‘That’s really nice,’ Ben nods, yet I feel it’s another example of my decade-long stasis, as if I sit around in a moth-eaten Miss Havisham graduation ballgown, listening to a crackly recording of Pulp’s “Disco 2000”. ‘I’ll let you know about that story, too. What’s your number?’
Ben keys it in while I try to remember the numbers in the right sequence, awash with adrenaline.
He checks his watch again: ‘Crap, I’m late. What about you? Need walking to your stop?’
‘It’s only round the corner, I’ll be fine, go.’
‘Sure?’
‘Yes, thanks.’
‘See you soon, Rachel. I’ll call you.’
He ducks down and pecks me on the cheek. I hold my breath in the shock of the contact and the brush and warmth of his skin against mine. Then there’s a horrifically awkward moment when he unexpectedly goes for the other cheek too in that media London/sophisticated European way. I don’t expect it and we nearly bump faces, so I have to put my hand on his shoulder to steady myself and then panic it looks too forward, over-correcting by leaping backwards.
‘See you!’ I say, though what I really want to do is re-run the action without me being such a gauche fool, in the manner of a bossy child directing a play in their front room. ‘Right, you stand there, I am here again … Go!’
I walk to my stop in a semi-trance-like state, cartoon stars circling round my head, the two recently kissed places on my face burning. There’s the illicit rush at seeing him – and he asked to see me again! – combined with the spirit-flattening confirmation that his life’s shiny and joyful and functional and mine isn’t.
An hour after I get home, when the fixed grin has faded and I’m watching the old telly in the spare room, I let tears fall. Once the dam has cracked, there’s a deluge. Married. Happily. Olivia. What’s even in a posh shepherd’s pie?
I feel as if I’ve woken up after a coma, been jolted back to life by a favourite song. I’m not sure I like the view from my bed. The experience of meeting Ben again is the very definition of the word bittersweet.
Then two very clear questions form in the tears, snot and inner maelstrom: how am I going to feel if he doesn’t call? And what good’s going to come of it if he does?
11
I don’t ask Rhys to borrow the car so I can move my things because I know he’ll want to use the car to be nowhere near the house on the day I leave.
The evening before last, I was coming out of the shower with a towel wrapped around my body and another around my head. I was moving quickly because any extra amount of skin on show feels inappropriate, post-separation. Rhys charged up the stairs. I thought he was going to dodge past, or argue about the cavalier use of the hot water, but he stopped in front of me, looked me in the eye. His eyes were unexpectedly moist.
‘Stay,’ he said, thickly.
I thought I’d misheard. It sunk in.
‘I can’t,’ I blurt.
He nodded, not even angry, or resentful. He galloped back down the stairs and left me standing on the landing, shivering. Turns out the consequences of a huge decision don’t all tumble down at once like opening an over-full cupboard; they keep hitting you in waves.
When I tell Caroline I’m going to hire a removal van, she asks what I’m taking with me and decides it can be done in a few runs in her car. She turns up early on a Saturday to find me, lightly sweaty, standing in a hallway crammed with everything I own that’s portable. It feels strangely like leaving for university, only with bleak despair where all the bright hope used to be.
Rhys went for Mindy’s plan about the furniture. I saw the thought scroll across his face – ‘Screw making life easier for her’ – then imagining those flat-bed-truck-style trolleys in IKEA, and he grunted his agreement. So it’s clothes, books, DVDs, a surprisingly huge haul of bathroom toiletries, and then ‘odds and sods’, a category which sounds like it should be the smallest but turns out to be the largest. Photo albums, plants, accessories, pictures … I’ve been scrupulously fair whenever encountering something the house only has one of – hot water bottle, mop bucket, cafetiere, engagement ring – and left it for Rhys.
Caroline casts an appraising eye over the junk and decides it’s two journeys, three at a pinch. We start heaping it into the back of her Audi saloon and, with the back seats folded down and some determined pushing, we make decent in-roads.
‘Definitely two journeys,’ Caroline concludes, as I lock the front door, saying what I’m thinking, minus the part about how much I’m dreading coming back for the next and last time.
We set off, me blithely chattering about the flat to distract from the inner turmoil, Caroline casting worried glances at me whenever she can take her line of sight off the road.
‘We don’t have to go, you know. If you’ve changed your mind …’ she starts, and I bite my lip hard and furiously shake my head to indicate please, not now.
Caroline pats my knee and asks about the route. When we arrive at the flat, I’m grateful for all the tasks – paying the car-parking meter, unlocking the flat, running relays with armfuls of clutter – to occupy me. Eventually it’s all piled up and time to collect the rest. I deep breathe and blow the air out as if I’m an athlete limbering up for a feat of exertion.
Back at my house, or what used to be my house, the rest of the packing is completed in minutes.
I can’t go yet. I can’t. I sit down on the front door step and try to gather myself, instead I feel myself unravelling. A bit of a sniffle turns into whole-body sobbing and I feel Caroline’s hand on my shaking shoulder.
When I pull my messy face back up from my knees I say, through all the liquid that’s leaving my body via my eyes, mouth and nose, ‘I don’t have anything to sleep in.’
‘What do you mean?’ Caroline asks, crouching down in front of me. ‘Rupa’s got a bed, hasn’t she?’
‘No,’ I gesture downwards. ‘To sleep in. I always wore one of Rhys’s t-shirts. A Velvet Underground one. I’ve left it behind.’ I wipe my eyes. ‘Is it mine? Or is it his? I don’t even know.’
I recommence sobbing while Caroline rubs my back.
‘You’ve been together such a long time and this has all happened so quickly. You’ve got to expect it to hurt, Rach.’
There’s something about Caroline’s kindly no-nonsense that really sorts you out when you’re in a spiral. She’s sympathetic without being indulgent. The difference between seeing the school nurse instead of your mum when you’ve grazed your knee.
‘I’m going to miss him,’ I say.
‘I know you are.’ She rubs harder, as if I might be able to cough the hurt up and get it out that way.
‘I can’t tell him that.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’m leaving him!’ I bawl, and break down again.
She moves in beside me on the step, I shift across, both of us ignoring the kids kicking a ball across the street who are looking at us curiously.
‘Look,’ she lowers her voice slightly, ‘I don’t want to sound too much like a therapist but I think you’re bound to feel guilty, and you’re going to feel sad. You have to simply feel it. Don’t hate yourself. It is what it is. God, that sounds so trite …’
‘No it doesn’t. It actually makes sense.’
‘Really? Well, good.’
We sit in silence for half a minute.