fell slowly, laying shades of blue and black over the garden outside. He watched the moths, as small as torn shreds of paper, flitting madly around the string lights. The string lights which he had put up with Cass, hammering the flimsy plastic hooks into the fence while she pinned the cable to the wood with her hand, arm outstretched and scarcely reaching the mark. An ache in his chest gripped his breath. Above the green-grey tangle of rosemary and the white-grey blooms of viburnums in the dusk, a swathe of dark cloud sped across the sky like woodsmoke. A cold drizzle of rain began whispering on the leaves and the roof. Mark stretched his legs, stiff from sitting in the cold, and turned his gaze upwards. Cass’ hair, her laugh, her eyes, her voice. Her absence was vast and spread across the empty sky with its microscopic stars like diamond grit. Cassiopeia was bright tonight.

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