by Leah Mercer
‘I didn’t want to tell you, but I was going to leave you, anyway. The cancer, well . . . it just made me do it sooner.’ She gasps and covers her mouth and in that second I hate myself for what I’m doing to her – for the cruelty I’m stunned I have within me – but I force myself to continue. ‘I don’t know what else I can tell you. I’ll send you some divorce papers, if that’s what you need. Just go. Just go, and leave me alone.’
I push the door closed, desperate to force her out before the pain overwhelms me. Just before it clicks shut I notice the wrapped box in her arms. I sink backwards on to the bed, my legs collapsing beneath me.
How like her to bring me a token of love, I think, despair and grief filtering through me as I picture her in a shop, selecting a card and something she knows I’d like: chocolate, maybe, or even those cufflinks I had my eye on. I imagine her desperate to find me, knowing I’m ill, spurred on by hope and love as she trudges down endless streets. After all, if the roles were reversed, wouldn’t I do the same? Wouldn’t I do everything to keep us together, even knowing how hard it is to watch someone you love die?
But we’re not the same people. We don’t have the same starting point . . . not by far. Anna might be strong – perhaps stronger than I thought – but she has no idea what it’s like watching disease claim someone you love. And my sister had a hope of recovery . . . in the right hands, anyway. I have none. You can be as strong as you like, but you can’t hold out against death.
I listen as Anna’s footsteps fade away. I hear the front door of the B & B thud closed. I’ve won the battle – I haven’t failed this time – but I feel anything but victorious. Before sadness and pain overwhelm me, I pick up the pen and finally start to write my letter.
To seal my fate – our fate.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Anna
I stare at the scratched wooden panel just inches from my face. I can’t breathe – can’t move. I feel paralysed, like my muscles have forgotten how to work. Did Mark actually close the door on me? Did he say that he was planning to leave me, even before the cancer . . . and that nothing I could tell him would make a difference?
Not even having a baby?
I stand like a statue, trying to grasp on to just one emotion as my husband’s words batter me over and over, like a flurry of blows to the gut. I can’t make sense of anything – can’t even begin to absorb that what he said is true. Mark wasn’t going to leave me. It was his cancer that made him go. He left to protect me and to save me from what he went through with his sister.
We were happy. We did love each other. I can’t have been wrong about that – about the life we built, our perfect world. Can I?
I wait for the automatic voice that always responds ‘No, of course not’ to pipe up, to allay my doubts and fears like it always has this past month. But it’s silent now, as if it’s disappeared. I’ve been beaten back by words, dissolved by the harsh reality of coming face to face with the man I love and being knocked down so cruelly – so brutally – in a way I never believed he could behave, not in a million years. In one fell swoop, he’s demolished our perfect world, too – at least, the world I believed existed, regardless of what he kept hidden in his past.
Maybe Sophie was right and I was living in la-la land. Maybe that world never existed in the first place. I guess it didn’t if Mark was planning to leave me. Planning to leave me. God.
But why . . . why would he keep trying to have a child with me if he wanted to leave? Did he not care that much – about me or his baby? Did he really mean that even if I told him about our child it wouldn’t make a difference?
I can’t believe that. I just can’t. No one could be so callous, and certainly not Mark. Not that man I know.
Then Sophie’s words about people changing ring in my ears so clearly it’s almost as if she’s right here beside me. I shake my head as the realisation sinks in that I don’t know him – at least, not the man inside that room. Maybe he’s changed, or maybe I never knew him to start with. But whatever the reason, I can’t deny that the man I thought I married is gone.
I was so ready, so prepared to give him my all . . . again. To build something new – something wonderful – with him and our baby. To take on the fear and uncertainty ahead – to face why he didn’t tell me about Margo – and grasp the chance to have something wonderful together.
But in the end, maybe he’s right. There is nothing I can say – not even that I’m having his baby – if he meant those vicious words. I vowed I’d never give up, never stop trying to bring us together, never lose belief in us. But I can’t chase something so elusive if one of ‘us’ has morphed into something unrecognisable.
Tears streak down my cheeks and I let them drop silently on to the carpet below. Doors open and close, voices shout down corridors and, out on the street, someone who’s had too much to drink is trying to sing ‘Jingle Bells’. I feel like every bit of me is hyper-alert, as if by tuning into the environment around me I can protect myself from the pain inside.
But finally I need to move. My legs feel numb from standing so motionless, my head is pounding and my back aches, but these are nothing compared to the agony gripping my heart. I stare at the door for one more second, willing it to open – for the Mark I know to come back again – but it stays closed. There’s no noise behind it, and I know I have to go. I could stay here all night and nothing would change. Mark’s certainly made that crystal clear.
I head down the stairs and shake my head when I realise I’m still holding the box containing the baby’s T-shirt. ‘So much for that,’ I mumble, fury and pain almost lifting me off my feet as I recall my card saying that Mark will be the greatest father ever. So much for our Hallmark moment – my vision of happy families. I look around the reception for a rubbish bin, but of course there isn’t one. That would be too much of a convenience. I can’t bear to hold this box any longer, so I drop it on to the reception desk on top of a pile of papers. If this place is as disorganised as the last fifty B & Bs I’ve encountered, it will be buried under more paper by morning.
Then I walk down the steps and out into the night – away from my husband, away from my hopes and away from our future together.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Mark
I don’t sleep all night after Anna leaves. I furiously scribble word after word to her, praying my explanation will make her understand how I could treat her that way . . . even though, looking back, I’m having trouble understanding it myself. I know I had to be harsh and throw whatever bricks I could, but oh, the things I said. The way I mentioned children, like we hadn’t been desperately trying for our own. How I tossed out divorce, something I never – not in a million years – would have applied to our happy, secure marriage.
How I told her I was leaving anyway.
I rub my eyes, as if I can erase the image of her awful expression when I flung those words at her, but it’s branded on to my eyelids. Her face crumpled and her body slumped, as if any hope inside her had suddenly deflated – like I was a stranger, not the man she’d spent the past ten years with. I feel like a stranger to myself now, too, and I don’t just mean my wasted body.
Why am I doing this? I think to myself, putting down the pen. Is the pain I’m causing Anna now – the pain I’m causing myself – worth it? Maybe my wife is strong enough to be by my side. Maybe she’s stronger than me, and it’s my actions – not my illness – that will damage her beyond repair. My heart lurches when I picture her back home in our flat, curled up on the sofa all alone, crying like her world has fallen apart.
It has. Our world has, and I’m the one who destroyed it – well, me and my cancer. I had to push her away to keep her safe. I couldn’t fail, and I can’t cave in now. I need to keep reminding myself of that.
It’s too late, anyway, I think, picking up the pen again. I’ve brutally rejected her, and all I can do is hope that this letter allays some of her pain once I’m gone.
I don’t even know if what I’m w
riting makes sense, as page after page fills up with frantic words. I can barely read my scrawl at the best of times. I’ll go back and make it legible later. Somehow it seems important to get it all out now. I write all night, only lifting my head when the cleaner comes in – a different one; it seems fitting that it’s not Anna. She brings me food, tidies up and leaves again without a word, and still I keep working.
Finally, I have nothing left to say. I feel empty, hollowed out, with nothing left to live for – nothing except finding Grace, that is.
I stand up, blinking as the room rotates around me. I feel hot and cold at the same time, but I can’t sit back down. I need to open those boxes at the storage centre and see what’s inside . . . see if there’s a way to find that baby before packing up my life. I don’t need to protect myself from the pain of memories any longer – I can’t anyway, since all of my armour is now stripped away. And after last night, I’d be amazed if I even can feel any more pain.
I don’t have the energy to shower so instead I spray everywhere with deodorant, trying not be sick as the strong scent fills the room. I pull on my trusty padded jacket, slide the phone into my pocket and stagger down the stairs. The reception is empty as usual, so I head into the frigid air to flag down a cab. The sky is such a brilliant blue it hurts my eyes, and I squint against the light. Everything feels raw, as if sandpaper is scraping against my senses.
Thirty minutes later we pull up to the storage centre. I follow the route from a few days ago, through the reception and straight up to the second floor. The locker door opens and the light above me snaps on. The stack of boxes is there, just as I’d left it. I lift up my arms, my muscles feeling heavy and weak, and I struggle to get the boxes down.
I force myself to scrabble through one box and then the next, looking for anything that might give me a clue to Grace’s whereabouts. My heart lifts as my fingers touch something that feels like a stack of papers, and I haul them out. The sheets are all stuck together, melded into a solid lump by water and time. Carefully, as if I’m performing surgery, I try to peel them apart, but it’s impossible – they rip and tear, the writing lifting from the pages’ surfaces, rendering each paper completely unintelligible. I try to make out what I can: a British Gas bill from what must be Ben’s flat; an old pizza flyer; a reminder from the doctor’s surgery of Margo’s next appointment. There could be something here from social services I guess, but if there is I certainly can’t decipher it.
Shit.
I lift down another box and tear it open. Thick jumpers, tops and trousers spill out, cascading on to the floor in a rainbow of colours. I can’t help smiling, remembering how Margo always loved wearing bright colours. In fact, we buried her in a red dress I’d never seen on her, but I know she loved. She used to stroke the silky fabric, telling me that when she gained enough weight she was going put it on and take me out to a West End show.
My throat closes up and I force myself to shove the box aside and open the next. More clothes, I think, my heart dropping as I root through a jumble of trousers. Right, time for the next one – the last one. I crouch down, my pulse racing as I open the box’s flaps. It looks somewhat promising, a mix of yellowed novels, magazines and . . . I scrabble around in the bottom of the box, my fingers closing around a small object that’s heavy in my hand. Is that a phone?
I draw it out, examining it in the bright light. The clunky frame coated in heavy plastic is a throwback to the past when smartphones were only a figment in some computer whizz’s imagination, and an image pops into my mind of Margo on the night before she died. I heard her voice so I went into her room and was surprised to see she was talking on the phone. She used to be a real chatterbox, but ever since she’d moved back in with me after Ben left I’d rarely heard her speak on the phone. I’d taken her talking as a good sign, slowly backing out of the room with a smile on my face. Oh, how wrong I was.
I turn the mobile over in my hands, wondering who she was speaking to that night. Would the call still be registered on the phone? Or could it contain a message, a phone number, a contact . . . something that could point me in Grace’s direction? I try to turn it on, but of course the battery is long dead and – I run my hand around the empty box – there’s no charger either. That would be way too easy.
I’ll head down to Tottenham Court Road now, I decide, desperately wanting to lie down, but knowing I need to carry on. As the centre for all things electronic in London, someone there should be able to sell me an old charger that would work with this phone. Hopefully, it’s escaped any water damage. I stand up now, hastily repacking Margo’s things. Some day, after I’ve tracked down Grace, I’ll go through her mother’s possessions and pass some things on to her. And for a second, surrounded by my sister’s life, it almost feels like she’s right there beside me – like she’s smiling down at me and is at peace for once.
‘I will find Grace,’ I mumble, repeating my vow from the graveyard. ‘I promise.’
I ask the man at the reception to call me a cab, and a few minutes later it pulls up out front.
‘Tottenham Court Road, please. The end with all the electronic shops.’ There’s no reason to be more specific – any cabbie worth his salt knows which end that is. I lean back in exhaustion as the cab makes its way back towards central London.
As we head through the streets the city sparkles with Christmas decorations. The festive season is approaching, and . . . I shut my eyes, realisation flooding through me that this will be my last one, and I’m spending it alone. An intense yearning judders through me – a yearning to be with Anna, holed up in our flat, surrounded by books, mugs of hot chocolate and mulled wine as the Christmas tree winks on and off in the December darkness.
On Christmas Day we always sleep in as long as possible until an excited phone call from Flora awakens us. Sophie spends Christmas at Asher’s parents and Flora opens our gift there, then rings the second she discovers what it is. I have to say, I have a knack for choosing the perfect gifts for Flora. Even Sophie jokes that she can never top what I give her daughter, although she always accuses me of going overboard. And I do, I know, but deep down I guess it wasn’t just Flora I was buying a gift for – it was Grace, too.
After the phone call, we lounge in bed for a bit, curled up with each other against the pesky cold draughts that poke their long fingers through our ancient sash windows. Then we have French toast, coffee and cinnamon bagels slathered with cream cheese, rubbing our bellies and groaning as we open our gifts. We always pay the price of indigestion for our gluttony, but after years of Christmas morning struggles and pleas with Margo, I suppose I wanted to just let go – to celebrate the normalcy of overeating on Christmas Day.
When we’re able to move again, we wrap up warmly and pull on our wellies, then head out into the silent streets and over to the Heath for our traditional Christmas walk. No matter the weather, the Heath always seems even more magical on that day. Bare branches arch overhead, the ground is spongy with dead leaves beneath our feet, and the scent of damp earth colours the air. And I’ll never forget one Christmas when we were caught out in a snow squall, tiny flakes swirling through the frigid air. I grabbed Anna and spun her around, her laugh encircling us.
I wonder what she’ll do this year. A sharp pain goes through me as I picture our flat, all decked out with the decorations we’ve curated like an art show over the past ten years. Will she have a tree? Who will help her put it up if I’m not there? And who will remind her to turn off the Christmas lights each night before she goes to bed?
Anger stirs inside me and I shake my head so hard I get a crick in my neck. How I wish she’d never found out about my cancer. How I wish she’d simply thought I’d left her. Why couldn’t she just let me go? Why the hell did she need to track me down – twice?
Did I really think she would just let me go? I ask myself. A few phone calls, a few messages and that’s that? Did I think I could escape our relationship – the one we’ve poured ourselves into, the one we’ve moulde
d into something so special – by closing the door behind me? The fact that she fought for me – that she tried so hard to find me and that she succeeded – makes me even more certain that I need to protect her now. She might think she’s strong, but she would lose herself in this illness. She’d give everything she had, and I can’t let that happen. Anyway, after what happened last night, I think I’ve made my feelings more than clear now. I muffle a cry as I remember her stricken face and my awful, awful words. I hope she’ll be all right.
She will be, I tell myself. She has Sophie, and her life is still intact. I know I’ve hurt her terribly, but she will heal.
‘Tottenham Court Road.’ The cabbie’s voice cuts into my thoughts and I turn my head to look out the window. Buses rumble past, people push by – the world outside is alive. I hand over some cash, then try to open the door without hitting anyone on the busy pavement. The cab pulls away and I stand for a moment, then move to the side when someone swears and tries to get by me. God, I forgot about the craziness of Christmas shopping in central London. It’s years since I’ve been down here. Anna and I always shopped online rather than brave this chaos.
After being locked in my room for the past few days, barely talking to a soul besides the cleaner – and after leaving my life behind – this place seems even crazier than usual. Lights flash from the huge theatre on the corner and the nearby Tube exit spews an endless stream of people, all laughing and shouting, high on life . . . or drunk. I lean back against a shopfront, not even sure how to penetrate the crowd.
My legs start to buckle, but I push past the people and head towards the row of shops across the street before what little energy I have deserts me. I pull open the door, explain to the man behind the counter what I’m looking for and show him the phone. He shakes his head and suggests the next store along, and I cross my fingers in the hope that I won’t need to repeat this process too many times. I already feel like I’m going to pass out.