“I always think it’s about the climb for you, Drew,” she used to say. “It’s the striving for something. You’re inspired by the gap between where you are and what you want. Getting there is almost an anticlimax, and then you want the next thing.”
She was right, in a way. It is the climb that I love. But this summit is one I never really imagined reaching. It feels pretty bloody good.
Although …
The other sinking flipside is that I never actually believed I would get this far in the award, so I skipped the bit where you’re meant to have permission from the subject of the images. I thought chances were slim. It wasn’t worth the angst of rekindling any kind of association with Evie. Every time we’re together it ends disastrously. I haven’t seen her since Harriet’s fifth birthday party, and what a mess that was. Harri clingingto me, “Watch me, Uncle Drew! Uncle! Look!LOOK!!” Oliver fuming in the corner. Evie trying to be diplomatic. Him silencing her efforts with one glare. I gave her the gift—a toy camera—and left early in the end. Promised I’d see her another time. Hoped I wouldn’t see her dad and stepmum again for another year.
My photos are going to be printed and hung in the competition’s public exhibition at Somerset House in London. And I implied that I had Evie’s permission. I can’t imagine the photos are good enough to win, but I also can’t imagine the professional embarrassment of winning, only for it to come out that she hadn’t agreed to being featured. Such an inexcusable error.
Contacting her makes me feel sick, though.
“Pretend you don’t know me” had been the pre-Harriet instruction. Not “Blow up photos of me and broadcast them on the international stage.”
I’m going to have to withdraw—and implode the best career break I’ve ever had.
Or send her an email.
80
Evie
After my coffee, I go to the gym. I’m not going to let a little problem like ending my marriage disrupt my normal routine. Teenage me would be astonished about the exercise. I was hopeless at phys ed—devoid of any kind of prowess at ball sports, or patience, particularly for anything with a high chance of failure. I consider the irony of ending up in a marriage that has so spectacularly crashed.
The routine is all I really have these days. I hardly even do anything here, just walk absentmindedly on the treadmill and then adjourn to the coffee shop, usually, to read or to people-watch. Wishing things were different. Filling in another pointless day that’s dragging me further from my dreams.
My anxiety got so bad after I pulled out of the PhD, Oliver convinced me to give up my job. “It only has to be temporary,” he’d explained. “Just while you pull yourself together.”
“I don’t want to stop working,” I told him. “It’s the one place where my anxiety isn’t bad.”
“Find a hobby or something, Evie. You need a break.”
Pulling myself together turned out to be a bigger task than either of us envisaged. I was far more broken than I’d thought. At least, that’s how it had felt. I was bedridden for months. Tooscared to face the real world. I think I feared that if a single person I knew saw me—really saw my face—they’dknow. About the failed relationship. Failed PhD. Friendships. Family. Everything.
And if they found out, then I’d have no choice but to do something about it, which is where I am now. A deer in the headlights of an untenable situation that can’t be tolerated a second longer but seems equally impossible to face.
I sit down in the café and get my phone out. It’s always on silent and I hardly ever check it lately. Too scared of missed calls and messages. Too overwhelmed by notifications. Too sad, to be honest, about the messages thataren’tthere. The calls I don’t get. The way everything went so wrong with my parents and Bree. And Drew.
I always separate him, I realize. It’s always “My parents and Bree. And Drew.” He deserves a category of his own, I guess. I remember when my parents thought it was Drew that I liked. Not Oliver. They probably heard something in my voice that spoke more truth than the bright lights and fanfare of the iridescent romance I was swept away by.
My mind flashes to the day Drew’s mother died. That fraction of a kiss. Of all the thousands of kisses I’ve had with Oliver, not one has occupied as much space in my mind as that one with Drew that barely began. Even now, reminiscing about it, everything plunges inside me in delicious anticipation. And then loss.
I flick open my email app. It’s full of marketing promotions and bill reminders and job-search notifications I never look at because it’s too depressing wondering how to explain the growing gap in my résumé. It’s not like I’ve had kids. We’ve tried. Oliver thinks our failure to conceive is all in my mind, that I’mtoo high-strung and emotional and that’s what’s stopping my body from just relaxing into motherhood. Perhaps it’s more that I’ve been privately hoping things will change and the relationship will strengthen enough to give me the confidence to bring other humans into it. Every other weekend with Harriet is nowhere near enough parenting for me—she’s the only sunlight in my life.
I’m about to close the app when I scroll back up. I’d skipped over the messages so fast, I hadn’t noticed one buried between a spam message about a bogus phone bill and something from a meditation app I signed up for, thinking I’d start a daily habit about six years ago.
FROM:Drew Kennedy
SUBJECT:Pictures of you.
My heart leaps at our exhibition name.
I open the message.
Evie,
I know we haven’t spoken in a while. I hope you’re well, and Harriet.
This is a short message. And a confession. With a question.
