Chapter Forty-Five
Marty
Isend my first postcard the day after I get back. I purchased it from Dublin airport - a cheesy postcard with a pint of Guinness in one corner, the Ha’penny Bridge below it and next to them a dated photo of The Temple Bar pub – and had the message written and a stamp on it that night. I then got up early the following morning for a ten-kilometre run in the rain and posted it at the first post-box I saw. Even though I had it tucked in the back of my shorts and boxers, a fact I painfully wished I could have shared with Jenna, the Irish drizzle still managed to get at it and the first few lines were blurred with droplets.
JENNA, IT’S BEEN 48 HOURS AND I THINK I’M DYING. IF I DIDN’T LOVE YOU SO MUCH, I WOULD HATE YOU FOR DOING THIS. BUT I DO LOVE YOU. SO MUCH. P.S. THE SUNSETS WERE SHITE AFTER YOU LEFT.
The second postcard is also from Dublin. This time, a shot of Trinity College I chose and posted on a whim one surprisingly warm evening in September. I'd just watched the sunset during a long bike ride with Dad that took us out in County Wicklow, and we stopped at the corner shop at the end of our street to pick up milk at Mum’s request. Since the last one I sent went unanswered, I’d been trying to put off sending another, but the sunset had been too beautiful and my mind was always so full of her, I couldn’t wait any longer.
JENNA, IT’S BEEN THREE MONTHS AND IT STILL FEELS LIKE I’M DYING. YET I’M STILL HERE. I SACKED OFF UNI FOR GOOD AND WORK FULL-TIME AT DERMOT’S. THEY ADDED THE MARTY PARTYTO THE DRINKS MENU. IT KILLS ME IN THE BEST WAY WHEN I SEE PEOPLE DRINKING IT. I LOVE YOU, MARTY.
I send my third postcard from France on a Christmas ski trip with my parents, Maeve, my uncle Dermot and his kids. It's not the worst trip in the world but I miss both Arnie and Jenna in equal measure, thinking how Arnie would shit himself on the black runs and how good Jenna would look with ski gear gripping her curves. It feels like a true achievement when I make it through the week without a drink, but I realise part-way through I have my sister to thank for that as she drinks Diet Coke with me and helps me carry our drunk father, uncle and cousins home most nights.
JENNA, THE SNOW IS FUCKING BEAUTIFUL. TWO SEASONS HAVE GONE BUT MY LOVE FOR YOU HASN’T. I THINK ABOUT YOU ALL THE TIME. I WISH THIS WAS EASIER. BUT MORE THAN THAT, I JUST WISH I COULD SEE YOU. LOVE, MARTY.
The fourth postcard I send is in April on my first holiday with friends since Ibiza. It's a slightly more civilised long weekend playing golf in the Algarve, a sport I am categorically shite at, but the sun shines and the sunsets over the Atlantic take my breath away. I play the Dead Boyfriend Card so my mates join me for them and they stay respectfully quiet and contemplative as we sit back and watch the ocean claim the sun. Little do they know I'm sitting there thinking about the other love of my life as well.
After, they let me choose a restaurant that serves more than burgers and chips, and then they get to drink their bodyweight in Sagres beer while I return to the hotel and think about Jenna, cry about Arnie, or sometimes call my sister or mother and let them distract me with their ramblings.
JENNA, I WATCH THE SUNSET EVERY NIGHT HERE. I DO IT TO FEEL CLOSE TO YOU, AND ARNIE. I GOT A PROMOTION AT WORK AND AM HELPING DESIGN THE SUMMER MENU. I WISH I KNEW YOU WERE OKAY. LOVE, MARTY.
The fifth postcard I send when I'm away in Ghana, teaching at a summer rugby camp for three months. It was a last-minute decision to go, what with work going so well, but Dermot gave me the final prod when I told him about it. I'mthere with lads from all over the world who are five or more years younger than me, and it shows. Immature jokes, inappropriate comments about sex or women or queer folk that I pull them up on, not to mention hygiene habits that have me learning to breathe through my mouth whenever I'm in the dorm room. But I'm outside all day. I'm meeting and playing with kids who teach me more about life than any adult ever has, bar maybe Jenna or Arnie. And I'm reconnecting with a sport I love.
I also spend a handful of nights kissing Veliane, a strikingly attractive woman who works at a bar in town where we go occasionally to play table football and dance terribly, much to the locals' amusement. Veliane has the most impossibly straight teeth, the daintiest hands, and an elegant arch in her back. She is a Christian and doesn't want to have sex before marriage, and the relief I have when she tells me this is felt from my head to my toes. She and I have easy conversations and sweet end-of-the-night kisses once the bar is closed, but all too soon she has to return to Accra for university.
JENNA, IT’S BEEN A YEAR, ALMOST TO THE DAY. I’LL NEVER FORGET THAT DATE. I HOPE YOU WON’T EITHER. RUGBY CAMP IS CLASS, BUT AS WITH MOST THINGS I JUST WANT TO TELL YOU ABOUT IT. PLEASE BE THERE IN FOUR YEARS. I LOVE YOU, MARTY.
Chapter Forty-Six
Jenna
Igive myself two weeks. One week to stay in bed and cry as much as I need to. And another week to stay at home, on the couch, in my pyjamas and with only the TV as company. Then I try getting dressed again. I tidy up, and eventually I leave the house. A few days later, I start thinking about what I want my future to look like, searching for ways to ease the pain. Ways to feel less lonely. Ways to feel okay being alone.
And I do. I create a schedule for myself; lifting, walking, yoga classes, reading time, writing time, evenings for socialising, weekends with friends or watching movies that make me laugh,Dumb and Dumberbeing top of that list. I also go back to my therapist and tell her about Marty. I only bristle a little when she asks me if I think I’m self-sabotaging. When I answer that it’s possible, but more likely that I want space to heal and to give Marty time to heal, I think her fleeting smile could be described as proud.
At some point, weeks into this routine, and almost out of nowhere I get an idea for a book and I start researching for it.
It's not the book I thought I’d write, but it’s the book I now know I can write. I work hard and it consumes the parts of me that thoughts of Marty do not. When I can’t work, I go to the gym. I'm there three times a week, focusing on a new eating programme and having regular check-ins with a PT who talks more than I'd like, so whenever he spots me I don't have the brain space to remember what it was like when Marty did it on that sunny morning in Crete.
When I start going out more - to the library, the theatre, to see friends, or just on long walks by myself - I find my eyes looking for him even though I know he isin Dublin. I know this is just part of the mourning I need to do. I don't blame or punish myself for it. I accept it for what it is, but I don't do any less searching for him as the days roll into weeks and the weeks pass by, blurring into months.
I dread the end of summer, but once autumn is here, I am reminded how beautiful it is seeing the streets of London bathed in autumn sunshine and falling golden leaves. It gives me a new appreciation for the predictability of nature and this is one of the many smaller things that help my days feel a little easier, sometimes even hopeful. I email a few old colleagues who have published books and I ask them to recommend agents and imprints, and slowly, alongside a fast-growing draft, I also build a list of people who could help me publish my book.
When winter comes, my brother moves in for his downtime between seasons. He is exhausted and depleted, and I take my duty of managing his rest and relaxation very seriously. I cook for him, take him on gentle strolls in Alexandra Park, and insist he comes to yoga with me each Sunday morning, even though he spends most of the time winking and pouting at Jorge, the instructor. Together we paint my bathroom (a green called Stormy Gale) and the guest bedroom (a soft terracotta pink heartbreakingly called Sunset Coral), and we spend more hours than is necessary building the flat-packed furniture I buy to finally replace what Robert took. When I need to, Jake lets me talk to him about Marty, and he holds my hand when that results in tears.
For Christmas, my brother insists we go and see our father and it's not the disaster I think it will be. Their dachshund dogs are hilariously contrary, and they leap into any puddle they can find. Their splashing makes me think about Marty and Maeve's pool antics and it takes willpower I don’t know I have not to download a certain app and find her videos in hope of just a quick recent glimpse of him.
On the second-to-last day of our visit, my father's neighbour asks me out for a drink with a blush so deep, it makes my own cheeks warm. There is no spark, but there is good conversation and the gentle stroking of my battered ego. On the train back to London, I reactivate my dating profiles then gaze out of the window as I think dreamily about getting a dog and how strange it is that I don't even know if Marty is a dog person. There really is still so much I don't know, and may never know, about him.
Thanks in large part to a string of terrible first dates, January and February drag in a way that makes me question everything, not just the decision I made about Marty, but everything else. It proves a useful emotional experience for my book, but disastrous for my self-confidence which is possibly why, three days before my thirty-eighth birthday, I end up going for dinner with Robert. After rejecting his offers to meet up for over two years, I am left stunned and more dejected than ever when, over medium rare steaks and salad, he tells me he's met someone and he hopes to propose in the summer. He asks me if I've met someone and I say yes, but other than his name –Marty, Marty, Marty– I don’t say much. I simply tell him I'm in love, because I am.
Spring comes, and I pause the disastrous dating to focus all my energy on work. As well as writing my book, I return to freelance work, contacting editors and explaining with tentative authority how I can now write about divorce and break-ups. By the end of April, during the same week my brother returns to Crete, I have completed several commissions and have a May meeting with a possible agent lined up.
I collect and treasure each one of Marty's postcards. Each one feels like a miracle I am both living for and don't deserve. I give myself hours to read and hold them. I wonder if the water marks on his first were his tears and I lift those blurry words to my lips hundreds of times. I wonder how he survived the family ski holiday. I wonder who he watched the sunset with in Portugal. My pride in him not going back to college, getting a promotion at work, and doing a rugby camp in Ghana sits heavy and happy in my heart for a long time. Keeping them under my pillow, I reach for the postcards on sleepless nights, and then I tuck them away and reach for myself, remembering the things he did to me and the things I did to him on a Greek island I wish I'd never left. I always think of him when I come. Always.
Maybe that's why I go back to Crete and spend a week at my brother's resort again. I know it means the world to my brother, who has another fully-booked season ahead of him. At my request I'm in a room at the other end of the resort from the villa I was in the year before, but it does little to mute the pain I feel being there without him. I drink too much on the first few nights, cry almost constantlyand hide in my room, even though there is no private pool to cool down in this time as the temperature climbs.
My brother intervenes on the third day and drags me to the gym, where he makes me do one of my workouts while he files his nails and moans about Lionel's Greek boyfriend. I can't figure out if my brother is jealous of Lionel or the boyfriend but it is a good distraction for the remainder of my time there. With less alcohol and sobbing in my system, I read nine filthy novels, write five chapters of my own book, and laugh so hard my sides hurt after my brother and I get roped into Greek dancing at a restaurant in the village.
