Blink of an Eye (2013) by Cath Staincliffe

right. I want to see him. We’re soulmates. We have the same birthday, like twins. We look a bit alike too, the same height, both with dark hair, but his eyes are green, this amazing electric green. I could almost see Alex as my brother, not in a pervy incest-type way or anything, but we squabble sometimes like I did with Suzanne growing up, though not so viciously. We play-fight and then one of us catches this look, like a glint in the other’s eye, and then we’re in stitches. I’ve never laughed as much as I do with Alex. We’re friends as well as a couple. We like the same stuff.
    He likes to argue. It’s his legal side. He’s really quick to spot things he sees as stupid or contradictions. Like how if it’s wrong to kill someone, then capital punishment is wrong too.
    And the job! At last one of us with a job. A real job. It was getting pretty bleak there for a while. Sending out a million applications and not getting any replies. Slobbing off to the Jobcentre to be patronized by some idiot who keeps suggesting you update your CV or widen your options. What options? In the last six months I have gone for jobs at call centres, a packaging warehouse and a care home. Some options.
    Mum’s face fell at the care job. ‘Oh, Naomi, it’s awful terms and conditions. They treat most of the staff like dirt.’
    I told her not to worry. I wouldn’t get it. I was right. But then I got the classroom assistant interview. I’ve missed that, but at least I did get one. It’s not totally impossible.
    Alex hates the whole circus, too. He did economics at A level as well as politics and law and Spanish. And the economics means he’s always arguing with the Jobcentre people about unemployment and the deficit and that.
    ‘They want to blame us,’ he said to me, ‘pretending that if we only had a bit more about us, nicer suit, brighter smile, we’d find work. Totally ignoring the numbers. Over a million out of work under twenty-four. Where’s the jobs?’
    Him getting a job is our salvation. Even if I don’t find anything for a while, we’ll still be able to get a place of our own. He always wanted to do law, from high school, he says. He got a first at uni – really keen. He was chair of the law society and the debating society. I still don’t know what I want to do. It’s not like I’ve got a particular thing that I’m brilliant at. Or a passion like Dad and his music. They all had a career in mind: Mum, Suze, Jonty. Me – zilch. That’s why I did tourism and leisure. It wasn’t too specific. I was so sick of it by the end, but by then I’d met Alex and didn’t want to mess up and leave, and so I scraped by with a pass, a third class in my degree.
    He went round firms in Newcastle trying to get an internship or a training place, unpaid if necessary. He was determined to get something, and when he didn’t receive any offers it drove him mad. I’d do anything just to pay the bills, but for Alex he also wanted it to be a stepping stone to achieve his real ambition, to be a lawyer. Things got a bit scary with money; there was no way we could manage on jobseeker’s and housing benefit. Didn’t even cover our bills. Alex had a credit card and he maxed it out. His mum ended up clearing it. Lucky sod. We were both pretty stressed out and we had a few rows, mainly about money.
    When the nurses have gone, after I’ve had my checks and used the bedpan and got over all that and the throbbing pain has settled a little, I close my eyes and think. How hard can it be to remember? If I just focus properly . . . I tiptoe back along the tunnels of my memories, like exploring underground. Here is the moment I woke up in hospital. I was in the ICU. But behind that, before that, it’s a hole, like a bomb crater with ragged edges. I skirt around it. It’s a dangerous place; the ground is crumbling at the rim and I might fall in. It is a bullet hole in my brain, the flesh torn, the matter missing, a smudge of blood. Edging