Rory.
I’m sat at on the grass of The Downs, the rolling greens that span Clifton, staring at the flat Jessica and I lived in. I am aware I may look a little deranged but right at this moment, I don’t care. It’s cold and damp and that suits my mood entirely. I have come here to wallow, to wallow and ask advice, permission maybe, I’m not sure. I’m not sure of anything right now other than my desire to reconnect with Jessica. Not in a woo-woo seance kind of way but my thoughts are so muddled, especially after that play yesterday, and I think she can help. All the problems surrounding her death, the issues I anticipated would be raised by this visit, had more or less become non-things, but new ones have taken their place.
I had braced myself for the fact that being home, or near to Bristol, for a month would trigger all sorts of hideous anxiety, flashbacks. It’s as if I had expected people to approach me on the street and shout abuse in my face for letting Jessica down.
Obviously, that hasn’t happened.
Instead I have started to consider my return here permanently. Being around Mum, and the fear that sat in me about her mortality, has made me realise I want to spend more time with her.Farmore time with her. Be in her life more. Make the most of all we have. We have been lucky this time, I hope. We’ll know better after the mastectomy. Cancer has a way of rearing its head again. This next operation makes that less likely but if that happens I don’t want to be on the other side of the world. I’m not sure I want to be the other side of the world at all. Somehow confessing all this and talking about my mum to Belle the other night cemented it in my mind. It was as if once I had said the actual words out loud, my brain then knew what path I had to take. For the first time since Jessica’s death, nearly five years ago to the day, I can see myself living a life here. I had needed to get away, create a new life for myself, but now, now I think I’m ready to come home.
And on this visit, instead of memories upsetting me on every street corner, I’ve found that the majority of my memories of Montpelier – now hilariously swish compared to when I was growing up there, when it was definitely more working girls and gunshots than specialist coffee houses and Italian delis – are from childhood, not uni or Jessica. If I venture into Clifton or even across to the Cotham side of Stokes Croft, that is where I am reminded of her.
Which is why I have come here, to the place where we’d lived, where we’d shared our lives, our aspirations, were honest about our insecurities and would curl up together at the end of the night, legs entwined as we slept, my arm slung over her torso as I curled around her.
I have come here because I want to ask her forgiveness. I feel no less for her now than I did when she was alive – she will be a part of my heart until the day it stops beating – but I’m beginning to realise I had made life-changing decisions soon after her death which helped me through the subsequent years but had hurt those that loved me. Decisions I am ready to revisit, to change.
And the old guilt has a brand-new layer added. Not only do I feel as if I have short-changed her because this trip hasn’t been the hell pit of internal torture I expected, but also because this trip has been filled with Belle Wilde.
Nothing could have prepared me for this development, for Belle becoming my friend and for me developing feelings for her. Somehow our lives have woven together over these last few weeks. The woman I assumed she was is so different from the woman I now know her to be. She’s good all the way through and her ability to find joy in the little things when the bigness of life is steamrolling over her is admirable. She has taught me that there is always joy to be found if you look for it.
A robin bobs over towards me, interrupting my thoughts as it stops, cocks its head and looks directly at me. I look at the robin, marvelling at its resilience, its feet seemingly comfortable on the frost-patina’d ground. Joy in the little things. I nod my head at it.
I’m meant to be sitting here trying to say sorry to Jessica and my mind keeps falling back to Belle.
I look around The Downs, the huge green expanse of space that surrounds the house in which we used to live, and I let out a little laugh.
We lived in Clifton because this was where Jessica thought we should live. And I understood her thinking, it was certainly the most affluent part of the city and where we had been based when we were students. But still, despite both of us bringing in good money, the rent for this house in front of me used to make me wince.
I understood her need for the symbols that shouted to everyone else how well we had done for ourselves. Such a contrast with Belle, born to money and completely unbothered as she dots around in a car that has moss on it.
Jessica worked in the BBC and I had started my business whilst still in uni. The rapid and massive expansion of Facebook had made me see there was a potential for reputations to be made or broken through social media. In school, I helped friends set up a positive online presence, and curate the way they presented themselves years before it became a mainstream awareness. This was back when people were sharing everything willy-nilly, without thinking through the consequences. When companies were only just beginning to check out profiles and make hiring decisions based upon them. Jessica had been proud and supportive of me as I set up the business, she really had. She hadn’t minded me working all hours then; it was only later she had begun to complain. The same time as other parts of her behaviour had changed to the point of awakening a jealousy within me that I had never thought myself capable of. A jealousy I was reminded of yesterday in the theatre.
The robin is still here and is looking at me quizzically. It doesn’t seem to want to fly off. I’m not going to shush it away but I am a little unnerved as it fixes that unblinking black eye upon me.
‘Yes, you’re right,’ I say out loud. ‘I’m here to commemorate Jessica, not raise the doubts I had about her. That’s unfair. She can hardly answer back.’ I know this is why I eulogise the relationship, why I never say anything about the way things were beginning to fray at the edges at the very end. The robin looks a bit more satisfied when my phone buzzes.
I pull it out of my coat to see a video call from Jamal, the Belle fox from Christmas Eve falling out of my pocket as I fumble for the phone. Do I really want to be interrupted by Jamal right now? I had meant to see him and so far hadn’t got around to it.
I hear Jessica’s voice in my head saying,Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can get done today. The robin nods. Bloody hell.
‘Hey,’ I say as I answer the call.
‘Hey, how you doing? Sorry I didn’t get to see you over Christmas, it’s been mad busy. But I’ve got plans to make that right, I’m back again for New Year’s Eve, will you be about? Hang on. Where you at?’ Jamal’s face looms large on the screen. ‘Isn’t that where your old house used to be?’
‘Yup,’ I say.
‘Long way from the badlands, what you doing there?’
‘Trying to talk to Jess.’
‘Fam!’
‘Honestly, I know that I’ve deliberately put distance between us and right now, I’m back and I want to say sorry to her. Here seems like a good place.’
‘Okay, okay, and how’s that going?’
‘Honestly, not quite as I’d imagined.’
‘And why’s that?’
