The Pieces of You and Me

by Rachel Burton

  ‘It wasn’t much of a life without you,’ he said, pulling me towards him. ‘But we’ve got a second chance now. We can still have all of that.’

  I looked up at him. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t know if I’m well enough to have a family, or a normal life. Some of the medication I’m on isn’t suitable if you’re pregnant.’

  ‘Then we talk to your doctors; we’ll work it out.’

  ‘And what if we can’t have children? What if we can’t be normal?’ I asked.

  ‘Then we work that out too. What’s normal anyway? But the first thing we need to do when you move up to York is go house-hunting. I can’t expect you to live in that damp little academic’s cave with me forever.’

  I laughed then and rested my head against his chest as he wrapped his arms around me. The sun was warm on my back and all the memories of us together in this garden, in Mum’s apple orchard, floated around me like confetti. I believed that we could have everything we’d ever dreamed of.

  ‘I love you, Jessie,’ he said into my hair.

  And I loved him too. There was no going back now.

  25

  JESS

  When we walked back into the Tremaynes’ house, Madeleine, Anthony and Mum had moved from the living room into the kitchen. Mum was making the tea that I had been desperate for since we arrived. I went over to help her and left Rupert talking to his parents.

  ‘Everything OK?’ I heard Anthony ask, but I didn’t hear Rupert reply.

  ‘Do you remember Dan Kelly?’ Anthony asked then. It was casual and he seemed to be simply making conversation but I felt a faint sense of dread. Dan Kelly seemed to be popping up to haunt us at every turn.

  ‘He went to work for National Geographic, didn’t he?’ Rupert said. His voice was flat and expressionless. I took his tea over to him and sat next to him. He rested his hand on my knee – it felt like a show of solidarity.

  ‘He did,’ Anthony went on. ‘But he’s back in the UK now, in York as well, in fact.’

  Of course he was. Because there weren’t any other cities to choose to live in. Of course Dan had to pick York.

  ‘Why York?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, he comes from up there, doesn’t he?’ Madeleine replied.

  ‘He comes from Leeds,’ Rupert said.

  ‘York, Leeds,’ Madeleine said with a wave of her hand. ‘It’s all the same.’ Madeleine Tremayne believed that anywhere north of Peterborough was full of savages who still painted themselves blue. ‘We went up for the funeral. It’s all grim.’

  ‘York isn’t grim,’ Rupert said.

  ‘What funeral?’ I asked at the same time.

  ‘You’re rushing forward, Madeleine,’ Anthony said.

  ‘Well, you tell them then.’

  Anthony sighed and turned his attention back to us. ‘Dan’s mother, Maggie, died earlier in the summer,’ he began. ‘She had cancer but it spread quite rapidly and she died within a few weeks as far as I can tell. Dan had come back to the UK to look after her.’ Maggie had been Dan’s only family and I suddenly felt really sorry for him – he had nobody now.

  ‘You knew Maggie, didn’t you, Jessica?’ Madeleine said suddenly, looking straight at me.

  When Mum had assured me Madeleine had no idea who CJ Rose was, she also told me that as far as she knew Rupert’s parents didn’t know about me and Dan. By the way Madeleine was looking at me I was beginning to wonder if that was true.

  ‘I did,’ I said quietly. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Rupert didn’t say anything.

  ‘Madeleine and I had known Dan’s parents years ago. I was at school and at Cambridge with his father, so we went up to Leeds for the funeral,’ Anthony went on. ‘Dan was there of course, and he asked after you, Rupert.’

  ‘After both of you,’ Madeleine said. She definitely knew. I wondered if it was Dan himself who had told them, at the funeral.

  ‘I know Dan and Jessie used to date if that’s what you’re getting at, Mum,’ Rupert said. Madeleine made a strange little shrug.

  ‘Why is he living in York?’ I asked again.

  ‘He was born there,’ Anthony said. ‘It’s the only place he has memories of both his parents. He didn’t say that was the reason but reading between the lines it felt as though he was trying to find a sense of family. He inherited his mother’s houseboat and he lives on it now on the River Ouse. His father used to teach at York like you, Rupert.’ I had never known that but it felt oddly inevitable, as though our two worlds had collided again.

  I had no idea that Maggie had a houseboat. She certainly didn’t mention it on the few occasions I’d met her. I found it hard to imagine Dan living on a boat, but I guessed the years had changed us all.

  Nobody said anything although I could feel Mum trying to catch my eye. I didn’t know where to look. I could feel Rupert’s hand on my knee still but I could sense that he wasn’t happy about this new turn of events. I didn’t really understand why he got so defensive whenever Dan’s name was mentioned, but then I still harboured teenage jealousy whenever anyone mentioned Camilla. At least nobody had mentioned her. But then she did get tenure at Harvard so was perhaps a person never to be spoken of in the Tremayne household.

  ‘Anyway,’ Anthony said, breaking the silence. ‘He asked to be remembered to you, Rupert. When I told him you were in York too, he gave me this and said to get in touch if you wanted.’ He pushed a business card across the counter towards us, but Rupert didn’t reach to pick it up. I moved in my seat so that I could get it, knowing Rupert might want it later. For a moment I thought he was going to stop me, but he let his hand fall from my knee instead. It suddenly felt as though everything we’d talked about in the garden, the tentative plans we’d started to make about our future, meant nothing in the wake of this news.

  ‘When was the funeral?’ Rupert asked.

  ‘At the end of May,’ his father replied.

  ‘And it’s taken you four months to tell me?’

  ‘You’re never here,’ Madeleine interrupted. ‘You never phone; you never want anything to do with us. What were we meant to do?’ She sounded shrill suddenly as though she was trying to hide how upset she was about the breakdown of her relationship with her son.

  ‘Well,’ said my mother, finding her voice at last. ‘I need to get back to London and I’m sure you must be tired, Jess.’

  I smiled at her. I was tired and I wanted to get back to the hotel Rupert and I had booked for the night before we went back to York tomorrow. I thought we could order room service and talk about what had happened.

  But Rupert had other ideas. He wanted to stop at the Fort St George pub by the bridge that we used to drink in as teenagers ‘for old times’ sake,’ he said. He drank four pints in quick succession on an empty stomach and passed out as soon as we got back to our hotel room. He hadn’t wanted to talk about Dan and the next morning he’d been too hungover to talk at all. He sat grimly on the train in the seat opposite me all the way from Peterborough to York. I thought again about the conversation we’d had in his parents’ garden, about the future that I had been holding on to in my mind’s eye, and I wondered for the first time if he really wanted that too.

  … Dan phoned two weeks after you left for America. I hadn’t really spoken to him since you’d gone. I couldn’t bear to talk to anyone about it and I’d been ignoring his texts for weeks.

  It was Rich who answered the phone, just as he had the final time you’d called.

  ‘Do you want me to tell him you’re out?’ Rich asked. He’d grown used to telling everyone who phoned that I wasn’t in. I barely spoke to anyone in those two weeks after you left, other than my mum. I was dividing my time between Cambridge, where I was helping Mum pack up Dad’s stuff and decide whether to put the house on the market, and London where I was looking for flats for Mum and trying to get ready for my journalism course.

  Rich knew what had happened. He’d worked it out from my behaviour and the few questions he asked me every night. I t
hink he was the only person I spoke to about you during that time. I couldn’t bring myself to talk to Mum about it. She had her own grief to contend with.

  But now, suddenly, I wanted to talk to someone else. I wanted to vomit out all the black feelings that were clustering around my broken heart, and Dan just happened to be in the right place at the right time. I took the phone call in the living room and Rich made himself scarce.

  ‘Come for a drink with me,’ Dan said.

  I hesitated. I wanted to be with somebody, I wanted to talk to somebody new, but at the same time it felt too soon after you’d left to be going for a drink with someone else, even if it was someone I’d been for many drinks with before.

  ‘No woman is an island, Jess,’ he said gently. ‘I know Rupert’s gone and I know you’re grieving your dad. Trust me, I know how that feels. I know you must be hurting so much right now, but you have to get on with your own life.’

  ‘I’ve got a lot on at the moment,’ I said. But I knew it was an excuse. I already knew I was going to go out with him, because I remembered that he knew what it was like to be without a dad. I knew he’d understand.

  ‘All work and no play …’ he began.

  I smiled. ‘Are you going to talk in clichés all night?’ I asked.

  ‘Say you’ll come for a drink and I’ll stop,’ he replied.

  We met in the Lock Tavern in Camden, just up the road from my flat. That part of north London had been home to me for three years and I’d fallen in love with it the day I arrived. I was glad I had it, because I didn’t want to go back to Cambridge without you there – I think Mum knew that. I think it played a part in her move to London.

  I loved the Lock especially – you never knew who you might meet there; from famous DJs to the guy who carried his laundry around in a guitar case.

  ‘So what happened?’ Dan asked as he placed the drinks on the table between us. ‘Why did you break up with him?’

  ‘I couldn’t go with him, Dan. I couldn’t leave Mum.’

  ‘But you’re not even willing to wait for him?’

  ‘It wouldn’t work,’ I replied. ‘Besides, Camilla’s there.’

  ‘That’s not the reason he’s going.’

  ‘He says he didn’t know …’

  ‘But you don’t believe him?’

  I shook my head. ‘Get me another vodka please,’ I said, draining my glass.

  Dan and I slept together for the first time that night, squashed together in the single bed in my flat in Mornington Crescent, the bed that I’d shared with Rupert so many times. We finally fell asleep to the grumbling sound of the early morning tube trains starting up.

  I don’t know how it started, but once it did I had no idea how to stop. I’d had too much to drink that night and Dan made me laugh – I felt as though I hadn’t laughed in a long time. Being with Dan always made me think of you and on that night there had been something about the way the streetlights shone off the contours of his face as we walked down Chalk Farm Road, that reminded me of you.

  And when I closed my eyes and buried my face in his hair, I could pretend that he was you …

  JANUARY 2018

  26

  RUPERT

  He stood by the bank of the River Ouse, his gloved hand holding hers, their breath steaming in the cold, winter air. Captain sat at their feet desperate to keep moving. Rupert stared at the little red houseboat moored at the riverbank with a plume of grey smoke spiralling out of its chimney. The houseboat in which, according to his father, Dan had been living for the last six months.

  ‘How would you feel about seeing him again?’ he asked, turning to Jess, his grip on her hand getting tighter.

  ‘I’ve told you,’ she replied. ‘I’d like to. I think we should email him. But I know you don’t want to. I wish you’d tell me why.’

  They hadn’t really talked about Dan after they returned to York the previous autumn. Jess had mentioned him a couple of times. She’d even mentioned that it might be fun to meet up again.

  ‘Would you like to meet up with Camilla again?’ he’d asked. She hadn’t replied, but she hadn’t mentioned Dan again either. He knew it was a low blow and he knew he shouldn’t have said it but the thought of Dan living in that red boat, the thought that they could bump into him at any time, was enough without planning some sort of reunion.

  Jess couldn’t really understand why he didn’t want to see Dan again – they had been such good friends at school. He couldn’t really explain it himself. He had tried to put aside the feelings of jealousy he had felt when he found out that Jess had dated Dan for years but they were simmering below the surface, just as they had been when he was a teenager.

  But there was more to it than that, much more than the vestiges of feelings left over from childhood. Rupert didn’t want to go back. With Jess in his life again all he wanted to do was look towards the future, towards their future – he didn’t want to look back to that time when Ed had died, and Jess had chosen a different path. He didn’t want to have to think about everything that had happened ten years ago, or to dig up memories from the part of his mind that he’d buried them in. He had a feeling that, despite all the therapy he’d had, he hadn’t dealt with Ed’s death and his break-up from Jess properly and he worried that seeing Dan again would bring it all back.

  And he was scared about what would happen if he had to think about it again.

  So he’d thrown himself back into life in York and tried to ignore the red houseboat on the river by the towpath where he used to walk Captain. He threw himself into the new term at the university and, more importantly, he threw himself into making Jess happy, because that made him happy and he had a feeling that finding joy in his everyday life was the thing that was going to help him the most.

  Together he and Jess had found a rhythm, even though the house was too small for them both. Together they’d rediscovered the gentle intimacy they used to have – but with the added benefit of them both knowing themselves better, of knowing when they needed to be quiet, needed to be alone. For those first weeks leading up to Christmas everything had felt exactly as it was meant to feel – work didn’t take up too much of his time and Jess wasn’t writing to a looming deadline and so they spent time together, walking Captain, kicking through autumn leaves, watching folk bands in the local pub, reading – enjoying the sensation of being together after so long apart.

  But Rupert had a feeling, like an itch he couldn’t scratch, that they were ignoring reality. He felt as though they were living in a vacuum – they weren’t doing anything practical. They weren’t looking at other houses, and they weren’t talking about the things they both knew they needed to talk about. On the one other occasion Jess had mentioned Dan, Rupert had closed the conversation down – he hadn’t wanted to think about it.

  ‘You wouldn’t contact him without telling me, would you?’ he’d asked.

  ‘Of course not,’ Jess had replied. ‘We’re a team now, we do the big things together.’ He’d wished he hadn’t said anything at all. Her answer just left him feeling bad for even asking the question. Of course they were a team now, but no couple could survive entirely alone – he knew they couldn’t live in this bubble forever.

  They’d spent Christmas in London with Jess’s mum. Despite worrying that Jess would miss London, she hadn’t gone down to see her mum at all in the period between October and Christmas – although she’d spoken to either Caro or Gemma every day. He’d been surprised, but she’d told him that she wanted to get used to her new life and that she would never be able to do that if she was always running back to her old one.

  Which brought him back to the reason he didn’t want to see Dan.

  Christmas had been wonderful, an escape. It had felt like a cocoon of warmth and love and happiness until they made the mistake of taking a trip to Cambridge to see his parents.

  Every time he saw them things seemed to be worse. Mel hadn’t come back for Christmas again. She had a good enough excuse: it was the busi
est time at the Emergency Room she headed up in Sydney’s Royal North Shore Hospital. Rupert had hardly kept in touch with his sister over the years.

  He visited her once, years ago, and had been disappointed when she handed him the key to her apartment and told him to enjoy himself. She was working night shifts and he visited all the usual places while she slept – the Opera House, the Chinese Gardens, Taronga Zoo – but he’d changed his flights in the end and gone back to Harvard early, bored and not really seeing the point, wishing he had somebody to share the experience with. It had always felt as though he and Mel were like two only children growing up in the same family by mistake.

  His family had never felt like the family he’d wanted – that was why he’d always been so grateful for Jess and Caro and Ed on the other side of the fence. He had no idea where he’d be without them, without their love. It wasn’t that he doubted that his parents loved him, he knew they did, they just had no idea how to show it.

  The reason for that became very clear to him on that cold December afternoon when he and Jess went to visit. He had sat in an armchair in the overly warm and stuffy living room watching Jess desperately try to make small talk with his mother, and he’d realised that the problem wasn’t him or Mel. The problem was that his parents didn’t love each other. He wondered if they ever had.

  Since Christmas Rupert had become more determined than ever to make things work with Jess, to show her how much he loved her every day. And he had started to think about Dan again – not in an angry, jealous way and not in a way that made him think about the past, but he had started to wonder if meeting up again would be such a bad thing.

  Dan had been, for a while, almost a brother to Rupert. In many ways they had been closer than he had been with John even though he’d known John longer. Rupert and Dan had so much in common, bonding over their mutual hatred of boarding school and thrown together that summer when Anthony Tremayne took his old school friend’s son under his wing. Had Rupert been jealous of that too? Of the attention his father had shown Dan over him?