The Man Who Didn't Call

by Rosie Walsh

  I shook my head. ‘That’s just what you say when you’re looking for someone. Scouring crowds. Needle-in-haystack job.’

  Tommy shrugged. ‘Maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe he’s someone else entirely.’

  Rudi perked up. ‘Do you think Eddie is a murderer?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ Tommy said.

  ‘A vampire?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A gas man?’ Jo had recently explained Stranger Danger.

  Tommy stared thoughtfully at my phone. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But there’s something fishy about this man.’ Then suddenly he sat up straight. ‘Sarah!’ he whispered. ‘Look! ’

  I took the phone from him and found he’d opened up my Messenger. Then everything surged forward and into free fall, like water from a weir. Eddie was online. He had read my messages. Both of them. He was online now.

  He was not dead. He was somewhere. ‘What were you doing in my messages?’ I hissed.

  ‘I was being nosy,’ Tommy said. ‘I wanted to see what you’d been saying to him, but who cares ? He’s read your messages! He’s online!’

  ‘What did he say?’ Rudi was trying to grab the phone. ‘What did he say to you, Sarah?’

  Jo confiscated the phone and took a good long look.

  ‘I hate to tell you this,’ she said, ‘but he read your messages three hours ago.’

  ‘Why hasn’t he written back?’ Rudi asked.

  It was a good question.

  ‘I’m getting tired of your boyfriend, Sarah,’ Rudi said. ‘I think he’s a really horrible person.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘Let’s go down the meerkat tunnel,’ Jo said.

  Rudi looked at me, and then at his precious meerkats, ten metres away – ten metres too far.

  ‘Go,’ I told him. ‘Go and be with your people. I’m fine.’

  ‘Just walk away, Sarah,’ Jo repeated, as her son scampered off. She sounded exhausted suddenly. ‘Life is too short to run around after someone who makes you miserable.’

  She went to join Rudi. Tommy and I stared at the screen. Impulsively, I typed, Hello?

  Seconds later Eddie’s picture dropped down next to the message. ‘That means he’s read it,’ Tommy said.

  I won’t bite , I wrote.

  Eddie read the message. And then – just like that – he went offline.

  I stood up. I had to see him. Talk to him. I had to do something . ‘Help,’ I said. ‘What do I do, Tommy? What do I do?’

  After a beat, Tommy stood up and put his arm around my shoulders. If I closed my eyes, we could be back in 1997 at LAX, me crumpled against him in the arrivals hall, him carrying the keys for a huge, air-conditioned car, telling me everything would be OK.

  ‘Maybe his mum got really bad with her depression,’ I said desperately. ‘He told me she was on a downward spiral when I met him. Maybe it got really scary.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Tommy said quietly. ‘But, Harrington, if he was serious about you two, he’d still have sent a message. Explained. Asked you to give him a few weeks.’

  I didn’t argue, because I couldn’t.

  ‘See if he replies,’ Tommy said, squeezing my shoulder. ‘But unless he does soon, and unless something really quite extraordinary has happened to him, I think you should consider very seriously whether or not you want to see him again. It’s not kind to have put you through this.’

  Awkwardly, but with much tenderness, he kissed the side of my head. ‘Maybe Jo’s right,’ he said. ‘Maybe you do need to let go.’

  My oldest friend had his arm around my shoulder. The man who’d helped me glue myself back together, all those years ago, who’d watched me lose everything and somehow rebuild my life. And now we were only a few short years from forty, and it was happening again.

  ‘She is right,’ I said dully. ‘You both are. I have to let go.’

  And I meant it. The only problem was, I didn’t know how.

  Chapter Fifteen

  This is not just a broken heart , I thought, later that night. I was standing in Tommy and Zoe’s kitchen in my pyjamas, eating crisps. It’s more than that.

  But what?

  The accident? Is it something to do with the accident?

  There were so many blanks in my memory of that awful day. Distance, or trauma, or perhaps the vast difference between my English and American lives had helped me block out a lot of what happened. And yet the feelings I was having now, I knew them. They were like bad old friends.

  At 1.30 a.m. I decided to use this surfeit of energy to attempt some work. My colleagues had been too polite to say anything, but I knew I’d have someone on the phone if I didn’t process the backlog soon.

  I got back into bed and opened my emails. And my brain – finally – ignited. I made big decisions; I made small decisions. I authorized spends and sent a report to our trustees. I checked our webmail folder, because nobody ever remembered to check it, and found an email from a little girl asking if some of our clowns could visit her twin sister, who was very sick in a hospital in San Diego. Of course! I wrote, forwarding the email to Reuben and Kate, my deputy. Send in the clowns! It’s a hospital we know! Let’s have our guys in there by Friday, please, team !

  By three in the morning I realized that my brain was running at a speed I didn’t like.

  By four I felt quite mad.

  At a quarter past four I decided to call Jenni. Jenni Carmichael would know what to do.

  ‘Sarah Mackey!’ she said. I could hear the soaring violins of an old romantic film in the background. ‘What the hell are you doing awake at this time of night?’

  Thank you , I thought, closing my eyes. Thank you, God, for my dear Jenni Carmichael.

  My wedding to Reuben had been something of an embarrassment. His side of the congregation was full, whereas mine contained only Mum, Dad, Tommy, Jo and a couple of waitresses from the cafe on Fountain where Reuben and I had held our first charity meetings. No Hannah. Just a silent space on the bench next to Mum. And no friends either, because nobody in England knew what to say to me anymore, let alone wanted to fly across the world for the pleasure of still not knowing what to say.

  I’d told Reuben’s family that ‘none of my English friends could make it’ and shame had sloshed all over me like beer from an overfull glass.

  Reuben and I had a beautiful honeymoon in Yosemite. Hidden away in a bell jar of love, we were happy. But when towards the end of the trip we found ourselves in San Francisco, surrounded by laughing groups of young people, my friendlessness had taunted me again.

  Then Jenni had arrived in my life, as if shipped in by courier. Jenni was from South Carolina. She had no interest in the film industry, unlike most out-of-towners: she just ‘wanted to try something new’. While Reuben and I were wandering around northern California as newlyweds, Jenni was being installed as the manager of the office building where Reuben and I rented a desk, a grey concrete block crouching in the shadow of the Hollywood Freeway.

  Upon our return, she had come to ask me if we were planning to pay our overdue desk rental anytime soon. I handed over cash and apologies the very same day, hovering guiltily beside her as she counted the dollar bills. On her desk I noted half a cake wrapped in cling film and a small CD player on which she was playing what sounded like a ‘Greatest Love Songs’ compilation. She glanced up at me and smiled as she thumbed through the money with a rubber thimble. ‘I suck at numbers,’ she said. ‘I’m counting the bills to look efficient.’ She went back to the beginning of the pile twice before giving up.

  ‘I’ll trust you,’ she said, putting the money in a cash box. ‘You look honest. Would you like some cake? I baked it last night. I’m scared I’m going to eat the whole damned thing.’

  The cake was outstanding, and as I ate it by her desk, Jenni recounted her interview with the very strange man who owned the building. She did a near-perfect impression of him. I want her to be my friend, I thought, as she skipped a modern power ballad in favour of Barbra Stre
isand. She was nothing like me, or anyone I’d ever known, and I liked her all the more for it.

  I’d have got there. I’d have found friends eventually. I still carried the scars of my past but was emerging already as Sarah Mackey, charity executive: pleasant, ultra-reliable, sometimes witty. But Jenni Carmichael was the conduit; through her I began to meet people, to believe that I could belong here in this city I so needed to call home.

  Three years later Jenni had become not only a firm friend but a valuable asset to our charity. When Reuben and I signed a long lease on a building on Vermont, just two blocks down from the Children’s Hospital, she quit her job and came with us. Our new HQ wasn’t much to look at, surrounded by dicey-looking medical clinics, coin laundries and takeaways, but the rent was low, and it had a big, open ground floor that would become Reuben’s training academy for new Clown-doctors. She came first as our office manager, then as ‘someone who helped with grants’, until eventually, after several years, we made her our VP of fundraising.

  A year or so after we met, she had forged her own perfect love story and now lived happily on the edge of Westlake and Historic Filipinotown with a man called Javier, who fixed wealthy folks’ SUVs and bought her flowers every week. She lived for their romantic getaways and talked about Javier as if he were God Himself.

  They had been trying for a baby for eleven years. She refused to complain, because complaining was not something she had much time for, but it was killing her. Slowly, and from the inside, it was destroying my friend. For her I had even prayed to a god I’d never believed in. Please give her a baby. It’s all she wants.

  If this final round of IVF didn’t work out, I had no idea what she’d do. Neither she nor Javier had the money to fund treatment once her insurers had stopped paying out. ‘Last-chance saloon!’ she’d said stoutly, when we hugged goodbye at LAX.

  Jenni had been shocked by my break with Reuben. I think it shattered her assumptions about love: sure, people divorced all the time, but not those in her immediate life. She got round it by taking on the role of rescuer, for which she’d been designed. She downloaded apps to my phone, moved me into her spare room and made a vast number of cakes.

  ‘So!’ she said now. ‘Eddie reached out to you, right? Everything’s back on track?’

  ‘Actually, no,’ I said. ‘It’s the opposite. He’s back in the world – assuming he went anywhere in the first place – but he’s not replied to any of my messages. He’s cut me dead.’

  ‘Hang on, honey.’ I heard the music stop. ‘Just pausing my movie. Javier, I’m just gonna take this call out on the deck.’ I heard the screen door snap shut behind her. ‘Sorry, Sarah, could you repeat all of that?’

  I repeated all of that. Jenni perhaps needed a moment to take on board that my second shot at a love story had gone up in flames.

  ‘Oh shit.’ Jenni never swore. ‘Really? ’

  ‘Really. I’m a bit of a mess. As you can probably tell, it being gone four in the morning over here.’

  ‘Oh shit,’ she said again, and I laughed bleakly. ‘Tell me everything that’s happened since we last messaged. And step away from that computer, too. You’ve sent some crazy messages in the last few hours.’

  I told her everything that had happened.

  ‘So that’s it,’ I said, when I got to the end. ‘I think I’m probably going to have to let him go.’

  ‘No,’ she said, a little too sharply. Jenni didn’t like seeing anyone turn their back on love. ‘Don’t you dare give up. Look, Sarah, I know most folks’ll be telling you to leave that man well alone, but . . . I can’t give up on him yet. I’m as certain as you are that there’s an explanation.’

  I smiled briefly. ‘Such as?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said slowly. ‘But I’m determined to get to the bottom of it.’

  ‘So was I.’

  She laughed. ‘We’ll figure it out. For now, hang on in there, OK? Which reminds me – how’re you feeling about tomorrow?’

  ‘Tomorrow? ’

  ‘Your meeting with Reuben and Kaia. At some film place by the River Thames, right?’

  ‘Reuben’s in London? With his new girlfriend? ’

  ‘Uh . . . yes? He said he’d emailed to set up coffee tomorrow. Introduce you to Kaia, so you don’t meet for the first time back home in Cali.’

  ‘But why is she in London? Why are either of them in London? I’m meant to be going back to Gloucestershire tomorrow! I— What? ’

  ‘Kaia wanted to come,’ Jenni said helplessly. ‘She’s hasn’t been to London in years. And Reuben already had a flight to London for your vacation together . . .’

  I sank back in bed. Of course. Reuben and I had booked tickets to the UK back in January, when we were still playing that lonely game of husband and wife. I came home every year for the anniversary of the accident, and he had often come with me – although it had been a few years since he’d made it. ‘This year, I will,’ he’d promised. ‘I know how much you miss your sister. I’ll be there for you this year, Sarah.’ And so the tickets had been booked.

  Then, later, he had asked me for a divorce. ‘I’ve changed my London flight to a different date,’ he’d said, a few days later. He was watching me, face smudged with guilt and sadness. ‘I didn’t think you’d want me to come with you.’

  And I’d said, ‘Sure, that’s a good idea; thanks for thinking of it.’ I didn’t really consider when he might have decided to go instead. In all honesty, I had thought about very little around that time; I had mostly been stretching cautious limbs, flexing tiny new muscles. Experimenting curiously at Life Without Reuben. The ease, the fluidity, the sense of future and space in this brave new world had felt oddly shameful. Where was the mourning ?

  ‘He booked a ticket for Kaia,’ Jenni said. She wasn’t enjoying this exchange. ‘I’m sorry. He said he’d emailed you.’

  ‘He probably did. I just haven’t got to it yet.’ I closed my eyes. ‘Well, that’ll be cosy. Me, Reuben, Reuben’s new girlfriend.’

  Jenni laughed bleakly.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, after a pause. ‘I wasn’t snapping at you; I’m just shocked. And it’s my own fault anyway. I should have stayed on top of my emails.’

  I heard her smile. Little offended Jenni. ‘You’re doing great, honey. Apart from the being-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night thing. That could do with some work.’

  I closed my eyes. ‘Oh God, and I haven’t even asked you how the IVF cycle’s going. Where are you at? How long until they harvest your eggs?’

  Jenni paused. ‘Oh, they did that. I went in last week and they harvested the hell out of me. I sent you a message? On WhatsApp? They implanted three embryos, because it’s my last chance. I’ll find out next week.’

  She took a breath as if to say something else, but then stopped. In the silence swung a thousand-ton weight of desperation.

  ‘Jenni,’ I said softly. ‘I’m so sorry. I thought you were still on the ovary stimulation bit. I . . . God, I’m sorry. It excuses nothing, but I am not myself at the moment.’

  ‘I know,’ she said brightly. ‘Don’t feel bad. You’ve been there for me, every cycle. You’re allowed to make one mistake!’

  But her voice was too cheerful, and I knew I’d let her down. In the sooty darkness of Zoe’s spare room, I felt my face flush livid with self-loathing.

  Jenni replied to something Javier shouted, then said she would have to go soon. ‘Listen, Sarah, here’s my suggestion,’ she said. ‘I think you should start over with Eddie. Like you’ve just met. Why don’t you send him a letter? Tell him all about yourself, as if you were on a first date? All the things you never had a chance to tell him. Like . . . does he know about the accident? Your sister?’

  ‘Jenni, let’s talk about you. There’s been far too much chat about me and my pathetic life.’

  ‘Oh, honey! I’m taking good care of myself. I’m visualizing and chanting and doing fertility dances and eating all sorts of gross, healthy stuff. That’s all I can do. But
there’s plenty you can do.’ She paused. ‘Sarah, I will never forget the day you told me about the accident. It was the most awful thing I ever heard, and it made me love you, Sarah. Really, really love you. I think you should tell Eddie.’

  ‘I can’t send him a sob story to make him change his mind!’

  ‘That’s not what I’m saying. I just think . . .’ She sighed. ‘I just think you should let him get to know you properly . All the parts of you, even the ones you don’t like people seeing. Let him know what an extraordinary woman you are.’

  I paused, the phone hot against my cheek. ‘But, Jenni, I was lucky you reacted the way you did. Not everyone would.’

  ‘I don’t agree.’

  I pulled myself up on my pillows. ‘So . . . he cuts me out for nearly a month and suddenly I start writing to him about my childhood? He’d think I was crazy! Certifiable!’

  Jenni chuckled. ‘He would not. Like I said, he’d fall in love with you. Just like I did.’

  I slumped back down again. ‘Oh, Jenni, who are we trying to kid? I have got to let go of him.’

  She burst out laughing.

  ‘Why are you laughing? ’

  ‘Because you have no intention of letting go of him!’

  ‘I do!’

  ‘You do not!’ She laughed again. ‘If you wanted to let go of Eddie, if you really wanted to let go, Sarah Mackey, the last person on earth you would have called for advice would have been me.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  DAY FIVE: A Beech Tree, a Wellington Boot

  Eddie was on the phone to Derek again. I didn’t yet know who Derek was, but I imagined he was something to do with Eddie’s work: Eddie sounded more formal talking to him than he had when a friend called yesterday. Their conversation this afternoon was brief, mostly Eddie saying, ‘Right,’ or ‘OK,’ or ‘Sounds like a good idea.’ After a few minutes he was done. He went inside to replace the phone.

  I was sitting on the bench outside his barn, reading an old copy of Our Man in Havana from his shelf. It turned out that I still loved reading. I loved that a novelist on the payroll of MI6 had dreamed up a hapless vacuum-cleaner salesman, drafted into the Secret Intelligence Service so that he might better fund the extravagant lifestyle of his beautiful daughter. I loved that I could read about this man for hours and never once pause to overthink my own life. I loved that, with a book in my hand and no urgent need to be anywhere, or to be doing anything, I felt like a Sarah I’d entirely forgotten.