by Tom Ellen
‘I know,’ I say.
‘I hope you do. You bloody should.’
I was never totally honest with Mum about why Daff and I were taking this break. I just told her it was because Daff was going to New York; I didn’t mention anything about my marriage freak-out; it was way too closely intertwined with her and Dad.
For a second, I consider telling her about it now. But then I hear a muffled voice behind her. ‘I’ll be right in,’ she calls to somebody. And then: ‘I’d better go, love. We’re about to do presents.’
I feel a spasm of panic rip through me. If I let her go now, I don’t know if I’ll ever get to speak to her again. But then what can I do? I can’t exactly spend the rest of this evening standing out here chatting to her.
I stare dumbly at the pavement, feeling my throat constrict so tightly that I can’t get any words through it. Luckily, Mum speaks for me. ‘It feels rather odd, not being with you today,’ she says. ‘Not having lunch together, not giving each other our presents in the morning.’
‘I know …’ I swallow the lump in my throat, and then remember the conversation I overheard through the kitchen door. ‘Hey, do you remember that Christmas when I was a kid, and I nicked your Sellotape and stapler and then gave them back to you as a present?’
The line is flooded with her laughter. ‘God, I’d forgotten all about that! What a little cheapskate.’ She breaks off and sniffs. I wonder if she might be crying, too. ‘You know,’ she says quietly, ‘that was actually one of my favourite gifts you’ve ever got me.’
‘I love you, Mum,’ is about all I can manage.
‘Love you too, darling,’ she says. ‘I’ll speak to you soon. Merry Christmas.’
‘Merry Christmas.’
I take a deep breath as I blink wetly into the night air. All I can think is: God, I hope I get to see her again. Just one more time.
My phone tells me it’s now 10.47 p.m. There’s just over an hour before all this ends and I find myself somewhere else completely.
Through the window of the bar, I can see Alice flagging our waiter down, signalling for the bill.
Once we’ve paid, we stumble back out, and Alice slips her arm through mine again as we wander tipsily through the near-deserted streets of the 14th arrondissement.
Occasionally we pass someone – usually another tipsy, looped-armed couple – and exchange a friendly Joyeux Noël.
We walk in silence for the most part. Alice is now seemingly all talked out, and I can’t conjure any words either. My brain is just white noise, like a scrambled TV. It feels like I’m on a conveyor belt; aware of where I’m heading, but not sure what will happen when I get there.
I glance down at my watch, its hands still stuck at 11.59. I’m about to check the real time on my phone when Alice stops outside a big blue doorway.
‘Here we are, then.’ She punches in the entrance code and looks me straight in the eye. ‘So … do you want to come up?’
I stand there dumbly, just as I did six years ago, feeling excitement and terror do battle in my stomach.
And then I tell her: ‘Yes.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
On the face of it, Alice’s place is not much different to mine: a low-ceilinged two-bedroom flat halfway up a creaky seven-storey apartment block. Even the floorboards squeak in the same way – though I can’t hear any explosive marital disputes coming from above.
Alice chucks her coat onto the baggy brown sofa and asks if I’m OK with more red wine. I tell her that I am. And as she goes into the kitchen to find a bottle, I take the opportunity to have a proper look around.
She must have been in this place for two years now, but it looks like she’s only just moved in. The walls are bare – no photos or posters – and there are no books or magazines or DVDs in sight. The whole place has a slightly furniture showroom feel to it: everything spotlessly clean but not very … homely.
The only concession to the time of year is a small, undecorated Christmas tree about the size of a toaster, which sits glumly on the windowsill.
I slump down onto the sofa and try to remember what I was feeling at this exact moment last time. Nervous. Excited. Those were definitely the two overriding emotions, with horny probably bagging third place on the podium. Despite that, though, I don’t think I felt particularly guilty at this point.
Daff and I were supposed to be on a break: that was what I kept telling myself. And even though we hadn’t set any rules, or mentioned the idea of seeing other people, she was the one who had initiated the whole thing. Plus, I couldn’t escape the idea that this entire evening felt like fate. I mean: what were the chances of randomly bumping into the girl I’d once had a major thing for? It seemed like it was meant to be.
Or maybe I felt no guilt because at this point I still didn’t think anything would actually happen. From the minute we stepped through the door of the flat, I kept expecting Alice to yawn and sigh and tell me it had been a fun day but she was knackered and maybe I had better go. I think part of me would have been relieved if she had. But she never did.
Instead, she came back from the kitchen, sat down on the sofa, and kissed me. I kissed her back, and then we went through to the bedroom, leaving our wine undrunk behind us.
I don’t know what I was thinking, really. As soon as we kissed, it was like I stopped thinking altogether. My brain took a back seat and – with pathetic predictability – other parts of my body stepped in to take control.
So it wasn’t until afterwards that the guilt came.
It flooded my veins the next morning as I lay frozen in Alice’s bed listening to her snore softly beside me. The sunlight was peeking in through the curtains, and the gravity of what I had done was fifty times more crushing than my hangover. At that moment – miserable, sweating, in the vice-like grip of regret – I don’t think I’ve ever missed Daphne more.
I missed everything about her: the feel of her, her touch, her smell. The way we lay together afterwards, our bodies curled like speech marks. The way we seemed to fit so perfectly.
I feel hot suddenly, and as I shrug off my jacket, the snow globe spills out of the pocket. I stuff it back in, and take a deep breath to try and settle my roiling stomach. I pull out my phone to check the time, but the battery’s dead.
Alice walks back in from the kitchen holding two very large glasses of red wine. She passes me one, and settles down on the sofa next to me.
‘So,’ she raises her glass, ‘Joyeux Noël. Santé.’
‘Santé.’
We clink glasses and drink.
‘Thanks for today,’ I say. ‘It was great. The best day I’ve had since I’ve been here.’
‘No worries. I had fun too.’
I take another sip. The wine scorches my throat as it goes down. ‘Do you know what time it is?’ I ask.
Alice frowns. ‘My phone’s in the kitchen. Why – were you thinking of heading back?’
‘No, I just—’
‘Good. I was kind of hoping this wouldn’t be the end of the night.’
There’s a little pause during which we both look at each other, not saying anything, and my heartbeat starts behaving very irregularly indeed. Because, God, she looks incredible.
She leans forward and puts her glass down on the coffee table. When she leans back again, she’s very slightly closer to me. She lays her hand on my thigh and, almost automatically, I lay mine on hers. I close my eyes, and feel the touch of her lips on mine. And despite certain parts of my body screaming YES!, my head is suddenly full of Daphne. I instinctively pull away.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say quietly.
Alice looks at me blankly. She doesn’t seem particularly embarrassed or pissed off. She just seems like she’s waiting for an explanation. The best I can do, though, is stammer the word ‘sorry’ a few more times.
‘Is it Daphne?’ she says finally.
I nod. ‘Yeah. I guess.’
She picks her glass back up and takes a sip. ‘I thought it was over betw
een you?’
‘I don’t know if it is or not, to be honest.’
‘But you’re not together right now, you said?’
‘We’re … on a break.’
She laughs, and then holds a hand up in apology. ‘Sorry, that was just very Ross and Rachel. Remember how pissed off you used to get at uni when I wanted to watch Friends, and you wanted to watch The Wire?’
‘Yeah, I remember.’ My head feels heavy suddenly. I have no idea what I should do.
Alice sighs and shuffles closer to me. ‘Look, I don’t want to fuck things up with you and Daphne. But I guess I always thought there was something between us. And maybe, if it’s not going to work out with her in the long run …’ She tails off and swirls the wine around her glass. ‘I mean, you don’t exactly know what she’s doing in New York right now, do you?’
It’s true: I don’t. I never asked Daphne if anything happened in New York, just as she’s never asked me about Paris. I guess we both took it as read that the other had stayed faithful.
Guilt stabs me sharply in the chest, and all of a sudden I think I understand why I’m here: why I decided to come up to Alice’s flat. In 2020, I’ve arranged to meet Alice for a drink at her hotel. And this is how it will feel if I go. This is how it will feel to be on the brink of cheating on my wife; to be on the brink of knowing I’m about to lose Daphne for good.
Am I really prepared to go through with that?
Alice puts her glass back down and stands up in front of me. Without saying a word, she holds her hand out.
I stare at it for a second, trying desperately to decide whether I should take it. And that’s when everything disappears.
Chapter Thirty
‘Ben … Ben?’
I groan and roll over. I can feel someone rubbing my arm gently.
‘Ben, wake up. We need to get going.’
The feeling is the same every time I jump: dizziness, motion sickness, and a dull pain in my chest like I’ve just had the wind thumped out of me. My eyes flick open, and as I take in my surroundings, the first thought that enters my still-fuzzy brain is: I’m back.
Daphne is perched on the edge of the bed beside me, stroking my shoulder. But this isn’t the twenty-three-year-old Daphne I fell asleep with two nights ago in Balham. This looks more like the thirty-three-year-old Daphne I’m married to in the real world. In 2020. I inhale sharply, and glance around me. This is our flat. The flat we bought together. The flat we currently live in.
This madness is finally over. I’m back in the present.
The relief is so overwhelming that I scramble up and pull Daphne towards me, hugging her tightly. ‘Oh my God, Daff …’ is about all I can manage to say.
She hugs me back even tighter, her fingers tracing through my hair. ‘Shh, it’s OK … I know, I know … Everything’s going to be all right, I promise.’
I pull away to see that her eyes are red and glistening with tears. There are dark circles underneath them, as if she hasn’t slept properly in days.
The relief freezes inside me, turning instantly to cold, clammy fear. There’s something wrong here.
Was the watch-seller lying? Has the present changed after all? Maybe Daphne somehow knows about what happened in Paris.
‘We’ll get through it,’ she mumbles as she wipes her eyes. ‘Everything will be fine.’
My mind is fizzing and spluttering, trying to comprehend what’s going on.
And then, behind her, I see it. The black suit.
It dangles limply on the back of the bedroom door like an invisible man hanged for some terrible crime.
Daff puts her head in her hands and starts crying: hard, heavy, jagged sobs. And with a sickening jolt, it dawns on me. This madness isn’t over at all.
It’s about to get much, much worse.
Ten minutes later, I’m sitting at the kitchen table, staring at the green and white wreath by the door. Lilies. That was the decision in the end: lilies.
Tulips were Mum’s favourite, but apparently they weren’t suitable for the occasion. I can’t remember who said that – the funeral director, maybe, or Uncle Simon – but it was decided one way or the other.
I sit here in silence, watching the steam curl up from my undrunk coffee and feeling a dark, scary anger start to uncoil inside me at the thought of going through this again. Daff is standing by the stove, stirring a saucepan of porridge and intermittently pressing a tissue to her eyes.
She’s already dressed in her smart black outfit, her curly hair pulled back in a neat ponytail. Despite her tired eyes and worried frown, she still looks beautiful.
I, on the other hand, must look anything but. I’m still wearing the T-shirt and pyjama bottoms I woke up in. I just couldn’t face getting changed yet. Putting that suit on would make it all seem real somehow, and I’m not sure I’m ready to believe yet that it is. So the suit’s still upstairs, on the back of the bedroom door, waiting for me to climb into it and relive one of the worst days of my life: December 10th, 2018.
Daff plonks a steaming bowl of porridge down in front of me and attempts a smile.
‘Here you go. Please eat something.’
She kisses me on the top of the head. Not the kind of kiss you give a husband or a lover: the kind you give a child. Then she mutters something about going to put on some make-up, and leaves the room.
I try a mouthful of porridge. It’s blisteringly hot, and I wince as it scalds the roof of my mouth. But, weirdly, the pain feels good – sharp and alive – in stark contrast to the numbness in my chest.
I swallow another spoonful. My watch is still stuck at one minute to midnight, but the clock on the wall says 10.35 a.m. I woke up much earlier on this day first time around. I’d thought I wouldn’t be able to sleep, but I had, somehow. I remember having a dream in which Mum was still alive. I had those dreams a lot in the months after she died.
She was always still alive, too, in those first few hazy seconds after I woke up, blinking and yawning and becoming increasingly aware that something big and awful had happened but not quite able to put my finger on it yet. And then I had to remember all over again, and sometimes the pain of remembering was so intense it was actually physical, bending my body at odd angles, or curling my hands into claws as I lay there crying silently into the mattress, trying not to wake Daphne.
She comes back in and stands in the doorway, looking at me. The shadows under her eyes are now hidden under a layer of foundation, but she doesn’t look any less miserable. ‘Simon will be here soon,’ she says quietly. ‘You should go and get changed.’
I stare down into the porridge. ‘I’m not sure I can do this,’ I hear myself say.
‘Oh, Ben …’ She sighs and runs a hand across her forehead. ‘I’m not sure I can either. But we have to.’
‘No, I just …’ I don’t know what to say. How can I explain it to her? How can I tell her that I just physically can’t go through this again? This day nearly broke me the first time. It will break me this time. I know it will. So why do I have to relive it? What the fuck is the point?
I suddenly want to see the watch-seller again. I want to demand an explanation for why this is happening, for what I could have done to deserve this.
I look down to see tears dropping steadily into my porridge bowl.
Daff rushes across to me and wraps me in her arms. ‘Ben, we can do this. We can get through this day together, I promise you we can.’
The tears are starting to roll down her cheeks too now, spoiling her fresh make-up. I didn’t even try to get through this day with her, originally. I barely took any notice of her grief because I was so caught up in my own. I just shut her out completely and retreated inwards; I didn’t even realise I was doing it.
Maybe this is why I’ve come back, then: so that we can go through this terrible day together, as a team. I have to relive these next few hours; I’ve got no other choice. The only thing I can do is to try and make them better than they were before.
I can alre
ady think of something I’ve always regretted about today. Something I was supposed to do but didn’t. My stomach twitches with nerves at the thought of it, but I suddenly know I have no choice but to do it.
I wipe my eyes on the sleeve of my T-shirt. Daff goes to kiss me again, on my forehead, but I lift my chin and kiss her on the lips. She smiles in surprise – an effortless reflex smile – and a surge of strength shoots through me. That’s what I need to do, I realise: I need to let her in. To lean on her, and let her lean on me. That’s the only way it will be OK.
‘You’re right,’ I tell her. ‘We’ll get through this together.’
She touches her lips to mine again, and then nods. ‘You’d better go and put your suit on.’
‘I will. But first, can you help me find something? You know that book of Walt Whitman poems …?’
Chapter Thirty-One
‘Are you sure about this, Ben?’ Uncle Simon gives me a concerned glance in the rear-view mirror. ‘You know you don’t have to do it. No one’s expecting you to. No one will think any less of you if you don’t.’
He looks back at the road as he guides the car onto the dual carriageway. I can understand why he’s dubious. Three days before the funeral, I pulled out of reading Mum’s favourite poem during the ceremony. I just completely lost my nerve, terrified that I would break down in front of everyone. The programmes even had to be reprinted to remove the mention of my reading. So the fact that I’ve just told Simon – at the very last minute – that I’ve changed my mind again, and I now want to do it, must seem more than a little disconcerting.
But it’s like that kiss in the kitchen cleared the fog inside my head. It not only gave me a weird sense of courage and confidence; it also made me see how ridiculous it was to have spent this day entirely wrapped up in myself. I bottled out of reading the poem because I was scared of looking stupid or pathetic if I started crying. But really, who cares how I look? The most important thing is making the effort. Trying my best to do Mum proud.
‘Don’t worry,’ I tell Simon, touching the dog-eared book in my jacket pocket. ‘I’ll be fine. I promise. I really want to do this.’