“What do you mean, you don’t care?” he asks, clearly confused at having control of this scenario wrenched from him. “Let me explain, at least!”
I turn towards him, and smile. It is a twisted thing, devoid of any pleasure, but it is all I have to offer him. That and the truth – the truth that we have both been hiding from for way too long, the truth that will either kill us or set us free. The truth that I can’t avoid even a single day longer. No amount of self-care or yoga or meditation classes are ever going to fix this, to fix me – because I don’t want them to. None of this is right, none of this is working – and now I don’t even have to pretend it is.
“No, Mark, letmeexplain,” I say, with more calm than I’ve felt for years. “You don’t love me any more. And no, don’t argue – it’s fine. I don’t love you either. Kim isn’t causing this – the state of us caused Kim. We’ve not so much drifted apart as moved to opposite hemispheres. When’s the last time we actually genuinely felt right together? It’s a serious question – when?”
He gazes at the window, frowning, as I wait for his answer.
“When we were in Barbados,” he says finally, not even meeting my eyes.
I nod. It’s exactly what I would have said as well. January 2020 – before lockdown, before working from home, before I volunteered at an A&E ward. Before everything changed – before we lost so much, both of us.
The thought of that loss, the thought of how far it has driven us apart, fills me with a new sadness. I reach out, take his hand in mine. He grips my fingers in a way that feels so familiar, that once would have felt comforting – but you can’t find comfort in the person who is hurting you. We can’t go back; we can only go forward.
“It’s over, Mark. It’s been over for a long time. I can’t carry on pretending to be all hashtag blessed when all I feel, I don’t know about you, is hashtag knackered.”
He smiles. I am gently poking fun at his Instagram account, which presents a picture-perfect view of our lives – of the lives we seem to have from the outside looking in.
“I’m now feeling very hashtag sad,” he replies, turning to look at me. I see tears in his eyes, and mine respond in kind. There is a lot of history between us, between me and this man. A lot of love in days gone by, a lot of laughter – but none of that exists any more. It’s time we faced up to that.
“Are you sure?” he asks. “Isn’t there some way we could…try again? Go to Barbados maybe?”
That, in all honesty, is Mark all over – thinking that if he wants something enough, that if he throws enough money at a problem, he will be able to solve the unsolvable.
“Take Kim to Barbados,” I answer. “Though she’ll have to take her ID to get served in the bars.”
He grimaces slightly, and I know I have hit home with that one. Kim is in fact in her early 20s, but he is 40. He won’t appreciate being reminded that he has become a walking cliché.
“What are you going to do?” he says. “Do you want to…I don’t know, sell the house or something?”
The tone of his voice makes me laugh out loud – he loves this house, possibly more than he has ever loved anything. He came from a working-class background, and this place is more than a building to him – it’s a symbol of everything he has worked for, everything he has achieved. I have the sneaking suspicion that losing the house would be harder for him than losing me, which just about sums up exactly why I’m the emotional equivalent of the walking dead, and he’s shagging his secretary.
I manage to open the wardrobe door, look in at the racks of dresses and skirts and jackets. I don’t feel like any of it belongs to me. I don’t feel like I have ever been the woman who these clothes have fitted.
“No. I don’t want that, Mark,” I reply, grabbing a few items from their hangers. “We can sort that stuff out later. It’s not important, really. As for what I’m going to do, well…”
I glance around at the trendy silver-grey walls, the walk-in wardrobes, the en-suite with its heated towel rail and rainforest shower. I see it all, in its shiny perfection, and wonder if I could turn my back on all of this – ask myself if I need it, or want it. Will I miss any of it, including the handsome man standing next to me, if I leave? I don’t know, but I think I have to try. I cannot stay here, with him, in this house I have never loved, haunted by the memory of what has happened here.
“I think,” I say slowly, leaning forward to give him a quick kiss on the cheek, “that I’m going to find my happy place. And I’m taking your car.”
PartTwo
Happy Accident
ChapterThree
One month later
I get out of the car and kick its tyres. Every single one of them. It doesn’t make the engine start, but it does make me feel a bit better.
I gaze up at the sky – a merciless blue – and squint against the sun that seems to have decided that England is the new Mediterranean. It’s been like this ever since I left London, and at first I took it as a good omen – a sign that things were looking up.
I’d taken myself off the books at the agency, packed the bare minimum, and left the very same day that I found another woman in bed with my boyfriend. I had no plan, no aim, no destination in mind – which turned out to be something of a mistake, as I ended up spending the first night in a Travelodge near Watford wondering why I’d forgotten my toothbrush but remembered a photo album from almost 20 years ago.
As I’d flicked through the pages, though, it had given me the seeds of an idea – I decided that I would go and visit my old friends. That I would reconnect, rediscover the spark of fun and camaraderie that we shared at university, and during that mad trip to Europe. We’d been so close, shared so much – surely it wasn’t too late for us? I would tell them about my life, about the events that had cast their shadow over it. About Mark, and London, and my job. I would tell them everything, and they would understand, and they would help – and in return I would finally get to meet their children, see their homes, be present in their worlds again.
It was definitely the seed of an idea – but it hadn’t blossomed into much at all. Two of them, Katie and Priya, were away on holiday themselves, it turned out. Which, you know, makes sense during the summer. The third, Lucy, had moved to Ireland without telling me, which I only found out as I stood on the doorstep of her old house on the outskirts of Manchester, feeling like a fool as the new residents explained, and invited me in for a cup of tea. I must have looked as crestfallen as I felt.
So now, a month later, I am here – somewhere in Dorset on the south-west coast of the country. I have no idea why, because I still don’t have a plan. I have spent the last few weeks travelling aimlessly from place to place, going where the wind blows me. Some of it has been stressful, and boring, and pointless – unless you count eating in every service station in the land as a win. But some of it has been amazing – a night spent in a yurt overlooking Lake Windermere; walking the Long Mynd in Shropshire; a crazy day out doing Beatles tours in Liverpool that ended up with a karaoke session with complete strangers. ‘You’re So Vain’, in case you’re wondering.
