by Julie Cohen
She turned around.
‘What?’ he demanded, his voice gruff in his own ears. ‘What do you want? Why did you find me? Make it quick, I’ve got something to do.’
Felicity smiled widely, delightedly, as if they’d met by fortunate chance at a party. This was a very, very bad idea. He should turn around before it got any worse.
‘I just wanted to see you,’ she said.
‘Well, you’ve seen me now. Is that all?’
She looked him up and down: his unwashed clothes, his unshaven chin, his battered jacket, his dirty hair. He was certain that he looked exactly like what he was: a man who had spent the last couple of weeks hardly leaving his flat, not sleeping or eating, planning his own death and throwing guitars out of the window.
‘Do I look older to you?’ she asked.
Fucking hell. He’d forgotten how she spoke in non sequiturs. ‘You came and found me because you wanted me to be your mirror?’
‘I saw the picture that Mum painted of you,’ she said. ‘You look exactly the same.’
‘Of course I don’t. That was ten years ago, and I wasn’t—’ He swallowed, to contain his fury with her, with himself, with time.
‘You’ve changed, but you look exactly the same.’ She tapped her chest above her heart. ‘In here.’
It was an incredibly cheesy thing to say, the sort of thing he would snort at and deride if he saw it on television or in a film. It pierced through him like a twisting knife.
‘Hunky dory,’ he said. ‘Lovely to know. Eternal youth on canvas and also in your heart. How sweet, and also reassuring that the painting of me, wherever it is, isn’t doing a Dorian Gray.’
‘The painting’s in New York.’
‘Great. Thrilling. Now if you don’t mind—’
‘You came after me just now. You must have wanted to say something yourself.’
‘I didn’t come after you, I …’ He sighed, sharply, to cover up the lie. ‘I needed a stamp.’
‘Then let’s walk to the post office together.’
What was she trying to do? Annoy him? Stalk him? Rekindle their relationship somehow? Every possibility was so ridiculous he had no idea how to counter it.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘But only because I have to go there anyway. I don’t need the distraction and I’m done with reminiscing. I’ve got something to do.’
He started walking down the street, quickly, swearing under his breath. Felicity trotted beside him.
‘So,’ she said. ‘What’s this important stuff that you have to do?’
He grunted and walked faster.
‘What have you been up to for the past ten years?’
He didn’t answer. The post office was close by. Stamp. Post box. Home alone. Whisky and tablets. Done.
‘Ten years is a long time,’ she continued. ‘We haven’t been in touch at all. Aren’t you curious about what I’ve been doing?’
I assumed you were happier without me so I stopped thinking about you. ‘No,’ he said.
‘I’m curious about what’s happened to you.’
He swerved abruptly and pulled open the door of the post office, letting it swing shut behind him. Felicity stood outside. He could feel her through the glass door, watching him.
The post office was empty. He stormed over to the counter. ‘Second-class stamp,’ he growled at the woman behind it. ‘Make it quick.’
‘Do you want a book of them, or—’
‘I said one stamp, for fuck’s sake!’
She pushed over the stamp, took his money and gave him his change without a single additional word, which was exactly the way he wanted it.
When he got back outside, Felicity was standing with her fists clenched. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘I can understand why you might not want to see me. You’re probably happily married and you have a bunch of kids and you don’t need your ex-girlfriend coming back into your life even for a few minutes. That’s fair enough. But you could say that, you know, instead of being so rude.’
He stared at her. Was this a joke?
It wasn’t.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Rudeness is definitely the worst of my problems. Thanks for clearing that up for me.’ He stuck the stamp on the envelope, which was pretty crumpled now. ‘I need a post box.’
‘You and I haven’t seen each other for ten years, Ewan. Surely after all this time you can at least be civil to me.’ She put her fists on her hips. ‘Besides, you were the one who broke my heart.’
He’d stepped towards the red pillar box, but at this, he stopped. ‘I broke your heart? Do you have memory issues or something? You’re the one who sent me away.’
‘Because you were going to have a child with your girlfriend.’
‘And who in the world except you thinks that just because a woman’s going to have a man’s baby, that the two of them have to be together?’
‘You didn’t marry her?’
What was that emotion on her face? He used to be able to tell them all. Confusion, or panic, or disappointment?
‘Oh, I married Alana all right.’
‘And you had a baby together?’
‘We have a daughter.’ He continued his path to the pillar box and shoved the letter towards it. His hands were shaking. The letter hit the side of the slot and fell to the ground. ‘Dammit.’ When he bent to pick it up, he bumped into Felicity, who had followed close behind him.
‘So I was right,’ she said. Before he could recover himself, she swooped down and picked up the letter. ‘I was right. You were meant to be with her, it was the right thing to do.’
‘Give me that letter.’
‘I’ll give it back to you when you admit that we didn’t make the wrong decision. Also, you have to go and apologize to that lady in the post office. She didn’t deserve for you to be rude to her, either.’
He grabbed for the letter, but she skipped back out of reach. His reflexes were slowed from not eating or sleeping, from everything that had happened before. But he didn’t really want to wrestle the letter from Felicity anyway in the middle of a London street. Though it made no difference, he’d just as soon not make himself even more of an arse.
‘Fine,’ he said, and stormed back into the post office. The woman at the counter flinched when he approached. Her hand went under the counter where he assumed they had a panic button or something in case of aggressive nutters like him.
‘I’m sorry for being so rude to you,’ he told her. ‘Your customer service was exemplary and I was a cock.’
‘Er—’
‘Have a nice day.’
He rejoined Felicity on the pavement. ‘Satisfied?’
‘Now tell me that we didn’t make the wrong decision when we split up.’
‘Every single decision I have made in my life has been the wrong one, Flick.’
She blinked, and he nearly glanced over his shoulder to see what had startled her, when he realized what it was. Flick. Her old nickname had come back to him without his even thinking.
‘Okay,’ she said.
She turned and posted his letter. His suicide note. One moment it was there, the next gone, into the bowels of the post box. The first step of its second-class way to Ginge, who would open it on Tuesday, or possibly Wednesday, and call the police to find Ewan dead.
It was done. The last thing. All that was left now was the whisky and the tablets. To fill up this emptiness for the last time with a cure. ’Tis a consummation devoutly to be wish’d.
He fucking hated Hamlet. Indecisive moody bastard.
‘Thanks,’ he said dully to her and he began walking back to his flat.
She walked beside him, not saying anything. He didn’t look at her, in case she started up a conversation again. In case he saw that he’d caused her pain. He didn’t want to have to carry that too, even for the short time he had left.
He paused at the door to his building to take his keys out of his jacket. ‘Well,’ he said, looking somewhere in the vicinity of her left ear rather than at he
r face, ‘goodbye.’
‘Goodbye,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry this was all for nothing.’
She sounded defeated. He looked into her face. This was probably a mistake.
But from the minute he’d found her on his doorstep he had felt more emotion – more true, raw emotion – than he’d felt for what seemed like a very long time.
This was definitely a mistake.
‘Do you want to go for a drink?’ he asked.
Chapter Fourteen
‘A DRINK?’ I ask. ‘Right now?’
‘Yes,’ says Ewan. ‘Right now.’
‘Don’t you have this urgent thing to do?’
‘Twenty minutes isn’t going to make much difference. Come on.’
Once again he launches himself onto the pavement and I have to hurry to keep up with him. He’s heading in the opposite direction than last time, though.
He looks so real, so much more three-dimensional than in my memories. It’s as if the smell and the feeling I’ve been having have been embodied in this man who should be a stranger to me but isn’t. Everything about Ewan, even the things that have changed, seem familiar to me.
Strange to think he’s been living his own life for the past ten years as I’ve been living mine. He hasn’t been frozen in time, frozen in memory. He’s carried on, turned into more of himself.
His hair’s thick and rumpled. He has lines around his eyes from smiling or squinting. His leather jacket might be the same one he wore ten years ago, more battered and soft and faded at the elbows and collar. He looks as if he’s slept in his clothes. His accent has softened. His hands are exactly the same.
When he opened his door my heart made a great leap and I couldn’t help but gulp the air, expecting it to taste of frangipani. In that moment, I didn’t feel guilty. I didn’t think about Quinn at all. The thoughts of Quinn came after, when Ewan had slammed the door, when I was walking back to the underground station and thinking that it was maybe for the best that Ewan didn’t want to see me. Thinking that I’d had a strange feeling about my first love, that I had tried to find him again, and that nothing had happened. I’d appeased whatever my mind, or the universe, was trying to tell me, and I now could move on. I could work out what I wanted to do about my marriage without these thoughts of another man.
Then he came after me and I’d been simply, totally glad. Then I’d been furious. And then … lost. Without any feeling to guide me any more.
And now we’re going for a drink together.
Though he doesn’t seem entirely happy about it. His face is grim, his hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket, and his strides are angry.
‘Where are we going?’ I ask him.
‘Pub.’ He veers suddenly to the right down a side street and there’s a pub there at the end. It looks pretty seedy from the outside, with several men leaning against the wall smoking, and when he pushes open the door and I follow him in, the inside isn’t much better. It’s dingy, airless and full of people who look as if they haven’t left their seats since 1986.
Ewan goes straight to the bar. ‘Whisky,’ he says to the barman. ‘House double. Cheaper the better. I might as well get started.’ He turns to me. ‘You?’
This is all so surreal that I’m not certain that drinking alcohol is a good idea. Also, I haven’t eaten much today; I’ve been too nervous.
‘Me too,’ I say anyway. Ewan nods at the barman, who goes off to put our whisky in two cloudy half-pint glasses. Ewan carries them both to a table in the corner.
I sit on the cracked vinyl seat of one of the chairs. It’s sticky. Ewan slumps across from me. He takes a drink of his whisky and drums his fingers on the table, looking off towards the fruit machine.
I sip my own whisky, and shudder at it. On the other hand, a cheap double whisky seems exactly the appropriate drink to have in a pub like this, and perhaps drinking it will give me some clue as to Ewan’s state of mind. Every part of his body language tells me that he doesn’t want to be here with me. And yet this was his idea. He could have slammed the door in my face, like he did at first.
‘So,’ I say, ‘you never told me what you’ve been up to for the past ten years.’
‘Playing guitar.’
‘And what about your … daughter?’ I wait for him to supply the name of the child he had with Alana. He drinks his whisky instead and doesn’t reply. The minutes stretch out. His hand has stopped drumming and is clenched on the table. The blinking lights reflect in his eyes.
‘I got married last year,’ I tell him. ‘We live in Tillingford – it’s a village in Oxfordshire. We’ve got a tiny cottage, but it’s big enough so that I have a studio in the back bedroom. That’s what I do, now. I draw. Illustrations mostly, just little things. Children’s books. I’m doing a series called Igor the Owl.’
I wait for him to react, to the news that I’m married, or maybe some sort of recognition of Igor.
‘It’s doing quite well,’ I add.
‘How’s Esther?’ he says as if he’s had to drag the words out reluctantly.
‘She’s dead.’
Ewan’s head snaps up. He appears to focus on me for the first time since we’ve entered the pub. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘She died nearly two years ago.’
‘I need another drink,’ he says. He gets up and goes to the bar without asking if I’d like anything.
Across the room, one of the solitary drinkers is watching me. Leering. He raises his greasy eyebrows when he sees I’ve spotted him, and raises his pint in my direction. I bow my head and study the table, dreading Ewan saying the usual platitudes about how sorry he is, about how wonderful she was, about it being a shame.
When Ewan gets back, he doesn’t say anything. He concentrates on drinking his whisky as if it’s a job he must accomplish. This annoys me even more than if he’d mouthed the clichés.
‘She had liver cancer,’ I tell him.
He grunts; he doesn’t seem to be listening any more.
I stare at him and my hand tightens on my smeared glass. This is not Ewan not knowing what to say. Ewan always had something to say. He swallows whisky as if I don’t exist. As if my loss doesn’t matter, as if he never spent any time with my mother. As if she’d never painted his innermost self, the way he looked when he was in love.
I stand up. ‘You’re not interested. I’m leaving.’
‘You were the one who wanted to meet.’
‘Not any more,’ I say. I turn around and walk out of the pub.
The air smells much better out here. One of the smokers mutters something to his companion and they both snicker. I ignore them and hurry down the street, not sure where the underground station is from here. Not caring. My heart is hammering and my face is flushed with rage.
‘Flick!’
Ewan shouts from behind me. I keep going. I hear him catch up with me, though he doesn’t grab my shoulder this time. I whirl around to face him.
‘You don’t care about me at all,’ I say furiously, ‘or about how I feel. You act like an arrogant arse and take me to the most horrible pub in the universe and then when I tell you something important, something that really matters to me, all you can do is grunt. You don’t care about me, that’s fine, but my mother cared about you. She saw something in you and she tried to share it with the world, and you don’t give a shit. I don’t understand why you keep coming after me or why you invited me for a drink.’
His face screws up and he rubs his eyes with both palms. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know why. It was stupid.’
‘You’re telling me!’ I shout at him, and I step backwards. I should go back to Lauren’s, go back to Tillingford, pick up my life again.
All this. For nothing.
I turn away so that Ewan won’t see me crying.
‘I’m sorry,’ Ewan says behind me. ‘I don’t know what I thought would happen. You were just – unexpected. A distraction. It might have been another path.’
‘I’m sorry too,’ I say, and begin
to walk away. He catches my arm.
‘Do something for me,’ he says urgently. ‘I know I don’t deserve it and I know I shouldn’t ask. But do one last thing.’
‘Why should I?’
‘Because you’re right, your mother saw something in me. Because you did.’ I can smell the whisky on his breath. His hand is hot on my arm.
‘Agree to meet me on Monday,’ he says. ‘No, Monday’s too early, I could still do it. Tuesday. Agree to meet me Tuesday.’
‘Why?’
‘I can’t tell you, not now. Say you’ll meet me somewhere, anywhere, somewhere away from here. Meet me in Greenwich, near the Meridian Line. That’ll do. At noon.’
His words are so urgent.
‘Why?’ I ask again. ‘I’ve given you enough chances. Can’t you tell me whatever you need to tell me now?’
‘I can’t. And I might not be able to tell you then, either. But if I can’t tell you, I won’t show up.’
‘You want me to agree to meet you all the way over in Greenwich but you might not even be there.’
‘If I’m not there, it won’t be your fault. It’ll be mine. Don’t wait for long. And if I don’t turn up, forget all about me. Forget I even asked you. It’ll be for the best.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You don’t need to. I probably won’t be there. Just say you will. Tuesday, at noon. It’ll either be too late, or it won’t.’
This close, I can see more changes in Ewan. There are threads of silver in his hair, at his temples. I don’t recognize his scent.
This intensity, however, I know. The colour of his eyes, too, though they are tired.
‘All right,’ I say. ‘I’ll be there.’
Chapter Fifteen
THE SCENT DOESN’T come until Ewan and I have parted and I’m walking towards the underground station. But then suddenly the air is filled with frangipani and I stop and look around, convinced that Ewan has followed me again, that he’s behind me and is about to put his hand on my shoulder, and this time when I turn around he’ll say all the things that he was supposed to have said. About how he’s missed me and has thought of me all these years. About how he remembers this feeling, this love love love.
