“April? Honey . . . ? What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
As she slumped against me, suddenly I knew I wasn’t ready. I never would be. Whatever was so bad, so close to our wedding, I didn’t want to hear it.
As if she knew, she lifted her head, for a moment looking into my eyes as if searching for something.
“I’m sorry,” she said, glancing momentarily away. Managing a glimmer of a smile. “It’s just wedding nerves, catching up with me.”
“Where were you today? I was worried,” I said quietly. “I thought for a minute there, you’d changed your mind.”
The smallest sigh came from her. “I would never, never do that,” she said. “Look at me, Noah. Believe me. I want to be with you, more than anything in the world.”
I looked into her eyes, knowing I believed her, fighting an irrational desire to keep my arms round her, terrified that if I didn’t, I’d lose her.
* * *
I knew something was wrong, but no matter how many times I asked, she wouldn’t tell me. Not even much later, when we were in bed, and she couldn’t sleep, and simply lay there, staring up at the ceiling.
“You do love me, Noah? No matter what?”
It was what we always said to each other. No matter what.
“Hmmm.” I pulled her closer, my earlier unease dissipating slightly.
“You know I love you, too? No matter what?” I thought I heard her say, but much later, when I tried to remember, I was never sure. I should have stayed awake that night, kept my arms tight around her, got her to talk to me, told her that whatever was wrong, we were strong. We’d survive. But instead, I slept, then awoke the next morning to find her sitting on the bed.
“Hey . . .” She had her back to me. Still drowsy, I reached for her, wanting to pull her back into bed, feel her warmth against me. Then suddenly noticing she was dressed, I pulled myself upright.
“April? Honey? Are you all right?”
She didn’t reply, but as she turned, the look on her face chilled me.
18
Afterward, when I played her words back in my head, I told myself there’d been a mistake. A misunderstanding. It couldn’t have happened. We were getting married. But my denial was replaced by shock when I remembered her face, ashen, as she told me.
This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.
As she spoke, her words stopped my heart, as a numbness started in my brain, flowing through my body.
Something’s happened, Noah.
Her voice was quiet, full of sadness, as she went on.
I can’t marry you.
Trying to make sense of what she was saying, my brain was unable to take it in. We were getting married. Tomorrow. The hotel was booked, the guests had accepted. We couldn’t cancel. Not now.
I wouldn’t make you happy, Noah. Not if you knew.
I begged her to stop. It didn’t matter what had happened, or what she’d done, I told her. I loved her enough to forgive her anything. But before she could reply, the doorbell rang and she went to answer it. Pulling on pajamas as fast as I could, I rushed after her. But by the time I got there, she’d gone.
Now, in a state of shock, I was overwhelmed with the need to find her. I fumbled with my phone, frantically calling her, forced to listen as each time it went to voicemail.
My voice was shaking as I poured my heart into a string of desperate messages, telling April it didn’t matter what she’d done, it was past, behind us and there was nothing that would stop me from loving her. Until there was no more space, by which time I’d run out of words.
I remember little after that, just that I sat, unable to move, unaware of time passing. I never asked who told him. Where he got a key. Later I assumed it was April, or maybe Bea, but I was still sitting in the same place, staring at the table, when Will quietly let himself in.
I felt his hand on my shoulder, then heard him pull out the chair opposite. For once, he didn’t talk, just sat in silence with me, while I held the phone as though my life depended on it.
I don’t remember how long we stayed like that, neither of us moving, just that it was Will who eventually spoke.
“Noah? Mate, I know this is hard. But we need to call the hotel.”
It was as if my insides were gripped by a giant hand. “I can’t. . . .” The hand twisted. “Not without talking to her. I need to find her, Will. You have to help me.”
He glanced at the phone I was still clutching tightly.
“She doesn’t mean it.” My face was wet with tears, but I didn’t care. “She can’t. This is a terrible mistake—but that’s all it is. If I talk to her, she’ll see that. I know she will. . . .”
Across the table from me, Will rested his head in his hands. Then he told me she’d asked him to come here. It was over. She wasn’t coming back.
Spoken out loud, there was a finality in his words that in my shocked state I didn’t question.
“I’m sorry, mate. Very sorry. Look, I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but you need to let the hotel know.”
I never asked him why. I thought of the day April and I had so carefully planned, looked forward to for so long. Getting up, I went across to the window, looked out on yet another perfect summer’s morning, still unable to take it in.
Will must have understood. “I’ll do it for you—if you like.”
Leaving the phone on the table, I went outside at that point. To hear him tell them the wedding was canceled was more than I could cope with. I heard him call my mother’s care home, and Bea. Then between them, Bea and Will began calling our guests.
* * *
I remember little about the days that followed. In a word, my world had imploded. Nothing existed outside my grief. I had no plan, no solution, and, I believed, no future, because April had taken it with her. It was as my mind comprehended this, I gave up. From the moment I woke up, I drank, until my vision blurred and pain dulled, until I collapsed into unconsciousness. Anesthetizing my mind, every cell in my body, day in and day out, until one morning when I wasn’t expecting him, Will came round.
“If you carry on like this, you’ll fucking kill yourself,” he told me. “It’s ten o’clock in the morning, man—and you’re plastered.”
“You have no idea,” I threw back at him, then took another slug of whisky, not caring. “You have no idea how this feels.”
“Yeah. Right.”
“You’re fucking single, Will.” Taking another swig, completely missing his sarcasm. “You screw a different girl every week. That’s nothing like me and April.” Just saying her name sent another stab of pain through me.
My glass empty again, I reached for the bottle. But this time, Will was quicker than I, grabbing it, across the room in seconds and pouring it down the sink.
“Don’t be so sure.” His eyes narrowed. “You’ve been so caught up in your perfect little world, mate, you don’t know the half of it.”
Just like with Bea, I wasn’t listening. Not to his allusion to what were possibly his own problems, nor that somewhere along the line maybe I’d missed something. This was my tragedy—not Will’s.
“Do you know how many times I’ve lost her, Will? And every time, she came back? This time, she won’t, though. I know she won’t.” My voice choked, my body shaking with unsuppressed emotion.
“Poor Noah,” Will mocked. “Welcome to the real world. She said it herself. She was keeping something from you. Anyway, didn’t you ever ask her where she went?”
In my alcoholic haze, I missed it—that he knew April would disappear.
“We knew everything about each other,” I hurled at him, my pain translated into anger. “Everything that counted. You don’t understand because you’ve never had a relationship like that. Most people haven’t.”
Will shook his head. “You’re completely deluded. You have no idea, do you?” His words were loaded with cynicism.
I stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, man. You need to w
ake up to yourself. You want the truth?”
As he spoke, I heard his condescension, felt his coldness, dimly registering Will didn’t care about me. Not really. I didn’t even know why he was there. I felt a wave of hatred for him. But he went on, oblivious.
“She was with other blokes. The whole time. You didn’t know that, did you? Your perfect little April’s nothing but a cheap slut. Think yourself lucky you found out now. . . .”
I was drunk, but I felt each word tear deeper into me, until I couldn’t take any more. He hadn’t finished his sentence when I got to my feet and took a swing at him, punching him as hard as I could, in the mouth.
“Fuck . . .” Will bent over, his face white, his hands splattered with blood that was dripping onto the kitchen floor. “You’re a bastard, Noah.”
“Get out,” I told him, suddenly sober. “Or I’ll fucking kill you.” My body was tense, my fists clenched involuntarily. I meant every word.
“Bathroom,” Will muttered, ignoring me as he staggered toward it.
But I blocked the way. “Just get the fuck out.”
He stood up, still holding his jaw, as if weighing up whether I meant it, before picking up his keys and walking out.
Once he was gone, I sat there, hearing his words over and over, fury raging through me. Will was wrong. He had to be. Now I heard what I’d missed the first time round, gripped by shock’s icy chill. Who was he to know where April went? How would he know? But it was all lies, I tried to convince myself, my trust pitted by silent doubts.
I poured myself a drink, then another, remembering the day before she left. The look in her eyes as she told me she wanted to be with me more than anything. How I’d believed her. Those long walks she used to take, preferring to be alone . . . It had never entered my mind that she might be meeting someone. In my naivety, I’d believed everything she told me.
I hurled my glass at the wall, and suddenly I was out of control, throwing everything within reach, the sound of shattering glass and china fueling me on. Whatever had happened to make her leave, April had loved me. There was a reason she’d left like this. There had to be. When I found her, she’d explain—I knew she would. I loved her. I could forgive her anything. Not Will, though. He’d been jealous, all along. He couldn’t bear the existence of my happiness.
If it was just that, I could have forgiven him, too. But I couldn’t. After the way he’d spoken about April, I never would.
19
The wave had broken, hurling me into seething, boiling depths in which I plummeted to the bottom. Indeterminate days passed, during which I wallowed, wanting to drown, imagining a release from misery. But I’d reached that lowest point from which I found myself slowly, unwillingly, inevitably drifting upward.
When I sobered up and confronted what I’d done to the house, I realized also, much as I hated admitting it, Will had been right—but about one thing only. I didn’t know April as well as I thought. If I had, she wouldn’t have gone.
I’d been aware of the shadow that followed her; but I’d been too happy, on the crest of my wave, hadn’t questioned once, Why? But it was love that had done that to me. Love, its palette of warmth and color and light, painting rosy-tinted brushstrokes into every corner of my life; now it was buried under the ugly shade of bitterness. I’d made a mistake. I’d trusted April. It was a mistake I wouldn’t make twice.
After cleaning up the house, remorselessly mopping up Will’s blood from where it had congealed on the kitchen floor, I threw out the empty bottles, returned wedding gifts, and discovered how expensive canceling a wedding was. I made no attempt to contact Will. Bea came round once or twice—sweet Bea, who was always April’s friend and oddly awkward now that she’d gone. But whatever Bea knew, she remained fiercely loyal to April and wouldn’t be drawn.
“I know it probably doesn’t feel like it, but perhaps it wasn’t meant to be,” she said quietly, as we sipped tea from cups and saucers she’d found in the kitchen, which I didn’t recognize. Maybe an unreturned wedding gift, something else I hadn’t known about.
Even if she was right, it was too soon to hear her say that. “But I keep thinking of all those times, Bea. We broke up before, you know that, but somehow we always ended up together.”
I was still hanging on, desperate for her to offer even the smallest shred of hope.
“Oh, Noah. Darling . . .” Putting down her cup, Bea sighed. “I do know she loved you. Really loved you—in her way. For what it’s worth.”
“She should have talked to me, Bea. We could have worked out whatever was troubling her. I know we could.”
Bea shook her head unhappily. “Do you know what I think? You loved each other. But sometimes, love isn’t enough. Isn’t that desperately sad?”
“No,” I said, stung. “You’re wrong. Love, real love, like April and I had, can conquer anything.” Even now, I still believed that. Then I looked at her.
“Is that what she thought? She told you, didn’t she, Bea? Why?”
She shook her head again. “Don’t, Noah. She’s my friend.”
“If she did, you have to tell me, Bea. Please.”
Hearing the note of desperation in my voice, and sensing my rising panic, she glanced at her watch. “Oh my, is that the time?”
Bea reached for her handbag. But as she got up to go, I was across the room, beside her, grasping her arms.
“Bea . . . I’m asking you . . . Begging you . . . Please tell me. . . .”
“Noah! Please. You’re hurting me.” She pulled away from me, a look of fear crossing her face.
Ashamed, I released her, stepping back. “Sorry . . . Sorry, Bea. I don’t know what came over me.”
But already pulling on her jacket, she headed for the door.
“Bea . . . Please. Wait . . . ,” I called after her.
Her hand on the latch, she paused, her voice shaky as she composed herself. “Let her go, Noah. Move on. Now I must go, darling, I’m so sorry.”
* * *
In the aftermath, I oscillated between reluctant acceptance and devastation, battling through long days at work, only to come home to a house that resounded with loneliness, where every mug and every cushion was a reminder of what I’d lost, where my escape was to drink. It was only time; long, lonely months that forced me to accept the truth I denied for so long. April wasn’t coming back.
There were no letters or calls, no messages, inferred or otherwise to be delivered by Bea or Will or anyone else, not that either of them was speaking to me. Nor was there any sense in trying to find her. No one nearby had heard from her, and after the wedding was called off, mutual friends had drifted away on the tide of my embarrassment.
I was alone.
Ella
“Hi, Ella. How are you?”
“Hi. I’m good.” Slipping into the chair opposite the ugly painting, which has become less ugly and more funny now I’ve seen it a few times.
“Did your mother bring you today?” She flicks through some papers on her desk before coming to sit with me.
“No. She’s away. Italy, I think.” I screw up my face because I’ve lost track of where she is, Dubrovnik, Paris, Florence all merged into a monthlong euro-blur.
“Gabriela did.” Slipping up. She didn’t ask.
Her lips twitch slightly. Ha. I always knew it was a game. Then she sits back and crosses her ankles. I find myself staring at the small crescent moon tattooed on one of them.
Sensing my gaze, she uncrosses them. “I know. It’s bad for my circulation. So what would you like to talk about?”
That’s a new one. What does she want me to say?
I shrug. “Don’t know. Whatever.” It’s her show, not mine.
She’s quiet for a moment. Then she says quite quietly, “Can I level with you? I’m puzzled. You’re smart, Ella. You seem incredibly perceptive. I don’t buy it—that you don’t get on with your mother. Not per se. You might have your differences, about who you should hang out with and how she thinks you should
spend your time . . .”
Her silence tells me she’s worked it out. My heart a little bird trapped in a cage, as I sit there.
“I’m wondering, if maybe, there’s something else.”
“You’re forgetting one thing,” I tell her, slumping in my chair, folding my arms tight around me, because it’s a step too far and she’s forgetting the rules. I came here for a reason—my mother’s reason. She can’t make me talk about anything else.
“It wasn’t my idea to come here.”
She nods. “I know. But you could have wriggled out of it by now—if you really wanted to. You’ve just told me your mother’s away; how would she know you skipped a week? I might be wrong . . . but I’m guessing you have your own reason for coming to see me. A really good one.”
Okay. She’s challenging me. But as she speaks, I hear something unfamiliar in her voice, feeling surprise, then something stronger that gives me goose bumps, as I realize.
She cares. She actually cares. I don’t know how to feel, just stare at my hands in my lap, where I’m picking at one of my fingernails, feeling the lump in my throat, shocked to find my eyes full of tears.
Swallowing, as she says gently, “Am I right?”
I don’t meet her eyes. Feel my head nod, once, on its own.
She doesn’t do anything. Just lets me sit, blinking away tears. Why did she have to do this? When everything is already complicated.
It’s my own fault. I shouldn’t have looked inside that drawer. But I had to.
And I wish I hadn’t, but I can’t tell her.
Because if I do, then everyone will know.
20
2016
In the hospital, I watch April through the blinds, still caught in a past that lingers beside me, as heavy footsteps get louder then come to a stop, and I’m jolted back to the present.
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