‘Yes,’ I say, wiping away tears I hadn’t even noticed shedding. ‘But for now, let’s just sit, and talk about nothing, and watch the world go by.’
‘You were always better at that than me,’ he answers. ‘I was always on the move, always keen to be on to the next thing. All those simple pleasures I missed out on, because I was too busy rushing, too busy assessing what was useful for me and what I could skip over. Maybe, Elena, when this is all done … maybe we can go away somewhere. You and me. We can sit in the sunshine, and talk about nothing, and watch the world go by. Together.’
I am surprised by this offer, and strangely touched. Perhaps I have always been too cynical. Perhaps we are entering a new stage. Perhaps we are evolving.
‘I think I’d like that, Harry,’ I say.
Chapter 23
The next afternoon, I make my second attempt at being interviewed, and I manage to do it all without having a meltdown – which is amazing considering the fact that I am still reeling from Harry’s revelations the day before.
I am glad that he told me, but it will take time to accept. To think about it enough that its sharp edges are worn down, the pain of the deceit eroded.
In some ways it is even helpful, having the filming to do – a distraction. Em helps me through the interview, and we manage to cover my time with Alex beneath ground, and my time with Harry in the hospital above ground. It is not easy, but we do it.
Then, we focus on me and my life now – on my work, on why I never went back to teaching, on the paranoias and anxieties I have been left with. Of my discomfort in enclosed spaces, the way I sometimes barely manage to cross a road because I’m constantly checking for traffic. The stash of bottled water and enormous first-aid kit I keep in the boot of my car.
I do not blame Harry for any of this, because it is not his fault – I chose to stay with him when he needed me to, which I cannot regret. But I also chose to keep my life small and protected in the years that followed – years when I could have spread my wings. That wasn’t Harry’s fault; it was my choice, and possibly entirely based on a reaction to trauma that I should have talked to someone about long before now.
I am relieved to have finished the filming, even though Em warns me we might need more – I feel like now I have done it once, and done it properly, I can do it again.
Ollie and Olivia have gone out to get celebratory pizza, and Em and I are alone, embarking on stage two of the day’s tasks. She has a vast collection of video clips and photos that people have sent to her – of the night itself, of their holidays before the earthquake, of their lives since. She wants to show them to me, and to gather ours for her files.
I have assembled ones I think she might be interested in, my hands shaking slightly as I opened the wedding album before she and Ollie arrived.
It was quite the show, our wedding. Harry’s dad got his golf course to do the reception at a discount, and my outfit and Harry’s were donated by a hire company. We had a band that played for free in return for a mention in the publicity, and the photographer didn’t charge us on the basis that he could sell some of the pictures to the media.
The only way we could have made it a more commercial enterprise would have been if we’d had Harry’s wheelchair sponsored by Adidas. Years on, I still don’t like looking at those pictures. There is a grand canyon of contrasts between the way we look – young, joyous, optimistic – and the way we were feeling inside. At least the way I was feeling inside – which was pretty much dead.
Things have improved vastly since then. I’m not necessarily always joyous, but I am often at least content. It is perhaps less than I expected from life when I was twenty-one, but more than I expected from life on my wedding day.
Right now, though, I am feeling tender. My conversation in the Cooper’s Arms with Harry was needed, and in some ways liberating, but also difficult. As we lay in bed together last night, him sleeping like a baby and me staring at the ceiling, I couldn’t help thinking about my engagement ring, and the lies he told.
I understood why he did it, and it is not unforgivable – but it has unnerved me, given me the strange sensation that even the start of our marriage was based on a falsehood.
I am also going to have to figure out whether to tell Em or not – there is no real need to expose the lie, but I feel uncomfortable hiding it from her. Uncomfortable with so much at the moment.
Em has shown me some video clips – shaky footage of the village taken from the back of the coach as we arrived, carefree and happy, those little boys running alongside us. There is higher quality video, too, from when the coach was no more, and the village was broken, and none of us was carefree.
Now we are examining the photos that people have given her to use, including the ones from her mum’s camera, which amazingly survived intact.
‘It took me ages to look at these,’ she says as she spreads the pictures out across the kitchen table. ‘I just couldn’t face it. Dad is in practically all of them, frozen in time, lying in the pool on a flamingo-shaped lilo with a cocktail in his hand, grinning like an idiot.’
‘Not a bad way to be remembered,’ I reply gently. I knew the loss of my own father, and have some understanding of the hole it left.
‘No, not at all – he was a bit of an idiot. In a good way.’
She sorts the photos out into groups according to who took them, and I spend several minutes just staring. Figuring out the angles, remembering the people and where they were sitting, trying to piece together who might have taken what. Bizarrely, spotting myself and Harry in the background of one, me wearing that stupid pink sombrero. I remember the woman running that stall, the baby in the pram.
‘It’s so strange, isn’t it?’ I say, reaching out to touch a picture of the fountain at the centre of the plaza. ‘Seeing these? It all looks so normal. People eating and drinking and chatting. The plaza, the church. And minutes later, everything had changed.’
‘I know,’ she replies, her voice small and sad. ‘Like it was all on pause for just these few photos … all of us the way we were. When Harry could still walk, and I still had a dad. When everyone still thought they’d be getting back on the coach and driving away that night.’
When I still had a baby growing inside me, I think, my eyes seeking out the sombrero again. Without even knowing it, I was standing there in that stupid hat, about to lose what might have been my only chance at being a mother.
I have imagined it, over the years, what it would be like if I’d had that baby – a boy or girl who would be around eight now. How different my life would be: a whirl of school runs and laundry and the casual careworn euphoria I used to see on parents’ faces at the school where I worked. The look that said it was such hard work, but so worth it.
Both Em and I are quiet for a few moments, dealing with our personal losses, and I feel a sense of deep comfort being with her. Sitting here in silence, but not alone, knowing she understands what it was like. We have both survived, even though there have probably been moments for both of us where we wonder why.
