Chapter Thirty-Four
For most of the sevenmonths I’ve lived in this country, I’ve found myself defending the weather to people from home. Sure, it rains, but when it’s not raining it’s lovely. Even winter is cozy, with the streets lit up for Christmas and everyone in the holiday spirit. But as January drags on, I see what everyone’s been banging on about: This island is garbage. The rain is unrelenting, the gray oppressive. We go weeks without seeing the sun, and I don’t think I’m ever properly dry. The cold and damp cling to my bones until I can’t remember what it felt like before they took up residence.
Okay, yes, there may be additional reasons for my awful mood, but the weather does not help.
I sleep on Amina’s couch until her hints about me leaving become patently un-British, which is to say: overt. I load my two sad suitcases back into her car and return to her parents’ house and the lumpy twin bed and the Westlife boys, whose ’90s teenybopper vibe is now sneering, taunting me. I thought New Year’s Eve was a low, but being back in the land of frosted tips stings in a new, terrifyingly disappointing way.
One bright spot: A few days after my banishment from his future kingdom, little Hamza comes screaming into the world. It’sclear he’s inherited his mother’s spiritedness, as Amina says he does not stop screaming for several weeks. I feel his pain.
Dragging myself to work every day in the same building as Lachlan is like a constant silent scream, for weeks on end. It’s finally given me a new type of loneliness to add to the collection I was building last summer: the loneliness that comes when the person you loved, the one who broke your heart, is nonethelesseverywhereyou look. He’s skulking around the corridors of the training center, he’s doing extra sessions in the gym with his headphones on, he’s sitting alone in the first-team dining room. He’s on posters, he’s on shirts, he’s on television, he’s a tiny little figure running around on the pitch while I sit in the Comms box and try to remember how to be happy.
February brings no change to the weather, but I do manage to lift myself out of my funk long enough to bid the Westlife boys adieu. The one incontrovertible upside of living with Lachlan for months is that I barely spent a dime of my own money, so I’ve accumulated enough of a cushion to rent a one-bedroom of my own. It’s not much to write home about, but it’s just one bus away from work, and the only person who gets to have sex in the bed is me. Well, maybe one day—certainly not soon. Saint Amina bundles Hamza into a BabyBjörn and takes us back to Ikea, and we both try not to remember what we talked about the last time we were here, when the idea of Lachlan and me falling in love was so ridiculous, so exciting.
I thought that living alone for the first time in nearly six years would be terrible—and I was right. The first few weeks are unbearable. It turns out the effects of depression are greatly compounded by the slow ticking of a clock in an empty room. Breaking myself out of my ingrained couple habits was hard enough post-Steven, but there were always people around me,stewing lentils or playing video games or fucking each other’s brains out. If I thought I was alone then, I was wrong. It’s only now, on my own in this small apartment, that I can reckon with the full extent of my solitude. It takes me a month to stop checking every nook and cranny as soon as I come home, just in case a murderer somehow snuck in while I was away (the tipping point is when I open the fridge with a knife in hand, as if an assailant might be lurking in the crisper drawer).
But, like so many things in life, it gets better with time. I like having total control of the space, rotting on my couch and making the kitchen dirty and not cleaning it up until I’m good and ready. I like being able to sing as loud as I want, as off-key as I can manage, and not worry about disturbing anyone. I like the brief moments that crop up when it feels like I could be happy here, could build a life from this little flat on the outskirts of Liverpool.
As for work, it’s going as well as can be expected. On our first day back in January, I told Phil I wouldn’t be riding the bus anymore. He was disappointed but seemed to buy my excuse that it would be a good opportunity for other Comms people to “bed in” with the team a bit. I flinched at the expression and wondered if I’d ever be able to tell him about the members of the team I’ve bedded in with. I still make my way to all the matches, but #EarnTheShirt has well and truly taken on a life of its own, so my demure stripteases probably aren’t missed. But I miss the lads: the joy, the banter, the intensity, the cacophony of languages and music and noise that carried us those few miles to and from Knowsley.
And I miss Lachlan. Of course I do. I’m still angry, but it’s tinged with a palpable ache. The training center, which was starting to feel so intimate and comfortable, has become surprisingly large, as the two of us discover new ways to avoid running intoeach other. I come in early and leave late, long after the players depart. I eat lunch in my office. I bury myself in work, taking on as much responsibility as I can, as it fills my hours and my head.
We haven’t spoken since that night—in fact, we’ve barely even made eye contact. We have had some near misses. Once, while I was half-paying attention to a Zoom call, I swear I saw him stop outside my office door for a moment. But by the time I looked over for real, he was gone. Once, Phil and I were arranging the squad for a team photo and I had to say his name out loud several times to position him; I was amazed the words didn’t turn to ash on my tongue. He did what I said, swapped places with Riva, moved to the back row, adjusted his collar, and the whole time, his eyes were on me. But I couldn’t look right at him. One brutally cold day in late February, my bus was severely delayed, meaning I got to the front door at the same time as him. I was in a rush and he had his head down, hat pulled low over his eyes, so we didn’t realize what was happening until our hands brushed against each other on the door handle. Our eyes met, and I hated mine for filling with tears. Lachlan looked surprised, then flustered. “Sorry,” he muttered, but it was the kind of “sorry” that British people say twenty times a day, not the kind of “sorry” that I needed to hear from him.
At first I was surprised at our total noncontact, but now I get it. What is there to say? I couldn’t absolve him of his guilt about leaving Claire, so I have ceased to be of use to him. I couldn’t give him what he wanted, so the friendship is over. Why should I expect him to apologize? Josh was right: Lachlan was just using me. It’s an uncomfortable parallel to the dying days of Steven, when I finally let myself accept that he was only staying with me to hedge his bets, to make sure that hisotherrelationship would pan out in a way that meant he no longer needed a backup.
I try to keep things as normal as possible with the other players, laughing and clowning around with them whenever I can. If they notice that there’s something false in it, they don’t say anything. If they notice that I leave the room every time Lachlan enters, they keep it to themselves. Kieran has been a doll about it, always calling me over to his table in the cafeteria, always high-fiving me when we pass each other in the hall. And Sadie knows everything; I confessed the whole sorry business to her over several bottles of Prosecco at her flat. She has stepped up in an extraordinary way, stopping by my office, taking me to the pub on Thursday evenings, maintaining extreme situational awareness so that if Lachlan crosses a perimeter, she can make up an excuse to drag us both out of the area and into safety. Because Sadie and Bashie seem to have actually blossomed into something real, I assume he knows everything as well. After all, his invitations to join them in a threesome have become more frequent, like he wants to make sure I’m included in something. Very considerate, really.
The irony of it all is that since our conversation in December, Charlotte has been warmer than ever. I wonder if it’s just her natural shrewdness or if Matt Fletcher said something to her, told her to stand down because the situation had resolved itself. Fair play to him if that’s the case. Regardless, it’s clear that my visa is no longer in danger of being revoked.
Great, though I’m not sure what’s keeping me here anymore.
Chapter Thirty-Five
In March, there’s a breakin the Premier League schedule so the players can join up with their national squads in their home countries. Like most of the back office staff, I’m taking a few days off. I decide it’s a perfect time to get back to Erica’s List. The list never quite made it out during my move into this flat, self-improvement being shunted down the priority list in favor of my most basic needs: food, shelter, extra-large bottles of Sauvignon Blanc. But I fish it out of its shameful place beneath a pile of crap on my desk and tape it to the wall. And though the childish and petty part of me wants nothing to do with Josh or his wife while I’m still not speaking to him, the part of me that’s tired of waking up with a wine hangover understands that maybe it’s time to start the climb up and out of rock bottom.
I look for the easiest box to check off, and find it quickly:Take a train journey.Escape sounds pretty great right now. The only question is where? Amina tells me she’ll go down to London with me, but as we look at Hamza asleep (for once) in his bassinet, we both know it’s a lie. My mom has been begging me to come home for a few days, and for a second I wonder if riding Boston’s commuter rail out to my parents’ house in the suburbs could technically be enough to count…But no, going home is out of thequestion. The parabola has arced back to its origin: Just as I felt when I first moved to Liverpool, I know that if I go back to Boston right now, in my current state of anguish, there’s an enormous chance I won’t be able to board the plane back, to return to the remnants of the life I’m trying to build here. As much as I could use a hug from my mother right now, if I go home and see my brothers all happy with their families, hear how amazing their lives are, it will cement my defeat that I couldn’t make the same thing happen for myself. I will sink into my depression, crawl into my childhood bedroom, and stay there, awash in my failure.
A bit dramatic, maybe, but these days, I find I can only deal in absolutes.
So I open Google Maps and stare, idly swiping my fingers around and zooming in on different bits of Europe. This continent being what it is, trains can take you pretty far, and there’s something appealing about locking myself in a little metal capsule for a couple of days. I should go somewhere like Spain; a weekend soaking up the sun in Málaga would do wonders for my rapidly depleting levels of vitamin D. But Málaga is a place for happy people, and I’m definitely not ready for poolside Aperol spritzes and tapas on the beach. In fact, it feels like the entirety of southern Europe should be out. I need to go north. Somewhere I can just slink down into my feelings, wallow in the mess, get it all out once and for all, and try to come back grateful for what I do have. Somewhere even colder and grayer than Liverpool…Can they accommodate tourists at the North Pole?
A thought is nagging at the back of my mind, a little flickering flame that’s sucking up more and more oxygen, despite my efforts to stamp it out. It’s a thought I can’t engage with, because even I am not so much of a masochist. Even I would not be so foolish as to do this…
…and yet, I google Oban. The flame grows. After about ten seconds of contemplation, I book train tickets. I find a cute bed-and-breakfast on the waterfront and the credit card comes out again. It’s like I’m in a fugue state, the idea completely filling my brain now, running the controls like I’m inRatatouille. I’m going to Lachlan’s hometown. Without him. Alone.
I slam my laptop shut and push it away like it’s radioactive. What the fuck have I just done? The last thing I need right now is to bemorereminded of Lachlan Ramsay’s existence.
When the day comes and I’m on the train speeding northward, I can’t quell my shaking panic. I have to change train stations in Glasgow and I keep my head on a swivel for the entire ten-minute walk between buildings, as if Lachlan Ramsay would just be having a casual pint at the downtown TGI Fridays. My fight-or-flight reaction is triggered by every Scottish accent I hear—really unfortunate when one is in the biggest city in Scotland—but I make it to the station and onto my train to Oban. As it pulls out of Glasgow and heads up the coast, I allow myself to unclench. The bustling city center quickly fades to suburbs with neat terraced houses across the River Clyde. And sooner than I would have expected, Glasgow is fully behind us and we’re headed into the Highlands.
The evening has slipped into twilight by the time we pull into Oban, and I have a crick in my neck from keeping my face pressed to the window for so many hours. The staggering beauty of the lochs and mountains was enough to distract me from thoughts of Lachlan for long spells—thirty, even forty seconds at a time!—but now that the train has arrived in his hometown, the stupidity of this getaway comes rushing back. It feels like a transgression somehow, though the (admittedly small) rational side of my brain is trying to convince the rest of me that it’s fine. I’m juston vacation in a lovely small town in Scotland. I would have come here even if I didn’t know its most famous former resident.
I check into my quaint waterfront B&B and splash some water on my face before heading out to explore the town. It’s much smaller than I pictured; basically one high street along the harbor, with little side streets disappearing up into the hills behind and the bay dotted with ferries carrying people to the islands on the other side. A vicious wind whips off the water and I double up my scarf to protect my cheeks from the sting. This is a brutal cold even for March; it makes Liverpool seem balmy by comparison. The street is still bustling, though, families popping into shops, couples holding gloved hands, huddled against the cold. I’m surrounded by people and I’ve never felt lonelier.
I wander around the town, letting my feet take me wherever they want. It’s only when I find myself standing in front of Lochdon restaurant that my subconscious allows me to understand the real reason for my trip up here: Moira. Going to see my own mother was too difficult, but I’m still desperately in need of parental guidance, especially from the mother of the fucker who broke my heart. The only question is this: Does she want to see me?
I grit my teeth and push open the door, bracing myself for an unexpected surprise, like maybe the entire Scotland men’s national team has decided to take a detour to Oban for team dinner tonight. But the dining room is intimate enough that I can confirm there aren’t twenty-five exceptionally fit men lurking in any of the corners, and I will some of the tension to leave my shoulders. And I exhale even deeper when I see that Moira has hung the charcoal drawing I gave her on the wall right behind the hostess stand.
Then the woman herself looks up and sees me lingering in her doorway, and her face is all astonishment. “Abby, what on earth are you doing here? Are you all right? Are you hurt?”
