Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

‘—and then the day itself, making sure you thank people, the cortege and all that stuff … The family said to thank you for coming, by the way,’ he finished, tailing off. It was he who was drinking all the wine, I noticed – he’d already refilled his glass while I’d only had two sips.

‘But the days and weeks after that … that’s when it really starts to get hard,’ he said.

‘Is that how it was for you?’ I said.

He nodded. He’d switched on the fire, one of those gas ones that’s supposed to look real, and we both stared at it. There must be some piece of wiring left over in our brains, from our ancestors, something that means we can’t help but stare into a fire, watch it move and dance, warding off evil spirits and dangerous animals … that’s what fire’s supposed to do, isn’t it? It can do other things too, though.

‘D’you want to watch a film, Eleanor? Cheer ourselves up a bit?’

I thought about this.

‘A film would be perfect,’ I said.

He left the room and returned with another bottle of wine and a big packet of crisps. ‘Sharing bag’ it said. I’d never tried one, for that very reason. He ripped it down the middle and spread it out on the table in front of the sofa where we were both sitting, then topped up our glasses. He went out again and came back with a duvet which I guessed he’d removed from his bed, and a cosy-looking fleece blanket, red like Sammy’s sweater, which he passed to me. I kicked off my kitten heels and snuggled under the blanket while he fiddled with what seemed like ten remote control devices. The enormous TV sprung to life, and he flicked through various channels.

‘How do you feel about this one?’ he said, nodding towards the screen as he wrapped himself in his duvet. The highlighted selection said Sons of the Desert. I had no idea what it was, but I realized that I’d happily sit here in the warmth with him and watch a golf programme if that was all there was.

‘Fine,’ I said. He was about to press play when I stopped him. ‘Raymond,’ I said, ‘shouldn’t you be with Laura?’ He looked quite taken aback.

‘I saw you today,’ I said, ‘and at Keith’s golf club birthday party.’

His face was impassive.

‘She’s with her family right now, that’s how it should be,’ he said, shrugging. I sensed he did not wish to speak about it further, and so I simply nodded.

‘Ready?’ he asked.

The film was black-and-white, and it was about a fat, clever man and a thin, stupid man who’d joined the Foreign Legion. They were patently unsuited to it. At one point, Raymond laughed so much that he sprayed wine all over his duvet. I choked on a sharing crisp not long afterwards and he had to pause the film and thump me on the back to dislodge it. I was very disappointed when it ended, and also to see that we had eaten all the crisps and drunk most of the wine, although Raymond had had far more than me – I couldn’t drink wine as quickly as vodka or Magners drink, it seemed.

He walked unsteadily to the kitchen and returned with a big packet of peanuts.

‘Fuck,’ he said, ‘bowl.’ He came back with a receptacle, into which he attempted to decant the peanuts. His aim was poor, and he began to pour them all over the coffee table. I started to laugh – it was just like Stan and Ollie – and then we were both laughing. He turned off the TV and put on some music, via another mysterious remote-controlled device. I didn’t recognize it, but it was pleasant; soft and undemanding. He chomped on a handful of peanuts.

‘Eleanor,’ he said, nut crumbs falling from his mouth, ‘can I ask you something?’

‘You may certainly ask,’ I said. I hoped he would swallow again before he spoke.

He looked closely at me. ‘What happened to your face? You don’t’ – he leaned forward quickly, touched my arm over the blanket – ‘you definitely don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I’m just being a nosy bastard!’

I smiled at him, and took a gulp of wine.

‘I don’t mind telling you, Raymond,’ I said, finding, to my surprise, that it was true – I actually wanted to tell him, now that he’d asked. He wasn’t asking out of prurience or bored curiosity – he was genuinely interested, I could tell. You generally can.

‘It was in a fire,’ I said, ‘when I was ten. A house fire.’

‘Christ!’ he said. ‘That must have been terrible.’ There was a long pause, and I could almost see questions crystalizing, as though letters were emanating from his brain and forming words in the air.

‘Faulty wiring? Chip pan?’

‘It was started deliberately,’ I said, declining to explain further.

‘Fucking hell, Eleanor!’ he said. ‘Arson?’

I sipped more velvety wine, said nothing.

‘So what happened after that?’ he said.

‘Well,’ I told him, ‘I mentioned before that I never knew my father. I was taken into care after the fire. Foster placements, children’s homes, back to being fostered again – I moved every eighteen months or so, I guess. I got a place at university – I was seventeen – and the council housed me in a flat. The flat I still live in.’

He looked so sad that it was making me sad too.