The Sight of You

by Holly Miller

  “But she can’t change the future, Callie,” he whispers, his eyes full of sadness. And as he speaks, the weight of everything he’s saying takes me down, because I know he’s ending it here, tonight, now.

  “This is all for nothing,” I say, one last attempt to get through to him. “Because even if you told me what you know, our lives wouldn’t be better. They’d be worse. Telling me isn’t the answer.”

  “Then there’s no more we can . . .” But he trips over his words and can’t finish.

  I keep staring, and we keep saying nothing, and soon my tears are too heavy to hold back. Because maybe if what he’s saying is true—if he really can’t live with it—then there isn’t a way forward.

  Maybe there just isn’t.

  “Something has to change, Cal,” he says eventually, softly. “One of us just needed to say it.”

  I’m shaking my head now. Not because I still think I can change his mind, but because I’m winded, in shock. “I can’t . . . believe this.”

  His expression says he can’t believe it either. So sudden and brutal, like a heart attack or a car crash.

  As my eyes start leaking tears, the flame from the tea-light seems to flicker sympathy. “I’ve had the best year of my life,” I say, because I need him to know.

  “I think for you,” he whispers, “the best is yet to come.”

  “I wish you hadn’t had that dream.” My words are a riptide of regret. “I wish that more than anything.”

  Our gazes fuse. “I tried so hard not to love you, Callie. But that was impossible, because . . . well. You’re you.”

  Feeling the stares of nearby diners swiveling one by one toward me, I reach for my napkin and start wiping my eyes. By now my mascara is probably all over my face.

  Perhaps reflexively, Joel leans across the table to help, which makes me cry harder, grab his hand. “How can it end like this?” I say, as his fingers grip mine, perhaps for the last time. “We’re not finished yet.”

  “I know.” His eyes cling to me. “That’s what makes this so hard.”

  But he’s right. I can see that now. We’ve finally run out of road, with no way of turning back.

  Releasing a breath, I attempt to steady myself for the toughest part, the part I’m not sure I can force my body to do. I manage to get to my feet, though I’m swaying a little.

  I can’t look at him, because if I do, I won’t be able to go through with it.

  “I’ll stay at Esther’s tonight—”

  “No, don’t. I’ll go to Tamsin’s.”

  I pause then, because I can’t leave forever without saying it. “Just . . . trust people to love you, Joel. Because they do, so much.”

  And now I’m through the front door, negotiating the road somehow, not caring about the cold. As I reach the opposite pavement, I manage to turn around and blink back at the restaurant, as if to check that it’s still there, half hoping this is all just my mind’s illusion, a mirage created by strangely angled light.

  At our table with his back to the window, Joel has lowered his head. The traffic goes silent around me, and the street melts away. It’s just me now, staring at Joel through a pane of glass, like he’s already an artifact, something to be loved but never touched again.

  Then comes the hiss of bus brakes, a whistle of wind. People push past, and sound swells around me. The world is moving me along, and a current’s clipping at my feet.

  I breathe in and then out, step forward, let it take me.

  * * *

  • • •

  It’s only when I crash-land on Esther’s doorstep twenty minutes later that I discover I’m still clutching my dessert spoon.

  72.

  Joel

  Once Callie’s left the restaurant, I stay where I am for maybe thirty minutes, an hour. Eventually the candle at our table burns out. But none of the waiters come close. They must have seen what happened. A relationship smashed into pieces, right here in their restaurant.

  I can’t stop staring at her empty plate.

  In the end, the waiter lets me take it home with me. I arrived with the only girl I’ve ever truly loved, and leave just two hours later with a single plate and a broken heart.

  We haven’t even made it to a year. Let alone a lifetime.

  PART FOUR

  73.

  Callie

  Life is so different these days. Whenever I stop to think about it, it’s hard to believe how much has changed since the last time I saw you.

  But when was the last time you saw me, Joel? Do you ever see me in your dreams? Sometimes I wonder how much you know about the way I live now—the things you’ve been privy to, the details and the colors. I’ve thought a lot about what you said—I think for you the best is yet to come—and I’ve wondered for so long about how much weight to give that. If my sadness is misplaced. If I should feel only optimism.

  I know all you ever wanted was for me to be happy. But I also know, for that to happen, I’m going to have to learn to let you go.

  I’m trying, Joel. To pick my heart off the floor, love what we were, and finally let you go.

  Just know, every day, that I’m trying.

  74.

  Joel—six months after

  I’ve got a dodgy back and permanently jarred neck from all my disjointed nights on the sofa. I’ve been sleeping there since Callie left. It’s a small price to pay for not having to lie next to the empty space where, in another life, she should have been.

  A week after she moved out, Esther and Gavin came over to pick up her many things. I couldn’t face being there, so I took the dogs (minus Murphy, of course) for a ten-mile hike. When I got back, the flat was empty again. Lifeless, just an echo. Exactly as it was before she moved in.

  At first I thought it might help not to be surrounded by her stuff. I hoped the blankness might snuff out the memories. But there were traces of her all over the place. Still are. Hairbands under sofa cushions, in drawers, hooked on doorknobs. Odd socks hidden among my things. The flowerpots on the patio, redundant and weed-filled now. Her favorite work fleece (Esther forgot to take it) still hanging by the front door, filling my hallway with the faint smell of bonfires. Strands of cut reed from her boots against the kitchen kickboards, because I can’t yet bear to sweep them up. Last week, I trod on a stud earring, one half of a pair I’d bought her.

  I didn’t even care when it drew blood.

  I miss her like she’s been stolen from me. Like I’ve been robbed in the dark of something irreplaceable. Since that night in the restaurant I’ve been unable to walk past the coffee shop, or go anywhere near Waterfen. I can’t even pass the end of the road where the Sicilian pastry shop is. I failed to celebrate Christmas, watched back-to-back action films on Valentine’s night. I live from cereal box to cereal box, dog walk to dog walk. Occasionally I surface to check on Tamsin, Amber, and five-month-old Harry, then head back to the flat to carry on staring at four walls.

  It’s a good job I have only a hypothetical neighbor to consider. With Danny hardly about, I’m not obliged to care what he might think of me right now. I don’t have to make small talk or pretend to be okay. And, best of all, I don’t have to come up with crap like It is what it is and I actually think it’s for the best (which was as much as I could say to my family during those first few weeks).

  Dad and Doug, though they liked Callie a lot, seemed unsurprised by our breakup. But Tamsin was devastated. And I’ll never forget the way Amber’s face crumpled when I told her she might not see Auntie Callie again. It felt like the most careless kind of cruelty.

  When I got home that night, I sobbed.

  * * *

  • • •

  One afternoon in early May, I tune in to the sound of my intercom buzzing. For a good ten minutes now I’ve been staring at the patch of floor by the hearth where Murphy used to lie. Conjuring up the warmth of
his body against my thigh, the sunlight of Callie’s smile by my side.

  It’s the little things that take me down. Like turning my head to speak to her, before remembering she’s gone. Wondering what she might fancy for dinner. Coming across a mug she’s left behind as I boil the kettle for tea. Reliving our best kisses. Those times when just to touch her sent me spinning off into the stratosphere.

  And Murphy. How he’d patter around after me, always hopeful of dropped cheese or a handful of words he could understand. Appended to me like a shadow. Gentle as a lamb, unquestionably loyal.

  After twenty seconds or so the buzzing stops, only to be replaced by the aggravation of my phone ringing. Glancing at the screen, I’m alarmed to see Warren’s name flash up.

  I stretch to peer through a crack in the blinds at the bay window. He’s standing on my goddamn doorstep. Spots me straightaway.

  “You can’t stay” is all I say when I open the door. He’s got a suitcase and everything.

  “I’m worried about you.”

  “I can’t do this right now.”

  “You don’t have to do anything. Just let me in, so at least you’re not alone.”

  Without warning, that gets me. I break down beneath a torrent of tears, the kind that make your body convulse. So he just holds me and holds me until I can’t cry anymore.

  * * *

  • • •

  Later he goes out to buy pineapple fritters and chips. It’s the first hot food I’ve had in maybe a fortnight because, honestly, what’s the point when you can ingest cereal by the fistful? We eat off our knees, side by side like old men at the beach. Fingers shiny with fat, lips stinging with vinegar.

  “You’ve lost weight,” he remarks. “You look pale too.”

  Why do people keep telling me this? As if I didn’t already know, or no longer have access to a functioning mirror.

  “When I split up with your mum I postponed my trip for a bit,” Warren says. “Just sat in my bedsit and forgot to eat for a month. Lost touch with friends, got miserable.”

  Yeah, and meanwhile she was pregnant with me, I think. Have you ever wondered how she was feeling?

  “And then I realized,” he continues. “You know what solves everything? Salt water on your face.”

  I stare at him blankly, half wondering what he’s here to try to sell me.

  “You need to duck-dive a few waves, mate. Come surfing with me. It’ll help, I promise. You’ll feel like a new person. If I ever have a problem, the sea sorts it out.”

  Right now, I don’t want Warren to be my mate, or to feel like a new person. I want to travel back to the night of my dream and consume caffeine at quantities that would cut short a coma.

  “Come to Cornwall, stay for a bit. I’ll teach you to surf, help you move on.”

  “I’m not ready to move on.”

  Warren brushes salt from his fingers. “This is no good. Look at you—you’re making yourself ill. You need to get out more, see people . . .”

  “There’s a decent hotel by the river. It’s not too expensive. I’ll give them a ring.”

  Warren sighs heavily. “Okay. I’ll check myself in tomorrow, if you insist.”

  “I do.”

  “But tonight I can kip here.” He pats the sofa cushion. “I’ll be no bother.”

  Perhaps the rumpled duvet should have given him a clue. “Actually, that’s kind of my bed at the moment.”

  He looks at me pityingly. “Come on, Joel.”

  “Look, no offense, Warren, but you don’t get to tell me how to live.”

  “You did the right thing, you know. Letting her go.”

  I think about my mum. The decision Warren made that enabled her to live her life.

  Still. “Right doesn’t make it easy.”

  “I know. But I’m sure Callie wouldn’t want you to—”

  That does it. “Maybe you should just go.”

  He eyeballs me helplessly. “That’s really what you want?”

  Just . . . trust people to love you, Joel.

  “I can’t do this right now” is all I say.

  * * *

  • • •

  After he leaves I sit on the sofa, the air congealing with chip-shop fat. I try to imagine what Callie’s doing now, wonder if I’ll ever stop feeling this way. I think about her until my heart is alight and my mind ablaze, and then I finally fan the flames with a double shot of Scotland’s finest.

  75.

  Callie—six months after

  The months have leapfrogged into May, yet I’ve never felt more damp, more gray, more lonely.

  Friday nights are the worst. That once-golden time of the week, a sensation of supreme release—like slipping into a warm bath, letting out a held breath. But now just the act of arriving home at the end of the week is enough to trigger a landslide of memories from those glorious months before Joel’s dream, when life—and our love—truly felt infinite.

  Back then, Friday nights meant Joel, a crackling fire, the enticing sight of chilled white wine. A weekend waiting for us like a cork to be popped, long lazy kisses that ushered in evenings lost to lovemaking, our skin pink and slick, heartbeats thundering. Slow showers together before nights out in town, candlelit dinners, drinks with friends.

  My mind filters out the messier stuff, like when Joel couldn’t sleep, or got snagged on the meaning of a dream. Because none of the hiccups mattered, not really. I loved him fully, for the whole person he was.

  Six months on, I still do.

  * * *

  • • •

  Life has barely been life since I left the restaurant that night. I couldn’t bear for Mum and Dad to go through my pain secondhand, so I crash-landed straightaway at Esther and Gavin’s. It was the only place to go, really. Because, inside, I felt almost as I did when Grace died.

  Esther wasn’t quite sure what to do with me at first. We’d experienced the aftermath of Grace’s death together—drinking too much, staring numbly at each other, and occasionally voicing reminders to eat and wash. Now she was watching me go through it all again alone, and the ugliness of grief is no spectator sport. Shut out in the cold, she kept begging me to let her in.

  There’s still so much she doesn’t know. Like exactly why Joel and I broke up (I only ever tell her, “It just couldn’t work,” before I’m forced to turn away). Or why I started spending so much time in her little basement kitchen, staring at the spot where Joel and I stood that night at her party, to share a kiss I’d remember forever.

  * * *

  • • •

  After a few weeks, Esther’s bewilderment at the state of me grew gradually into incentive. So I finally moved out and into the cottage at the edge of Waterfen, because there’s only so long you can skulk around your friend’s house like a ghost. Poor Gavin must have wanted to hang out the bunting when I eventually left.

  I’d accepted the full-time job from Fiona by then too, asking for no break between contracts, because I couldn’t bear the thought of stepping on a plane to Chile.

  But now, in my darkest moments, the idea of escape is beckoning me once again, winking at me through the blackness. I’ve been pulling the travel guides off my shelf more regularly, flicking through them over breakfast or after I’ve climbed into bed.

  Maybe one day soon I’ll use some leave to fly away, attempt to rebuild my mind.

  The cottage is no-frills, but it’s exactly what I need. Perfectly isolated on the edge of the reserve, it’s surrounded by reeds and tall trees, overlooked only by kestrels and owls. There’s no one to hear me crying here, no one to urge me to eat or to inform me I look like death—although I know I do, but I just can’t seem to care. And because access to the cottage is via a long, potholed track requiring permission to cross train tracks, I rarely have to worry about unannounced visitors. Much of my social contact moves onto my phone,
and that suits me fine.

  Sometimes, after dark, I’ll take long hikes across the reserve, just me and Murphy and the moon. And sometimes I’ll howl out loud, release my agony into the night sky, and wonder in the moments that follow if I’m actually going mad.

  It’s the little things that spark the worst kind of loneliness—smiling as I start to think about the weekend, or opening WhatsApp to ask how his day’s going, before the thunderclap of recollection comes. And I can’t even deny reality, the way I did with Grace, by leaving messages he won’t ever receive. Because he is still here, he is only down the road—but he’s just not mine anymore.

  When Esther fetched my things from the flat, she brought back some of Joel’s T-shirts by mistake. I’ve spent whole evenings curled up on the sofa, holding them to me as though I’m holding him. I well up if I hear a robin through the kitchen window, insist on meeting Dot far away from the coffee shop whenever we get together, bake drømmekage in batches that I then fail to eat. I scroll endlessly through the pictures on my phone, unable to look away from his lovely face, fighting the urge to call.

  Always, always fighting the urge to call. I’ve heard nothing from him since the day I walked out of the restaurant, and can only take that to mean he wants no further contact.

  Though Joel is my greatest weakness, I have been strong enough to prevent my mind from wandering too far ahead—to how, and where, and how long I have. When that thought does flicker to life, I’ve become adept at snuffing it quickly out. I don’t want to give it oxygen, or all this pain will have been for nothing.