Once the door had clicked shut, I threw myself onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling as I tried to work out what I was feeling. There was plenty of guilt there, that was for sure, and some sadness and a touch of relief too. But the overwhelming emotion was one of surprise that I actually felt so little.
Ceiling, air conditioning, sheets,I thought.Light fitting, traffic noise, fingernail.
But I was counting in threes out of habit, not need. I actually felt perfectly calm.
So I’m a cold-hearted bastard, after all,I thought.
That was a shock.
Because we all create these myths about ourselves, don’t we? Mine was warm, helpful, generous Rob.
But there was also this other Rob, it transpired. There wasshag ’em and dump ’em, don’t-give-a-damn-Rob, too.
Who knew?
I ate in the hotel room that evening, and fell asleep in front of a film.
The next morning, I had breakfast in the room, alone, without Cheryl or Cheryl’s snuffling. Plenty of people I knew would be down at the breakfast bar and I couldn’t face the company.
I felt desolate and taut with stress, but also, deep within my chest, there was a strange pressure-cooker bubbling up of elation, as if change, endless change, was perhaps the spice of life after all. Cheryl and I had reached the end of a chapter, and that felt unbearably sad. But there was also a sense of excitement lurking about whatever was coming next.
While I was in the shower, my phone beeped with an incoming text message, and I just assumed it would be a ‘good morning’ text from Dawn or something from one of my colleagues. But once, suited and booted, I finally read it while waiting for the lift, I discovered that it was actually from Samsung. It said that due to rising concern about Covid-19 and the absence of a number of key speakers from Korea, all events had been cancelled.Wow, I thought.That’s a first.
I went back to my room and turned the TV on, just in case I’d missed some major bit of news that might explain these dramatic changes. But Sky News was showing the same old images: deserted streets in Italy, tents going up for a field hospital, Johnson burbling on about ‘herd immunity’.He sees us as a herd, I thought.That’s nice.
I went and sat on the balcony and debated whether or not to call Cheryl.
Her cigarette butt had blown away but the marble table was stained where she’d stubbed it out, so I scratched at the stain with my finger and then licked it and rubbed at it repeatedly until it crossed my mind that indirect licking of tabletops during an epidemic maybe wasn’t such a good idea.
I composed a text message that said,Are you OK? All my events have been cancelled, so if you need to talk, I’m totally free.
The first step was to change the ending fromtotally freeto justfree. Thetotallyseemed to express a keenness on my part that wasn’t entirely honest.
But then I thought about it some more and deleted all but the first three words, and sent them before I could change my mind.
Cheryl answered almost immediately.We’re done Rob, her text message said. Quickly followed by,If you ever leave your wife then let me know. Until then, there’s no point, so just don’t bother.
I winced as I read it, because it was so real and so honest it felt like a slap.
Her message struck me as spot on, too. Because she was right, wasn’t she? Continuingwouldhave been pointless. Worse, we’d been risking creating a whole new situation – pregnancy. That would have been stupid, unpredictable and irresponsible… So yes, she was right: that was exactly the situation: unless I was going to leave Dawn, continuing was pointless. And I wasn’t going to do that, was I?
A surge of love for Dawn, for the kids, for the life we’d built, came over me, taking me by surprise. Tears welled up to the point where one actually trickled down my cheek.
I’d put so much at risk, I realised, but by sheer luck we’d got through it all. I felt suddenly grateful to Dawn, to God or perhaps fate, that I hadn’t been made to pay the price for what I’d done, that we’d survived long enough to allow the candle to burn itself out. That struck me in the moment as madly, undeservedly lucky.
My phone rang. It was Steve, the guy I’d driven up with. ‘D’you see everything’s cancelled?’ he asked. ‘It’s crazy. Anyone would think it was Ebola or something. It’s just a bloody cold, for Christ’s sake.’
‘It doesn’t look likejust-a-coldin Italy,’ I said, glancing in at the TV screen. ‘They’re setting up army hospitals in tents.’
‘Yeah,’ Steve said, dismissively. ‘Well, Italians…’
I didn’t know what that was supposed to mean, but decided I didn’t much want to either.
A sensation of…forebodingI suppose is the word, was rising up in me. I was thinking about Ebola and Spanish flu and crowded city centres and taking home some bug that could potentially kill my wife. It was dawning on me, I think for the first time, that maybe this was going to get nasty.
‘Anyway, I’ve been looking up things to do,’ Steve said. ‘There’s some museums and a place called the Biscuit Factory that looks quite cool – they sell art and stuff. And there’s a cool waterside—’
‘I think I’m just going to go home,’ I said, interrupting his list. ‘D’you want to travel back with me or…?’
