Life has barely been life since I left the restaurant that night. I couldn’t bear for Mum and Dad to go through my pain secondhand, so I crash-landed straightaway at Esther and Gavin’s. It was the only place to go, really. Because, inside, I felt almost as I did when Grace died.
Esther wasn’t quite sure what to do with me at first. We’d experienced the aftermath of Grace’s death together—drinking too much, staring numbly at each other, and occasionally voicing reminders to eat and wash. Now she was watching me go through it all again alone, and the ugliness of grief is no spectator sport. Shut out in the cold, she kept begging me to let her in.
There’s still so much she doesn’t know. Like exactly why Joel and I broke up (I only ever tell her, “It just couldn’t work,” before I’m forced to turn away). Or why I started spending so much time in her little basement kitchen, staring at the spot where Joel and I stood that night at her party, to share a kiss I’d remember forever.
•••
After a few weeks, Esther’s bewilderment at the state of me grew gradually into incentive. So I finally moved out and into the cottage at the edge of Waterfen, because there’s only so long you can skulk around your friend’s house like a ghost. Poor Gavin must have wanted to hang out the bunting when I eventually left.
I’d accepted the full-time job from Fiona by then too, asking for no break between contracts, because I couldn’t bear the thought of stepping on a plane to Chile.
But now, in my darkest moments, the idea of escape is beckoning me once again, winking at me through the blackness. I’ve been pulling the travel guides off my shelf more regularly, flicking through them over breakfast or after I’ve climbed into bed.
Maybe one day soon I’ll use some leave to fly away, attempt to rebuild my mind.
The cottage is no-frills, but it’s exactly what I need. Perfectly isolated on the edge of the reserve, it’s surrounded by reeds and tall trees, overlooked only by kestrels and owls. There’s no one to hear me crying here, no one to urge me to eat or to inform me I look like death—although I know I do, but I just can’t seem to care. And because access to the cottageis via a long, potholed track requiring permission to cross train tracks, I rarely have to worry about unannounced visitors. Much of my social contact moves onto my phone, and that suits me fine.
Sometimes, after dark, I’ll take long hikes across the reserve, just me and Murphy and the moon. And sometimes I’ll howl out loud, release my agony into the night sky, and wonder in the moments that follow if I’m actually going mad.
It’s the little things that spark the worst kind of loneliness—smiling as I start to think about the weekend, or opening WhatsApp to ask how his day’s going, before the thunderclap of recollection comes. And I can’t even deny reality, the way I did with Grace, by leaving messages he won’t ever receive. Because heisstill here, heisonly down the road—but he’s just not mine anymore.
When Esther fetched my things from the flat, she brought back some of Joel’s T-shirts by mistake. I’ve spent whole evenings curled up on the sofa, holding them to me as though I’m holding him. I well up if I hear a robin through the kitchen window, insist on meeting Dot far away from the coffee shop whenever we get together, bakedrømmekagein batches that I then fail to eat. I scroll endlessly through the pictures on my phone, unable to look away from his lovely face, fighting the urge to call.
Always, always fighting the urge to call. I’ve heard nothing from him since the day I walked out of the restaurant, and can only take that to mean he wants no further contact.
Though Joel is my greatest weakness, I have been strong enough to prevent my mind from wandering too far ahead—to how, and where, and how long I have. When that thought does flicker to life, I’ve become adept at snuffing it quickly out. I don’t want to give it oxygen, or all this pain will have been for nothing.
I’ve added the dessert spoon from the restaurant to my small collection of memories, the things that will forever remind me of us. The hotel shampoo from Hugo’s wedding. The collar from the abandoned dog Joelsaved, that bravely pulled through in the end. The tractor T-shirt’s in there too, because I can no longer bear to wear it, and the note Joel wrote urging me to apply for the job at Waterfen. Jewelry he’s given me, the glasses and carafe from Christmas the year before last. A bittersweet medley of our time together, short as it was. A story only half told.
76.
Joel—eleven months after
You’re a natural.”
“You think?”
“Look at the way he’s gazing at you,” Tamsin says. “Sure you don’t fancy moving in, letting us sleep for six months? We’ll pay.”
I smile, bounce Harry up and down on my knee. Miraculously, he’s stopped yelling, though we definitely can’t relax yet. He’s notexactlygazing. I’d say he’s scrutinizing my face while considering his next move. Master tacticians, babies.
“Actually, Joel, I do need your help with something. Non-child-care-related.”
“Go for it.”
“It’s to do with the other day. When you called and told me not to get on the tube.”
I saw the tube station in a dream, only a few hours ahead of time. A massive stampede, blind panic, screaming. I couldn’t make out the station, but I did know Tamsin was due to visit an old uni friend in London that day with Amber and Harry. (I had no idea at that point why the stampede started, or how. Had nothing at all I could bother TfL with.)
“Oh, that.” I bounce Harry up and down again, talk directly at him. Pull a series of astonished expressions, like people do when they’re playing for time.
“Yeah, that. You see, I’m a bit confused.”
“About what?”
“About how you could possibly have known. You rang me hours before it happened.” The thing was covered widely on the news, took over social media for most of the day.
A trapped-wing flutter inside my chest. “I told you. It was just a feeling.”
