The Flavours of Love (49 page)

What I want to ask is:
When did you realise he wasn’t coming back? Do you feel as hollowed out as I do now that you know it’s for ever?
‘What’s the matter?’ I ask. ‘Aren’t I playing this role properly? Am I supposed to quietly accept you ending our friendship and put up with you blanking me?’

‘It was you who—’

What I want to utter is:
Does this desolate feeling get any better? Because you said I’d learn to live around the pain and I am, but what about this desolate, hollowed out barrenness? Will that ever go?
‘It was me who wanted to talk but you refused,’ I utter.

He lowers his tone: ‘Talk about what? I’m
just
a friend to you. What we shared was
just
sex. What is there to talk about?’

What I want to beg is:
I just need to know this will get better and that everything is going to be all right again
. ‘Please, you know it’s not that simple,’ I beg.

‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ he tells me.

‘There is.’

He shakes his head. I know why he won’t talk. It’s for the same reason that I won’t verbalise all of those feelings: the thought of the pain the answers will bring is too much to withstand; and I’m not the only person who will go out of their way to avoid pain, Fynn does it too. ‘I won’t call you Saff again,’ he states.

‘Fine,’ I reply. ‘That’s perfectly fine.’

I have to walk away before he steps out of the door and clicks it shut behind him. I can’t watch him walk away again. He keeps doing it and it hurts a little more every time, especially now it is certain I can’t rely on him any more to be the one to tell me it’ll all be OK.

*

Phoebe is installed on the sofa under her seaside scene duvet, plump white pillows propped behind her and the silver remote control firmly in her hand. Zane, who has barely left her side since his return two days ago, sits with his back against the sofa by her head, so they’re as close as possible. Aunty Betty is dozing in the armchair in the bay window. It’s been a very tiring few days in the hospital, I don’t
think she knew she had it in her. She’s now volunteered to become a hospital visitor and to find funding for and to run a mobile book-lending service. She’s planning on starting it with the books she has in storage but it essentially means I’ll be funding it and taking her to and from ‘work’, as she calls it.

For the first time since I’ve known her she has gone several days without wearing a wig. Even when she was in hospital with a broken hip, by the time visiting hours came around she had her wig in place and some basic make-up on. Now, her chin-length hair is combed out and frames her face like wispy grey-streaked black clouds. She looks like a different person, even though she still has her eye make-up and lipstick. She’s stopped hiding behind her make-up, I’ve realised these past couple of days, now she wears it to enhance her features, not to disguise them. Aunty Betty is finally ready to face the world, it seems.

At this moment, her head is thrown back, her mouth is wide open, her teeth with their patchwork of grey-black fillings are exposed to the entire room. She doesn’t quite fill the brown leather seat, not like Joel used to. That was ‘his’ chair and once upon a time I would have encouraged her to move by saying she would be more comfortable elsewhere. Now, I simply leave her. It doesn’t matter if she sits there now, he’s not coming back. He won’t sit there again. He really is gone.

‘Who wants a cup of tea/hot chocolate/coffee/apple juice – delete wet substance as appropriate?’ I ask.

A resounding silence is my reply.

‘Fine, I’ll take care of myself,’ I say.

‘OK, Mum,’ Phoebe says.

‘It’s going to be all right, you know, Mum?’ Zane says suddenly and unexpectedly.

I frown at my son.

‘It is, you know,’ Phoebe adds with a nod.

‘Right.’ I glance at Aunty Betty, expecting her to add something equally poignant. She snorts a little snore at us.

The kids crack up and I find my own smile.

It’s going to be all right, you know, Mum
. I hear those words for the
rest of the day. And when I climb into bed that night, I don’t simply look over at Joel’s side of the bed, I spread myself over it, I try to touch both sides of the bed by stretching my arms right across.

It’s going to be all right, you know, Mum
.

My fingers don’t come anywhere near each side, but I keep at it, I pull myself apart as far as I will go because I am desperate to touch the sides. I am desperate to do the impossible. Because it seems impossible that it’s going to be all right. That life will work when he’s not coming back.

I finally give in, stop stretching myself, stop attempting the impossible and I am still.

I am still and listen to those words again:

It’s going to be all right, you know, Mum
.

‘
It is, Ffrony,
’ I fancy I can hear Joel say, ‘
I promise you, it’s going to be all right.
’

Fynn has no shirt on and is kissing a woman on his front doorstep.

I watch them from the end of the black and white tiled path that leads to the tiled steps up to his flat. He lives in one of the four apartments in a large house in Hove on one of the roads that goes down to the street that runs parallel to the seafront. There really is no need for him to be doing that out there when he has a doorstep inside.

She’s really quite beautiful, this woman. As tall as him in her designer heels, extremely slender, a well-cut navy blue suit and swathes of long, shiny, ebony black hair that cascade right down to the middle of her back. She has one hand on his face, he has his hand nestled at the base of her spine as they snog like two people who’ve blatantly spent most of last night screwing. And probably this morning, too.

This, I do not need to see. Whether she’s a new girlfriend or a one-night ‘hook up’ I do not need to be watching this. Apart from everything else, it’s confirmation that in the four weeks since we last saw each other it hasn’t bothered him that we’re not friends any more. How things stand between us – with him regularly speaking to/texting the kids and often Aunty Betty – is fine with him. He’s simply getting on with his life without me in it.

The canoodling couple break apart and simultaneously grin at each other, a secret shared without words between them. They say their goodbyes and she smiles, flashing her light blue eyes at me, on her way past. She has on last night’s clothes but she has fresh makeup, and she’s showered, her vaguely woody, musky scent is one that Fynn often smells of. I smile back because it’s the polite thing to do.
I even manage a smile for the man at the top of the black and white steps.

He replies with an unfriendly tightening of his lips and a glare, but leaves the front door and the door to his flat open when he goes inside.

The flat is in partial darkness because the living room blinds are drawn and I’m guessing the ones in the bedroom are, too. All the other doors that lead off the corridor are closed, so the flat is subdued and almost sombre. Fynn moved here after he got divorced eight years ago. He was married for two years and neither of them could explain why they got married – they did it in Vegas – nor why they split up. I liked her, but she moved away after they broke up and didn’t want to keep in touch. ‘Need a fresh start away from everyone,’ she texted. ‘I know you’ll understand.’

By the time I enter the flat, Fynn has, thankfully, pulled on a T-shirt and he walks from section to section of his bay window and jerks the strings to open the blinds. He also opens the sash windows as far as they will go with the window locks to let some air in. The whole flat needs proper airing because everything reeks of sex.

He moves around his living room, righting it after last night’s activities: he picks up the wine glasses on the table in front of the television and carries them through to the kitchen. He returns for the shot glasses and the nearly empty bottle of whisky. While screwing up the empty crisp packets and snatching up the empty condom packet that was partially hidden under the coffee table, he finally speaks: ‘What, have you come over to watch me tidy up, or to tell me what else I can’t do because we’re not friends?’

‘Neither … I came here …’ I hold out the white paper bag in my hand, in it is a muffin I made earlier with him in mind. All the flavours I know he loves. ‘Look, see? I brought this muffin: white flour, white sugar, white chocolate, coconut – which is of course white – all in a white paper bag. I mean, yes, it’s got blueberries and the coconut was slightly toasted, but in essence, baked goods crammed with stuff to be used as a white flag.’ I wave the bag around. ‘Ceasefire?’

He says nothing, glowers at me from his ‘hunched over cleaning my coffee table’ position, before he stands upright and pads into the kitchen. His bare feet make an almost comical slapping sound as they hit the tiles.

I follow him. I know he’s hurt, but I am too. The world doesn’t feel right without him
and
Joel, I can’t believe he doesn’t feel the same.

‘Isn’t it weird to you that we’ve not spoken in a month?’ I ask.

He shrugs dismissively and fills a large tankard I know he and Joel brought home from Oktoberfest 1997 in Munich with water from the tap. Joel confessed it was one of the worst trips of his life because for the first time ever he had memory blackouts from the drinking and hated the thought of not remembering what he’d got up to.

‘So, who was your friend?’ I try again as a punt on something that might make him talk.

Fynn lowers the glass from his lips and aims his head dangerously at me. I think for a moment he’s going to scream at me to get out of his house, to stay out of his life, and brace myself for it. ‘Are you having a laugh?’ he replies.

Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, after all. ‘No,’ I say. ‘I’m asking because I am interested.’ I inhale deeply, an attempt to take the edge off the panic that is amassing inside. I have a normal way of quelling the panic but I am trying not to do that any more. I don’t want to be that person any more. It hasn’t worked completely, but I am getting there. I am here to face the panic instead of continuing to run.

‘Interested or jealous?’ he challenges.

‘Jealous. Of course I’m jealous,’ I say. The panic rises. I lower my gaze to the muffin in my hand. I want it. I want to rip open the bag and cram it whole into my mouth to silence myself, to stop myself from doing this. I toss the bag onto his work surface and turn my back on it.

His surprise is evident, but he does not speak.

I have to redirect my eyes as I continue. ‘You know I’m jealous. You know that I … Wanting you, sleeping with you, was never the problem, Fynn.’

‘That’s not what you said.’

‘I know. I just … both of those conversations caught me off guard. I’m not very good at this. Speaking about what I feel is not easy for me. If it was, I doubt I’d have half my issues. Lord knows I’ve had a crash-course in it recently, but it’s not second nature. I get scared. I panic. I want to do things perfectly and I become so incredibly frightened when it might not work out, and then my mind races ahead to every possible thing that could go wrong which leaves me completely frozen. Except these past few weeks every issue I’ve ever had seems to need to be dealt with. It’s been … It’s been so hard. And with you, I panicked because there were so many trigger points in those conversations.’

Deep, deep, deep breath in, long, long, long push out. ‘I need you back in my life. I want you back.’

‘You’ve got Lewis.’

‘He’s not you.’

‘What are you saying, Saff, sorry, Saffron, because you’re not making any sense?’

Although my hands are trembling, I take his glass from him, place it on the countertop beside the sink. ‘Fynn …’ The panic, it billows up inside, sheets and sheets of soft, feathery panic welling up to smother me from the inside out.

My quivering hands rest gently on his face. I want to see him when I say this. I want him to see me, to watch me speak so he understands.

‘Fynn … I … I
love
you. So much. It makes my heart ache when I think about how much I love you. Not just as a friend. You’ll never be “just” anything to me. Yes, it was sex, but I couldn’t have had sex with just anyone.’ I squeeze my eyes together, push and shove at the panic to get it out of me; to free it with every word I say. When I am brave again, I open my eyes. ‘I do love you and if I was ever going to have any more children, of course I’d want you as the father. You’re practically a father to Zane and Phoebe as it is. And, yes, I admit a part of me has been expecting us to get together and settle down, too.’

Silent and wary, he watches me speak.

‘But, I can’t be with you.’ The panic continues to gush out of me. ‘You’re too much like him. You talk alike, you think alike, you find the same things funny. You react in the same way he would to things and you put yourself out so often for the people you love. You’re amazing. And so was he. In so many of the same ways.

‘If we got together, I would lose him all over again. I already lost him once. I was trying so hard to find him again with the cookbook, to bring him back almost. And it didn’t work. And then all the stuff with Phoebe where I had to stop trying to do things his way and do it my way, I had to give up some more of him. I can’t let any more of him go. Not for any reason.

‘Being with you would blot him out. I wouldn’t know where he ended and you began. It’d happen slowly, I probably wouldn’t notice it at first, but then I’d try to remember something he said or did and it would be mixed up with you and soon there’d be nothing of him left. I can’t let that happen.’

Fynn cups my face as though nurturing a flower in the cradle of his hands, and gently his thumbs stroke away some of the tears on my cheeks. His tears are briefly dammed by my fingers, before they continue their downward journey over and around my hands.

The panic, the terror, is not as loud now; it does not seem as overwhelming and dangerous, that it will smother me in its thick, white folds now that I have been honest. ‘Do you understand?’ I ask.

He nods, forcing his pink lips together into an unhappy smile.