Greg’s love had been like a beam of adoration that had pointed my way and I’d soaked it up, hoping that one day it would seep in so far that I’d realise it was exactly what I’d been looking for all along. And I truly believed it had worked.
But Adam’s return had made me doubt myself. It had made me reassess what I had with Greg, what we’d built up over the years, and made me question whether our marriage wasn’t what I’d been searching for after all.
That maybe I’d only find that with someone else.
With someone like Adam.
I jerked upright and lifted the needle off the record with shaking hands. I felt panicky, the sudden silence making my ears hum as I watched tiny dust particles bounce around in the disturbed air. My breathing was shallow and I forced myself to take some deep breaths, filling my lungs with the dusty air until it slowed and deepened.
My hand fluttered to the chain around my neck, the crotchet which nestled against my heart that I’d hidden underneath my polo neck, and my stomach rolled over. What the hell waswrongwith me?
I hurried to my feet and was about to head back downstairs when something in the bottom of the box caught my eye. I reached my hand in and clasped my fingers round the rectangles of hard plastic and pulled them out – five or six old cassette tapes, the CD90s that had already been almost obsolete when I was a child but that I’d still used to make mixtapes on Mum’s old cassette recorder. I picked the top one off the pile. There was my handwriting, the neat, round letters telling me that this tape contained the top 20 from November 1995. I smiled and picked up the next one, and my heart stopped. On the front, on the white insert card, was a scrawled note, which just said:
To E. To remember me. Love A x
It was a tape Adam had made me. I’d forgotten all about it, but seeing it brought the memory of the day he gave it to me flooding back. It had been a few days before I’d been due to leave for university, and he was about to head off with his band on a tour of pubs in the north-east. I was beside myself, desperate not to be apart, and had cried non-stop for several days. We’d gone for a final drink with our friends before we’d all left, and as we’d arrived, Adam had handed the tape to me, shyly. I’d never seen him look so coy before, and he’d shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans as soon as I’d taken it from him.
‘I just thought you could take a piece of me with you,’ he’d said, his voice low. His eyes darted back and forth as though to make sure no-one was listening.
I’d stared at the tape in amazement, my heart soaring. ‘Wow, thank you,’ I’d said, my voice cracking.
‘It’s not much but – well, I’ll miss you.’
A tear had slipped down my cheek and I’d wiped it away. ‘I’ll miss you too,’ I’d said, and almost thrown myself at him. We’d held each other tightly, locked in our own cocoon, before the moment had been shattered by Sam. ‘Come on you two love birds, let’s get this show on the road!’
I didn’t get a chance to listen to the tape until much later that night when I’d got home and played it on Mum’s old Walkman, lying in bed listening to all the songs Adam had deemed were important to me and him: Bush, ‘The Chemicals Between Us’; Ash, ‘Girl From Mars’; Nirvana, ‘Heart-Shaped Box’… I’d played it endlessly for those first few weeks at university too, almost wearing the tape out between Adam’s visits.
I hadn’t seen it since those days, but now here it was, back in my hand. Was it fate, me finding this now?
Suddenly aware of the time, I stuck the tape in my pocket to take home with me, and was about to put the rest back in the box when I noticed something scribbled on the one below it. It looked much older than the one I’d just found, the insert card yellowed, and I pulled it out and studied it.
To Penny with all my love, J xx
I frowned. That wasn’t my father’s writing. His was curly and elaborate, while this was blocky and slightly childlike. I turned it over, opened the box and slid the tape out. But there was nothing else on there, no song titles, nothing. I slipped it into my pocket as well, and headed back downstairs.
16
NOW
Cyndi Lauper: ‘Time After Time’
It was late on Boxing Day by the time I got round to listening to the tape I’d found in my father’s house. Greg and I had spent the day drinking coffee in our dressing gowns, and I’d been for a walk to clear my head. At about three o’clock Greg suddenly announced he was going for a run.
‘A run?’ Greg hadn’t been for a run for at least a year. As his gambling addiction had taken hold, early evening jogs and bike rides had slowly gone out of the window as he holed himself up in his room for hours on end. This was quite a turn-round.
‘Yep. New year, new me,’ he said, lacing up his slightly tatty trainers.
‘It’s not New Year yet.’
‘I know.’ He patted his belly. ‘But it’s never too soon to try and get rid of this paunch.’
I eyed him suspiciously, ignoring the fact that he obviously didn’t have a hint of a belly. ‘But you hate running. You said you were never doing it again.’
He sat down next to me and placed his hand on my leg. ‘I do hate running. But I think it will help me, when I feel the urge to gamble.’
I met his gaze. ‘Do you feel the urge now?’
He nodded. ‘Always.’
