‘It felt as though I had brought all of this on myself,’ he said after a while. ‘I felt as though I hadn’t worked hard enough, I hadn’t concentrated on my job because I was too stubborn and proud to do the only thing I wanted and come back for you.’
He felt exhausted then from telling her everything and rested his head on the back of the bench. She tucked her feet up underneath her, something she’d done since she was a child, and turned to face him. She was still holding his hand.
‘None of this is your fault, Rupert. It sounds like you had a breakdown brought on by the pressure of your work and probably still the aftermath of Dad’s death.’
‘That’s what the doctor at Harvard said, that it was a breakdown. But that sounded so melodramatic compared to what I was feeling.’
‘Not every breakdown is obvious,’ Jess replied. ‘Stress and grief can do strange things to people.’ There was something in her voice that made him think she was talking from experience.
‘I always thought I was good at dealing with pressure.’
It felt so comforting to have her there with him, his hand in hers. It felt as though he could tell her anything. He hadn’t realised how scared he’d been about telling her what happened at Harvard until he’d told her. He suspected that was why she was reluctant to share whatever it was she hadn’t told him.
‘You were never any good at dealing with pressure,’ she said. He didn’t reply. He didn’t know what to say. He’d felt, over the last couple of years, that he’d forgotten who he was and had no idea who he wanted to be.
‘How are you now?’ Jess asked quietly.
‘Better, much better,’ he replied, turning his head to look at her. ‘Most days I feel like my old self. There’s a lot less pressure at York. I get to write at my own pace most of the time, plan my own courses. I get a lot of freedom. And when I’m with you I’m even starting to feel happy again.’
She’d smiled. He loved that smile.
‘It doesn’t mean it’s gone away though,’ he went on. ‘Just because I feel better now doesn’t mean I won’t feel bad again. Whatever it was that happened, a breakdown, depression … well, it could come back if I get stressed or …’
‘It’s OK,’ she interrupted. ‘I understand, and I get it.’
He felt a wave of relief wash over him, and a deeper curiosity to know what it was that made her understand.
‘Are you still on medication?’ she asked.
‘No, but I do still see a therapist twice a month. Even though I hate going and I hate talking about myself, I know it helps long term.’
‘Did you go back to Cambridge? When you first came back to England.’
‘For a little while, but I couldn’t get a job there. Cambridge didn’t want me after what had happened in Harvard, so I took the position in York.’
‘It sounds as though you like it there.’
‘I do actually. It’s a really good job and the students are funny and engaging. Grim weather aside, I’m really starting to like it up there. But my mum thinks it’s “beneath me”.’ He made air quotes with the fingers of his free hand.
‘Mum mentioned that you don’t see your parents very often. Is that why?’ Jess asked.
‘Mum and I had an enormous row about it. She didn’t think that I tried hard enough to get a position back at Cambridge. She thought …’ He stopped suddenly and looked away.
‘What? What did she think?’
‘She thought it was because of you.’
‘Me?’ There was surprise in her voice. ‘How did she think it was because of me? We hadn’t spoken for years.’
‘She was right though,’ he said. ‘It was because of you. Partly at least. I’m not really prepared to beg for any job, but I couldn’t bear being back in Cambridge without you. When I was there, you were all I could think about.’ His mouth felt dry, and he sensed something shift between them, a change of energy or a softening of pace. It was as though they understood each other better now, even though he wasn’t sure why.
‘Up in York I could put some distance between myself and my memories of us. It didn’t stop me thinking about you all the time, but it didn’t feel as raw. Nothing ever felt right after we split up; nothing ever clicked into place for me again. By the time I moved to York I didn’t even see the point in dating.’
‘Much to the disappointment of the women of York.’
He smiled, looking down at their hands twisted together.
‘I want to try to make this work, Jessie,’ he said. ‘I know everything has changed and I know we’re not the same people we were ten years ago but I don’t want to walk away from you and spend the rest of my life wondering …’
‘What if?’ Jess interrupted. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I feel the same.’
‘You do?’
‘I know what I said last weekend about not being able to go back and I stand by that. But what if we tried to go forward? Would that work?’
‘I guess we won’t know until we try,’ he said.
She was quiet then and for a moment he thought she was going to tell him whatever it was she’d been hiding. But instead she slipped her hand out of his and stood up.
‘Would you like a drink of something?’ she asked.
He sighed. He had to believe this was a stalling tactic, that she was scared. He couldn’t let himself believe she wasn’t going to tell him.
‘A beer would be nice if you’ve got one?’ he said.
… The summer before our finals you asked me to marry you. You got down on one knee in Trinity Quad, through which Byron had allegedly ridden his horse before being sent down, where Isaac Newton discovered gravity. Your friends hid in the cloisters and cheered you on. Afterwards I phoned Dan and Gemma to tell them. Gemma was over the moon but there was something in Dan’s voice even then that felt like a warning. It was as though he already knew we’d never go through with it.
I didn’t tell you about that – I’d already noticed the distance that was growing between you and Dan and I didn’t want to make it worse. Later on, it occurred to me that the foreboding in Dan’s voice was more to do with my father than you. He was always softly warning me that finding a heart donor wasn’t as easy as I seemed to think it was.
Our parents thought we were too young. I saw the way they all looked at each other when we told them. You were holding my hand so tightly that it reminded me of the day by the river when you first told me you loved me and of the day we buried my grandmother.
Your parents assumed I was pregnant; mine thought we were rushing into things. Even when we assured them that there was no baby on the horizon and that we were still both intending to do the post-graduate courses we’d planned, their smiles remained forced. I wanted them to be happy for us, as happy as we were. We told them that we’d get married the next summer, after we graduated, and it was then that I realised you and I were destined. We could no more walk away from this than Oedipus could have run away from killing his father and marrying his mother. That’s the thing about Classics, the thing that you could never really understand. Study it for long enough and you end up thinking like the ancients – or those boring dead people, as you preferred to call them.
Except we did walk away from our fate. Perhaps it was never destined at all. That afternoon when we told our parents that we were getting married, I imagined that somewhere the gods were playing a huge game of chess and we were in the centre of it, together always.
I had no idea what the gods really had in mind.
By the Easter holidays before we graduated we were making plans. I was still sure then that my father would get the new heart he needed, that he would be well enough to walk me down the aisle later in the year, that you would do your PhD in Cambridge, that everything would be all right. But the new heart never came, and nothing was ever all right again.
I was already broken by the loss of my father when I overheard you talking to your sister one summer afternoon.
‘Don’t give up Harvard for he
r,’ she said. ‘It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.’
‘Don’t you start, Mel – she needs me. Caro needs me.’
‘Come on, Rupert, this is just a teenage crush that has gone on for too long. We’re talking about the rest of your life here – it’s not as though it’s your father who died.’
I stood breathless, pressing myself against the wall of the hallway. We’d been in the garden and you’d come inside to get drinks and I was wondering what was taking so long. You didn’t know I could hear.
‘She can come to America with me,’ you said. I had no idea you were even contemplating going to Harvard. Why hadn’t you talked to me about it? It hadn’t occurred to me then that you weren’t thinking straight either, that you were knocked sideways by my father’s death too.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, little brother, you know that will never happen.’
You hadn’t replied to that and I went back into the garden. It was a long time before you joined me and when I asked you where you’d been you were vague and didn’t mention your sister or Harvard. But I noticed the furrow in your brow and I noticed how you changed that afternoon, as though you were considering a future without me.
It was over a week later when you finally told me about Harvard, when you asked me to go with you.
But by then I had already found out about Camilla. I had bumped into one of the girls from school in town. After the obligatory sympathy, the head nod and the ‘oh you poor thing’ that seemed to follow me everywhere I went since my father had died, she told me that you weren’t the only person who had a PhD place at Harvard that year.
Camilla was going too …
22
JESS
I walked into the kitchen and took a bottle of beer out of the fridge. I almost took one for myself as well, but I needed a clear head for what I was about to do. I should have just told him. He had opened up to me and I should have done the same to him. Yet here I was, hiding in the kitchen, avoiding the difficult conversations again.
I stood by the window watching him stretched out on the garden bench. I wanted to tell him, I wanted to share what had happened with him and I wanted it to help him feel less alone, to help him understand that the last ten years had been completely unpredictable for me as well. Even though my books had done well and I had found something I was quite good at, I still felt what happened after I had glandular fever had stolen such a big part of my life and left me a shadow of who I used to be. I didn’t know how to tell him because I didn’t know how he’d react. I’d had such mixed reactions to what had happened over the years that these days I preferred not to talk about it.
As I watched him, I saw Mum go out into the garden and walk towards him. She sat down on the bench next to him and took his hand and I knew, instinctively, that she was taking the burden of it away from me. Rupert needed to know what had happened and she was going to tell him. She knew that neither of us could move forward until we’d had this conversation.
I turned away from the window and waited. I don’t know how long I’d been standing there when he walked into the room. Neither of us spoke.
He sat down at the kitchen table and leant his head in his hands, pushing his hair up and out of his face. It was too long again, sitting on his collar. The haircut he’d had for Gemma’s wedding had already grown out. I thought for a moment of Gemma, on a beach in the Maldives, and how much I would have to tell her when she got back. I wondered who was going to speak first.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he said, breaking the silence and answering my internal question. ‘You have ME, Jessie. That’s really serious. Why couldn’t you tell me yourself?’
He looked up at me and I saw the worry in his eyes. That was exactly what I didn’t want to see, but at least he seemed to believe me.
‘Is that what you and Mum were talking about?’ I asked.
‘Yes, but I already knew there was something. I’ve met a lot of people with glandular fever over the years – I teach teenagers for goodness’ sake. I know it knocks them out for a bit but not like this. I can see you’re struggling. You might be able to hide it from most people but not from me.’
My mouth felt dry as I looked at him.
‘Talk to me, Jessie,’ he said. ‘Tell me the truth.’
I pushed myself away from the kitchen sink and went to sit at the table with him. He took my hand, just as I had taken his in the garden earlier.
‘I got glandular fever five years ago,’ I began. I took a breath. I had to do this quickly, like ripping off a Band-Aid. ‘I never really got better. Nobody knew why and nobody seems to know if I’ll ever get better.’ I paused, trying to straighten out the words I wanted to say. ‘ME, myalgic encephalomyelitis, chronic fatigue syndrome. Sometimes I feel as though they are just words that mean “we don’t know what’s wrong with you”.’
He looked at me, gently stroking the side of my face with his free hand as though I might break at any moment. I didn’t want him to treat me like a fragile invalid, but I didn’t know how to tell him that.
‘And that’s why you moved in here with Caro?’ he asked.
I nodded. I could feel the tears burning the backs of my eyes and looked away from him, but he drew me towards him until my head rested on his shoulder and I let myself cry.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asked as he stroked my hair. ‘Did you think this would change the way I felt?’
I moved away from him so I could look at him. ‘Yes, I did,’ I said. ‘I thought it would be too much for you after all these years. You have your own life now.’
He touched my face with his thumb, wiping away the tears. ‘Jessie, this doesn’t change anything. I haven’t found you again just to walk away at the first sign of difficulty. I’m not that immature kid anymore and I know life isn’t meant to be perfect.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘I learned that the hard way too.’
‘Sometimes people don’t understand what’s wrong with me,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure I do all the time either, but some people don’t believe ME exists. I don’t look ill, I’m not in a wheelchair, so they can’t see that I have limitations.’
‘What does it feel like?’ he asked.
‘I have good days and bad days,’ I explained. ‘And I’m much better than I was, and the bad days aren’t as frequent as they used to be, but when they come I’m so tired I can’t do anything. It feels as though I’m walking through mud, and I ache all over. I get headaches, upset stomachs – the best way of explaining it is that feeling you get just before you get flu. Some days I don’t have the energy to dry my hair and Mum has to do it for me. That’s why I can’t move out. I need her help.’
‘There’s other people who would help you, Jessie.’
‘I can’t expect that of other people,’ I replied. ‘It’s too much.’
‘If someone loved you,’ he said quietly, ‘then you wouldn’t have to expect it of them – they’d just do it.’
I didn’t know what he was trying to say so I looked away. It felt too much suddenly, too intense.
‘Look at me, Jessie,’ he said. I turned my head to meet his eyes. ‘This doesn’t change anything. I want to have you back in my life, if you’ll let me. Seeing you again is the best thing that has happened to me in a long time. I was a fool to let you go and it’ll take more than this to get rid of me.’
He smiled and I felt a weight lift from my shoulders. He understood. I don’t know why I ever thought he wouldn’t.
I don’t know how long we sat there at my mother’s kitchen table, but once I started talking about my illness I couldn’t stop.
I told him about when it started, the sore throat I’d had for weeks that didn’t seem to shift, how everyone at work was down with a virus at the time so I didn’t think anything of it. I was still working at The Ham & High then, and we were short-staffed in the lead-up to Christmas. I’d had to write a restaurant review and a report on the local amateur football league as well as my usual review of the Highgate Amateur Dramati
cs Association Christmas panto. It had been particularly awful that year, a highly suspicious version of Beauty and the Beast in which everyone forgot their lines constantly. The costumes were good though, made by my mother as usual, and I made sure to mention them in the review.
All in I’d had a lot of late nights and early mornings and I didn’t think anything of the sore throat, not even when I started to run a fever on Christmas Eve. I just went to bed early assuming that I’d be better the next day.
I wasn’t. I still couldn’t remember anything about the Christmas of 2011 at all. I had a vague recollection of Mum arriving at the flat and her and Dan making a fuss. I remembered the pain in my throat getting worse and worse and that by Boxing Day it had spread into my ears and jaw and it felt as though my head would explode. I couldn’t eat and Dan sat by the bed hour after hour trying to get me to drink something. I couldn’t even make it to the toilet without his help.
At some point between Christmas and New Year Dan called the doctor out. I don’t know how he managed it, as it was almost impossible to get even a routine appointment at our doctor’s surgery. The doctor suspected glandular fever – they would have to do blood tests to be sure but there wasn’t much that could be done even if it was.
I told Rupert about the blood tests I’d had over the years, the tests for lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and leukaemia. I talked about how every test came back ‘normal’, even though I felt as though I’d never be normal again. I told him about the doctor who insisted I was depressed and tried to put me on anti-depressants even though I knew that I didn’t feel depressed. I just felt frustrated because nobody would tell me what was wrong.
Rupert listened quietly, not interrupting, not asking questions, not giving unsolicited advice as so many people had done in the past. I didn’t mention Dan by name but he knew who I was talking about.
The Pieces of You and Me Page 11