Love Will Tear Us Apart

by Holly Seddon

  We talked. About the crash, of course, he told me that he’d been breathalysed while I was unconscious, and nearly hit one of the police officers for keeping him away from the kids and me for those minutes. I couldn’t imagine that. He told me that Harry had pleaded to ride in my ambulance. Actually on his knees, in the lashing rain. My boy. But we talked more about the ten-year journey leading up to the crash. And then we stopped talking about that and just started to talk. About nothing really, we just chewed the cud like we used to. After school, Paul brought the kids to see me and we watched TV in the private room that was costing more than I dared to ask. And I am wearing five years’ worth of rose-tinted spectacles, because I nearly died. Not just in the crash but during surgery afterwards. And my body hurt like hell and I had an excruciating headache for weeks and I couldn’t reach to shave my legs so I was both itchy and mortified, but once I was over the worst of it, once I believed I wasn’t going to die, those weeks were strangely wonderful. And then finally I was home.

  After weeks of caring for me and looking after the kids, Paul cried before he went back to work one Monday and we knew by Wednesday that his card was marked.

  Whether they’d decided to manage him out while he was off or after he returned without any of the hunger of before, we’ll never know. He stalked his corner office as colleagues avoided his eye and was called into a meeting on Friday afternoon.

  We took a long holiday. Renting a gite in France and getting fat on cheese while ignoring the emails from school about fines for unauthorised absences. We talked about what we wanted. Surprising each other and ourselves.

  A few weeks after we returned to Blackheath, I found a job at The Bijou Agency running their training academy. I mentor the juniors, I run workshops for women, I help tease out talent. I love it. My agency specialises in charities and socially responsible business, which is why I suggested Paul ignore the two job offers from corporate agencies that gave him an anxiety stomach and instead meet my new boss for a coffee.

  Even with our combined salaries, we earn half what Paul used to bring home alone. We travel in to work together most days. Sometimes we have lunch in the small cobbled garden behind the office. I’ve made new friends too, women who make me laugh until I’m close to wetting myself. Paul works to help organisations he cares about advertise themselves. And he reads again.

  We’re happy.

  Unaccustomed to afternoon sex, we fall asleep and when I shake myself awake, the sky outside is dark blue. The chatter of smokers gathering outside bubbles up to our window.

  I reach for my phone and look at the time. It’s past six. I slide over to Paul, put my head on his chest. There’s still that old ghost of a feeling, that maybe I’m crossing a boundary, that familiarity and sexuality are getting all messed up. But it’s an old feeling, a facsimile of the truth and I have let it go. I kiss his chest and he stirs.

  ‘Hey,’ he says and reaches for his glasses, neatly placed on the little bedside table.

  ‘Do you want to get dinner downstairs?’ I say.

  ‘It’s lovely here now, isn’t it?’ he replies. ‘I never would have imagined The Swan turning into something like this.’

  ‘It is lovely.’

  I sit up and run my fingers through my hair. ‘I could do with a shower.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he smiles, ‘we probably both could.’

  ‘You know what I really want to do though?’ I say.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Put my jeans back on and go out and get some chips.’

  We split a bag of fat, vinegary chips. The portion is smaller than I remember from our childhood. Or maybe we’re just so much bigger. I lean on him just a little as we walk, noticing all the changes in the village.

  We walk past the church and fall silent for a moment. But we don’t walk into the graveyard where Viv lies, buried in a purple dress and her necklace from Paul. Instead, we turn left into the recreation ground, which used to have a couple of rusty swings and a climbing frame. It now has some kind of arty wooden jungle gym. A few metres away, a teenager with floppy dark hair stands awkwardly next to a blonde teenage girl who is sitting on a bench looking at her mobile phone.

  ‘Oh shit,’ I say, ‘isn’t that the girl we met last time we came down?’

  Harry scratches his head and leans over to say something to her. He’s so tall I almost don’t recognise him.

  ‘What’s he doing out at this time?’ Paul says.

  ‘Were we indoors at seven o’clock on a Saturday when we were thirteen?’

  ‘You know we were!’

  We stand and watch for a moment. The girl stands up, as if it’s causing her some inconvenience but she supposes she’ll make the effort. Harry smiles, offers her his hand and she takes it. He leans in to kiss her.

  ‘Oh my God,’ I say, stifling a laugh.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Paul whispers, squeezing my hand, ‘he’s a lot more efficient than we were.’

  We sneak back out of the park and dump the greasy chip wrappers in the bin.

  ‘We’ve done alright, haven’t we?’ Paul says.

  ‘We’ve done alright,’ I say. As we walk back to The Swan, we stop just a moment outside 4 Church Street. The curtains are closed but we listen at the door. The faint sound of Status Quo seeps through.

  ‘I love you,’ I whisper to Paul.

  ‘I know,’ he whispers back. ‘I know.’

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you for reading Love Will Tear Us Apart. It is the most personal book I’ve written to date, and I really hope you liked it because it means an awful lot to me.

  Love comes in many forms. We may grow up thinking about it in binary terms, but then we meet friends who we love like siblings and partners who we love like friends. I am a very lucky woman. I have a lot of people I love and there’s not much more I could hope for than that. But of course, above all others are my husband James and my children, Mia, Alfie, Elliot and Finch. I love them fiercely.

  When I started writing this book, I had been happily married just over seven years. It’s pure coincidence that it has been published in the tenth year of my (still very happy) marriage!

  I am definitely not Kate (I’m five foot three, for a start, and my parents are lovely) nor is my husband anything like Paul, but we do have one thing in common: friendship. No-one’s opinion matters more to me than his, no-one makes me laugh harder and I’ve never had a bigger champion. But unlike Kate, I fell head over heels without prior arrangement and my life with this man has been the most awesome adventure. Every year together is a privilege; I love the bones of him.

  I spent many childhood years living in the Somerset town of Castle Cary, and it holds a huge place in my heart. I hope its residents will forgive the fictionalised version of the place, and the surrounding villages. Little Babcombe itself does not exist but is an amalgam of various homes I’ve had. I also hope that anyone who works in advertising will forgive the massive massaging of truth. . .

  Special thanks to Sarah Fletcher and Kate Diamond who read an early draft and were so encouraging, even though I’ve now accidentally stolen both of their names for characters across my last book and this one.

  Finally, becoming an author has brought me many wonderful things, but perhaps the most wonderful of all things are the friendships it’s gifted me with other writers. Gilly McAllister and Hayley Webster, I’m especially looking at you two.

  As ever, I have to thank my amazing agent Nicola Barr. Right from the first few chapters that I nervously sent over, Nicola was so very supportive and I’m forever grateful to have her on my side.

  My brilliant editor, Sara O’Keeffe, understood instinctively what I was trying to do, who the Loxtons were and how their story should be told. Both Sara and Susannah Hamilton from Corvus have helped immeasurably; their suggestions and edits were always spot-on and the whole team there is just such a pleasure to work with. Thank you all.

  Us Apart