What lie does he tell himself most? he wonders.
That Julia will one day settle down and be different, stop going out every night, stop the party scene.
Thathewill be enough for her, as he is.
That the arguments will stop.
Writing down what he lies about is no use.
Everyone in his life seems to see him as the baddie: Vicky and Julia’s cousin, Miriam, they both think he’s to blame for the way Julia is.
Vicky says: ‘Anyone normal would tell her they can’t hang around while she takes drugs and parties to excess. You’re propping all that crazy behaviour up. She’ll never stop if you keep mopping up the pieces, Dan.’
It’s not his job to stop Julia: it’s his job to look after her. She’s a wounded bird and he adores her. What’s so wrong about taking care of her?
Even here in therapy, Rose has pushed him about it.
He’s supposed to imagine if Julia left him for good, permanently.
What a ridiculous idea. They’ll always be pulled back together, even if they are apart for now. This separation is just a break …
Winded, he drops the pen.
His cigarette has gone out from lack of smoking.
If Julia left the way Rose suggests she could, he wouldn’t be responsible for her any more.
Imagine what that would be like – freeing, like jumping off Glastonbury Tor and allowing the wind to make his body sail up into the sky. The freedom of never worrying how she is, walking on eggshells in case he upsets her, which always results in her going on a bender with her friends …
He crumples back on earth with a mental bang.
He will never let that happen.
Julia saved him from the crippling loneliness of his teenage years and early twenties.
It had been a time when Dan felt both supremely clever and hideously shy, unable to exist in the world because he’d been born without any shell.
His Julia had been there: beautiful, fun, one of the exciting people, always.
She went to every party, was top of the list of fabulous people and, holding her hand, Dan was there too. In return for loving her, she gave him acceptance into the world.
She’s beautiful, breathtaking, and he doesn’t deserve her. He can’t lose her.
He feels such guilt about today’s sharing about her. It was a cry for help and he’d made it about him.
What a fool he is.
But then Rose’s other statements crash fleetingly into his conscious mind: it sounds like a co-dependent relationship, and you can’t change other people.
Julia’s always trying to change him.
India fiddles with the pen and her notebook. Purple writing, she decides, and puts away the pink pen – too girly – and takes up her purple one.
She draws a couple of flowers on the page.
The word that comes to mind is ‘naive’.
She’d gone wedding dress shopping when she was going out with Felippe, who was the one before Chad.
