But suddenly he isn’t smiling back.
‘I should’ve written to explain,’ he begins to say. ‘Iwantedto. I was just not in a good place.’ He looks, suddenly, like his mind is wandering away from him.
‘Sam, it’s fine,’ I say, waving my hand again.
Then, after a brief pause, he says: ‘My mum died that autumn.’
And just like that, I feel like the tectonic plates are shifting underneath me. I sit back in my seat, almost speechless.
‘Oh. Sam. What happened?’
During those weeks Sam and I spent together, his mum was being treated for ovarian cancer. She’d been diagnosed four years earlier and had been given months to live, but went on to defy doctors to the extent that – in Sam’s words – ‘I was half convinced they must’ve swapped her medical notes with someone else’s.’ But in July she went downhill and it was a matter of weeks before she knew she was going to die.
‘She wanted to go back to Ireland to be with her family when it happened. We were only there less than a month when she left us. And I was just . . . I suppose I was . . .’ he shakes his head as he tries to find the right words, before settling on just one: ‘Lost.’
He pinches the top of his nose as if trying to stem some emotion, then gives a small shake of his head. ‘Sorry. Haven’t talked about this for years.’
He clears his throat before continuing. Reeling from the loss of his mother and now effectively homeless, he didn’t know what to do with himself. His mum’s family offered him a home in Ireland. But he was eighteen, technically aman, and though he had a hard-won place at university, he’d already missed the start of his course in London. While his uncle dealt with the house sale and other ‘sadministration’, Sam did the only thing he could think of.
‘I ran away,’ he shrugs. ‘But I was clueless about where to go, so just phoned the first charity I could find who did any medical work abroad and signed up as a volunteer.’
The organisation in question performed transformative surgery on kids with cleft lips, which left untreated meant they struggled to eat, speak or breathe. He worked as support staff in the Dominican Republic and then Rwanda for two years, met some inspiring people and eventually ‘got himself together’ enough to return to the UK and re-enrol on a medical degree course, this time in Edinburgh.
‘Back in the days when I met you, I’d been convinced that I’d go into oncology. You know, because of Mum.’ He shakes his head. ‘But I came to the conclusion it would just be too painful, that never-ending reminder. And I loved the work our organisation was doing. It felt important. I guess . . . the rest is history,’ he says, with a flat smile.
I take a deep breath. ‘Why didn’t you tell me she was sick that summer?’
‘Because I hoped she’d get better,’ he shrugged. ‘I was partly in denial. But at the same time, I was going with her to have treatment several times a week and at that point it seemed to be going so well . . . until it wasn’t.’
I look down at my glass. ‘Well, now I feel like an idiot.’
‘Why?’
‘I’d assumed you’d met someone else. Or had other ideas or . . . oh I don’t know. All those silly teenage preoccupations. I had no idea you were going through all that.’
‘Well, Ishouldhave written. I wanted to. I just . . . I don’t know what I was thinking.’ He looks up at me, sincerely.
‘I apologise, Jules.’
‘Oh, God.Don’t,’ I wave him away.
‘Well, I do.’
I turn to him and try to coax a smile from him. ‘You’re not allowed to.’
He doesn’t rise to it. ‘Julie. I am making this apology and I would very much like you to accept it.’
He meets my eye and returns my smile. It’s a tiny, subtle gesture. But the connection it conveys is as deep as the ocean.
‘Okay,’ I say finally. ‘Apology accepted. But don’t call me Julie.’
He laughs. I take a sip of my rosé and lower the glass.
‘I . . . do understand grief, Sam,’ I say.
‘I know you do.’ He nods, slowly. ‘So, what happened to your husband, do you mind me asking?’
‘Of course not. It was an asthma attack. He was at a conference in Newcastle and started coming down with a chest infection. He phoned me on the second night to say he was getting the first train home the next morning. He never came back.’
