After The Fall

by Sarah Goodwin

  “I wasn’t planning on it.”

  Nate looked surprised at that. I felt suddenly very tired, all the fire of my desperation had burnt up, and I just wanted to rest.

  “It was my marriage,” I said, “the only people who could end it were me and Emma. You shouldn’t have lied to me but you didn’t tell me anything that wasn’t true, and you certainly didn’t tell me to leave her.” I shuffled my feet on the pavement. “I shouldn’t have just left without talking to you, I was just...I freaked out.”

  “So did I, first time I put one of those DVDs in. And I wanted to tell you, but...I didn’t know what I was looking at, and neither of us remembered it. It was so much easier to pretend that we were right when we thought we’d only just met.”

  I nodded. There was a short silence, broken only by the creaking of tree branches and the call of sirens over on the high street.

  “Are you going to come back to the flat?” Nate asked carefully, “I’ve been worried about you, you left your tablets behind.”

  “I know...things haven’t been great,” I admitted.

  “I can bring them round,” he said, “only...I don’t like the idea of you being here, on your own...I miss you.”

  I thought for a moment. I wanted to go back with him. I wanted to sleep in our bed, the two of us against everything else. Existing in our own little vacuum. Where it was safe.

  But I had to tell him, I had to do it, or I’d be just as wrong as Emma had been when she pretended that I’d never left her. As wrong as Nate was when he kept the DVDs from me. I knew in that moment what it was like to have total control over a situation, to be able to decide, not just for myself, but for someone else, exactly how we were going to move forwards.

  I didn’t like having to make the decision, knowing that it would change everything. I hadn’t had to choose a single thing about my life so far – even leaving Emma had already been decided for me, by my old self. The job that I hated had been taken from me, and Nate had helped to turn me towards getting the help I needed with my depression.

  This was really up to me.

  “Nate...I need to tell you something.”

  His shoulders slumped, and I chickened out, just like that.

  “But, it can wait until we get my stuff back to the flat.”

  Nate’s smile made him look about twenty years younger, and he nodded quickly. I let myself into the B&B with my code at the door, and led him up to my tiny room. He looked around it with interest as I piled my few things into a bag.

  “You know, this is practically the same as the flat,” he said.

  “You shouldn’t do it down. I love your place.”

  “Hmm, well, I still want to go for that other place, the one I told you about? Get something a little nicer. Let someone stuck here have my place maybe.”

  I felt a creeping discomfort. Nate might regret his wish to move somewhere more settled with me once I told him about the bags I had found.

  “Jesus, you’ve got enough stuff,” he said, helping me with my own bag, plus the two I’d found at the scrap yard.

  I didn’t say anything, and we walked all the way over to the familiar street, and the flat. I felt relieved to see it again, less tense and mournful. I hadn’t realised how much being at the B&B had grated on me.

  Inside the flat was warm, and, although it was a lot messier than it had been when I’d left it, I was glad to be back. Nate picked a t-shirt up off the sofa and threw it into a pile of clothes on the floor.

  “The maid quit then?” I said.

  He looked a little embarrassed. “I haven’t really been keeping up with the cleaning and stuff.”

  It sobered me. “Well, I’m back now so, I’ll help get it tidy again.”

  He nodded, almost to himself.

  “I’m sorry I left,” I said, “I should have waited for you to get back.”

  “It’s alright, can’t say for sure that I wouldn’t have done the same.”

  I put my bag down by the bed, and brought the other two into the middle of the room. Nate watched me curiously.

  “Do you want me to get some fish and chips or something?” he asked, “I haven’t got anything in, and I’m starving.”

  I was hungry as well, I hadn’t eaten all day. But I wanted to tell him everything before I could make more excuses not to. I’d been building up to it all the way over, and I knew that if I begged off again, I would never say anything. I’d eat my fish and chips, get into bed with Nate, and let things go back to how they were. And while that was tempting, while all I wanted was to let the decision leave my hands, I knew I’d suffer for it later. We both would.

  “In a bit,” I said, “I want to tell you something first.”

  “Sounds serious,” Nate said, with a guarded voice, “should I be sitting down?”

  I shrugged, which was clearly not the response he’d expected his joke to get him. He sat on the sofa, and watched me.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “When I said I went out today...I went really far out. Took two buses over to the scrap yard where my car was taken, after my accident.”

  “Jesus,” he breathed, “why would you do that? It’s horrible enough that it happened, without seeing the car all...” he broke off, “are you OK?”

  “I’m alright, the car wasn’t there anymore anyway. But they keep some of the things from the cars that come in, to sell off or give away. And they had some of my things there. Golf clubs, my bags, from when I left Emma.”

  Nate was listening, but confusion had crept into his expression. “So, what’s the serious talk about? Did you find something about yourself? Something bad?”

  “No, I didn’t find anything about me...but I found Simon’s things.”

  Nate swallowed. “Oh, you did.”

  “Yes, and...”

  “And you found him, so, what? Now you want to go and see his family? Find out more about him?” Nate probably thought he was hiding his insecurity well, but I could hear it in every word, and see it in the way he hunched his back, shoulders drooping.

  “I don’t think he has any family...you see, no one reported him missing.”

  “Poor bastard,” Nate said grudgingly, “I know what that’s like. Suppose it’s a good thing he died in the accident, sorry to say. I mean, it’d be hard for him, being a cripple, or a veggie and not having anyone there to take care of him, or miss him.”

  I almost didn’t say it then. The pity in Nate’s voice was real, and I almost couldn’t bring myself to tell him. I knew it would be like watching a horror film, and slowly realising that it was your life, yourself, on screen. That the monster was coming for you, and there was nowhere to run.

  But I knew I couldn’t keep it from him. In that moment it ceased to be a decision I had to make. I knew I could never lie to him.

  “Nate, Simon’s last name was Cooper,” I said, fishing the ID from my pocket. “This is him. This is you.”

  I don’t think Nate could have looked more shocked if I’d told him that I was a hallucination. His face went the colour of powdered concrete. His mouth moved like he was about to say something, and he blinked a few times. I held the ID out to him, and after an aborted twitch of his fingers, his hand reached up and took it from me.

  I watched him as he looked over the card, staring at the tiny picture that was undoubtedly him. I felt helpless just standing there.

  “I think, you were in the car with me,” I said, “when the bridge went down, and we ended up in the river, maybe you were carried off downstream, and you got taken to a different hospital, where they didn’t know to put you down as a victim in the accident.”

  Nate shook his head slightly, still looking at the card.

  “I’ve been thinking about it, and...Janey, from the leisure centre, I think she sort of recognised you. Only I told her your name was Nate, so she thought she’d got it wrong.”

  “I can’t be, I c-” he shook his head, harder. “it doesn’t...I mean, I don’t understand.”
r />   “The reason no one reported you missing, was because I didn’t remember you. If I hadn’t lost my memory, I would have come looking...” I broke off at the sheer, appalling unfairness of it.

  “You would have tried to find me,” Nate finished numbly.

  “I would have. If Emma hadn’t told me you were dead, I would have started looking right away.”

  His sharp eyes found mine. “She told you I was dead?”

  “I think she believed it. Once you didn’t turn up again, at the hospital, she must have assumed.”

  “Or she lied, I mean she lied to you already.”

  “I don’t think she lied about this,” I said gently.

  Nate sat in silence for a while, and I stayed where I was, rooted in front of him. After a long, tense silence, Nate stood up, went over to the glass jar on his shelf that held his spare change, and fished out some coins. He turned back to me, pocketing the money.

  “Let’s go get some dinner.”

  “Are you sure you want to go out?” I asked, “it might be better to-”

  “To stay in, hungry and talk about this all night?” Nate said, “I’d rather get something hot in me, and you can’t have eaten in ages, if you went all that way.”

  “But-”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Nate said firmly, his voice cutting loudly over mine.

  “OK,” I said, “we’ll get something and bring it back.” Really I was just relieved that he’d started talking again.

  We walked to the chippy just down the road, but on the way there, found ourselves outside the house where I’d picked up the box of DVDs. Nate paused and looked up at it.

  “This is the house, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  There were lights on inside.

  “Didn’t keep it empty long, did they?” Nate said quietly, “I’d hardly’ve been cold in the ground by now.”

  We walked the rest of the way in silence, and went into the chip shop to buy chips and sausages. Carrying the grease paper bundles home we walked shoulder to shoulder, and I felt better than I had all week, being with him. I didn’t want to leave him again, or have him leave me.

  At the flat we put the chips on plates and sat on the sofa. Nate ate like a horse, as usual, but he didn’t talk to me. After a while I put my half-finished plate to one side and watched him start on my chips.

  “Are we going to talk about it?”

  Nate finished his mouthful. “Do we have to?” he said quietly.

  “We should, it’s going to sit there until we do...why don’t you want to?”

  “Don’t see that it’ll change anything.”

  “It doesn’t have to.”

  “So why talk about it?”

  “Because it’s your life, your past.”

  Nate shrugged. “I have a life.”

  “So you’re telling me it means nothing to you.”

  “No, of course it doesn’t but...I don’t need to be that person, whoever I was. I don’t care about him.” He stabbed with particular viciousness at a piece of battered meat. “No one did.”

  A short silence stretched between us.

  “I did.”

  Nate looked embarrassed.

  “It feels weird,” he said at last, “knowing that we were serious. That you left your wife for me.”

  “Why? I’ve done that for you since.”

  “But it’s like you did it for someone else.”

  So that was it, the thing that had been bothering him.

  “You know there hasn’t been anyone else. As far as I can tell, I haven’t been with another bloke.”

  “I know,” he said, shaking off the odd little moment, “it’s just a big fucking shock.”

  “But you’ll be alright with it, with me? Right?”

  “’Course I will,” he said, but he didn’t meet my eyes.

  It was my first night back in our bed, and I got undressed while Nate was in the bathroom. I relaxed against the lumpy pillows, the soft cotton sheets and springy mattress a welcome change from my hard little improvised bed at the B&B. But the best part of being home was having Nate next to me. After switching off the light, Nate slipped into bed and shivered his way across to me, bare feet scrunched against the cold. His stubble scratched my shoulder, the warm shadow of his body brushed against my back.

  “I’m glad you’re back,” Nate muttered, arm sliding around my waist, and I was happy, folding my fingers with his. But after a while he pulled away, lying on his other side, and scrunching up.

  I didn’t sleep well, and I woke up all through the night. Each time I did, Nate was wide awake.

  Chapter Nineteen

  When I got up the next morning, Nate was already out of bed. He’d put on some jeans and a big, baggy green jumper and was sitting on the sofa eating cereal.

  “Morning,” I said, and he jumped, almost guiltily, like he’d been trying not to wake me.

  “Morning.” He nodded at the kitchen, then got up to take his bowl out. “Kettle’s just boiled.”

  I got up, wrapped myself up in his dressing gown and made myself a cup of tea, popping an antidepressant along with it. I was relieved to have my medication back, it was a safety net I needed to feel secure, and it made me feel a little braver when I thought of the day ahead of me.

  “Do you want to help me practice for my interview?” I asked Nate, turning to find him putting his shoes on.

  “I’m off out,” he said.

  “Where to?”

  He busied himself with tying his laces. “I don’t know, just out for a bit.”

  I didn’t push, but I wanted to. Nate clearly wasn’t fine with what I’d told him the previous night. I wondered, as I had during the night, if I’d done the right thing by coming back to him and then dropping my bombshell. Maybe he could have used some time alone, to adjust.

  After Nate had gone out, I had a shower and got dressed. I was surprised to find that I had quite a bit of energy, despite my bad night’s sleep. I cleaned the bathroom up from my shower, hanging the matt up to dry and cleaning the toothpaste and shaving bristles out of the sink.

  There was washing-up in the kitchen so I filled the sink with soapy water, flicked on the radio and cleaned up after last night’s dinner, and that morning’s breakfast. The counters were a bit greasy, and by the kettle there were brown mug stains and gritty sugar stuck to the surface. I wiped them down, then swept the floor and mopped it over to get rid of some of the splashes of dropped sauce and spilt juice. Clearly, Nate hadn’t put much energy into cleaning since I’d been gone, and I felt guilty about that, so I dusted the lounge and plumped up the sofa cushions.

  I cleaned for three hours, and, once everything was in order and in its place, I got out my interview clothes, still in their charity shop bags with the labels attached. I took the tags off and put the suit in the washing machine. While it rumbled through a cycle I made a cup of tea and watched the TV. I wasn’t hungry, even though I hadn’t had anything to eat yet.

  A while later, my stomach started to complain and I got up and went through the cupboards. There wasn’t anything, aside from a few tins of butterbeans, and a half box of crackers. In the fridge there was a pot of baking soda and a plastic pack of calf’s liver. Nate had said he didn’t have anything in, but I had no idea how literally he’d meant it.

  On the crest of my wave of energy, I decided to go out and get some shopping in. I still had a fair bit of my job seekers allowance left for the week. I put my coat on and went out to ASDA.

  I’m not sure what it is about supermarkets, but I loved them then, and I still love them now. Maybe it’s the fact that they’re always bright, even at night they shine like lanterns, full of busy workers and the blipblipblipping of tills. Maybe it’s the music that changes as you walk around the shop, or the way everything is clean and new, fresh and available. Like each new trip to the supermarket is another chance to buy new clothes, a whole new style for your house, products for your hair, vitamins, and food, whole n
ew recipes and types of food to try.

  Maybe that’s Nate rubbing off on me.

  I picked up a basket and walked around, looking over vegetables and fruit, picking up apples, peppers and leaves for stir-fries. There were buttermilk pancakes at the bakery, and a selection of cut-price crumpets and rolls.

  I picked up tins, packets of pasta, rice and couscous (Nate had several recipes bookmarked with couscous in them, I’d seen them, cut from magazines and stuck to the fridge).

  By the time I got to the checkout, my basket was full, and I was glad to be able to put it down on the conveyer belt. But my relief was short-lived.

  I looked up and saw Emma sitting at the till, her mouth pursed up and her face set.

  For a second I just looked at her, unable to move. Then I picked up the basket again and made to leave. I think that, if a manager hadn’t been walking past at that moment, that would have been it. I could have gone to a different till and left, without talking to Emma. But, as it was she made a quick, impatient movement with her hand.

  “Come on then,” she hissed, casting a nervous smile in the direction of the manager, who was looking at her from across the aisle.

  I resigned myself and unloaded my basket.

  We were stuck in a frozen silence as she bowled my food down to the end of the conveyer and I put it into bags.

  She was the first one to speak.

  “So, you must be having a right laugh at me.”

  I was counting notes and coins, “What?”

  “You, and him. Simon. I saw you together at Spoons.” Her eyes were sharp and almost suspicious. “How did you manage that? I thought he was-”

  “Dead?” I supplied. “No, he got out of the car, got swept away.”

  I handed over the money and she took it without touching me, stashing it in the till and counting out my change.

  “Are you alright, for money?” I asked her.

  Her face was blank and cold. “I’m fine.”

  “Well, if you need anything, let me know.”

  “I don’t need anything from you.”