We sat down on a bench, just inches from each other, overlooking the sea where the trawlers and the smallfishing boats were tied up for the night. Him, as he always sat, right ankle resting on left knee.
‘I should have known how bad it had got, Red,’ I said. ‘I mean, all the signs were there.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ he said kindly. ‘People need to ask for help. All too often, we just try and cope on our own, thinking that that is the best way. But it’s really the worst.’ He smiled at me. ‘It’sthe least effective way of getting better.’
If you only knew, I thought. ‘Yes, yes… but sometimes we can’t. Sometimes we don’t know what to do. And it’s easy for me – for us – to sit here and say you should talk, when we’re rational and not in the middle of some crisis. When you are… well, it’s hard to do all the right things.’
He nodded. ‘I know. But you shouldn’t blame yourself.’
‘She’s alwaysbeen a perfectionist, always wanted everything to be nice and good, always had the best marks in school, just so easy. But when Jake finished with her… that was a bit of a point of no return… a kind of loss of innocence that life can be really awful.’
‘I suppose it builds resilience,’ he said thoughtfully.
‘The school have told me that she doesn’t have to sit the exams this year but that weshould have a total rethink about next year. Reapply to different colleges, make sure she’s on a course that she really wants to do.’
‘You’re a really good mother, Tab,’ he said. ‘I always wondered what…’ He trailed off.
‘What?’
‘Nothing…’
I let it go. I was loving talking to him, as though nothing bad had ever happened, that we were still Red and Tab, that there was no painful elision inour lives. And that in a moment, I could lean over and he’d put his arm about me and we’d sit there and watch the boats and the sea, together forever, as we’d always meant to be and there was no way I was going to spoil this moment by talking about the past.
‘She’s sort of lost her footing… you know?’ I carried on.
‘I’m still losing mine, all the time,’ he said. ‘Literally and metaphorically.We were rehearsing the songs fromAnnieand I ran down the steps from the stage and misjudged them.’
‘Not in front of the girls?’ Red always made everything better. I should have remembered that.
‘Oh yes… how they laughed,’ he said, grimacing. ‘And I had to pretend that I wasn’t embarrassed and that I hadn’t bruised my arse.’
I laughed. ‘And metaphorically?’
‘Oh you know, in the way that weall do, us humans, doing the wrong thing, saying the wrong thing, wondering if the life you are living is the life you are meant to live, that kind of thing.’ There was a look in his eye that I couldn’t quite read.
‘Why? What makes you think you’re not?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said, looking at me. ‘Just a typical ongoing existential crisis. I just wonder sometimes. But you have Rosie. You haveher.’
We looked at each other, unable to break eye contact, a huge swell of feeling washed over us, so much unspoken, so much unresolved emotion. The detonating of our relationship had been brutal for both of us.
‘Red…’
He looked away. ‘It’s been tough, you know,’ he said. ‘I mean, I’m a grown-up now. And I’ve learned to live with it.’
‘With what?’ I said gently.
‘The disappointment,’ he said.‘It never went away,the disappointment.’ It was clear he meant only one thing.
‘Red… I’m so sorry.’
He shrugged it off. ‘Part of me was frozen, numb,’ he went on, looking out to sea, as though I wasn’t there. ‘When you didn’t come to San Francisco, when you didn’t answer any of my calls. When there was no explanation. You should have just told me. If you had met someone else, or if you’d justgone off me. Or whatever.’ He said sadly, as though resigned. ‘That would have hurt, sure, but it would have been better than nothing.’
‘I know… I’m sorry.’
‘What’s done is done. I don’t blame you. I’m not angry. I’ve never been angry. I was just so bloody sad about it. It was like it took root, this sadness. I mean I went out, I was sociable, good to be with, made jokes, the usual Red, likeI am now but I was never able to shake the sadness’ He shrugged again. ‘It doesn’t matter now. But I’ve always wanted to tell you how I felt. I mean, I know you were grieving for your grandmother… that must have been hard. But not to tell me. To just disappear like that.’
I sat there, not knowing what to say, certain though that any explanation may be redundant and I didn’t want to try and excuseor to explain away what I’d done. I needed to feel his pain, his sadness.
