Never Coming Back: a tale of loss and new beginnings

by Deirdre Palmer

  It was the thing about the husband, the almost-shock the woman had registered at Kate’s question, as if knowing what he felt was a concept so ridiculously alien it may as well have sprouted little green antennae. Kate thought about her and Morgan, how one minute they were connected and real and reading each other’s minds, and the next they were like strangers who happened to be passing through the same space at the same time. The Morlands had lost a daughter; they had a reason for inhabiting their separate worlds. She and Morgan had only themselves to blame.

  Or perhaps not Morgan. Perhaps it was just her.

  Sometimes she had looked out of the flat window at the ocean and imagined the two of them sinking deeper and deeper into the metallic blue water, their arms reaching out to one another, never quite touching. The same image inhabited her dreams at night. She was beginning to hate that view. Not that it was hers to hate; not any longer. From Tracey’s spare room, which wasn’t really spare at all, she saw small windows, and red roofs, and defunct TV aerials, and merry-go-rounds of drying washing.

  Even that was history now. Beneath Kate’s desk crouched a large black rucksack, as heavy as a body. It contained all that she’d brought from the flat, the important stuff. Her life in a bag. Tracey had been lovely to her, unexpectedly gentle and accommodating in her attempt to make Kate feel at home. But as the week wore on it had been obvious that Kate was one complication too many in Tracey’s overcrowded life, and she wouldn’t impose any further. Tonight she was moving into the nurses’ home in the grounds of the hospital, to an end-of-corridor room which smelled of stale fried food and cigarettes. She’d lived in worse as a student. It would be fine.

  Sooner or later she’d have to brave the flat and fetch the rest of her stuff. Given her pared-down living arrangements, much of it would have to be stored at Mum and Dad’s. She couldn’t leave it where it was; it wasn’t fair on Morgan. Neither was it fair on him to have avoided the conversation. They’d spoken, of course, and texted, but it had all been practicalities and surface stuff. The big one was still to come. Surprisingly, Morgan wasn’t pushing it. Or perhaps not so surprising; she was the one who liked things tidied up, labelled and put away.

  Kate the pragmatist. Morgan the dreamer. She’d loved that about him. It had also irritated the socks off her.

  Lunchtime. She wasn’t hungry. She went to the window of the now empty office, in time to see Xavi crossing the gravel in front of the outpatient annexe, his fair hair gleaming golden in the sun. No dates, no shared meal breaks, and no proper talking for the time being; they’d agreed. Only work stuff, small-talk and the allowable ‘You okay?’ whispered when no-one was around, as if their affair wasn’t the most talked about secret in the whole of Psych.

  She watched the deliberate march of his feet, the frustrated hunch of his shoulders, and felt guilty for prevaricating. She had been right to do so, though, for both their sakes as well as Morgan’s. They were simply on hold, she and Xavi, while she caught her breath. They weren’t over.

  So not over.

  Straining at the window, hungry for Xavi’s every move, she saw him reach his car and tap his pockets for the keys. She was so much in love with him it gave her stomach ache. She wouldn’t keep him hanging on much longer, only until she’d laid matters to rest with Morgan and cleared her head a bit.

  You can’t help who you fall in love with.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘No, it doesn’t, since you ask. It doesn’t help at all to know that you walked out because you decided we weren’t head-over-apex in love any more. Doesn’t even come close.’

  It was Sunday afternoon, one week and two days since Kate had left. Morgan had been wondering when she’d finally get around to having this conversation. Despite his misery, he wasn’t going to be the one to instigate it. He still had some pride. Now, they stood facing one another on the chalky clifftop path above Haverstone. A sharp wind flung itself off the glittering sea, crashing against his face like the breakers on the rocks below and reducing his eyes to stinging liquid slits. An extra annoyance in an already annoying day. And he wasn’t feeling very well, either.

  ‘That’s not what I said, Morgan.’

  ‘No, but it’s what you meant.’

  Her exact words had been, ‘We can’t give each other what we need,’ as if she’d scoured the agony columns and picked a sentence at random.

  He almost wished she had someone else. Devastating though it would be, like a knife driven down the middle of their relationship, at least the cut would be clean. It was the first thing he’d asked her – the obvious thing – half an hour ago, before they’d come up here at his suggestion; being with Kate in the flat reminded him too much of what was at stake. But there was no-one else, apparently, only this wishy-washy something-and-nothing.

  ‘Nothing lasts forever,’ Kate said from behind a pair of oversized sunglasses.

  Where had she pulled that one from? A fortune cookie? He sighed, took a step closer, removed the sunglasses and handed them to her. She blinked at him in the glare.

  ‘Relationships change naturally over time, Kate. People grow used to one another. It doesn’t mean the love’s gone. It’s a different sort of love. Not worse, or lacking in any way. Just different.’

  Now he was at it, too. The whole conversation, such as it was, might have been filched straight from a magazine or the script of a telly soap. The problem was that Kate had not come to talk. All the while she’d been quiet, stoical and purposeful. Kate was a girl on a mission. She’d come to collect the rest of her stuff (tick), and say a final goodbye (not ticked, but it wouldn’t be long at this rate).

  He waited for her to speak again. For a long moment, it seemed she wasn’t going to. She looked down at her feet, fiddling with the sunglasses in her hand and looking unsure of herself for the first time since this debacle had begun. Morgan allowed himself a dash of hope. Then she looked up.

  ‘It hasn’t been right for months. Be honest, Morgan. It hasn’t, has it?’

  This, too, was a repetition of what she’d said earlier. He hadn’t agreed with her then and he wasn’t about to now, even though, deep down, he suspected she might have a point. It wasn’t irretrievable, was it? And why was she so determined to jump ahead, miss out the stage where they talked late into the night and tried to work it all through? Even if they did, in the end, go their separate ways, it should be a joint decision. Instead, she had decided, all on her own. Kate had decided. He had not.

  ‘Has it, Morgan?’ she repeated, trying to force an admission out of him.

  She took hold of his upper arm, but he shrugged her off, turned away and carried on walking along the path. To one side, the sea – endless, glaring, inescapable. To the other, an expanse of flattened grass, and beyond it, the giant bowl of the camp-site, a miniature city of pastel-coloured caravans and sail-white tents. The path sloped upwards to the crown of the cliff. When he reached the top, he stopped, waiting for Kate to catch up. She was walking deliberately slowly, her footfalls heavy, showing her disapproval at his refusal to answer her question.

  He watched her coming towards him and tried to look at her objectively, seeing her as others might – a pretty girl out for a walk on a brisk, sunny afternoon. Her hair was pulled back from her face at the sides and fastened with combs. It billowed out behind, spiralling amber against the blue of the sky. She was wearing a skirt. Kate never wore skirts. No, it was a dress with an ethnic pattern in greens and blues and browns, stopping short halfway up her pale thighs. Over it she wore her old denim jacket. She didn’t look like a heartbreaker.

  He waited until she was there in front of him before he said, ‘What about the sex?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘I thought it was pretty spectacular.’

  ‘It was just sex.’

  ‘Well, thanks. Thanks for that, Kate.’

  He wanted to say more, a lot more. The location seemed to demand it, as if they were actors in a film; the gusty clifftop, the sea battling away be
neath, thundering onto the rocks. But he held back, afraid that once he’d started he would never stop, and all the frustrations and wonderings of the past months would come gushing out, and then Kate would be upset or at least defensive and he didn’t want either of those things. Besides, flinging accusations wasn’t the way to win her over. Not that he had a better idea.

  By tacit agreement they turned back along the path the way they’d come, Kate in the lead, striding down the slope, slithering over lumps of chalk and rabbit droppings, as if she couldn’t get away from him fast enough.

  Morgan watched her bouncing copper curls and thought there had to be something else, something other than these vague non-reasons. Why else would she have upped and left in such a dramatic fashion? It didn’t make sense. His mind roved the possibilities, immediately discarding the one where Kate went through his phone and found Layla’s name among his contacts. She would never do that, no more than he would do it to her. And even if she did, she would ask him about it outright.

  But supposing he had somehow acted in a way that had aroused her suspicions? He’d been distracted by Layla, undoubtedly, although during that time he’d tried very hard not to think about her while he was with Kate. His brief moment of disloyalty remained a safely-guarded secret; he was as sure of that as he could be.

  His hand closed around the phone in his jeans pocket. Her number was still on there. He hadn’t thought to delete it. Why should he when he’d done nothing wrong?

  Kate stopped and swung round to face him, as if she’d just remembered something. The action was so sudden that Morgan, deep in thought, had to stall his own feet in order not to cannon into her.

  ‘Will you stay?’ she said.

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘In Haverstone, in the flat.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Kate, we haven’t come to that yet, have we?’

  He flung the question at her, and was rewarded by the sensation of a flinch in her body language before she sighed, and folded her arms.

  ‘I had hoped we wouldn’t do this.’

  ‘Oh right, so you thought it would all be on your terms and I’d roll over, wish you luck and send you on your merry way, is that it?’

  ‘Morgan, please…’

  Her eyes gleamed with tears, the most emotion she’d shown since she’d arrived. He wanted to hold her, brush her tears away, tell her to come home, and promise her it was all going to be all right. But he couldn’t, because he had no idea how to make it all right, and the more he thought about it, the more he realised he’d been burying his head in the sand.

  ‘The flat, Morgan?’

  She’d recovered herself already, all trace of emotion banished. They were back to practicalities.

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t thought. Funnily enough, the flat hasn’t been high on my list of stuff to think about.’

  Kate sighed. ‘I’ll carry on paying my half of the rent until everything’s sorted out,’ she said, as if he’d already said he wanted to stay.

  He nodded, unable to trust himself to speak. She knew full well it wouldn’t be easy for him to go on living in the flat alone; it wasn’t cheap. She also knew how to make him feel totally inadequate.

  They had reached the bottom of the slope where the rough path became a strip of tarmac leading past the backs of the beach-huts towards the pay-and-display where they’d left Kate’s car. Morgan began to feel panicky. He was making this far too easy for her, showing weakness at the very moment when he should be taking charge, finding a solution.

  He caught up, fell into step beside her. ‘Perhaps it’s the flat that’s the problem.’

  ‘What?’ Kate frowned.

  ‘The flat. It’s not the most romantic place in the world, is it?’

  ‘Romantic?’

  It did sound stupid, the way she repeated it at him. Didn’t she realise, though, that he was only trying to get her to talk, not leave him in this limbo? He tried again.

  ‘What I meant was, supposing we move somewhere else, somewhere entirely different? It could be what we need, a way of starting afresh.’

  Kate moved ahead of him again, as if she wanted to shake him off. He watched her departing back with a sinking sensation, accompanied by an unexplained pain in his chest and a shallow wetness in his breathing. She spoke without turning round.

  ‘And you think moving house would solve everything, do you?’

  ‘Not everything, no, but it might help.’

  He felt even more stupid now. She had no right to make him feel like that, she really didn’t, when all he was trying to do was find out what she wanted, what it was that he, apparently, had failed to give her.

  ‘Okay then,’ he said, ‘how about I give up the bookshop and get a better job, something that’s more of a career?’

  Kate stopped and turned. Her eyes met his. He held out his arms and she stepped into them. As he held her he felt the weight of her sadness matching his own. Again, he allowed himself to hope, but even in her closeness, her apparent need of him, he sensed a distance, as if she wanted to hurry him along. After a moment, she broke free.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with your job. You should do what you want to do, not what you think would impress other people. You still enjoy it, don’t you? The bookshop? And the writing – that’s your career, Morgan, if you want one. You’re going to be an author, a famous one, remember?’

  Morgan laughed, despite himself. He didn’t remember fame coming into it. Kate’s answering smile was natural and genuine. It said she still believed in him. For the moment, she was back. His Kate.

  ‘Yeah well, there’s a long way to go before that’s likely to happen.’

  They were standing by her car now. She had the keys in her hand. Several black plastic sacks bulging with her possessions were hunkered down on the back seat. The boot was full of books and files in supermarket carrier bags. In all their time together they’d never managed to acquire any decent luggage, apart from the rucksacks that had followed them from their student days. Was that a sign that they weren’t proper grown-ups?

  Morgan let the random thought billow through his mind when he should have been searching for words, the right words to make Kate stay. He couldn’t – wouldn’t – believe that there weren’t any.

  ‘Kate…’

  ‘Yes?’ She was in the car now, reaching over to hold the passenger door open for him.

  ‘I love you. I really do.’ He raised his hands in a helpless gesture.

  She sighed. ‘I love you, too, but I’m not in love with you, not any more. I’m sorry.’ She sat up straight in the driver’s seat, leaving the door open for him. ‘Get in. I’ll drop you back at the flat.’

  Morgan stuffed his hands in his pockets. He was beginning to feel most peculiar now.

  ‘No, I’d rather walk.’

  He didn’t fancy being bumped about in the car. Neither did he want to drag this out any longer than necessary.

  ‘If you’re sure.’ Kate started the engine. ‘I’ll be in touch, yeah?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Morgan said, closing the passenger door for her.

  He stood and watched as she reversed, swinging round to the exit and waiting for a bus to pass before turning onto the road. Only then did he call after her.

  ‘I love you, Kate! Don’t do this!’

  But he knew she couldn’t hear him.

  Chapter Fourteen

  A chest infection, the GP said, lowering her stethoscope. Rotating her chair to face the computer, she chugged out a prescription for a course of powerful antibiotics. Morgan pocketed it as furtively as if he was a junkie come for his controlled fix. He felt feeble, bothering the doctor when the waiting room was packed to the gunnels with more deserving cases. But he couldn’t remember feeling this ill, ever, and none of the stuff he’d found in the bathroom cabinet had made the slightest impression on his condition.

  Back in the flat, his weary feet took him straight to the bedroom where he’d been holed up almost constantly since Monday. On
e look at the mashed-up pillows and dampish furrowed sheets had him stripping off the bedding and ramming it all into the laundry bin. With no energy left to re-make the bed, he took a blanket to the sofa and set up camp there with a carton of orange juice and the TV remote. At least if he fell asleep and dribbled on the cushions, there’d be no-one to tell him off.

  No-one. He examined the word, surprised to find a different reaction from the one he’d expected. The flat felt hollow and subdued but no more than it had before Kate went, even with its thinned-out contents. There was, however, a low level air of expectation about the place, as if she’d simply gone away for a while and was due back at any moment.

  Up on the cliff on Sunday afternoon – was it really only three days ago? – nothing had seemed definite or final or sorted. The pendulum had swung backwards and forwards in his mind: it was over; it was not. By nightfall, when he’d given up the fight to stay upright and fallen, coughing and feverish, into bed, he’d given up trying to work it out and was too ill to care.

  Raising himself up on one elbow, he swallowed down the first of his antibiotics with a slug of juice and flopped back onto his makeshift bed. Staring up at the ceiling, he purposely built an image of Kate driving away with a carful of belongings, leaving Haverstone. Leaving him. For good. The concept had no substance, no ring of truth about it.

  At the time, there had been cause for reasonable doubt but, strangely, not now. If there was one thing he knew about Kate, though, it was that she wouldn’t be told what to do. As much as he felt the urge to, it was no good ringing or texting or hassling her in any way. Nothing was guaranteed more to send her scampering in the opposite direction.

  No, he must wait it out until she realised her mistake and came back of her own accord.

  His thoughts wandered to his mother, how like her Kate was in her stubbornness, and how like his father he was in the way he reacted to the same situation. Well, not exactly the same, because with Nick and Ellie – they preferred him to call them by their first names – there had been a third party involved, but it amounted to the same thing.