by Joy Richards
When he confronted her in the toilets of the pub, she had broken down. She pretended she didn’t feel the pain to numb herself against the great big wave of grief. At least, that was what he hoped. A small part of his brain, one he could not quiet down, kept suggesting an alternative scenario. A scenario in which she was secretly relieved to be rid of him, so she could start looking for someone else. Someone who shared her new life goals. The thought disgusted Alex, and filled him with unexplainable anger.
He tried to throw himself into his work. In many ways, it was the ideal distraction: he spent a lot of time trying to learn the new ways of the New York office, and was taken out for wining and dining most evenings by his new colleagues. Depressingly, he had been right about the move. The work was faster paced, with bigger clients and more exciting stakes. His new boss was hands-off. His new colleagues all appeared to be great fun, and all seemed like potential new friends. And the city was magical. His new friends took him for cocktails in Midtown, and for Ramen all over the city. They went to a speakeasy that still had its original password system at the door, and where everyone drank champagne laced with vodka. This was the life. He started looking online for apartment listings, before realising it was probably time to rent. He went to a few viewings, but the corporate accommodation he was currently in was very comfortable and he did not feel as though he was in a hurry.
This was everything he had hoped for, and more. Only, he had hoped to share all this with Sarah, like he had everything else for the past fifteen years. On the other hand, he realised, moving was the best way to help him heal from the breakdown of his relationship. Every square inch of London was branded with Sarah’s face, at least in his mind. On the other hand, they had never been to New York together: the city was a blank slate. He could go where he wanted, dine where he wanted and speak to whomever he wanted without fear of running into her, her friends, her colleagues or just places where they had shared a magical mundane moment. He could feel himself getting lighter, day by day.
Through the whole slow process of breaking up long distance, they only had one fight. This was after a couple of weeks, when she rang him to confirm she had transferred over his half of their shared savings. He had had too much to drink at a work party, and was missing her more than ever. He stupidly pulled out a photo of her to look at while they were talking. It was a somewhat inappropriate picture, taken while she was reading a book on a beach in Croatia. He had focused on her, blurring the background to two broad stripes of white sand and bright blue sea. She was wearing large black sunglasses, a floppy straw hat and a red-and-white gingham bikini, and was engrossed in a book. She always loved those fluffy trashy books you can get in airport bookshops, which used to annoy him and even slightly embarrass him but which now seemed like a small endearing quirk only he was privy to.
He watched her picture as she spoke, monotonously going through reference numbers and exchange rates. He looked at her cheekbones, wrinkled in laughter as she read, he now realised ironically, her terrible book. He missed her so much.
“Listen,” he burst in, interrupting her. “I miss you. Let’s just forget all of this. Let’s do it. Let’s have a baby. We can get married, you can come over next week.”
“What?” She sounded metallic, almost like a robot.
“Give your notice and leave next week.” He was speaking faster, realising the enormity of his mistake as he listened to the words come out of his mouth. “We can get married at the New York Courthouse. Or have a real wedding, whichever one.”
“And have a baby?” She was practically whispering.
Was it too late to pull back? Probably. He should pull back now, before he committed to something he would never be able to go ahead with. And yet, he heard himself say, “Yes, Sarah. Have a baby. Start a family.”
“Alex?” He could hear her voice quavering. “How dare you.”
What? She was meant to be elated!
“How fucking dare you!” she screamed over the phone, causing his head to heat up. “Where do you actually get off, saying shit like that?”
The argument carried on for a few minutes. More than an argument, it was her shouting at him about how she did not want this, had never wanted this and that if he had ever loved her, ever understood her, ever listened to her, he would know how deeply she did not see herself, or their relationship, that way. Then, after one particularly long bout of shouting, she hung up on him. She texted him a few minutes later. “We should do the rest of the admin by email. It’s probably for the best.” Alex rolled over, in a drunken stupor, and went to sleep.
The next morning he went for a jog through the city, the cold air hitting his face as he strode through the geometrically arranged streets. He looked at the bare tree branches against the merciless, cold blue sky. He stopped at a street cart to pick up a coffee, and walked back to his apartment.
He could see now what an awful choice he had made the previous night. He did not mean it. He did not want a family, and Sarah knew that. She was letting him go, so he could have his freedom and the life he always wanted. She must have thought he was offering to give her a baby, and a wedding, and all the things he did not want out of pity. More than anything else, Sarah loathed to be pitied. That was why she hid her feelings so deep down, and why she never let anyone know how truly they had wounded her.
She wanted him to want a family with her, he now realised. She wanted him to be excited, to dream about it, to ask her to marry him on a bended knee not because it was tradition, but because he was truly begging her to please, please love him and raise his babies. All he had to offer was love of a different kind, and any attempt at trying to give her what she wanted would be forced, unauthentic and, worst of all, short lived. You cannot live a lie for your whole life, Alex thought as he made his way back into the safety and impersonal cosiness of his corporate apartment. He shook his head in sadness. He had never wanted to hurt Sarah, and yet there he was.
He texted her back: “You’re right, let’s do email. I am really sorry about last night BTW, I was drunk and not really myself xx.”
She texted back almost immediately. She must have been right by her phone, waiting for him to reply. “That’s okay. I’ll email you next week once I have closed the bank account.”
No kisses. No friendliness. Just as well. They were an ocean apart, and worlds apart as well. They only spoke once more, a month or so later. She texted him during what would have been the middle of the night for her. She wanted to talk. They arranged a call for the next day. By that stage, Alex had reached a place where he had moved on enough to know not to hope for a complete change of tune. She was not going to tell him she had got a job in New York and that she wanted to resume their old lives together.
In fact, the more time went on, the more Alex was coming to terms with the fact that from now on, his life would not have Sarah in it. Nevertheless, he was nervous about what would happen next. He shouldn’t have. It was a strange call: she asked how he was, told him about her work. Had a brief chat about their common friends, what they were up to, and about their respective families. After about ten minutes they hung up. It was the sort of conversation you have with remote acquaintances you find yourself trapped with on a train; boring, stale and quite stiff. Why had she wanted to do that? Alex knew he would never know, and was starting to accept that.
Right after that phone call, he started slowly and truly moving on with his life. He left the corporate apartment and rented a small, one bedroom flat right by his work. It was, much like his old one, almost entirely green glass with interesting views over the bowels of the city. He put more effort in his new friendships, and signed up for an exclusive online dating service. He knew he needed someone else to help him get over Sarah. Day by day, he found himself thinking about her less and less.
Over the coming months, his life came together, just the way he had imagined it when he was living in London and was trying to sell Sarah on the idea of moving to America. He was exploring New York, maki
ng new friends and even venturing further afield. He went to Florida a lot for work, and spent Thanksgiving weekend at the family home of one of his new friends in Maine. It was magical. He planned a short break for himself and a new friend at the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas. He never saw her again after they got back to the city, but he enjoyed it immensely and did not think of Sarah once the whole time he was there.
His work was challenging, and he loved it. His new clients appreciated him, his boss liked his work. He pulled many all-nighters, but out of his own volition. He loved to work hard and play hard, and made sure everyone at the office knew it. One of the partners tapped him on the shoulder one day and let him know he knew he had a long and fulfilling career ahead of him. Sarah started being more and more of a memory, a distant shadow he would think of often, but with decreasing frequency. He surprised himself by thriving without her.
13
Paul
Fallout
The sellers were clearly not changing their minds. It had been three weeks, and he’d not heard a single word from them. He’d rung the estate agent twice, and there was no chance of anything happening.
“To be honest, mate,” he’d said on the other end of the line, “I really don’t think there’s anything else we can do here.”
It was polite code for please piss off, I have a lot of other customers to attend to. People who might actually buy a house. Paul should have been heartbroken. His dream home, gone. He was a couple of thousands of pounds out of pocket for various fees. He was technically homeless, living in a cottage in Hatfield Peverel that was literally falling apart. While he should have been on the road to getting his life back on track, he was going nowhere fast. On the other hand, he was the happiest he’d been in two years. More than that, he was probably the happiest he’d ever been. Even at the peak of his relationship with Alice, he had never felt this way. He was giddy. He was giggly. He was funnier than he’d ever been, his hair looked better than it’d ever had. He was, quite simply, in love.
He had started working from home on Mondays, an option he’d never taken advantage of before because he’d hated his tiny flat so much. Now, it was an excuse to cook for Holly. She’d come home, covered in drizzle from her walk from the station, annoyed at the train and tired from work, and he could make her feel better with the wave of a hand. Plus, he loved cooking. Warming lentil stew, with pearl couscous and a side of roasted butternut squash, dripping in honey and tiny thyme leaves. An asparagus and sun-dried tomato lasagne, smothered with cloudy layers of pillowy béchamel sauce and sprinkled with Parmesan cheese. Tonight, a stroganoff: succulent chunks of Portobello mushroom, coated in sauce and served on top of fluffy wild rice. There was salad, thin slithers of cabbage and carrot soaking up an apple cider vinegar dressing, with raisins. He’d made sweet potato fries, coated in cinnamon and brown sugar, and a very spicy Siracha dipping sauce.
Alice had never liked him cooking, because it took forever and it made a mess in the kitchen. Plus, she didn’t much care about food. She was a decent cook, but did not think twice about shoving greasy slices of freezer pizza down her throat while she revised for her many exams. Holly loved the fact he cooked for her. She said it made her whole day, and from her face that was definitely true. Plus she couldn’t cook, but she would help him by washing or chopping or peeling as instructed. At the weekend, they’d made a stuffed cauliflower cheese together and she even seemed like she wanted to learn. Plus, she ate everything. Alice was the kind of maddening vegetarian who only likes three vegetables: carrots (cut into cubes), peas and lettuce. Everything else was carbs. Holly loved everything he made, with such genuine enthusiasm it was impossible for him not to feel flattered.
It wasn’t just her discovering his talents. It went both ways. She was an exceptionally talented watercolourist, something he never would have known if he’d never moved in. She kept her colours in a small tin that had once held some old-school mints, and loved to take her thick pad of watercolour paper around the countryside. While in his mind she was very much a London girl, she actually spent most of her time when she wasn’t at work roaming the fields by her house. Her bright hair and her even brighter tights were visible through the mud and rotten leaves miles ahead. That was another thing, her crazy clothes. She owned dozens of thick woollen tights that must have been uncomfortable, in every bright colour under the sun. She kept them in the drawer of her granny’s vanity, and every morning Holly picked a new pair. She played little games with herself, like having to stick with the first pair she picked. She wore them under tight shorts and equally colourful dresses, many of which looked vintage. For someone who was supposed to save money, she had a lot of nice clothes. This made her more endearing to him, softer, like her childish side had been exposed.
This was different. Paul felt needed. He felt wanted. He felt listened to. He was afraid to even say it out loud. He’d just called his mum, who was embarrassingly probably his best friend, and had intended to tell her all about it. Well, not all about it. But then he realised he didn’t know what to say. On the surface, he and Holly had been seeing each other for a few weeks. Hardly “phone your mum” territory. On the other hand, they had been very close friends for almost two years, and knew most of what there was to know about each other. What they didn’t already know, they were learning by living together. It was as though their relationship had been sped forward, to that comfortable place where you still really fancy each other, but are no longer trying to make it look as though you have a six-pack. So he and his mum chatted about this and that, and Paul hung up the phone with a sense of excitement. He would call her back in a few weeks. Explain.
In the meantime, something new was on his mind.
“Are you looking at other houses, love?” his mum had asked, and he had not known what to say.
Rationally, the best thing to do was to get on with it. Look at some new places, find another one he liked. He had all that deposit money still sitting in his bank account. On the other hand, Paul didn’t really want to. Every time he’d go view a house, he would picture his future life there. In the pink house, he’d imagined a life with a thin blonde wife like the woman who lived there. And like Alice. But now he didn’t want to imagine a future without Holly. When he would look at a kitchen, he would think of it as the kitchen where he would cook for her. A reading nook by a fireplace would be filled with Holly, reading books she bought in charity shops and drinking litres of very milky tea. A box room could maybe, potentially, one day, be a nursery for her child. Not that he was going to bring this up to her right now, of course.
There was a thud, and the door opened. The room was suddenly filled with Holly. It wasn’t just that she was very tall for a woman, leggy, with brightly coloured tights and even more brightly coloured hair. Holly had a presence, an energy that lit up a room.
“Heya!” she hollered, her Essex accent just barely disguised after a decade of hanging out with public-school kids. He had noticed her accent was stronger at home. It made sense to him, it completed her. It was warm, and friendly.
“Hello!” he hollered back, drawing her in for a kiss.
“It smells amazing,” she said, while trying to jam the door back to close it. “This door is a bloody disgrace.” It was. You had to rugby-tackle it to open it, and shimmy it across the uneven floor to shut it again.
“I wonder how much it would cost to replace it.”
She giggled. “Too much. Plus if we do that, then we’ll have to sort out the rest of this God-forsaken place.” She’d said we! He could have done a little dance of joy, right there and then.
“Why not?” He’d been thinking about this. He was relatively handy and could help. They could make the place much nicer, if not habitable. He told her.
“Well,” she said pensively, while sitting on the bust sofa to take off her Doc Marten boots. “I guess I never really thought about putting some real effort into this place. I’m only here to save money so I can go travelling.”
“Sur
e, sure. I mean… don’t you have enough money by now? You’ve been here for a long time!”
“Ah, almost there,” she replied with a cunning smile. “Almost there!”
“You know, travelling for two people is a lot cheaper anyways.”
She stopped halfway through taking off her shoes, one foot free, the other foot still in. She looked up at him. She was gobsmacked. “Would you like to come with me?” she asked. There was a quaver of emotion in her voice.
“I thought it could be fun.”
“Are you serious?”
“I can’t see why not.”
She jumped up. Her eyes were full of tears, her voice was slightly broken. “This is crazy,” she said. “But I think it’s just crazy enough to work.”
She hugged him hard, hurting his shoulders with her thin hands. Going away together is a big step, Paul thought, but it’s really not that big a deal. Is this like a fear of commitment thing? He thought he’d lighten the mood.
“So where shall we go first, then? I still have two weeks booked off of work next month from when I was meant to be redecorating. We could go to Spain? Or maybe Greece? Somewhere warm, anyway.”
She jumped back. Her eyes were dry. She looked confused, and wounded.
“Paul, what are you talking about?”
“Going away. I know it’s not a big trip, but it would be nice to start small and see how we go.”
She shook her head. “Paul, I’m not going on holiday, I’m going travelling.” Emphasis on the word “travelling”. What?
“What do you mean?” He started to see.
