How I Lose You

by Kate McNaughton

  Eva’s father folded up his paper. This was a subject he felt confident talking about: the tale of his investigations and phone calls, the reassuring facts of what had been said to whom when, what bureaucratic obstacles were being put in his way. They were all relieved by it – it was something tangible everyone could focus on together.

  ‘Not a huge amount, I’m afraid. You wouldn’t believe the administrative hoops I’ve had to jump through …’

  Knives cutting through Adam’s flesh. His body on a cold, steel slab. His body in that black bag. His body, in the sense of corpse, not in the sense of ‘Ooh, he’s got a nice body.’

  His – yes, his corpse.

  An autopsy, just like on TV. Life had become as unreal and preposterous as TV.

  ‘He still thinks it was most probably a heart attack, but they’re still not sure what caused it, or rather, he wouldn’t really tell me anything – he said we have to wait for the final results. I’m going to keep pressing him to keep us updated, though. It’s unbelievable how long it’s all been taking.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Henry, come with me for a sec. I’d like to give you something.’

  Everyone looked surprised – it was true Eva spoke little these days. The sound of her voice had a rusty, foreign edge to it, even to her. Henry nodded wordlessly, and they both rose to their feet. Often – well, all the time, really – she felt as though she were floating, as though the world around her had taken on a strange, unreal texture, like a cross between cotton wool and porridge: sounds seemed dampened and distant, and her movements felt slowed, as if she were pushing through something thicker than air, and everything looked hazy. Often she felt as though she were the one who had become a ghost – she, and everyone else around her – and Adam was the only person who was actually made of flesh and blood.

  Eva and Henry floated down the corridor and into the bedroom. Henry sat down on the bed and looked around with distant eyes, as though he too were watching the world through a gauze-like veil. Eva closed the door, and felt the strange new breed of intimacy this gesture created between her and her old friend: it wrapped them both in their own sorrow, sent it reverberating around the room with nowhere to escape to.

  Henry let his shoulders sag.

  ‘I still can’t believe it, Eva.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘…’

  ‘…’

  ‘It’s just … I don’t know. Feels like it can’t possibly be real.’

  ‘…’

  ‘…’

  Eva let herself slip to the floor, her back against the heavy wood of the wardrobe, the thick carpet dense and comforting beneath her: all the warmth and solidity of home, and yet she felt as if she had been cast out into a windy and unforgiving sea.

  Henry looked around at the wardrobe, the carpet, the window.

  ‘It’s weird, I look at this room, and I remember – do you remember, when we brought the bed in here?’

  ‘It would be difficult to forget it …’

  ‘Yeah. The thing was a fucking nightmare. But, you know – I just remember Adam being so happy that you guys finally had a place of your own, how proud he was that we were having to break our backs hoiking this solid oak bed around … It feels like it was just yesterday, and now this … It’s just so … It’s so unfair.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s so unfair.’

  ‘…’

  ‘Eva, I … There’s something I need to talk to you about.’

  ‘Sure …’

  ‘I … I can’t stop thinking that maybe it’s because of the coke. That Adam – that he died.’

  ‘But they’ve already told us it’s not – right at the start. They said the quantities they found in his blood were minimal.’

  ‘But what if he – I don’t know – had a really low tolerance to it? I mean – a heart attack …’

  ‘They’ve already said that amount of coke wouldn’t have affected someone with a healthy heart – that there has to have been something underlying. Besides, it’s not like Adam had never taken coke in the past.’

  ‘It’s not like he took it every weekend either, though. And it was my fault – I’m the one who took you guys to that party. I’m the one who …’

  ‘…’

  ‘I mean, I basically just took a line to impress my colleagues. I didn’t even feel like it. I was just like, I don’t know, oh God these cool young new traders, I don’t want them to think I’m some boring, straight-laced old …’

  ‘Well, Adam took his own decision to do a line too. Probably for similar reasons.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t, though.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be so sure about that.’

  ‘But I took you guys to the party. What if I hadn’t invited you, Eva? He might still be with us now.’

  ‘What if I’d woken up while he was having the heart attack rather than hours after?’

  ‘…’

  ‘What if it had happened while he was working, surrounded by colleagues who could have reanimated him right away? What if he’d had a check-up with a cardiologist that time he did a triathlon and felt a bit weird afterwards? What if his GP had realized it might be a sign of something serious?’

  ‘…’

  ‘There are so many what ifs. We could drive ourselves crazy with what ifs.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Eve. I’m not trying to make this about me. I just keep looking back and wishing there was something I could have done differently, something that would have prevented it …’

  ‘I know. So do I.’

  ‘…’

  ‘Nothing is your fault, Henry. Nothing is anybody’s fault.’

  ‘…’

  ‘…’

  ‘I talked to our priest about it at the weekend, you know.’

  ‘About the coke thing?’

  ‘No, I … I can’t really bring myself to even think about that, to be honest – I just wanted to talk to you about it because … because I don’t want you to think I’m shirking my responsibilities. If I’ve had any part to play in this, I’ll … I’ll face up to it.’

  ‘…’

  ‘…’

  ‘So what did you talk to your priest about?’

  ‘Just about – well. About Adam being … gone.’

  ‘Was he any help?’

  ‘Not really. I just don’t understand how God could let something like this happen.’

  ‘But you knew these things happen, Henry. Worse things, even. Children die.’

  ‘Yes, but – you know. It’s easier to accept, when you’re talking in a general sense, that the world has to be like this. That we have to be tried somehow. But when it actually happens … and Adam was such a good man. A fundamentally good man.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘…’

  ‘What did your priest say?’

  ‘Well. You know. That God moves in mysterious ways. That I was allowed to be challenged by it, that it’s only through being challenged that our faith becomes stronger. And we talked a lot about Adam. About how he had lived a good life, and that its being short didn’t take meaning away from that.’

  ‘…’

  ‘Eva – can I ask you something? It may be a difficult question – I don’t know.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘How do you cope with this, not being religious? I don’t know how I’d manage if I didn’t have my faith to hold on to.’

  ‘But you’ve just said it challenged your faith.’

  ‘Well, yes – it has. But … It’s hard to explain. I feel my faith in God has been shaken, but that doubt, those uncertainties, that anger – they’re still directed at him. It’s like – I don’t know, it’s like being a teenager and rejecting your parents, rather than being an orphan and not having any parents to reject.’

  ‘It gives you a framework for those emotions.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so. And I feel less alone with it. I feel like what I’m going through is in a dialogue with someone.
Even when God isn’t answering me – at least there’s someone doing the not-answering.’

  ‘I – I don’t know if I can really get my head around what you’re describing. I’ve just never had that sort of belief. I’m not sure I can imagine what it would be like.’

  ‘…’

  ‘Do you think Adam is still here, Henry? That you’ll meet him again?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I think I do. I mean, not in a simple way – and I have moments when I question it, when I’m so angry with God I want to reject it all. But yes. I think his soul is still there, somewhere. I can feel his presence … Sitting here now, I can feel he’s here.’

  ‘So can I. But I’m not sure what I’m feeling is an immortal soul. It could just be our memories, our love for him.’

  ‘You don’t believe you will ever meet him again?’

  ‘I just – I can’t. I can’t make myself believe that. I wish I could.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

  ‘No, it’s fine. Everything upsets me these days anyway.’

  ‘…’

  ‘Oh. Henry.’

  Eva got up, and again the world felt opaque, dense, around her. She opened Adam’s half of the wardrobe, where his shirts and suits hung like faint echoes of him.

  ‘I was thinking, looking at you just now …’

  Henry got up and came to stand beside Eva; they both contemplated these sad, textile relics.

  ‘I was thinking, there’s this coat Adam bought …’

  She pulled it off the rack, her hand faltering slightly under its deadweight.

  ‘It was too big for him, we were going to go and change it – but I think it would probably fit you fine.’

  ‘Oh. Eva. Are you sure? I …’

  ‘I think it would be nice for you to have it.’

  Henry slipped into the coat, the thick wool seeming to take on a personality of its own with this flesh and bone to fill it out. It fitted him perfectly. On Adam, it had looked faintly ridiculous, as though he had eaten one of the cakes from Alice in Wonderland and shrunk a few sizes.

  ‘It looks nice.’

  Henry sized himself up in the mirror.

  ‘Thanks, Eve. If you’re sure, I … This would mean a lot to me.’

  Eva felt the tears well up in her eyes and the world drown out around her, and Henry take her in an awkward embrace, his arms made stiff by the dense wool of his fine new coat.

  THERE ARE SO many ways to die.

  You might miss the lights changing and step out under a revving engine. You might get stabbed in the liver by a maniac, get caught in the crossfire of a shootout, fly through the windscreen of a crashing car, be sitting on an exploding plane. You might stop off for lunch on a whim and get fatal food poisoning from the chicken soup. You might be having a shower and slip and bang your head against the murderous enamel.

  There are even, you have discovered, many ways to die in your sleep. You might take an aspirin before going to bed and bleed painlessly, internally, until everything has emptied from your veins. You might have had an aneurysm in your brain waiting to rupture your whole life. You might have mistakenly overdosed on any number of illegal drugs, or deliberately overdosed on any number of legal ones. Yes, you might have wanted to die, without your family or your friends or your wife ever suspecting that you were terribly, terminally desperate. Or you might, as it eventually turned out Adam did, have had a heart that was too large, too thick with muscle fibre, so that eventually your big, big heart just stopped beating. You could, like Adam, have had a mechanical defect that extinguished you, your laugh, your smile, your soul, out of existence. Because life is that fragile, and there are so, so many ways to die.

  THEY TUMBLE ON to the train just as its doors are beeping shut, out of breath, clammy from their dash to the platform. Adam heads straight to a free table and creates a mound of backpack, Saturday newspaper, water bottle, snacks, on the seat by the aisle. When he turns towards her, to check she’s following him, Eva is filled with wonder: look at him. Look at how beautiful he is. Those wild, golden locks, those vibrant blue eyes, his panting smile at having made the train after all, and them being together on it, and this summery weather – look at him. He waits for her in the aisle, grinning in the midst of these tired commuters, reaching to the seats for support with a grimace of exaggerated surprise as the train lurches forward, and Eva laughs as she is thrown into his arms. She clutches his firm, slender waist and breathes in the wonderful smell of him. He kisses her. Sometimes, when they kiss, she finds herself wishing there was something she could do to get even closer to him, because even when they’re kissing, their lips and tongues stay separate from each other, there is still a point where one of them ends and the other begins. Sometimes she wishes she could clamber into him, be a part of him completely.

  ‘Excuse me.’

  There is a man behind them with a briefcase and decades of weariness weighing on his shoulders. He looks at them without animosity from within the confines of his suit: he merely needs to get past them, get home, get changed into something more amenable to these sweltering temperatures.

  ‘Sorry!’

  Adam clambers over his mountain of stuff into the window seat, and Eva takes the one opposite him. They reach out with their feet, entwine their legs. Ever since they started going out, they have needed to touch each other – look at him. How could you see Adam, and not want to reach out your hand to run it through his hair, or across his cheek, or down his arm? How could you be sitting across from him in a train carriage and not need to feel your foot nestle into the side of his knee?

  They share out bits of newspaper, and before long Adam has fallen asleep and Eva is watching him as his head rolls with the unpredictable movements of the train, his face splattered with shifting light from the sun shining through the trees outside. She wishes she could climb over the table and melt her body into his; she wishes she could see what dreams are prompting the twitches and subtle shifts of expression that pass over his face. She marvels at the density of Adam, that he is a being of flesh and blood in front of her, who she would be able to smell if she leaned forward, whose body heat she can feel under the sole of her bare foot.

  Adam slowly stirs awake, and smiles.

  ‘What you looking at?’

  ‘You, you sexy devil.’

  Adam yawns and stretches. Eva watches his arm curl out into a tense, straight line, the fibre of muscles flexing underneath his skin, the golden hue his forearms have begun to develop since the sun started to come out.

  ‘Aah. I’m really looking forward to meeting your parents, Eve.’

  ‘Really? Why’s that?’

  ‘Dunno – just curious to see the old blocks you’ve been chipped from, I guess.’

  Adam beams, and looks contentedly out of the window, while Eva feels a flush of anxiety surge up within her: what if her dad starts chewing Adam’s ear off with a long exposition of the latest negotiations that have been animating the local council? What if her mum is, well, weird? What if Adam sees how limited the horizons of her life have been until she went to university, and is disappointed in her?

  ‘Seriously. I feel I should warn you.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Just – my parents. They can be so lame sometimes.’

  ‘Hey, if you want lame, I have lame. My mum goes to flower shows and listens to Phil Collins.’

  ‘Your mum’s, like, a barrister! That’s pretty cool. And she wears all those Yves Saint Laurent suits.’

  ‘She has one Yves Saint Laurent suit. The rest are all Marks and Spencer’s, probably. And come on – Phil Collins. I bet your mum listens to Kraftwerk or something.’

  ‘All I’m saying is I think you need to lower your expectations. And also, for the record, I am nothing like my parents.’

  ‘I bet that’s not true.’

  ‘Well, I just mean – if you think they’re lame, don’t assume I’m lame too.’

  ‘I would never assume that. I think
you’re amazing.’

  ‘Hold on to that thought.’

  Eva’s dad is waiting for them in the station car park. He is standing next to the car, and they both look so small: him, the car. He needs a haircut, too: his hair is wispy, flying around in the wind. He exclaims in exaggerated joy when he sees them: ‘Aha!’ – like bloody Alan Partridge or something – and bustles over, shakes Adam’s hand nervously.

  ‘And you must be Adam. Lovely to meet you.’

  ‘Lovely to meet you too, Mr Bard.’

  ‘Hello, darling.’

  ‘Hi, Dad.’

  Eva gives him a brief, awkward kiss on the cheek. She can feel her face flush.

  ‘So! Can I take any of that off you, Adam?’

  Her father grabs for one of the bags hanging off Adam’s arm and sends the newspaper flying out of his hand. It spreads in mid-air, shedding adverts and supplements. The heavier items fall to the ground, while the lighter ones blow over the car park in erratic gusts.

  ‘Oh dear. Oh sorry. Oh shit.’

  ‘Oh, er – no, well, don’t worry …’

  Adam is frozen to the spot, both arms encumbered by the numerous items he has been carrying, trying to prevent anything else from falling to the ground. Eva sets her bag down on the sections of newspaper closest to them, then starts gathering up the ones that are blowing away. Her dad has rushed after one particularly nimble, single sheet, which flutters along a few extra feet every time he reaches out to grab it. He is half bent over, half tottering along, his expansive arse straining against the seat of his trousers.

  ‘Here, grab these, could you?’

  Adam has finally managed to disengage from the plastic bags hanging off his wrists, the rucksack balanced on his shoulder – he thrusts them at Eva, and runs over. His long, slender limbs swing effortlessly through the air: he is like a stag, easily overtaking the slow, boar-like form of her father. Adam swoops in, grabs the guilty piece of paper, says something to Eva’s dad, who says something back to him, and they both laugh, and continue to talk and laugh as they walk back towards Eva, but she can’t hear what they’re saying.