Page 56 of Five Gold Rings
‘EVE!’
‘Mrs Milkov, Merry Christmas.’
She comes over and hugs me warmly, wearing her big signature trench coat and headscarf. We love Mrs Milkov because she shouts at delivery men and people trying to sell us Gousto boxes. When she goes away, I help water her window boxes and houseplants and like to meander through her house and admire all her embroidered cushions.
‘Merry Christmas, lovely girl. Look at you! So pretty!’ she exclaims, eyeing me cautiously. ‘Are you off to a party?’
‘Kind of. Are you off to your son’s house?’
‘Yes,’ she says, her arm pointing in the direction of bags of gifts. ‘I am just waiting on my taxi. Come, come, come…’ she says, urging us to follow her. We go through the door, lingering in the hallway until she appears with a foil-wrapped box. ‘These are for you. You’re always such an angel with my plants.’
‘You shouldn’t have.’
‘Nonsense, thank you for your lovely card,’ she says, looking at me again, confused but scanning across to Joe. ‘You’re not the boy who lives with her. Who are you?’
‘I’m Joe. Merry Christmas, madam.’
‘Joe is a friend, just a friend.’ I don’t know why I grimace when I say that.
‘And the other boy?’
She holds my gaze for a moment. She knows, doesn’t she? She knows everything that happens in this building. She tells me when there are parties, when people come to read the meters and when cats come in the foyer and she has to chase them out with a mop. It’s likely that she saw Allegra coming and going. I’m not quite sure what to say and can understand why she felt it not her place to say anything.
‘I’m not with Chris anymore.’
She nods but her lips are pursed together trying to contain her emotion. I look beyond where we stand, and I reckon she must have seen a lot of what occurred here two days ago. Mainly because I can see some hardback books on her coffee table that were meant for Chris’s dad and a lovely basket that was once part of a hamper. I like seeing everything repurposed.
‘Can I show you something?’ she asks me. She heads to a drawer in a table and pulls out a ring. I know that ring, unfortunately. ‘I found this in one of my window boxes.’
I smile thinking about Mrs Milkov standing outside our flats, possibly with a large net catching what came flying out of those windows. I hope she got an iPhone 14 out of this. She holds the ring between her fingers. It doesn’t catch the light in this dull hallway, it doesn’t shine, not at all. She holds it aloft like I might want to take it, but I don’t move, Joe studying my face.
‘Finders keepers,’ I whisper to her.
‘Really?’ she says, her eyes lighting up.
‘Really. In the New Year, I’ll give you the address of a lovely shop that will buy it from you. Or you can wear it, up to you.’
‘I should have got you more than some crappy chocolates then,’ she jokes, her face creased up with warmth as she puts the ring on one of her fingers. ‘I’ll shock the family today and tell them I got remarried to a twenty-five-year-old flamenco dancer.’
I laugh, watching the gold band slide over her wrinkled skin.
She looks up, concern in her eyes. ‘Are you sure, Eve?’
I take a deep breath to see that ring for one last time, on someone else’s finger. Sadness tinged with regret but acceptance that that ring was just not meant for me.
‘Very sure. Merry Christmas, Mrs Milkov.’
Mrs Milkov safely in her taxi, we climb the stairs to my flat and I think about the first time I put my key in this door. Chris and I had been going out for eight months and under my arm was a potted plant that my dad had gifted us. It’s funny how you recall moments like that. It was the summer. I remember I had denim cut-offs on and the first thing we did was get in the flat and have a shag on the wooden floors. I often wonder if the neighbours heard us. I remember the parking ticket we got as the van we hired was parked in the wrong place; I remember eating a Chinese takeaway on the floor, him throwing a prawn cracker at me; a moment when I was putting mugs on a shelf and thinking this was all I ever wanted, a space for my mugs and a feeling of security, love, growing old with someone in a third-floor flat forever. But now that flat is empty, cold, grey and the front room, unfortunately, is filled with a lot of opened presents that are half eaten, the Christmas tree dark and switched off, a strong stench of alcohol simmering off the upholstery.
‘Welcome to Chez Eve. I’m sorry about the mess,’ I mumble as I try to kick some of the debris out of the way. Joe looks around, a bit lost for words. The sadness just sits heavy in the room like gloom, like no one lives here anymore. I go over and turn on the Christmas lights to at least add some warmth to the room. Joe starts to sift through the place whilst I head for the bedroom trying to look for clues about why Chris was here. I spoke to Noel briefly before and he filled me in. He told me he found the knob end stood here, faking real glassy-eyed grief that I had dumped him, weaving Noel a whole catalogue of lies. He was so convincing that Noel even hugged him. I guess he’d had months of practice in lying. What was Chris looking for in here? Did he come for his passport to leave the country? Did he come to make amends before Christmas and have a reasonable conversation about everything? Did he come for me? However, everything is as I left it, parts of my bed stacked like they’re ready for a bonfire. I sit cross-legged in the room, staring blankly at the walls for an age, listening to Joe next door, sweeping shards of glass off the floor.
‘Are you OK?’ he asks me, resting against my doorframe, and I see him looking at all the parts of my bed, peeking in at the relics of my shame. He comes and sits down on a floor space right next to me. Why does he look so well? His eyes shine with such kindness. My eyes feel different – raw, so very tired.
‘Say something, Eve. Please,’ he mutters.
‘It was a shit ring, wasn’t it?’ I say.
‘Extraordinarily shit. I hope Mrs Milkov cashes it in for a weekend break somewhere.’