The Man Who Didn't Call: The Love Story of the Year – with a Fantastic Twist

by Walsh, Rosie

  Mrs Rushby, thankfully, changed the subject when she realized I couldn’t remember John Webster’s name. She told me she’d seen a news piece about my charity when she’d taken her family on holiday to California. ‘Something to do with entertaining children in hospital, isn’t it? Clowns?’

  I relaxed as I slipped into even safer territory: work. Clowndoctors, I explained, as I had done a thousand times before. Not clowns. Trained to support the kids, normalize their medical experience, make the hospital environment feel less intimidating.

  As I spoke, I glanced over at Mandy and Claire, still there at the back of the crowd. The blue-and-yellow dress and the fringe had belonged to Claire; the back fat to Mandy. Her once-spiky little frame had expanded by at least five stone since school, something I’d probably have prayed for back then. Now I felt nothing. She looked over at me, then quickly away.

  Mrs Rushby excused herself to hand something to another teacher and I downed the rest of Rudi’s champagne, just as the railway level-crossing alarm – a sound I hadn’t heard in years – started up in the distance. And for a second I was back in the mid-nineties again, a teenager wading through uncertainty and emotional hubris, exhausted by the effort of just living. A ladder in her tights, a thin attempt at a knowing smile smeared across her face. Trying so hard to get it right with Mandy Lee and Claire Peddler.

  Mrs Rushby was still busy and I was now exposed, so I checked my Facebook messages. I made myself look tense and focused, as if I were responding to a critical work email.

  Still nothing from Eddie.

  I put my phone away and watched Rudi, who was sizing up a far-too-big hurdle. ‘Rudi,’ I called. ‘No.’ I mimed slashing my throat.

  ‘I can do it,’ he shouted at me.

  ‘No, you can’t,’ I called back .

  ‘Yes, I can!’

  ‘If you move one more inch towards that hurdle, Rudi O’Keefe, I’ll tell your mum you’ve been using her password.’

  He stared at me in disbelief. Aunty Sarah would never be so mean!

  I stood my ground. Aunty Sarah would absolutely be so mean.

  He returned angrily to the smaller hurdles and I noticed someone watching him from the grassy island in the middle of the track. Someone slim, boyish, wearing shapeless jeans and a khaki-coloured mac. The hood was pulled up, even though the rain had cleared. A sixth-former? Photographer? After a few seconds I realized his gaze was directed not towards Rudi but towards my part of the field. In fact – I turned round, but the only person nearby was Mrs Rushby and the other teacher – it seemed oddly as if he were looking at me .

  I squinted. Male? Female? I couldn’t tell. For a second I even wondered if it was Eddie, but he was broader than this person. Much taller.

  I turned round again, to make certain there was nobody else he could be watching. There was not. Abruptly, the figure started walking away, towards a new entrance gate onto the main road.

  ‘Sorry, Sarah.’ Mrs Rushby returned. ‘So, tell me, how’s your husband? I remember him from the television piece. He seemed like a very talented man.’

  I checked over my shoulder one last time, just as the person in the khaki mac did the same. It was me he was looking at. It was definitely me. But after a split second he turned back and walked off the school grounds.

  An electric bus whined past on the main road. Slender planks of sun splintered out from between clouds, and something moved uneasily in my abdomen. Who was that ?

  I watched Mrs Rushby’s face drop as I told her Reuben and I had recently separated. This, I thought, would take some getting used to. ‘We’re still running the company together, though. It’s all very amicable and grown-up!’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She frowned, folding her arms self-consciously. ‘I shouldn’t have asked.’

  ‘Not at all.’ I wished I could explain to her how easy it was – how embarrassingly easy – for me to talk about Reuben. Why had a person in a hood been watching me? That’s what I wanted to know.

  ‘Well, Sarah, I’m quite sure you’ll find happiness with someone else.’

  ‘I hope so!’ I said. And then, to my horror: ‘Actually, there is a someone else, but … it’s difficult.’

  Mrs Rushby was clearly taken aback. ‘Right,’ she said, after a pause. ‘Oh dear.’

  What was wrong with me? This had been my first shot at a normal conversation in two weeks! ‘I’m sorry,’ I sighed. ‘I sound like one of your GCSE students.’

  She smiled. ‘One is never too old to yearn,’ she said kindly. ‘I can’t remember who said that, but I endorse it wholeheartedly.’

  I couldn’t think of a single thing to say, so I apologized again.

  ‘Sarah, if we didn’t have thousands of years’ writings on the pain of love – not to mention the questioning of faith, the loss of self it precipitates – I’d be out of a job.’

  Yes , I thought miserably. That was it. The loss of self. How could I ever admit that I preferred the idea of Eddie being dead than I did that he’d simply changed his mind? I was a monster.

  I missed Sarah Mackey. She’d been so regular . She’d—

  ‘ARGHHHH! ’

  I whipped round. Rudi must have tackled the too-high hurdle. He was curled on the ground, clutching his leg.

  ‘Oh fuck,’ Jo hissed, right into the silence that followed. She ran over to him, and all the parents and the teachers and the local journalists, all of Matthew Martyn’s junior sports troupe – not to mention Matthew himself – turned as one, sending javelins of disapproval across the field. Who was this woman who’d turned up with Tommy? Why wasn’t her child in school? And why was she using the F-word?

  ‘Charming,’ I heard a woman say. It was Mandy Lee. I’d know that voice anywhere.

  I hurried over to the screaming heap of Rudi and helped Jo inspect his leg. ‘Mummy,’ he wailed, a word I hadn’t heard him use in years. Jo caved herself around him, kissing him, telling him he was safe. A tall man with a pointed face marched up to Jo and announced that he was the designated first-aider.

  ‘Let me take a look at him, please,’ he said, and Rudi’s wails increased to siren pitch. He never did accidents by halves.

  After Jo had taken Rudi off in a taxi to the minor injuries unit at Stroud Hospital, I slunk off to the toilet with the vague notion of collecting myself.

  I ran my hand over the brick cubicle wall, knowing that, under layers of paint, my name was scratched alongside Mandy’s and Claire’s and some fierce words about how nobody would ever come between us. Ironic, really, given that a few days after we had committed our indestructibility to the toilet wall, they had decided to eject me from their block of desks for the day and I’d ended up having to eat my lunch in the very same cubicle. It had been raining outside; I’d had nowhere else to go. I recalled the burst of misery as my crisp packet had rustled and someone – some girl who’d never identified herself – had peered under the door to see what I was up to.

  I flushed the loo, thinking about the unidentifiable person watching me from under the hood of his coat earlier. Who even knew I was in Stroud today, beyond Eddie? Could he – or she – really have been looking at me? And if so, why?

  I checked Messenger before leaving the cubicle, but there was nothing from Eddie. He still hadn’t been online since the day we met. Maybe Jo was right, I thought. Maybe I should write a public post on his wall. The only thing stopping me, after all, would be fear of what people might think. What Eddie might think. And if I was as certain as I said I was that something bad had happened, that should be the least of my worries.

  The idea pitched around me like a bird trapped in a room.

  But then: No! came the answer. It’s not as simple as that. The reason I haven’t written on his page is that …

  Is that what ?

  I was going to have to write something. If Eddie really had been wasting away in a ditch, if he really had drowned in the Strait of Gibraltar, I was being pretty damned casual.

  I opened up his Facebook page
and took a long breath.

  Has anyone seen Eddie recently? I typed. Have been trying to get in touch with him. A bit worried. Let me know if you’ve heard from him. Ta. And before I had a chance to stop myself, I pressed ‘Post’.

  Suddenly the loo was filled with sounds I remembered. High-pitched chatter, make-up bags being unzipped, mascara wands being pumped. Several women talking through curved mouths as they smeared on lipstick. They shrieked with laughter about how they were still doing their make-up in the toilet mirrors after all these years, and I smiled despite myself.

  Then: ‘Have you seen Sarah Harrington?’ someone asked. ‘That was a surprise.’

  And then Mandy’s voice: ‘I know! Pretty brave to just turn up like that.’

  Murmurs of agreement. ‘Can I borrow your mascara? Mine’s gone clumpy.’ Taps being turned on and off; the useless sigh of the hand dryer that had never worked.

  ‘If I’m honest, I was a bit disappointed to see her,’ Claire said. The other women went silent. ‘I just wanted to have a nice afternoon, support Matt – know what I mean?’

  Know what I mean? I’d said it for a while, to fit in.

  ‘Yes,’ Mandy said. ‘And of course she’s got as much right to be here as anyone else, but it’s … well, difficult. For us, at least.’

  Claire agreed that it was.

  ‘She pretended not to have seen me earlier,’ Mandy said. ‘So I’m afraid I did the same. And so should you, Claire, if it’s going to stress you out.’ This was the kind of leadership that had made her popular at school. Let’s ignore Claire tomorrow. Let’s make some fake IDs. Although not for you, Sarah – you don’t look old enough. ‘I’ve got too much on my plate at the moment – I haven’t the mental space for Sarah Harrington.’

  Further murmurs of agreement.

  Then: ‘Tommy Stenham’s looking well,’ Claire said lightly. ‘Don’t you think?’

  Oh, she’d been deadly at that! Drop some poor person into the conversation – tone innocuous, intentions murderous – and wait, quivering, for Mandy to take the lead.

  ‘Looking very well indeed,’ Mandy agreed, ‘although I was a little confused by his girlfriend.’ Her voice just skirted laughter.

  I tried to breathe quietly.

  ‘Oh, that’s not his girlfriend,’ Claire said. ‘His girlfriend’s a lawyer. Matt’s seen a photo of her. Apparently she’s much better-looking than the woman with the kid.’

  Mandy said, ‘I suppose the real surprise is that he has a girlfriend at all.’

  Witchy cackling. More taps. More towels. And then they started recounting, voices thick with guilty pleasure, all the things the boys used to say about Tommy. Through gales of laughter they agreed it had been very cruel . On a roll, now, they moved on to the length and appropriateness of Jo’s dress, the generous proportions of her body, the embarrassing spectacle Rudi had made, and I began to boil. Hearing them talk about me had been bad enough, but it was nothing I hadn’t spent years imagining them saying. Tommy, though? Jo? No.

  So I wrenched open my cubicle door and I faced them: this row of thirty-seven-year-old women, with their carefully done hair and their perfume and their outfits that they wouldn’t admit to having bought especially for the occasion. They turned round, mascaras in hand, lip gloss sparkling sickly. They stared at me, and I stared at them.

  And I said nothing. Sarah Mackey, keynote speaker, lobbyist, campaigner. She stood there in silence in front of her old friends, and then she fled.

  Chapter Nine

  DAY EIGHT: The Day I Left

  ‘This has been the best week of my life,’ Eddie said, the day I left his house.

  I loved this about him. He seemed always to say what he was thinking; nothing was edited. Which was a novel experience for me, because everyone edited everything when I came back to England.

  Smiling, he placed two big hands round the sides of my face and kissed me again. My heart was wide open and my life was starting over. I had never been more certain of anything.

  ‘I do want to meet your parents,’ he said, ‘because they sound very nice, and because they made you. But I’m quite glad they had to go away.’

  ‘I agree.’ I traced a finger along his forearm.

  ‘It feels like the most extraordinary act of providence – there I was, sitting on the village green, talking to a sheep – and you just marched into my life, as if you’d been waiting in the wings for a cue. And then you came to the pub, and you … liked me.’ He smiled. ‘Or at least you seemed to.’

  ‘Very much.’ I reached round and slid my hand into his shorts pocket. ‘Very much indeed.’

  Outside, the song of a blackbird fluted down from a branch. We both turned to listen .

  ‘Final time,’ he said. He handed me a flower of hawthorn blossom from the pot on his windowsill. Spring had been slow, and the flowers were still blanketed across the trees like Eton Mess. ‘Final time. Should I cancel my holiday?’

  ‘You should not,’ I made myself say. I twirled the tiny stem between my fingers. ‘Go and have a wonderful time. Forward me your flight details and I’ll be at Gatwick a week today.’

  ‘You’re right.’ He sighed. ‘I must go on this holiday, and I must actually enjoy it. Normally I’d be over the moon at the thought of a week in Tarifa. But I can call you, can’t I? From Spain? I don’t care about the cost. Let me take your mobile number, and numbers for everyone you’re likely to be near until I can see you again. We can FaceTime. Or Skype. And talk.’

  I laughed, squinting through cracks to put my number in his mangled old phone. ‘It looks like you’ve driven over this on a tractor,’ I said, putting the little sprig of blossom on the windowsill.

  ‘Put in the landline at your parents’ house,’ he said. ‘And the landline where you’re staying in London. What’s your friend’s name? Tommy? Put his address in, too, so I can send you a postcard. Although you’re going up to Leicester to see your granddad first, aren’t you?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Well, give me his number and address, too.’

  I laughed. ‘Trust me, you don’t want to end up on the phone to Granddad.’

  I handed back his phone.

  ‘Let’s make friends on Facebook, too.’ He opened his Facebook and typed in my name. ‘Is this you? Standing on a beach?’

  ‘That’s me. ’

  ‘Very Californian.’ He looked at me and my stomach pitched. ‘Oh, Sarah Mackey, you’re lovely.’

  He bent down and kissed my shoulder. He kissed the crook of my elbow. The pulse at the bottom of my neck. He pulled my hair up and kissed my spine as it dropped into my vest.

  ‘I’m crazy about you,’ he said.

  I closed my eyes and smelled him. His skin, his clothes, the soap we’d used in the shower. I couldn’t imagine surviving without this for seven days. And as much as I’d loved Reuben, I had never seen separation from him as a matter of survival.

  ‘I feel the same.’ I held him tightly. ‘But I think you know that. I’ll miss you. A lot.’

  ‘And I’ll miss you.’ He kissed me again, pushing my hair back off my face. ‘Look, when I get back, I want to introduce you to my friends and my mother.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘And I want to meet your parents, and your British friends, and your terrifying granddad, if he ends up coming to stay.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And we’ll work out what to do from there, but it’ll involve us being together somehow, somewhere.’

  ‘Yes. You, me and Mouse.’ I slid my hand back into his pocket, felt the little wooden key ring.

  He paused. Then: ‘Take her,’ he said. He pulled out his keys. ‘Keep her safe until I get back. I’m always scared of losing her on the beach. She means a lot to me.’

  ‘No! I can’t take your lovely Mouse. Don’t be mad …’

  ‘Take her,’ he insisted. ‘Then we know we’ll see each other again.’

  He placed Mouse in my palm. I looked at her jetty eyes, then at Eddie
’s .

  ‘OK.’ I closed my fingers around her. ‘If you’re sure?’

  ‘I’m very sure.’

  ‘I’ll take good care of her.’

  We kissed for a long time, him leaning against the newel post at the top of the stairs, me pressed tight into his chest, Mouse in my hand. We’d agreed that he wouldn’t see me off at the front door. It seemed too final, too much like a proper separation.

  ‘I’ll call you later today,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure what time, but I’ll call. I promise.’

  I smiled. It was sweet of him to acknowledge that: the old, crabby fear of not being called. But I knew he would. I knew he’d do everything he said he’d do.

  ‘Bye,’ he said, kissing me one last time. I took the blossom stem and walked down the stairs, turning at the bottom. ‘Don’t watch me go,’ I said. ‘Make it feel like I’ve just popped out for some milk or something.’

  He smiled. ‘OK. Goodbye, Sarah Mackey. See you in a few minutes, with some milk or something.’

  We both paused, watching each other. I laughed, for no reason other than sheer happiness. Then: Say it , I thought. Say it, even though it’s crazy, even though we’ve only known each other a week. Say it!

  And he did. He leaned against the newel post, crossed his arms and said, ‘Sarah, I think I might have fallen in love with you. Is that too much?’

  I breathed out. ‘No. It’s perfect.’

  We both smiled. A point of no return had been crossed.

  After what felt like a long, long time, I blew him a kiss and drifted off into the bright morning.

  Chapter Ten

  Dear You,

  I’ve been missing you so much today, little sister.

  I miss your naughty laugh and those milky sweets you always used to buy with your pocket money. I miss that keyboard you had when you were little, the one that played that infuriating tune when you pressed the yellow button. You’d pretend you were playing it yourself and you’d laugh yourself silly, thinking you’d fooled me.