He stood on the towpath now, looking at the boat he knew to be Dan’s, in an attempt to put the past behind him.
‘I don’t know why I’m so reluctant to see him again,’ Rupert said.
‘Is it because of me?’ Jess asked. ‘You really don’t need …’
‘It’s not that,’ he interrupted. ‘It’s everything – all the memories, you know?’
He felt Jess squeeze his hand. ‘I do know,’ she said. ‘But you and I need to start making new memories. It might be good for you to have a friend – I seem to know more people here than you!’
He smiled at her. She had always been good at meeting people despite being so quiet and introverted. People were drawn to her somehow. ‘I’ve managed OK,’ he said.
‘Existing isn’t living,’ she replied. ‘How do you feel about maybe emailing him?’
He sighed. He had no idea how he felt. Angry, jealous, hopeful, scared. Everything.
‘Let’s take Captain for a long walk,’ he said, changing the subject.
She hesitated. ‘Do you mind if I go home?’ she said. ‘I’m freezing and I could do with a hot bath.’
He looked at her. Was he missing something? Something that Caro would have picked up on? Was she getting sick again? She’d seemed quieter since they’d come back to York after Christmas, more withdrawn than usual. She’d told him that she was finding the northern winter cold and bleak and he understood that, but was there something else?
‘Are you OK?’ he said, not wanting to fuss, knowing how much she hated that.
She smiled. ‘I’m fine, honestly. I just need some rest.’
He watched her walk away from him, looking for whatever it was he was missing. Was he imagining it? Was he making a fuss? Maybe getting in touch with Dan would cheer her up even if he had doubts himself.
He glanced back at the red houseboat and shook his head. He walked away with Captain by his side.
27
JESS
I’d thought a lot about Dan once I knew he was living in York as well. I kept expecting to bump into him and wondered how Rupert would react if that happened. I found myself endlessly curious about what life was like for Dan now, what he looked like, how India and his mother’s death had changed him.
I put a lot of this down to being a writer, to enjoying finding out the little things that make people tick. But I also had a feeling that seeing Dan again was key somehow. That seeing him again would help Rupert and I face the past that we didn’t really talk about – I think we were both scared to talk about it. We were so eager to live out our future together that we hadn’t really put the past to bed.
When I first started seeing Dan, after Rupert left, it had felt like a distraction. It was true that Dan reminded me of Rupert, but he was different in so many ways – his hair was darker, he wasn’t quite as tall and he was laconic and laid-back where Rupert was erudite and tightly wound like a spring about to break. It was Dan’s laid-back and unconcerned attitude to life that attracted me – it was so different to how either Rupert or I faced the world and it made me feel safe, to the point where some days I believed Dan when he said everything would be fine.
It took me by surprise when I realised I was falling in love with him. I hadn’t ever expected to fall in love again. I certainly hadn’t expected to love one person while my heart was still breaking for another. I understood how that must make Rupert feel and I understood that no matter how many times he told me that it didn’t matter, that I deserved to be happy, he must be feeling something – a shimmer of that old teenaged jealousy. He was right about Camilla as well – I wouldn’t have wanted to see her again.
But Dan was different. Dan was here and we were going to have to see him some time. York wasn’t a very big place and since we had come back after Christmas things had been different. I felt as though there was a small but not insignificant distance between Rupert and me and I think we both felt that we were going to need more than just each other if this was going to work. Perhaps that was why he was finally thinking about seeing Dan again.
I asked myself why I was so keen to see him again, but I didn’t like the answers that sprang up when I stopped kidding myself that it was just a writer’s curiosity.
I walked slowly back across York to Rupert’s house after we parted at the river. I still thought of it as Rupert’s house, because I hadn’t been able to put my mark on it. I’d slotted myself into his life, trying not to disturb anything too much, working from bed or the kitchen table and hoping that we’d start house-hunting soon. For some reason neither of us had got around to it and, since Christmas, a strange inertia that I couldn’t quite explain had come over us both.
Coming back to York from London had been hard for me. I hadn’t said anything to Rupert but I hadn’t wanted to leave Mum’s. Despite not going back to London all autumn in an attempt to make York feel like home, as soon as I got to Highgate on Christmas Eve I knew it would be hard to leave again. The only thing that got me back on the train north was remembering Madeleine saying we were rushing it. I didn’t want her to be right. I tried not to think about the conversation Rupert and I had had in his parents’ garden last summer when he’d told me I didn’t have to move up straight away. I almost regretted not taking him up on that offer.
But I did love him so much, and I didn’t want to be apart from him, so it worried me to see the changes that had happened to him since Christmas. It had started on the day we went to see his parents. He was unusually quiet afterwards and eventually, days later, told me that he knew now that the problem with his parents wasn’t that they didn’t love him and his sister, he knew they did, but that they didn’t love each other. I was surprised it had taken him so long to notice but I didn’t say anything. I just held him thinking he was going to cry even though he never did.
‘I’ve always loved you, you know that, don’t you?’ he said.
I did know that and while there was nothing he did that made me think he didn’t, I had noticed him spending more time at work, more time on walks with Captain on his own and I’d noticed a strange sort of depression come over him, like low barometrical pressure. I was worried about him, worried about where his thoughts were and how he was feeling. And I was worried about why he wouldn’t talk to me.
I let myself into the house, took off my boots and coat at the bottom of the stairs and headed straight for the bathroom. I just wanted to immerse myself in hot water and forget everything, just for an hour or two. I put the plug in the bathtub and turned the hot tap on full. As I turned away towards the bedroom to get undressed I heard the old pipes rattle and hiss and the hot water stop running suddenly.
I sighed, too tired and resigned to be angry. It wasn’t the first time this had happened. We’d asked the landlord time and time again but when he finally sent a plumber out we were told the entire system needed replacing. The landlord wasn’t willing to do it and Rupert told me not to worry, that we’d find somewhere better soon.
I didn’t know how much longer I could stand this cold, damp house. I was beginning to hate it even more than I hated the long, dark Yorkshire winter. I yearned for Mum’s flat in Highgate every day. I yearned for spring in Highgate Wood and sitting outside the café in the village. Up here it felt as though spring would never come.
Giving up on the bath I picked up my laptop and put my boots and coat back on, heading out again, this time towards The Shambles and the little café I’d discovered there when I first moved to York.
The café was simply called The Café, no more no less, and over the last few months it had become my haven – my home away from home. The first time I’d gone in I was greeted effusively by the owner, Pen – a gorgeous bubbly woman who ran the café with her husband Graeme. They had moved here from Cambridge after a friend had told them about the business being up for sale – café ownership being a dream of her husband’s. She told me they’d named it simply ‘The Café’ because the café where they both used to work in Cambridge had an utterly lud
icrous name and they didn’t want to fall into that trap.
She told me I was a sign from the universe and gave me a free vegan brownie that was made with black beans but tasted like heaven.
‘A friend gave us that recipe,’ she said.
It seemed so serendipitous, to meet someone who had come from Cambridge too, someone who had struggled to fit in here, who had found the winters long and dark and depressing at first.
‘It’s hard to believe that less than two hundred miles can make such a difference,’ she’d said. ‘And it’s only twenty minutes less daylight here than back in Cambridge but it feels so much more.’
I’d nodded in agreement, my mouth full of brownie.
‘You do get used to the winters though,’ she’d said. ‘I promise. It’s worth it for the long light summer evenings.’ Change is always hard, and Rupert and I had gone through a lot of changes in the previous months. We loved each other and surely that was all that mattered?
As autumn became winter I’d found myself spending more and more time in The Café. It was somewhere quiet and comfortable to work and somewhere I began to get to know people.
In breaks between chapters I had started to tell Pen the story of Rupert and me – how I was born just hours after him, how we grew up together.
‘You have the same birthday as my friend Julia,’ Pen had said, looking at me strangely. ‘You really are a sign from the universe, aren’t you?’
I hadn’t really known what she meant about signs from the universe, but I think it was similar to my belief that the gods were playing chess with our lives. Pen and I were meant to meet, for whatever reason. She had quickly become a good friend, and she’d slowly begun to fill the gaping hole that was left by not seeing Gemma nearly every day.
As Rupert had begun to withdraw, spending more time at work, I had found myself spending more and more time at The Café.
The Café was quiet when I arrived, and I didn’t even pretend to work or bother opening my laptop as Pen sat down opposite me with a pot of tea and a plate of brownies.
She already knew the story of Dan and me and Rupert and Camilla. I’d told her everything – she was the sort of person you could just open up to, and having lived in Cambridge so long herself she knew all the places I spoke of and had stories of her own to distract me with. She also knew how much I’d grown to hate Rupert’s house, so today I told her about how worried I was about Rupert. I told her about his strange mood and how, after weeks and weeks of not considering seeing Dan, he had started to speak about it again.
‘I think he’s lonely,’ I said. I knew that being with the person you loved didn’t stop you from being lonely. We both needed more than each other. ‘I think he’s been lonely for so long that he’s got used to it and doesn’t realise.’
Pen thought for a moment, tapping her teaspoon on the side of her saucer. ‘Can you get in touch with Dan yourself?’ she asked.
I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I mean I could, I have an email address and phone number, but I promised Rupert I wouldn’t. It’s something we have to do together, something he has to lead, I think.’
She nodded thoughtfully. ‘I can see that,’ she said. ‘Maybe you need to forget about Dan for a while. Stop dreading bumping into him, stop pushing Rupert to see him and do something for the two of you instead.’
‘Like what?’
‘Move house,’ she said. ‘Blind Freddie can see that living in that house isn’t helping either of you. You need a nice environment and your own space to make this relationship work. Are you buying or renting? Renting is impossible in this bloody city – it always is in student towns and Cambridge was the same. Do you have the money to buy?’
Pen was without a doubt the nosiest person I’d ever met. She asked a barrage of questions that nobody else would ever dare to and somehow got away with it.
I shrugged. ‘We haven’t talked about it,’ I said. ‘We were meant to start looking before Christmas but we never talked about whether we’d buy or rent.’ Part of me felt it was too soon to think about buying together, but the rest of me wanted to get on with the rest of our lives as soon as possible.
‘Do you have the money to buy?’ she asked again.
‘I do,’ I said. ‘I’ve got quite a bit of money saved up from my last advance.’ Pen knew about the books but of everyone who did know she was the one I was most scared would go blurting it out. ‘And Rupert has money his grandfather left him.’
‘Well, start looking,’ she went on. ‘You don’t even need Rupert with you to find a shortlist online. When Graeme and I first moved to York we lived in the flat above the café.’ She looked up towards the ceiling wearily. ‘It nearly destroyed us. Living and working on site, in such close proximity all the time.’ She shook her head and looked back at me. ‘We rented out the flat and moved into an apartment by the river instead. It changed everything. Trust me, you need to do this, shake things up a bit – talk to Rupert about it and forget about Dan for now. That will probably work itself out in time anyway.’
That was what I was afraid of.
Rupert still wasn’t home when I got back from The Café. Poor Captain was clearly being taken on the longest walk of his life. He’d be exhausted by the time he got back.
I hadn’t got any work done, so I took myself to bed, which was where Rupert found me when he returned. It was going dark by then.
‘Where have you been?’ I asked sleepily.
‘I’m sorry, I just needed some time on my own to think,’ he said. ‘Are you OK?’
I pushed myself up to sitting, rubbing my eyes. ‘I think so,’ I replied. ‘Just a bit wiped out by all this, and the hot water isn’t working again.’
He sighed. ‘God, Jessie, I’m sorry. It wasn’t meant to be like this. I know you’re struggling with how cold and dark the winters are up here, I know you’re missing your mum and your friends and I know you hate this house and I know I’ve not been much company recently. I think I’m too used to being on my own.’ He turned to me, cupping my face in his hand. I shifted across the bed to be closer to him.
‘Do you want to be on your own?’ I asked. I needed to ask it even if I was scared of the answer. I needed to know if his mother had been right after all.
‘God no,’ he said. ‘Not at all. I love being with you, I love having you here. It’s as though you’ve made all my dreams come true. But sometimes I don’t know what to do with that and I forget about what you want. But I am trying to change.’ He paused. ‘And I haven’t forgotten about getting another house. It’s just …’ He trailed off.
‘What?’ I asked. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘No, it’s just that I’d been intending to buy a house before you came back into my life. Renting in big university towns is always a nightmare,’ he said, echoing Pen’s words. ‘But I wondered if you thought it was too soon to buy somewhere together? I know what you said when we were in Mum and Dad’s garden last year about wanting a house and a garden and kids maybe, but I don’t want to rush you.’
‘You’re not rushing me,’ I replied.
‘I feel like I’ve been rushing you since Gemma’s wedding.’
I smiled and ran my fingers through his hair. ‘You’re not rushing me and I don’t think it’s too soon. I’d love to start looking for a house to buy with you. A home for us.’ I still felt that stab of disappointment that my health might mean I’d never have the life I wanted, that children might not be part of our future.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. My feelings must have shown on my face.
‘Oh, just not knowing what the future holds,’ I said. ‘My health, kids, you know …’ I didn’t know what else to say but I could tell by the way he looked at me he understood.
‘We’ll work it out, Jessie,’ he said. ‘I promise.’
He drew me towards him, gently kissing my neck before looking at me, his face a question asking for permission.
When I began to recover from the first onslaught of ME just o
ver a year after first falling ill, I started to go to a local support group. We talked about a lot of things, from working to sleep patterns to exercise, but the thing that our conversations always came back to was sex.
Nothing saps your libido like chronic fatigue. Some days all your energy goes into just getting dressed, staying upright; the last thing on your mind is sex and the bed becomes a negative thing – somewhere you spend time when you’re ill, not somewhere you go to enjoy yourself. I didn’t pay much attention to these discussions about our sex lives – they didn’t interest me. Dan had gone to India by then and at that point I couldn’t picture myself in another relationship ever again, with anyone. I didn’t have the energy to care about any of it really.
It had been one of the things that had scared me when Rupert walked back into my life. How would my illness affect our relationship? I knew why things hadn’t worked out with Dan and why I’d encouraged him to get on with his life, to go to India. Our future had been so uncertain because of my health and we’d lost all of our intimacy. We hadn’t had sex in months when he finally left. I worried now that if I got really sick again this would be a wedge that would come between Rupert and me too, something neither of us could deal with.
But ever since I’d told him about my illness he’d been careful, gentle, always asking me if it was OK, if it hurt. Rupert seemed to understand the reality of a relationship with someone with a chronic illness in a way Dan never had. Perhaps it was because, for Dan, the changes in my health were so sudden – we went from normal to freefall in such a short space of time, whereas for Rupert this was the new normal. While I might not have been honest with him from the start, he had accepted where I was and taken it in his stride.
I remembered the conversations that we had about sex in our support group years before – the couples who were struggling, the ones who’d had ME for years and years had explained how communication was the most important thing. I knew we hadn’t been communicating well since Christmas but I felt that talking about moving again, talking about buying a house together, was a move in the right direction. Pen would be pleased.
The Pieces of You and Me Page 15
