by Rebecca Done
‘But … sometimes I feel angry with him for not being the man I married. I feel as if … he didn’t uphold his side of the bargain. Stupid, isn’t it?’
Graeme doesn’t say anything, just shakes his head. He seems unable to speak, suddenly.
‘I mean, it’s completely illogical because of course it’s not his fault, but I think about it late at night, and I think, You left me. You abandoned me. What am I supposed to do now?’
It’s only when Graeme reaches out and puts a hand over mine that I realize I am shaking. We sit there like that for a couple of minutes, which all at once feels strange and perfectly natural.
‘So, Moll,’ he says eventually, gently withdrawing his hand. ‘If you could turn the clock back, knowing everything you know now – would you still choose Alex?’
‘Choose him as opposed to who?’
The moment skips a beat. ‘Anyone.’
‘Yes, of course.’
Graeme smiles and shakes his head. ‘Sorry. That came out a bit bluntly. It’s just that age-old question, isn’t it – better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all?’
‘Better to have loved,’ I say firmly, because I truly believe that.
‘So if your life could have taken a different path,’ Graeme says, turning to face me and slinging one arm along the back of the tiny sofa, ‘you wouldn’t have taken it? Not even now – knowing everything you know?’
‘That’s like me asking if you’d rather have been an only child,’ I say, aware that conversations like this are dangerous, with too much potential for crossed wires.
‘You don’t get to choose your family.’
‘You don’t get to change the past either.’
‘True.’ He eyes me over the rim of his cup as he sips.
‘I miss Alex,’ I say now. ‘I miss everything we had, so much.’
‘Tell me,’ he says.
I look down at my knees. ‘I miss him being affectionate. I miss all the jokes that only we shared. You know, I wrote them all down last year, so I’d never forget them, because I know he has. I miss him making me laugh until I literally cry, his cooking, that he was always discovering new bands because I’m rubbish at that. I miss going to the gym together. The idea that we might run a marathon one day. I miss trying new restaurants. I miss him smiling at me when I come downstairs before a night out. I miss his optimism.’ I smile faintly as my voice cracks then wobbles. ‘I miss being close to him. I miss him carrying the heavy stuff. But do you know what I miss most of all? I miss loving him, Graeme. That’s what hurts the most. To know I’ll never feel that way again.’
Finally, I look at Graeme, and he is choked-up too. ‘I’m so sorry, Molly. If I could swap places with Alex, give you both your life back, I would. In a heartbeat.’
‘And now,’ I say, ‘I don’t know what’s going on with Nicola, and I think … I know that nothing will ever be the same again. What we had – it’s lost for ever, Graeme.’
‘Molly,’ he whispers, ‘what are you saying?’
I look right into his eyes, take in the scent of him once again. The tears rise in my chest and I have to look away. ‘Sorry,’ I whisper, my voice catching in my throat. ‘I don’t know what I’m saying. I barely even know what I think any more.’
‘You’re thinking of leaving,’ he says then, the pieces slotting into place. ‘Sarah’s offered you a job, and you’re thinking of moving back to London. Without Alex.’
I recall our coffee at the station a month or so ago, when he assumed my parents and friends were on a crusade to bring me back to London. And now, I am too afraid to admit it. I can’t even tell if he would think it a good idea or a bad one any more.
‘Is this more about his temper, or Nicola?’ He expels her name like cigarette smoke.
‘Both, I suppose. But if Nicola … I couldn’t bear it, if anything’s happened with her,’ I say. ‘And it made me realize – how will I ever really know now? I can’t decipher a lie from an innocent untruth with Alex these days – he forgets so much, gets so confused. And what’s left for us, if the trust has gone? What’s left for us anyway?’ I shake my head. ‘You know, my mum wants us to go and live with her because she believes in the sanctity of marriage, of marriage vows, in sickness and in health. To her, once you’re married, you don’t leave, no matter what. But what if it’s not a marriage any more? What if your husband isn’t who you married? What then?’
Graeme stares at me wordlessly, for of course there are no answers.
‘You know, some things you can’t ever make better,’ I continue. ‘We live in this world where there’s a solution for everything, where people tell you there’s always a way, but the brutal truth is that in some situations … there isn’t a way. There actually isn’t.’
I remember the moment I realized it exactly. I was sitting at traffic lights, two years and two days after Alex’s accident, and it suddenly struck me, like a slap: Alex wasn’t getting better. This was our life now. I was never going to see the old Alex again. It was as if in that moment, he’d suddenly died. And then the lights turned green, but I couldn’t move. I was paralysed. Cars streamed around me, horns blaring, but I remained motionless, struck still by grief for the next four light changes.
‘You know,’ Graeme says, ‘I think this is the most I’ve heard you talk. Like, ever.’
‘Sorry.’
‘No, don’t be. It’s healthy. I wish you’d done it sooner.’
‘What am I going to do?’ I ask him, feeling guilty even as I’m saying it, because after all, Graeme is Alex’s twin brother. It’s not fair to put all this on him.
I suppose what I’m really asking him is, If I leave, who will look after Alex? How will he feed himself, earn money, make it from day to day? How can I even contemplate abandoning him – what kind of person does that make me? I’m his rock, and rocks aren’t supposed to go anywhere.
But to his credit, Graeme doesn’t attempt to answer any of those questions, the same questions that must by now be careering through his head too. ‘You’re going to sit there and relax while I make some more tea,’ is all he says, before calmly taking my cooling cup and disappearing into the kitchen.
I remove my phone from my pocket, press a single button. The lock screen lights up and there we are on our wedding day, running hand in hand. So happy. So blissfully unaware of what the future had in mind for us. Then, like a reflex, I open the text thread between Alex and me. I scroll back – it doesn’t take long, he’s scant with communication these days – and find the one that tortures and comforts me in equal measure.
Great night, love you xxx
I stare at the screen until my eyes thud, trying and failing to imagine how I would ever begin to contemplate telling him I was leaving.
Maybe, when the time is right, I’ll simply slip quietly away like a coward, to spend the rest of my days mourning the love I lost.
Graeme’s back, setting down two fresh cups of tea and what’s left of the biscuits on an upturned plastic crate, presumably a substitute coffee table. He drags it slowly within reach of the sofa.
‘Look, Moll, if Alex’s accident has taught me anything it’s that all you can do is go with it, take each day as it comes.’
I nod dully, barely able to listen to the coping strategies I outwore ages ago.
‘I mean, I get it. I do. One day he loves watching football on TV. The next, he’s swearing at me for suggesting we watch it. Or, he’ll be manically enthusiastic about going food shopping, then when we get to the shops he won’t get out of the car.’
I smile sadly. ‘What’s your point, Graeme?’
‘My point is, I know how much of a rollercoaster it can be, even going from hour to hour.’
‘Minute to minute,’ I correct him.
‘Right. Whatever happened to my passive, reliable brother?’
‘It’s like you’ve switched.’
And then I turn to look at him, and it’s just as I thought it would be – like staring int
o the deep-green eyes of my husband once again. He looks the same as Alex used to, he smells the same, and I’m sure if I reached out and touched him, he would feel the same too.
And then for some reason it is suddenly 2010, and I am back in a bar in Soho talking to Graeme. He complimented me on my skills at getting served, paid for my drinks, flirted with me – and for a few short minutes, I found myself charmed. But then he disappeared, and in his place arrived Alex, who advised me in the subtlest of ways that his brother was not really a man I should be hanging at the end of a bar waiting for. And that was the start of the story of me and Alex – and it was a beautiful story, not one I regretted for a moment. And yet here I am tonight with a black eye and a faltering marriage, plagued by a cloud of doubt and mistrust. Tonight, it suddenly seems horribly easy to wonder how my life would have panned out if I had waited a couple more minutes for Graeme to return. Or if I’d simply smiled at Alex outside the toilets and kept on walking.
‘I can’t keep looking at you like this, Moll,’ Graeme says softly then.
‘Why not?’ I say, my voice small and tight.
‘Because Alex is my brother.’
I swallow, hard. My heart is pounding. ‘I know.’
‘To look at you like this,’ he says, reaching out and brushing the hair from my face, his fingertips dancing across the surface of my black eye, ‘knowing what he’s putting you through … it’s the hardest thing in the world, believe me.’
‘Another couple of minutes,’ I breathe, ‘and maybe things would have been different.’
‘I’ve told myself the same thing.’ He knows exactly what I’m saying. We speak the same sad language these days. ‘But that’s a really dangerous way to think.’
‘Dangerous how?’
He doesn’t reply for a long time.
‘In just about every way imaginable,’ he whispers eventually, but he takes my hand as he says it, and I feel his pulse pounding, like electricity passing from his palm to mine. His other hand is still against my face, and for a moment I imagine he will start to run his fingers through my hair, in just the same way as he used to.
No, wait. That was Alex. Not Graeme. Alex.
On the road beyond the basement window, cars are rushing past, reminding me that we are not alone, that it is not just Graeme and me together in the world. That tomorrow will dawn, and I will return home to Alex, and life must continue. No matter how desperate I’m feeling tonight, no matter how betrayed and sad and low, Graeme and Alex must remain two distinct people.
Graeme is not Alex before his accident, however much he looks, feels and sounds like him. However much I want him to be.
‘I think,’ I whisper, squeezing Graeme’s hand and looking him right in the eyes, ‘we should call it a night.’
He smiles sadly. ‘You always were a better person than me, Moll.’
‘Not better,’ I correct him. ‘Just different.’
‘That’s why you were so well suited to Alex,’ he says. ‘And why I could never have measured up.’ And then he gently drops my hand, gets to his feet. ‘Help yourself to whatever you need. My bedroom’s on the left. I’m just going to … get some air.’
‘I’m sorry, Graeme,’ I tell him.
‘For what?’ He pauses by the door to the living room, palm against the handle.
‘For everything.’
17
Molly – present day
I am nervous when I arrive home on Sunday night, a few hours after leaving London and Graeme. Partly because I am exhausted from a torturous return journey involving weekend engineering works, an extended wait at a train platform somewhere in deepest Essex and a coach ride for the last leg back into Norfolk – which doesn’t bode well for my ability to hold a calm and rational conversation with my husband.
But I’m also nervous because I don’t know what to say. It’s always an impossible balance to strike between letting him know when he’s done something wrong, and not destroying whatever delicate equilibrium he may have been able to reach since an altercation. Our fight was on Friday night – it’s now a full forty-eight hours later, and already I can anticipate that Alex will have forgotten all about it, wonder why I’m raking over events he can barely remember.
And what about Nicola? Charlie’s been with Alex all weekend, so it’s not as if I’m worried she will have been hanging around – Charlie’s as allergic to her and as loyal to Alex as anyone else – but I still haven’t got a clue how to handle the situation, no matter how capable Graeme seems to think I am.
And Graeme, of course. I’m nervous about looking Alex in the eye, all the while knowing that last night I was just a hair’s breadth from kissing his twin brother. How can I be outraged about Nicola when last night I was contemplating doing exactly the same to Alex – or arguably, given we’re talking about his twin, something far, far worse?
I push open the front door and step tentatively inside. Straight away, I breathe in an unfamiliar odour. It smells like … fresh paint.
‘Alex?’
Appearing unusually quickly, he leans against the wall. ‘Hiya.’
‘Hi.’ I set down my bag and we regard each other, but neither of us moves.
‘Did you have a nice time in London?’ he asks me slowly.
‘Yes,’ I say guiltily, but all the same relieved that he seems to be feeling even-tempered. ‘Are you okay? Did you enjoy yourself with Charlie?’
He nods. ‘Yeah. I told him about your face. I feel bad about it.’
I swallow. ‘Oh.’
‘He told me I should say sorry and do something nice.’
I smile faintly. ‘Oh. That’s … that’s good.’
‘So I got you some flowers and I drew you a picture.’
I pause for a moment, take this in. ‘Okay.’
He smiles. ‘Yeah, so …’ Then he shrugs, leans back against the wall like, job done.
Well, it’s the thought that counts, Alex.
‘So, can … I see them?’ I ask him tentatively.
‘Yeah,’ he says, like I’m being a bit slow.
So I follow him into the living room, and it is there that I catch my breath. The whole place is clean and tidy, alive with brightness.
‘Alex, you painted it!’
He hesitates. ‘Oh, yeah. Me and Charlie painted the living room.’
It’s a beautiful, fresh off-white, the shade I’ve dreamed of having in here since we moved in. When I left on Friday, the room was still half covered in Kevin’s old wallpaper; Charlie and Alex must have stripped it, cleaned the old paste off, sanded and painted all weekend.
‘I can’t believe it. Alex, this looks amazing.’ My gaze travels the fresh new contours of the room, lands on a vase of flowers. ‘Oh, Alex,’ I breathe, welling up.
They are cream and blush pink roses – the same ones we had at our wedding reception. I walk over and lower my face to them, breathe in their beautiful scent. Alex hasn’t bought me flowers since before the accident.
And next to them, my third surprise – a fine-liner sketch of me, washed over with watercolour. The drawing I’ve been waiting for, the one I cross my fingers for every time I flick through his sketchbook. My heart pounds with pleasure. I am depicted asleep in bed, looking far more peaceful and content than I ever do during waking hours. His incredible artistic talent blows me away once again, and it takes me a few minutes to compose myself.
I have to believe he drew this with love. I will believe it.
‘Did you do this from memory, Alex?’ I look over towards him.
His face remains blank. ‘What?’
I rephrase. ‘When did you draw this?’
‘Last week,’ he says, when he recalls. ‘Sometimes I do them when I can’t sleep.’
I run my fingers over it, then realize the paper is darker, rougher than the sketchbook I normally sneak a look at. ‘You mean, you’ve done more? Like this one? Of me?’
He nods and shrugs all at once, looks awkward suddenly.
Happines
s rushes through me. He must have another sketchbook, upstairs somewhere. He’s been drawing me all along. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
He looks momentarily thrown off, like he thinks I might be annoyed. ‘Didn’t want you to laugh at me.’
‘Why would I do that? I don’t laugh at you, Alex.’ I keep my face open, my expression light, to show him I’m not angry about anything. I don’t want to scare him off sketching.
‘You do when you think I’m being stupid.’
I step forward, so desperate to take his hand, but at the same time so afraid as always that he’ll move away, reject me. ‘No. I never think that. I never think you’re stupid.’ I survey the freshly painted room once more, the flowers, the drawing in my hand. ‘I think everything you’ve done this weekend is incredible.’
He breaks into a smile and I return it, knowing the Herculean effort it must have taken him, even with Charlie’s help, to stay focused on making it up to me for a full forty-eight hours – to help with all the painting and the flowers, to pick the sketch he thought I’d like best, to remain bright-eyed and upbeat for my return. Not to mention just making it through the days too – eating, sleeping, hydrating, making conversation with Charlie. All the stuff everyone else takes for granted.
I can’t forget what happened on Friday night, but this goes some way to helping ease the physical and emotional pain, because this isn’t regular from Alex. This is very special.
Incredible.
‘What’s for tea, Moll?’ he says then. ‘I’m hungry.’
The next morning as my alarm sounds to mark the start of another week, I smile before I open my eyes, remembering last night and all the things Alex did for me over the weekend, the uncharacteristic tenderness with which he greeted me home.
I sigh; Monday morning again. It seems to have come round so quickly, yet so much has happened since Friday night. Switching off the alarm, I reach down for Alex’s hand in the hope of sharing one last moment before the week starts again, but I am already forgotten – his side of the bed is empty, cool. He has vanished downstairs.