bags, desperately trying to employ some of the tricks that helped to
alleviate it all: concentrating on the feeling of his feet against the floor; listing in his head five things he could hear, smell and see;
focusing on the reality around him.
But none of it worked.
He stepped outside, on to the busy street, where he dialled the
number and listened as it connected – but instead of Esme’s voice
on the other end, Tom got her voicemail message. He dialled again,
and getting the same result, punched out a text message.
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Call when you can xx
The reply came immediately:
Not now! Busy. Stop calling x
Tom stood still for a moment, while the early-evening city crowd
bustled past him in the rain. He took a deep breath, but it felt as
though the air couldn’t reach his lungs.
Just ignore it, he told himself. He wanted to ignore it, but didn’t
know how.
This was it.
As the rain worsened, Tom dropped his phone into his pocket
and retreated back inside, where Louisa was waiting for him at their
table with an empty glass in front of her.
‘Everything okay?’ she asked, as Tom took a seat.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Carry on’
‘Oh right,’ she said, clearly put out by how blunt he was being.
Tom thought about apologising for being rude. But was too
distracted. To the extent that he barely listened as she went through
it all – her marriage, divorce, kids, house. Occasionally he nodded
and forced a smile, before he stopped her abruptly.
‘Can I get you another drink?’ he asked.
‘Please. G and T. Probably shouldn’t have too many more before
I go on. But fuck it. We’re only the warm-up, eh?’
Tom smiled, grabbed her glass and made for the bar. He ordered
Louisa’s gin and tonic without so much as looking at the barman.
Instead, he was fixated on the high-up optics. Some of the bottles
were familiar, some new to him after years off the game. He could
sense what he was about to do, as if he was somewhere else in the
room, watching himself do it. Finally, all good reason to say no – to
stop on the precipice and turn back – had dissolved.
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It was too late. There was no stopping him.
‘Gin and tonic, please,’ Tom said. ‘And . . .’ Both his voice and
the twenty-pound note in his hand shaking. ‘I’ll have a whisky and
ginger.’
‘Any particular whisk—’
‘No. Any,’ he said quickly.
Tom watched as the barmaid poured the drinks, then handed
over the money.
‘I thought you were teetotal?’ Louisa said, her eyes on the glass
in front of him. He studied his drink, beaded with condensation.
It pooled on the table. A single slice of lime bobbed merrily among
ice cubes.
‘I was for a little while,’ he lied, unable to meet her eyes. ‘I have
a few every now and then, though.’
‘In that case,’ she said, innocently oblivious to what was happen-
ing in front of her. She raised her glass. ‘To old friends.’
They clinked, she smiled, and Tom drained his glass.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Midday – 1 pm
THE WRONG TIME TO TALK
April 2017 – Camden Town, London
Looking up at the red bricks of his old building, Tom wondered
who might be living in the studio now. Whoever it was would likely
have no idea of what that small room meant to others who’d passed
through it. For Tom it signified a turning point: his first move away
from Lowestoft, aged just twenty-two, his parents having driven him
down to London in a small yet still sparsely filled van they’d rented
solely for the occasion. Tom knew that he was taking a step out on
his own and that in doing so he was taking a big risk.
For two years after his attempted suicide brought about a rushed,
early exit from university, he had been living in his old room, picking up bits of work as a covers musician and teacher. It was a life of
parts: the child driven to medical appointments by a harried, worried
mother; the adult seeking independence; the boy in recovery, unsure
if he would ever feel able to cope with it all. So when he put his
key into his own front door for the first time, it was perhaps more
significant a moment than the impatient, pimpled estate agent could
ever have imagined.
This was Tom Murray 2.0. Sober. Hopeful. Nervous.
He thought back to his tearful mother on that day, about to leave
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her son alone and only able to keep repeating the words ‘you’ll be alright’ – as much to reassure herself as him.
He had gone to Camden today after a therapy session in nearby
Chalk Farm, ostensibly to remind himself of what Annabel had told
him all those years ago:
There are always reasons to live, Tom. You just have to remind yourself of what they are.
He wanted more than anything to confirm in his own mind that
he couldn’t knowingly do to Esme what he had done to his best
friend all those years ago; that he would never let her be the one to
find him on the floor, with that ugly slick of vomit trailing from
his mouth. Having her be the one to call his parents to say that it’d
happened again, and that, maybe this time, he’d been successful.
Esme, he knew, had always believed that he had been open with
her. Proactively so. But it wasn’t true. Before every piece of eventual honesty, there had been a withholding; him so desperate to see
her as an answer to his problems that it took him far too long to
understand what the problems actually were.
‘It’s my fault. All of it,’ he had said in his therapy session, talking again about Liverpool, about the relapse. He recited the same story
every week, convinced it could have been prevented if only he had
been honest from the outset.
‘Are you going to tell her?’ Christine, his counsellor, said.
‘It’s too far gone.’
‘Only you can decide if that’s true,’ she said.
Tom started back towards Camden, found a bench on the tow-
path. He took his new phone from his pocket and scrolled through
photos backed up over the last couple of years: Esme on beaches and
in city centres; selfies on Hampstead Heath; meals he had cooked
that looked far better with the naked eye than they did through
the lens of a smartphone. Every one of them had some small story
behind it. A snippet of shared happiness, laughter, fun.
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These, he thought, are the blocks a life is built with.
Moments to be alive for.
To stay alive for.
The photos and the memories they evoked were a catalogue of
why Tom loved Esme and Esme loved Tom. Nights on the couch,
sat next to o
ne another in shabby jogging bottoms and hoodies,
watching cookery talent shows. Mornings in bed pretending to read
broadsheet newspapers.
One of them took him back to New Year’s Eve in 2016. They
had seen in the year together sitting atop Primrose Hill, after dinner at the new Chalk Farm flat Jamilla had bought with her boyfriend,
Chris – a research scientist, whose work looking into blood defects
in cancer treatment always made Tom feel a little inadequate. Around
them on the hill that night the families of North London let off
Chinese lanterns. Parents sipped strong drinks from hip flasks, while
their children ran around and slipped in the mud.
Tom remembered precisely what happened when the hour finally
turned. He and Esme turned to face each other, both sensing that
they were ready to start a new year with a clean slate.
‘I love you. And I’m sorry about everything,’ he’d said, as a lantern
narrowly avoided colliding with a bare tree behind them.
‘I love you too,’ she said. ‘Maybe let’s have fewer sorrys this year?’
They kissed. They embraced. Then, as with of all twenty-first-
century record keepers, she suggested that they take a selfie capturing the fireworks in the distance behind them.
That shot was taken less than six months ago. But it felt like a
lifetime had taken place since. Aside from their familiar faces, they
could be entirely different people. Tom remembered an article he’d
read about how the human body supposedly completed total cell
regeneration every seven years; how every seven years each and every
particle is completely different from what it had once been.
So what about the mind and soul? he wondered.
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Barely three weeks on from the selfie they were on an early pregnancy ward. Esme had her scan, where the bad news was confirmed.
When they got home and she went for a nap, Tom locked himself in
the bathroom and sobbed on his knees for fifteen minutes.
When he came out of the bathroom, he pretended none of it
had happened.
Sitting there, overlooking the canal, Tom knew that if they were
going to survive then something had to change.
Before he had a chance to overthink it, he dialled Esme.
‘What are you up to?’ he said, eschewing any sort of polite greet-
ing.
‘Paperwork. Why?’
‘I wondered if you wanted to meet up? I’m in Camden. We could
go for a walk in Regent’s Park, or get a coffee.’
‘Right,’ she said, sounding confused. ‘Tom, is everything alright?’
‘Yes, fine,’ he said, trying to remain upbeat. ‘I just thought . . . I mean, there’s some stuff I want to talk to you about.’
‘Stuff? Do I at least get a clue?’
‘No. No clue.’
‘It’s just you’ve literally never done this before. In ten years of you working at home, and me in town, you have not once suggested we
meet for a coffee in Hampstead.’
‘I know, but—’
‘Sorry. That sounded as though I don’t like the idea. I do. I’m
just, well, surprised I suppose.’
‘I was thinking maybe it’s a thing we could do sometimes. Meet
up and that.’
‘I do like how you think a couple meeting up is a new idea.’
‘Do you want to, then?’
‘Okay. Yes. I’ll see you outside the Tube in twenty minutes.’
‘I’l be there,’ Tom said and hung up the phone, the butterflies
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and vague sickness rising up with the realisation that an imminent conversation could go one of two ways.
Since he had arrived back in London from his trip to Liverpool
with no phone and a raging hangover, Tom had been wondering if
he should tell Esme. He knew that making a mistake did not make
him a bad person. But this was somehow beyond all that.
Tom stood outside Camden Town station. All around him people
buzzed around the shops and cafes, sipping coffee and avoiding the
punks giving out flyers for gigs. A celebrity he vaguely recognised (a TV character actress, or perhaps a gameshow host?) passed in front
of him, and a busker playing the violin warbled the open strains of
an Oasis song.
It was a bright, sunny spring day – the kind that tricks people
into putting on their summer clothes.
Tom himself was a little cold in his dark green T-shirt, jeans and
a button-less cardigan, but had nonetheless decided to get off the
Tube a stop early at Belsize Park to enjoy the walk up the hill.
Esme was uncharacteristically late, and so he re-opened his email.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
02/04/2017
Re: Sorry
Hey Tom,
Look, I don’t know how many times. YOU DON’T HAVE TO
KEEP APOLOGISING TO ME.
I know something bad was going on with you that night.
I’m just glad I was there to help. To be honest I’m sorry for
making you think that . . . that happened. I wanted to sleep on the couch but I have this shit back problem and I really
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can’t. Even had my funny expensive pillow with me in my room (I know – getting OLD).
Anyway. How are you Tom? I know it all went a bit shit but it
was really nice to see you up in Liverpool. It’s been a while. I
really hope we can keep in touch.
Lou x
PS: FYI I am NOT Louisa McTell anymore. Just using my old
email address. Last bit of post-divorce admin. Louisa Scott is
very much back in the game.
He hadn’t replied yet. The question ‘How are you?’ had become
so difficult to answer in recent weeks that it was easier not to.
‘Texting other girls already? Jesus, I’m only five minutes late,’
Esme said.
Tom turned around, hurriedly closing the email app, locking his
phone and shoving it into his back pocket, before properly looking
up at Esme. Although he noticed the change, it took him a second
to really process it.
‘Your hair?’ he said, to which she nodded. ‘Bloody hell, Es.
When?’
‘Well I might have lied about having an early appointment today.
And I might have taken the morning off to visit the hairdresser.’
‘Today, then?’
‘Well, if it was yesterday I’d have hoped you’d have noticed.’
‘Yes, stupid. Sorry,’ he said, staring at her, taking it in. In the time they’d been together, Esme had never had more than a variation on
the same shoulder-length, slightly wavy haircut. And now the vast
majority of that was gone.
‘Tom, I’m quite aware that you’ve not said if you like it or not.’
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‘Oh . . . shit. Sorry. No. I love it. It’s, like . . . really . . . I don’t know. Really . . .’
‘Short? It’s called a pixie cut,’ she said, straightening the fringe a little, unable to stop messing a hand through it.
‘Well yes, short. But it suits you.’
‘Really?’ Esme sa
id, turning to look at herself in the window of
the dry cleaners’ window. ‘It’s a bit drastic, isn’t it?’
‘Good though,’ Tom said, with what he hoped was a reassuring
tone.
‘ Good drastic rather than bad drastic?’
‘Exactly. How long had you been planning to . . .’ Tom began,
unsure of what he was going to say.
‘Since the weekend. But I thought I’d surprise you.’
Esme smiled and kissed Tom full on the lips. Then took his hand
and led him away from the station, across the busy crossroads that
led them towards the park. As they walked, Tom began to feel that
today might not be the right time to talk. She was too happy and
upbeat, turning her own corner. To bring her down would be selfish.
But then, if he put it off now, the stone would only gather more
moss. Was it better to get it out of the way with?
After a few minutes of walking together in silence, Esme spoke
again.
‘Sorry if I sounded a bit grumpy earlier. About coming to meet
you.’
‘It’s fine.’
‘It isn’t really, though. I’m glad you suggested it. I remember when
we first started going out,’ she began. ‘We used to wander around
here almost every Sunday. I’d wonder who could actual y afford to
live in those big stupid mansions in the park. Then you’d complain
that there were never enough seats in the nice cafes, and we’d end
up in that dodgy little pub by the station.’
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‘There is nothing wrong with The World’s End. And they served a delicious hot chocolate.’
‘It was powder from a packet, and we only ever went there so
you could watch the football over my shoulder. I think they called
it The World’s End for a reason. Anyway. I’m just trying to say that
this was a nice idea.’
‘Good,’ and just as Tom was about to continue, about to use a
sombre, serious ‘look, Esme’ to pivot from nicety to gravity, Esme
spoke again.
‘While we’re here, I think it’s probably a good time to talk.’ She
was looking down at her dark-blue Converse All Stars, scuffing the
path and sending tiny stones scuttling around them.
‘Right,’ Tom said, apprehensively.
‘I think we both know that this year has been pretty shit. And
maybe that for a while before things weren’t that great either.’
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