by Rosie Walsh
“So!” she said now. “Eddie reached out to you, right? Everything’s back on track?”
“Actually, no,” I said. “It’s the opposite. He’s back in the world—assuming he went anywhere in the first place—but he’s not replied to any of my messages. He’s cut me dead.”
“Hang on, honey.” I heard the music stop. “Just pausing my movie. Javier, I’m just gonna take this call out on the deck.” I heard the screen door snap shut behind her. “Sorry, Sarah, could you repeat all of that?”
I repeated all of that. Jenni perhaps needed a moment to take on board that my second shot at a love story had gone up in flames.
“Oh, shit.” Jenni never swore. “Really?”
“Really. I’m a bit of a mess. As you can probably tell, it being gone four in the morning over here.”
“Oh, shit,” she said again, and I laughed bleakly. “Tell me everything that’s happened since we last messaged. And step away from that computer, too. You’ve sent some crazy messages in the last few hours.”
I told her everything that had happened.
“So that’s it,” I said, when I got to the end. “I think I’m probably going to have to let him go.”
“No,” she said, a little too sharply. Jenni didn’t like seeing anyone turn their back on love. “Don’t you dare give up. Look, Sarah, I know most folks’ll be telling you to leave that man well alone, but . . . I can’t give up on him yet. I’m as certain as you are that there’s an explanation.”
I smiled briefly. “Such as?”
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “But I’m determined to get to the bottom of it.”
“So was I.”
She laughed. “We’ll figure it out. For now, hang on in there, okay? Which reminds me—how’re you feeling about tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow?”
“Your meeting with Reuben and Kaia. At some film place by the river Thames, right?”
“Reuben’s in London? With his new girlfriend?”
“Uh . . . yes? He said he’d e-mailed to set up coffee tomorrow. Introduce you to Kaia, so you don’t meet for the first time back home in Cali.”
“But why is she in London? Why are either of them in London? I’m meant to be going to back Gloucestershire tomorrow! I—What?”
“Kaia wanted to come,” Jenni said helplessly. “She hasn’t been to London in years. And Reuben already had a flight to London for your vacation together . . .”
I sank back in bed. Of course. Reuben and I had booked tickets to the UK back in January, when we were still playing that lonely game of husband and wife. I came home every year for the anniversary of the accident, and he had often come with me—although it had been a few years since he’d made it. “This year, I will,” he’d promised. “I know how much you miss your sister. I’ll be there for you this year, Sarah.” And so the tickets had been booked.
Then, later, he had asked me for a divorce. “I’ve changed my London flight to a different date,” he’d said, a few days later. He was watching me, face smudged with guilt and sadness. “I didn’t think you’d want me to come with you.”
And I’d said, “Sure, that’s a good idea; thanks for thinking of it.” I didn’t really consider when he might have decided to go instead. In all honesty, I had thought about very little around that time; I had mostly been stretching cautious limbs, flexing tiny new muscles. Experimenting curiously at Life Without Reuben. The ease, the fluidity, the sense of future and space in this brave new world had felt oddly shameful. Where was the mourning?
“He booked a ticket for Kaia,” Jenni said. She wasn’t enjoying this exchange. “I’m sorry. He said he’d e-mailed you.”
“He probably did. I just haven’t got to it yet.” I closed my eyes. “Well, that’ll be cozy. Me, Reuben, Reuben’s new girlfriend.”
Jenni laughed bleakly.
“Sorry,” I said, after a pause. “I wasn’t snapping at you; I’m just shocked. And it’s my own fault anyway. I should have stayed on top of my e-mails.”
I heard her smile. Little offended Jenni. “You’re doing great, honey. Apart from the being up in the middle of the night thing. That could do with some work.”
I closed my eyes. “Oh, God, and I haven’t even asked you how the IVF cycle’s going. Where are you at? How long until they harvest your eggs?”
Jenni paused. “Oh, they did that. I went in last week and they harvested the hell out of me. I sent you a message? On WhatsApp? They implanted three embryos, because it’s my last chance. I’ll find out next week.”
She took a breath as if to say something else, but then stopped. In the silence swung a thousand-ton weight of desperation.
“Jenni,” I said softly. “I’m so sorry. I thought you were still on the ovary stimulation bit. I . . . God, I’m sorry. It excuses nothing, but I am not myself at the moment.”
“I know,” she said brightly. “Don’t feel bad. You’ve been there for me, every cycle. You’re allowed to make one mistake!”
But her voice was too cheerful, and I knew I’d let her down. In the sooty darkness of Zoe’s spare room, I felt my face flush livid with self-loathing.
Jenni replied to something Javier shouted, then said she would have to go soon. “Listen, Sarah, here’s my suggestion,” she said. “I think you should start over with Eddie. Like you’ve just met. Why don’t you send him a letter? Tell him all about yourself, as if you were on a first date? All the things you never had a chance to tell him. Like . . . does he know about the accident? Your sister?”
“Jenni—let’s talk about you. There’s been far too much chat about me and my pathetic life.”
“Oh, honey! I’m taking good care of myself. I’m visualizing and chanting and doing fertility dances and eating all sorts of gross, healthy stuff. That’s all I can do. But there’s plenty you can do.” She paused. “Sarah, I will never forget the day you told me about the accident. It was the most awful thing I ever heard, and it made me love you, Sarah. Really, really love you. I think you should tell Eddie.”
“I can’t send him a sob story to make him change his mind!”
“That’s not what I’m saying. I just think . . .” She sighed. “I just think you should let him get to know you properly. All the parts of you, even the ones you don’t like people seeing. Let him know what an extraordinary woman you are.”
I paused, the phone hot against my cheek. “But, Jenni, I was lucky you reacted the way you did. Not everyone would.”
“I don’t agree.”
I pulled myself up on my pillows. “So . . . He cuts me out for nearly a month and suddenly I start writing to him about my childhood? He’d think I was crazy! Certifiable!”
Jenni chuckled. “He would not. Like I said, he’d fall in love with you. Just like I did.”
I slumped back down again. “Oh, Jenni, who are we trying to kid? I have got to let go of him.”
She burst out laughing.
“Why are you laughing?”
“Because you have no intention of letting go of him!”
“I do!”
“You do not!” She laughed again. “If you wanted to let go of Eddie, if you really wanted to let go, Sarah Mackey, the last person on earth you would have called for advice would have been me.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Day Five: A Beech Tree, a Wellington Boot
Eddie was on the phone to Derek again. I didn’t yet know who Derek was, but I imagined he had something to do with Eddie’s work: Eddie sounded more formal talking to him than he had when a friend called yesterday. Their conversation this afternoon was brief, mostly Eddie saying, “Right,” or “Okay,” or “Sounds like a good idea.” After a few minutes he was done. He went inside to replace the phone.
I was sitting on the bench outside his barn, reading an old copy of Our Man in Havana from his shelf. It turned out that I
still loved reading. I loved that a novelist on the payroll of MI6 had dreamed up a hapless vacuum-cleaner salesman, drafted into the Secret Intelligence Service so that he might better fund the extravagant lifestyle of his beautiful daughter. I loved that I could read about this man for hours and never once pause to overthink my own life. I loved that, with a book in my hand and no urgent need to be anywhere, or to be doing anything, I felt like a Sarah I’d entirely forgotten.
The hot weather had not yet broken, but it would soon—the air was still and curdled, hovering like a bird of prey before attack. My clothes hung motionless on the washing line above a thick cluster of rosebay willowherb, which didn’t move an inch. I yawned, wondered if I should go and check everything was okay at Mum and Dad’s.
I knew I wouldn’t. The second night Eddie and I had gone to bed together, it had become quite clear that we would stay here, in this suspended world, until either my parents came back from Leicester or Eddie went on holiday. I didn’t want to be apart from him even for the hour it would take to walk home and back. The universe I knew had stopped, for now, and I had no desire to bring it back.
From the edge of Eddie’s lawn, the squirrel, Steve, was watching me. “Hi, you criminal,” Eddie said as he came back out. He looked at the squirrel, mimed shooting a gun. Steve didn’t move a muscle.
Eddie sat next to me. “I like you in my clothes,” he smiled, pinging the elastic of his boxer shorts against my side. I was wearing them with a T-shirt of his, worn thin at the shoulders. It smelled of him. I yawned again and reached over to ping his own boxer shorts. I had stubbly legs. Nothing mattered. I was stupid with happiness.
“Shall we go for a walk?” he asked.
“Why not?”
We stayed on the bench for a while, kissing, pinging elastic, laughing about nothing.
* * *
• • •
It was a little after two by the time we set off. I was back in my own clothes, which smelled of Eddie’s washing powder and sunshine.
After a few yards following the river, Eddie left the path and started striding up the hill, into the heart of the wood. Our feet sank deep in the untouched mush of the forest floor. “There’s a thing I wanted to show you up here,” Eddie said. “A bit of a silly thing, but I like to come and check it’s still there from time to time.”
I smiled. “It can be our noteworthy activity for the day.”
We hadn’t completed many noteworthy activities since this affair had begun. We had slept a lot, made love a lot, eaten a lot, talked for hours. Not talked for hours. Read books, spotted birds, made up an extended narrative about a dog who’d nosed around Eddie’s clearing while we’d eaten Spanish tortilla on the bench one day.
In short, even though everything was happening, nothing was happening.
I squeezed his hand as we climbed up through the woods, struck again by the dazzling simplicity of everything. There was birdsong, there was the sound of our breath, and there was the sensation of sinking into the mulch. And, beyond a deep feeling of contentment, there was nothing else. No grief, no guilt, no questions.
We’d walked nearly to the top of the hill when Eddie stopped. “There,” he said, pointing up at a beech tree. “A mystery Wellington.”
It took me a while to see it, but when eventually I did, I laughed. “How did you do that?”
“I didn’t,” he said. “I just spotted it once. I have no idea how it got up there, or who was responsible. In all the years I’ve lived here, I’ve never seen anyone in this part of the woods.”
A very long way up—probably more than sixty feet—a branch, once heading skyward, had been snapped off. A black Wellington boot had been placed over the remaining stump. Since then, a few younger limbs of pale green had grown below, but the trunk was otherwise smooth: impossible to climb.
I stared up at the welly, puzzled by its existence, delighted that Eddie thought it was something he should take me to see. I slid an arm around his middle and smiled. I could feel his breath, his heart, his T-shirt just on the brink of damp after a hot uphill climb. “A proper mystery,” I said. “I like it.”
Eddie mimed throwing a welly a few times but then gave up. It was inconceivable. “I have no idea how they managed it,” he said. “But I love that they did.”
Then he stepped round and kissed me. “Such a silly thing,” he said. “But I knew you’d like it.” His arms wrapped tight around me.
I kissed him back, harder. All I wanted to do was kiss him.
I wondered how I could possibly go back to LA when happiness of this sort was right here. Here, in the place I’d once called home.
Eventually we found ourselves in the leaves without any clothes on.
I had mulch in my hair, probably insects. But I felt only joy. Deep, radial branches of joy.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Dear Eddie,
I’ve thought long and hard about writing this letter. How can I possibly reach out—yet again—now you’ve made such a conspicuous show of being alive but unwilling to communicate? How can I be so desperate, so unwilling to heed your silence?
But last night I found myself thinking about the day we walked up to see that welly. What a silly, lovely thing it was to do; how we stared up at it and laughed. And I thought, I’m not ready to give up on him. On us. Not quite yet.
So this is it: my last-ditch attempt to find out what happened. To work out how I could have got it so wrong.
Do you remember our last night together, Eddie? Outside in the grass, before we hauled your enormous tent outside and then spent the next few hours trying to put it up? Do you remember that, before we both collapsed with exhaustion in the damned thing, I was meant to tell you my life story?
I’m going to start it now, from the beginning. Or at least the edited highlights. I figured that maybe it would remind you why you liked me. Because whatever else you might have managed to hide from me, the liking-me bit wasn’t made up. Of that much I’m certain.
So. I am Sarah Evelyn Harrington. Born Gloucester Royal at 4:13 p.m. on February 18, 1980. Mum taught maths at a grammar in Cheltenham, and Dad was a sound engineer. He did a lot of touring with bands, until he started to miss us too much. After that he did all sorts of soundy things locally. He still does. Can’t stop himself.
They bought a wreck of a cottage in the valley below Frampton Mansell, about a year before I was born, and they’ve lived there ever since. It’s about fifteen minutes’ walk along the footpath from your barn. You probably know it. Dad and his friend reopened that old path the summer he and Mum moved in. Two men, two chain saws, several beers.
Being in that valley with you made the place feel very different. Reminded me of a Me I’d forgotten. And as I said to you on our first morning, there is a good reason for that.
Tommy, my best friend, was born a couple of months after me to the “slightly fraught” (Dad’s words) couple in the house at the end of our track. He and I became best friends and we played every day until that strange, sad moment in adolescence where playing just isn’t the thing anymore. But until then, we forded streams, stuffed ourselves on blackberries, and made tunnels through blankets of cow parsley.
When I was five, Mum had another baby—Hannah—and after a few years Hannah joined in our adventures. She was utterly fearless, my sister—far braver than Tommy and I, in spite of being several years our junior. Her best friend, a little girl called Alex, was quite literally in awe of her.
It’s only now, as an adult, that I realize quite how much I loved my sister. How I was in awe of her, too.
Tommy spent a lot of time at our house because his mum was—as he put it—“crazy.” I’m not sure, in hindsight, that was fair, although she was certainly preoccupied on a very deep level with very surface things. She moved their family to LA when I was fifteen and I was heartbroken. Without Tommy I had no idea who I was anymore. Who were my friends?
What group did I belong to? I knew only that I had to latch on to someone fast, before I wheeled off the school social scene and became a confirmed loner.
So I latched on to two girls, Mandy and Claire, with whom I’d always been friendly—if not exactly friends—only now it was more intense. Intense and exposing. Girls can be so cruel when they’re young.
Two years later I was on the phone to Tommy at five in the morning, begging him to let me come and stay. But I’ll get to that later.
I’m going to leave it there. I don’t want to just vomit my entire life story all over you, because you may not want to hear it. And even if you do, I don’t want it to sound like I think I’m the only person on earth with a past.
I miss you, Eddie. I didn’t think it was possible to miss someone you’d known for only seven days, but I do. So much I can’t seem to think straight anymore.
Sarah
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
There he was: Reuben. Right there at a table in the BFI café, talking to his new girlfriend, whose face was just out of sight. The brown-husked remains of a coffee next to his hand, all about him the simmer of self-possession and new masculinity.
I remembered the shy, skinny boy I’d found quaking outside a Mexican restaurant all those years ago, his hair gelled and his neck sheathed in cheap aftershave. The crushed and trembling quality of his voice when he’d asked me out a few hours later. Now look at him! Broader, stronger, quite the Californian hero with his tapered fashion shorts, his sunglasses, his deliberately careless hair. I couldn’t help but smile.
“Hello,” I said, arriving at their table.
“Oh!” Reuben said, and for a second I saw the young man I married. The man I thought I’d be with forever, because a permanent life with him in that sunny, cheerful city was all I thought I’d ever need.