by West, Jade
I couldn’t answer. Couldn’t face it. I pulled the covers up and hid my face in the warmth and prayed they’d fuck off and leave me in my own pit of misery.
“Anna… Anna are you awake? Where did you go?” Nicola’s slurred voice sounded out.
Like they didn’t know where I’d have gone, and like they didn’t know why.
“You know it’s only cos we care, right?” Vicky called. “We care about you! That’s why we’re so bothered! Lucas Pierce is a cunt, and we’re saving you! Believe us! We’re trying to save you!”
“We love youuuu!” Nicola sounded out again.
“Come and talk to us!” Vicky said. “We spoke to Yasmin, you know… and we get it more now, and we’ll talk. We promise we’ll talk!”
“Yeah, come on,” Nicola tried. “Do you wanna hear? I mean, you must wanna talk about Lucas, right? And he’s a cunt, but we know you’re sad, and we know you love him, and we care!”
I knew it was right. I knew it was true they cared. I knew everyone had nothing but my best intentions at heart when they were cursing and damning and calling for destruction, but it didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter.
My heart was broken. And my heart was failing.
The worst I could do now was talk about Lucas a whole load more, and chat about Yasmin, and Maya and what a bitch she was, and dredge up a whole new whirlwind of shit with people who wouldn’t get it, no matter what.
I ignored the girls, and tried another shot at sinking into sleep, but it was another shit attempt at normality to add to the failure pile.
I felt so torn up and so lonely I felt sick. I was barely sleeping, and the seizures were coming back, and I didn’t want to eat a bite.
I was missing Lucas so much it felt like round one all over again, and I guess that’s why round one started repeating.
I guess that’s why I felt like I needed someone to hold me tight and tell me it was all going to be ok.
I had nothing but the barrage of people telling me what they thought I needed, and nothing but the pain in my chest telling me I’d never have what I wanted, and it was blurring into one long, fucked up, miserable string of days that were going nowhere.
I pictured Lucas happy with his wife and little girl – just like his mother’s pictures had shown me.
I pictured his mother grinning happy now he was back in his real life.
I pictured Lucas and Maya renewing their vows, and making it work this time, and making another little brother or sister for the treasure they’d created already.
And I couldn’t stand it.
Not anymore.
I couldn’t stand everyone on loudspeaker telling me just how much I should be back in my real life, to match his. I couldn’t keep fighting it, because I wanted to believe it too, just to believe in something.
So when that regular text message came through on that regular Monday morning, a few weeks after I’d been trying to do it all by my myself – through blanking out useless with my seizures in the meeting rooms at work, to waking up in pools of my own piss and tears, and the epilepsy nurses trying to insist I put my medication levels up all over again – I did it.
Have you come to your fucking senses yet?
I stared at the text message for three hours straight until I sent my reply to the man who’d picked me up from this pain last time around.
I was scared, and alone, and felt like maybe I was insane after all – just like everyone was so keen to convince me I was – and I sent that reply with shaking fingers.
One simple word in one simple moment at breaking point.
Yes.
I sent the yes I’d been avoiding for months.
And so he came back for me.
My real life in Sebastian Maitland came back for me, and the whole fucking world was cheering for it, waving their party banners and thanking the heavens.
If only I could too.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Lucas
“Hey, Daddy, look what I drew for you,” Millie’s face was a beautiful smile, so innocent in her happiness as she held up her drawing for me to see. “It’s us! You, me and Mummy!”
Three scribbled people, one in a dress, and one in a scribble tie, and one grinning little girl in between them.
I’d have given anything for it to work and be as picture perfect as she wanted it to be, but it never would. Never could.
“Let’s have a look, sweetheart,” Maya said and called Millie around the table, and I had to look away, across the kid’s group Saturday art session to the other grinning families and feeling that same crushing pain in my gut all over again.
Failure.
Failure to be what I needed to be.
It was Maya’s condition on coming back to Cheltenham – that I could see Millie, but only with all three of us together as one group, showing her just how great we were together as Mummy and Daddy. I was taking any opportunity, because I needed it. I needed my little girl.
I also didn’t deserve any better treatment. I’d been enough of a prick to Maya for a lifetime already – so Mother had been so keen to tell me. Poor Maya being so bound by life at your side, knowing you never wanted her from the beginning. Terrible, so terrible.
Seemingly the rest of the world was certain this was life at its finest anyway, pushing us back into regular contact, regardless of what I was feeling. I was choking back my pain at Mother’s dining table over far too many evenings to feel comfortable while she smiled smug over at Maya and Millie, shooting me knowing glances like she told me so.
I was keeping my schedule open to make the most of the potential time with Millie, but I wasn’t doing any more.
Whenever Maya pushed me to stay on past Millie’s bedtime to talk or spend time together I’d politely decline, and keep my message clear and true.
I’m here for Millie, but not for us.
There will never be an us, Maya. I’m sorry, but there will never be an us.
I’ll do anything I can for Millie, but I can’t do anything more for me and you.
She would shrug and pull faces, and cast me aside like I was still the selfish prick she was fighting against, but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t be anything else to her anymore. I’d be lying if I tried.
In my head I was still churning through potential miracle solutions on loop, but it was getting nowhere. Anna’s phone still had me on block, and I couldn’t see her listed on any other channels of communication, even though I looked.
Oh fuck, how I looked.
I was barely sleeping around seeing Millie. The dogs were getting their usual walks, but I was on autopilot, throwing balls and praising them like I was still fully engaged with the world, but even they knew the difference. They’d stare at me from my feet at night, looking up at me with far more sympathy and care than I was getting from anywhere else in my life.
Work was doing fine, but I was back to the grey, bland version of me they’d come to know before I’d exploded in colour. I didn’t give a shit for the projects I’d been throwing myself into with newfound zest, and I couldn’t give a shit for socialising around work meetings.
It must have been desperation that meant I abused my position at GCHQ for the first time since I’d been employed there. I used the security surveillance potential to tune into Anna’s communication channels and see when and how she was active.
It showed me nothing new. She was working long hours, and switching her phone onto standby for early nights, and at least that was a relief – that she was sleeping long hours, and taking care of her epilepsy and going about her regular life.
This grand fate that Maya and her friends were so keen to believe in was just a fucking cunt. Anna’s regular life should have been with me.
I lost track of how many nights I’d been smiling fake at Mother’s dining table, but I was taking our plates through to the dishwasher on one of them when she followed me through to the kitchen and closed the door.
“Well?” she asked, in a whisper-hiss. “W
hen are you going to sort yourself out and make some actual progress? Millie needs to see you back with Maya. Maya needs it too.” She paused, and I felt my stomach lurching. “And you need it, Lucas. Even if you are too Anna Blackwell blind to see sense, you need it too! Take some action, before it’s too late!”
She was right on one score, at least. I was Anna Blackwell blind to the maximum. She had my heart, and my thoughts and my dreams snared in hers.
I tossed and turned in bed at night, craving her next to me. I was coasting through my waking life praying that some kind of crazy lightning bolt would strike and bring her back.
Losing her would be a nightmare I’d wake up from on loop, and she was everywhere. In everything. Lost from my whole fucking world.
I think I must have coasted for weeks on end, staring at the sky and hoping for a bizarre strike of fortune.
I must have shrugged myself into oblivion, buying into helplessness and accepting this bullshit outcome as the only one I was capable of living. But then it stopped.
I snapped myself back to reason one morning while sitting at the project meeting table at work.
I’d never once wished on fortune. Not once in my life had I ever dug into my pocket and tossed a coin into Neptune’s fountain along with Anna.
My outlook was simple, and it was strong.
The universe isn’t responsible for my road ahead. I am.
It was true.
I was responsible for my road ahead, and I was responsible for seizing my own destiny.
And so I would.
I wrapped up the project meeting ahead of schedule, standing up at the table to gather my notes and laptop while a host of confused faces stared over at me. I retreated to my office and got my coat, and checked straight out of the building with one eye on the time.
Lunchtime was busying in town when I closed the distance. I grabbed a bouquet of stunning red roses from the florist on the corner and headed across the final few streets with my heart pounding hard, because I had to do this. Fuck all the consequences and how I’d still need to find some miracle way ahead, I had to do this.
I kept my distance, holding back a little way from Lewton’s Consultancy so as not to freak Anna the hell out just as soon as she stepped out through the front doors for lunch, but I was ready. My mouth was dry with nerves, and my whole body was humming with need, but I was ready.
I needed her.
I needed her to know that I needed her.
I needed her to know that she was my whole world and always would be, and this time I couldn’t let her go.
But then I saw him.
Sebastian Maitland was crossing the street up ahead, dressed in his uber designer suit with his phone pressed up to his ear. I saw him head up to the Lewton’s front doorway and heard him explode-laugh his snotty laugh at whatever pompous associate was on the other end of the line.
And then I saw her.
Anna.
Jesus Christ, I saw my beautiful Anna.
She came out of the front doors and she was smiling. Beautiful, and smiling, and enough to set my soul on fire.
That fire burnt me to nothing but dust.
She was smiling as she walked up to Sebastian like it was the most natural thing in the world, and she was smiling as she slipped her arm through his and they walked away up the street.
He was still on his phone, without giving a toss for even saying hello to the woman at his side, but that didn’t seem to matter.
They were back together.
They were back together and she looked happy for it.
And I was done.
Reeling, and broken and done.
I handed the bouquet of roses to a sweet looking grandma on the way into the nearest shop, and I ran. I ran back towards GCHQ, not really sure quite where I was going until I ran out of breath down a side alley between two stores.
Once again, I was fucking retching my guts up as fate spat me out. I was sick and I was sobbing, and I was cursing everything I’d ever been and everything I’d ever done all over again.
But at least Anna was happy.
Thank God, she was happy.
And so was Millie.
So was my little girl.
That was all that really mattered. I deserved every fucking scrap of my pain, and I’d live it and take it, and stop fucking trying.
My own happiness was worthless anyway.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Anna
It was one of his work social nights. Sebastian’s.
I was sitting at our regular table, making the same regular small talk with the same regular group of other halves, twirling the engagement ring on my finger that was fresh on there for the past few days, ignoring my orange juice as the other women sipped away on their wine.
Bored.
I was so damn bored.
But it was more than that.
I scanned the club, our usual venue after the usual restaurant, the cycle swirling all over again, like it had done for years. My eyes glossed over the man who was supposed to be the love of my life as he stood in his usual pose, one elbow on the bar top, laughing along with his pompous work friends like their lives were the epitome of worldly success.
I should have been happy. Everyone had been trying to convince me I should be. Everyone telling me we were great, we were great, we were great. That Sebastian Maitland was the best future husband anyone could wish for. Attentive. Smart. Successful. Invested in our future.
My heart was a static flatline, even though I told myself it wasn’t. I’d forgotten who I was – fading back into myself so hard after losing Lucas that I didn’t recognise my own soul anymore.
I was trapped in my own glass box, with a fake smile and fake hopes and dreams.
But tonight I couldn’t accept it. Tonight I couldn’t accept that I was numb and lost and fading into the background.
I got up from my seat and made my way to the bar. I ignored Sebastian and his friends and ordered myself a prosecco and returned to the table to drink it.
The other women looked at me with horror on their faces, knowing I was breaking the rules of life by drinking alcohol on my meds, but I didn’t care.
I didn’t want to care anymore.
It was when Sebastian shot me a glance from his crowd, and he was glaring with that same horror and disgust as the rest of the party, that I knew I had to break away from it, even for just a few short minutes.
I finished my drink and made my excuses and headed out the back to slip amongst the rest of the smokers, and I sucked in that nicotine and tried to convince myself all over again that this was my life now, and it was good. It was great. It was everything.
Then, when I was done with my cigarette, I made my way back inside.
Sebastian was already waiting for me with my coat over his arm from the back of my chair. He would barely look at me as he told me we were leaving, and there was a taxi waiting for us outside.
We sat in silence on the way back to his, and my heart was in my throat, knowing full well that this was the final step in returning to our life together, and it was off to a terrible footing to match the terrible nerves.
I’d been stalling for days, telling him that we needed to find our feet together, and I was nervous and scared and wanted to take it slow – but this was it. The doorway to his was the final threshold, and we were about to cross it on terrible terms.
My fingers were twisting together in my lap, and I was desperate for him to speak to me, to say anything to make this feel better, because I wanted it to.
Please, God, I wanted it to.
We arrived outside his in a few short minutes. He paid the driver and headed up the front path, and I followed him.
He opened the front door, turned off the intruder alarm and hung his jacket up. He tossed the keys on the kitchen counter and I watched him. I watched him ignoring me with that same scowl on his face he’d had since I ordered the prosecco at the bar.
“Did you take your meds?” h
e asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I took them before the club.”
“No seizures?”
“None,” I said.
“Well, that’s a fucking blessing, isn’t it? Considering you asked for one with your fucking drinking.”
He poured me a glass of water, and slammed it on the counter. I sipped it as quickly as I could.
“Bed time,” he said. “At least you can get something fucking right with your ill fucking brain.”
I hadn’t even taken my coat off, but he didn’t notice, just stormed on by me and headed upstairs. My hands were shaking as I took off my heels and got ready to follow him. My legs felt bandy as I climbed the stairs, my heart still thumping as he finished brushing his teeth with the bathroom door open.
He jammed his toothbrush back in the holder and stomped across the landing to the bedroom, and I brushed my teeth with my hands still shaking, praying I could be the person I needed to be to make this work all over again.
He was still undressing when I joined him in the bedroom. He tossed his cufflinks down onto the dressing table and tugged his tie loose.
I watched him cast it on the floor.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know you like me to be careful, and I know I shouldn’t be drinking, but I like a prosecco now, just one every now and again. Just to loosen up a bit.”
He sneered at me. “Sure you do. And I guess you need to puff on some filthy fucking cigarettes to loosen up a bit too, do you?”
I didn’t have an answer to that, just stood hovering awkward and feeling disgusted with myself.
He stepped up closer, and sniffed at the air. “You smell revolting, Anna. What the fuck do you think you’re playing at?”
I hated him like this, after too many drinks out at Oscars. I hated the way his ego grew, and his self-righteousness grew along with it. And it was sad, because he wasn’t like this, not in regular life when he was caring, and trying, and wanting to save me from my own failing brain.
“I just smoke sometimes now,” I told him, and shrugged to try to lighten it.
His eyes were full of rage, and I didn’t blame him for that. I knew I was asking a lot for him to pick up the pieces. I knew I was asking a lot for him to treat me like the woman I used to be before I’d walked out and left him behind.