At the front door Danny panicked that Luis was about to hand over his keys or take off his engagement ring. When he did neither Danny declared, ‘I proposed at the point most couples file for divorce.’
Luis shook his head.
‘This isn’t a divorce.’
Danny agreed.
‘You have to be married before you can be divorced.’
Luis asked if Danny would be okay.
‘I’ll be okay,’ he said, sounding brave. When Danny asked him the same, Luis bit his lip.
‘I don’t know.’
Luis always seemed to have an answer and strangely it was soothing when he admitted to having none. Danny offeredLuis space and time – he wouldn’t chase him for updates or ask how he was doing. He wouldn’t message multiple times a day. Luis could call home at any time. He could come home at any time, but he would not be interrupted with questions or queries. Danny compared their process to a patient going under general anaesthetic, placing the relationship in a sedated sleep and when the remedial work was complete the relationship would awake, and their life together would continue – stronger. Fixed. Except there was a chance these two broken men were together precisely because they were broken.
Standing at the door, Luis and Danny were unsure how to leave each other. Since moving in together they had never been apart longer than a few days. Breaking the impasse Danny hugged Luis goodbye, trying to keep his grip loose so that it didn’t seem like clinging. With his voice muffled by the fabric of Luis’s coarse coat, he said, ‘Promise me that when you’re ready you’ll come back. Whatever you decide.’
Luis nodded.
‘I promise.’
But Danny wasn’t so sure. He remembered swimming in Bude and the irrational impulse to continue out to sea. Luis picked up his bags and walked out of the door, descending the stairs without a glance or a wave. It wasn’t that kind of goodbye.
Chapter Twenty-SevenAlone
Danny stood in the hallway, half-convinced that Luis would reach the street, change his mind and bound back up the stairs, breathlessly dropping his bags as he flung open the door, the pair of them kissing with the intensity of reunited lovers at a railway station. After a while he walked to the balcony, allowing cold air to sweep through the apartment with Luis’s Spanish newspapers rustling mournfully on the coffee table. They missed him too, it seemed. At a loss, Danny tended to the plants, removing the dead leaves, collecting them in his palm before tossing them into the air and watching them fall to the gardens below in a sad imitation of wedding confetti.
Without Luis, the apartment was a place to sleep and shower, but not to linger, like a lightbulb without electricity,glass and filament but no glow. Danny boiled the kettle but didn’t brew a tea. He carefully washed the dishes by hand. This was living alone, he thought. He had never lived alone. He had never learned how. For the first time in his life there was no one, no parents, no flatmates, no friends, no strangers and no Luis. Being alone was freedom, he had heard people claim. But to him it was a limitation. What did people do on a Saturday when they lived alone? Meet people, he supposed, in crowded places. But that would involve conversation and he had no desire to explain his situation. To be comforted or consoled. He would keep their pending nuptials preserved in amber until Luis returned.
Devising a coping strategy for the upcoming days, Danny planned to ask for overtime at the hospital, leaving only the thinnest slivers of time to wallow or ruminate. Satisfied with this solution, he set about requesting extra shifts. Even so, he still had to muddle through today, opting for a long run after which he would be exhausted and able to sleep. Run. Sleep. Work. That would be his life. He vowed to be in shape for Luis’s return with a healthy diet, alcohol-free. He would grow stronger, not wither or weaken.
Wearing a beanie hat and thermal gloves, Danny set off across Waterloo Bridge and through the centre of town. He followed the tree-lined avenue bisecting Regent’s Park, up Primrose Hill and towards Hampstead Heath, running to the rhythm of reassurances that it-will-be-okay, that Luiswould surely weigh everything they had created together and return. It was impossible to imagine that on the cusp of marriage it could fall apart.
Passing the historic Kenwood House at the top of Hampstead Heath, Danny slowed at the café, busy with Saturday visitors. He remembered how he and Luis stopped here once after a stroll, one of those complacent couples oblivious to the loneliness of others. He should head back home, he told himself. Except the thought of returning to an empty apartment filled him with such dread that he continued onwards, out of the Heath, following a haphazard route, past Highgate, through unknown streets and suburbs, with no idea where he was going, towards the outskirts of the city as if he were fleeing the capital.
By dusk Danny arrived at Shenley Park, a place he had never heard of. There was a walled garden and an apple orchard. He tried to run through it but after eighteen miles exhaustion caught up and his legs crumpled. He collapsed onto his back, lying on grass stiff with the cold. The clouds were a curious colour, filthy silver lined with faint blue curves. Danny was struck by the impression of being underwater, holding his breath on the seabed, looking up at the underbelly of a glacier. He longed for the light to stay the same, for the sun to stop setting, unable to stomach the prospect of the night alone. A dog bounded over, a Labrador licking his face. The owner followed, smoking a clumsilyrolled joint, the end smouldering in the gloom. The three of them watched the last light drain out of the sky.
Perhaps it was the four-hour run or the crowded Tube ride with passengers coughing and sneezing but arriving back home to an empty apartment Danny felt unwell. Barely strong enough to stand in the shower, he slumped against the tiles until the hot water ran out. After drying himself he put on a tracksuit and a thick terry robe. Even with these layers he couldn’t stop shivering. He dug out a picnic blanket, cocooning himself on the living-room sofa where he lay staring through the window at the pots on his balcony. The only colour among his plants came from the heather, a single brushstroke of mauve, a recent addition inspired by the Scottish Highlands. Luis was everywhere.
Alone, Danny experienced a variation of silence new to him – his thoughts possessing a physicality, a humming in his head as palpable as the beating of his heart. He turned on the radio, hankering after the patter of conversation, not banter but voices as companions.
That night, in a dream, Danny was by Luis’s side, discovering an unfamiliar location – the ruins of an ancient desert civilization. The rubble walls were black basalt, the same colour as the shadows they cast. The barren dusty landscape was Martian red. Luis and Danny carried frayed canvas backpacks full of parchment scrolls as they entered a crumbling fortification, the only man-made structurefor hundreds of miles. While Luis was excited to explore, Danny worried about making it home. It was a dream so simple in its reflection of reality it was barely a dream at all.
Chapter Twenty-EightDoubts
Two weeks after Luis left, Danny calculated that he must have run out of clean clothes and was either washing them or buying new ones. Either way, he hadn’t come home, and Danny’s imaginary schedule was wrong. That night he couldn’t sleep. At several points he was on the brink of calling Luis. Such a call would have broken their agreement and implied dependency. He had promised to give Luis as much time as he needed and not to demand a running commentary. Returning to Spain was more complicated than Danny’s weekend visit to Bude. Luis had been estranged from his family, his homeland and even his language. Two weeks was not enough time. Danny doubled his estimate to a month. What was a month apart in the context of twenty years together? He passed the night by playing solitaire atthe kitchen table until he eventually fell asleep on the cards, waking with the eight of clubs stuck to his forehead. Peeling it off, he wondered what it foretold.
At a reasonable hour Danny phoned Jasper, a substitute for calling Luis. Up until this point he had confided in no one, keeping the separation a secret, holding out the hope that Luis would return before Christmas and no one need know about their break. He worried that even the most kind-hearted friends would whisper to each other that the relationship was evidently flawed. They might conclude the marriage was a last-ditch attempt to hold together a fraying bond, a ribbon tied around a fractured bone. Jasper existed in a different category from his friends and family. He was a wedding professional and a witness to every type of trial and tribulation before the big day.
Early on a Saturday morning with a heavy mist over the Thames they met by Lambeth Bridge on the south side of the river at a small coffee kiosk perched on a wooden pontoon. They bought takeaway coffees and strolled down the pedestrian walkway towards the South Bank. Jasper was wearing cinnamon-coloured cords, a black wool jumper and an alpaca scarf. Positively funereal. Trying to put an optimistic gloss on the predicament Danny presented the separation as a natural part of their unique wedding journey. Yet Jasper was confused by the mixed messages, a plea for help muddled with assurances that everything was okay. Heasked whether Danny wanted assistance with the practicalities, such as delaying preparations. Danny shook his head. He wanted to know what Jasper made of the situation. Jasper remained cautious, pointing out that he never commented on the relationships he was professionally involved with and anyway, that it was impossible to truly understand another couple’s love. Desperate for someone to talk to, Danny persisted.
‘I don’t want to put you in an awkward position. But I haven’t told anyone else. I don’t know who else to talk to.’
Hearing this, Jasper relented.
‘What are you reconsidering?’
