by Hazel Hayes
‘Great.’
‘Yeah?’
‘No, Theo. She’s upset, obviously.’
‘Oh.’
The kettle begins to boil, its steady crescendo adding some much-needed tension to the situation.
‘So, are we going to talk about all the women you’ve been seeing?’ I ask.
‘Fucking hell!’
That’s not a denial.
‘Because one of the main reasons you cited for ending our relationship,’ I go on, ‘was a desperate need to “focus on yourself” and “spend some time alone”, and now I hear you’re making every effort to avoid being alone.’
‘How did you find out?’ he asks. His nonchalance actually hurts a little; he really doesn’t care any more what I feel or what I think of him.
‘Oh please. You’ve spent weeks coming on to every woman in every bar this side of the Thames,’ I say. ‘We have a lot of mutual friends. Word gets around.’
That’s not entirely true; I read his text messages using an old phone he left behind.
‘Well, I’ve been grieving. I’m a fucking mess. It doesn’t mean anything, I just needed an outlet.’
‘I hope you opened with that,’ I say.
‘Piss off.’
‘No really, did you tell them they meant nothing up front or as they were collecting their knickers off your floor?’ I ask.
‘I haven’t had sex with anyone … How could I when I’m sleeping on a blow-up fucking mattress?!’
‘Wow.’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ he says.
‘It’s exactly what you meant.’
‘Look, can we not do this please? I’m not feeling great.’
Ha!
‘Not do what, Theo? Argue or break up or move your things out? Because the first is optional but the latter two are definitely happening.’
‘Well, I’m not the one who’s been lording it about all over the internet!’ he shouts.
Two things strike me about this sentence. Firstly, yes, I have dramatically increased both the quality and quantity of my Instagram posts. They have followed the exact same pattern as that of every other recently dumped woman: beginning with inspirational quotes and pictures of sunsets, shortly followed by photos of the family pet, and then graduating to nights out with friends and overly filtered, uncharacteristically hot selfies. I’ve been taking a lot of gratuitous selfies lately, as it happens, because I’ve dropped over a stone since the breakup and I look fucking great. That said, I’ve been unable to eat because I’m so upset and I’d give anything to have my appetite back. But silver linings, eh?
Secondly, did he just say, ‘lording it about’? I should really be focusing on the matter at hand but my brain can’t seem to get past this hilarious choice of phrasing.
‘Lording it about?’
Saying the words out loud makes me laugh. He looks on, incredulous. I’m not doing well to dispel the notion that I’ve lost it. I compose myself.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, ‘I should have been more considerate. I should have thought about how my actions might affect you. I should have had more respect for you.’
His eyes narrow at me.
‘You’re not talking about Instagram, are you?’ he asks.
‘No.’
‘You’re talking about me getting with other women.’
‘I am, yes.’
‘Great!’ he says. ‘When am I gonna hear the end of this?’
I sometimes wish I could record these gems to play back for him.
‘I brought it up twenty seconds ago, so …’
‘Well, what do you want to know?’ he asks indignantly, like he hasn’t been behaving like an utter prick. I pull back my shoulders and raise my chin almost imperceptibly and without a hint of emotion I ask the question I’ve wanted to ask for months.
‘Did you cheat on me?’
‘No,’ he says, almost too quickly.
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Then why ask?’
‘You might have said yes,’ I say. ‘Or not answered at all, which counts as a yes.’
‘I didn’t cheat on you.’
‘But you did start hitting on women a few days after you walked out on me,’ I say.
He doesn’t answer.
The kettle reaches its climax and switches itself off. Theo turns and walks back down the hallway towards the bedroom.
Interestingly, I didn’t look through Theo’s messages to find out if he’d cheated on me; I just wanted to know who’d written the last email I received from him, because I could tell that he hadn’t.
Three weeks into our ‘break’ we met for dinner, as planned, to discuss the future of our relationship. I was aware, far back in some shadowy corner of my mind, that said future did not exist, but I wanted to see him. He hadn’t spoken to me since he walked out; I had only received emails from him, all purely logistical. One asked if he could swing by the apartment to ‘pick up a few things’, so in an effort to be accommodating, I told him I was in Ireland with my mother but he could of course let himself in to get them. When I returned to London, I asked my friend Maya to meet me at my apartment because I knew, without knowing, what I would find.
Theo’s half of the wardrobe was empty save for the clothes hangers, which jangled together noisily when I opened the door; his underwear and sock drawers had been emptied too, and in the bathroom, my shelf remained untouched – full of jauntily coloured nail varnishes, shampoos and face creams – while beneath it, his shelf was completely bare save for a few rings of dust around vacant circular spots, which at least confirmed that I hadn’t just imagined him.
I pictured Theo stuffing his belongings into a suitcase, frantically and unceremoniously, and now – the counterpoint to his frenzied evacuation – I moved through each room as though through tar, tentatively opening doors and pulling out drawers, conducting my morbid inventory. Maya stayed a step behind me. She said nothing. Sometimes our eyes met and we shook our heads, incredulous.
I had moments of panic about random missing items.
‘Where’s the iron? Did he take the iron? Check that cupboard.’
Maya did so, dutifully.
‘It’s not in here.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Okay. I can get a new iron.’
‘You can get a new iron,’ she echoed.
‘I don’t really iron things anyway. I suppose it was more his iron.’
‘Yeah. It’s fine,’ she agreed. ‘It’s just an iron.’
I was nodding constantly and involuntarily.
‘It’s just an iron.’
It’s just an iron. It’s just stuff. I’m just heartbroken. It’s just my heart.
I sat down on the bed and called my mother. Maya sat next to me and heard only my side of the conversation:
‘Hey. I got back okay … Fine. Bit of turbulence, but fine … Listen, I think he’s gone for good … Well, he took his stuff … No, not all of it, but, more than “a few fucking things” anyway … Clothes and toiletries … And the iron … Yeah, I can get a new one … I know I don’t, that’s what I said … No, Maya’s here … My mam says hi, Maya … She’s gonna stay the night, Mam … Yeah, I’m okay … No, of course I’m not … He took his shirts …’
I will never know why, but it was the shirts that broke me. It’s the shirts that have become an in-joke among my friends, one of whom even suggested that I write a novel about him and call it He Took His Shirts. It’s a good title, but I feel it somewhat undersells the depth of the subject matter.
Tears came then and my voice failed me. I held out the phone to Maya and she took it, rubbing my back as she talked to my mother, reiterating what I’d already said and adding her own opinion of Theo to the mix. Maya is a soft soul who hates no one, and while she’s prone to a good rant, I have never seen her as angry as she was that night. It was a muted, determined sort of anger, far more conservative than the one I knew would soon consume me.
Maya assured my mother she’d stay with me, a
nd, yes, she’d be sure to make me eat something. Straight after the call, she ordered pizza and watched me eat two slices of it. Then she called her husband, Darren, to let him know she wouldn’t be home and to say goodnight to their daughter. Maya and Darren had been our friends for years and had seen us at our best, before things started to fall apart. I could tell they were genuinely upset that Theo and I were breaking up, and I knew it would change the dynamic between us all for ever. Yet another casualty of this shitty situation, I thought.
I heard Maya tell Darren what Theo had done, and I heard the long silence on the other end of the line before he finally said, ‘Fuck’s sake, Theo.’ That was all he said. That was all he needed to say.
Finally, Maya put me to bed and crawled in beside me. I asked her to tell me stories, silly ones, fairy tales, like Goldilocks. I knew it sounded childish but I was desperate for simple, familiar things. She happily obliged and even stroked my hair until I fell asleep.
So this is how I knew, when I met Theo for dinner, that it was already over. Not only had he taken enough essentials for a new life without me, he hadn’t even prepared me for it. My mother had flown to London to be there for me when I got home from seeing him that evening, because – although she wouldn’t say it – she knew it was over too.
While I was getting ready, she asked what I would do if Theo wanted to work things out, and I told her I’d be open to it, because there was a part of me that hoped we could. But the thought of getting back together also created a quiet unease within me, which I realise now is why she asked; it forced me to imagine both possible outcomes instead of feeling – as I did – that I had no choice in the matter. I began to hope and fear in equal amounts that he would officially end it; I didn’t want to have to make a decision and I was terrified that, given the chance, I’d make the wrong one out of fear. So I went in accepting my fate, but still I agonised over what to wear and what to say. I almost didn’t go. I almost called to cancel. I almost wish I had.
When I arrived too early to the restaurant, in the pretty orange dress and navy coat I’d eventually picked out, I sat outside and waited. It was a mild October evening. Leaves the colour of my dress swirled idly around my feet and on the street in front of me, a foot-wide shaft of light thinned to a sliver as the sun moved behind a building. The air cooled and I breathed, conscious of each breath. My anxiety had flared up since Theo left – I’d been having full-blown panic attacks almost every day – but on that night, I remember feeling oddly calm. Truth be told, I was excited to see him; the prospect of a few hours with Theo after weeks of forced separation seemed appealing. Maybe, I told myself, it wouldn’t be so bad after all.
He turned up in his gym gear.
I tell people that and they need to pause to process the information. Then I repeat myself and, as their faces change from shock to pity, I become intensely embarrassed. I feel as foolish now, telling it, as I did then. In fact, of all the things that happened that night and in the weeks and months surrounding it, of all the unimaginably low moments, the thing I’m most ashamed of is that I sat in a fancy restaurant opposite a man who until recently I thought might one day father my children, while he ended our relationship in a pair of trainers and some grass-stained shorts. He said he hadn’t had time to shower or change because he’d come straight from training, but I’d spent three weeks waiting for this. I had lived those weeks. I had sat inside each minute and felt the weight of it pressing in on me. And he didn’t bother to wash himself, or put some fucking trousers on.
Theo told me it was over before the food even arrived; two servings of some sort of chicken in some sort of sauce. He devoured his meal, then asked if I was going to eat mine. I said no, I felt a bit sick, so he ate mine too.
A lot was said and all of it seemed of the utmost significance then, but I struggle to remember it now. Bits stand out. At one point he cried into a napkin. This was after I told him that I’d taken a pregnancy test on the morning he broke up with me and that it was positive. I had wanted to tell him that day, but things were already shaky between us and I sensed he wouldn’t handle it well. So I said nothing. And he just happened to break up with me. And leave. And the next day I took another two tests and they were both negative.
‘Maybe the test was broken,’ I offered.
I only wanted to explain why I was acting so odd that day, and I suppose I wanted him to know what I’d been through in those twenty-four hours – the kind of emotional anguish I’d spared him from – but instead, he thought I was accusing him of somehow causing a miscarriage by leaving me. He actually used the phrase ‘lost the baby’. It was upon saying these words out loud that he pushed back his chair, dropped his head into a napkin and cried heavy, globular tears.
Something inside me changed in that moment. I had spent most of the night listening to Theo tell me what I did wrong in our relationship. How me quitting my job to pursue writing had been stressful for him. How my anxiety and depression were bringing him down. How he’d been ‘miserable’ with me. Miserable. I remember that word distinctly. It’s quite a severe word. Theo basically made it clear that I was the cause of all his unhappiness. His floundering career, his turbulent relationship with his mother, even his own emotional instability could somehow be attributed to me.
I sat there nodding my head, brow furrowed as I took this all in, so weak and dejected that I believed him when he said that I was the only thing holding him back and if he could just be alone, to focus on himself and his career, he would finally be happy. But seeing him there, with his head between his knees, sobbing, something shifted.
Initially, almost a reflex, I put a hand on his arm and tried to comfort him. I apologised for telling him about the pregnancy test, for burdening him with this information. Then I looked around at the other diners, who were glancing at us over forkfuls of food, and I saw myself as they must see me; a pretty girl in a pretty dress, consoling a man in a pair of shorts who must have just received some horrific news. Except he hadn’t! I had! I wanted to scream at them …
‘HE IS BREAKING MY HEART! I AM THE ONE WHO IS BROKEN! HE SHOULD BE COMFORTING ME!’
I withdrew my hand, pulled my shoulders back and breathed deeply. Yes, I was broken and sad, but I was trying to keep it together. I was supporting him when I needed support. And I was being made to feel responsible for all his problems. It was a microcosm of our entire relationship.
Not for the first in my life, I put up a wall around me to protect myself from getting hurt any further. I grew stoic for the remainder of our time together, which was spent primarily dealing with the peculiar logistics of a breakup. He said he’d be in touch about collecting the rest of his stuff. He offered to pay his half of the rent for a couple of months until I figured things out; the least he could do, he said. He assured me he was not seeing anyone else, that he couldn’t even think about that right now. And he said he wanted to remain friends. That, in particular, stands out, because even though I was hurt and angry, I still loved him, and I didn’t want him to be out of my life completely.
Afterwards, he saw me to a taxi, and he took my hands in his and told me to call him if I needed anything at all. We kissed and I left. That was it. It was done. I felt at once lighter and infinitely heavier.
That night it was my mother’s turn to put me to bed, just as Maya had. I didn’t ask her to tell me any bedtime stories though.
*
A few days later, my mother flew home to Ireland and I picked my life up where I’d left off; I write a magazine column about mental health, and a weekly blog for the magazine’s website. I’d fallen behind on a couple of deadlines but, lucky for me, being a writer means I can channel my feelings into my work – or as Norah Ephron would put it, ‘Everything is copy.’ And so I ended up with a series of raw, honest articles, documenting my grieving process. The words practically poured from me, which is a rare occurrence for any writer.
My motives were mostly selfish to begin with – I needed to hand something in and wasn’
t capable of writing about anything else – so I definitely didn’t expect the response I got … hundreds of comments and emails and even handwritten letters from people who were going through the same thing in some form or other and had found comfort in my words. They all said I made them feel less alone, but the truth was that they had done exactly the same for me. My boss was delighted, of course, and she renewed my column for a further six months. She’s also encouraged me to write a collection of short stories about grief, and promised to help me find a publisher. Another silver lining, I suppose.
Then came Theo’s birthday. A few weeks had passed since our dinner and we hadn’t spoken once, so I decided to extend an olive branch and send him a text to wish him happy birthday. He didn’t reply. A few days later I texted again to ask if he was okay. No reply. When another week passed with no word from him, I sent him an email saying I wanted to know where we stood. I knew it was over and I wasn’t hoping to get back together, but at dinner he’d seemed keen to stay friends and now I got the impression he didn’t want to hear from me. It was confusing as all hell and I just wanted some clarity.
Two days later I received an email so bizarre that it’s difficult to describe without quoting the whole thing directly. Suffice to say it sounded like a canned response, the likes of which you would expect to receive in reply to a complaint about a faulty refrigerator, not a heartfelt message to your former partner.
There is an unmistakably ‘almost human’ tone to such emails, a sort of faux-empathetic sentiment with a cold, corporate undertone; the uncanny valley of language. It began with a decidedly formal greeting, included something about him ‘appreciating my patience in these difficult circumstances’, and ended with the line, ‘I do hope this correspondence has not caused you any further concern.’
Another mini revelation. Another gap in the clouds. This time I realised two things: one, he lied about wanting to be friends and was continuing to lie because he was too cowardly to just tell me he never wanted to see me again, and two, he did not write that email.
