The Last Time I Saw You (38 page)

“But you do want to?”

“Ye-es,” I say, trying not to sound as reluctant as I feel. “I’m in a bubble right now, but I have pretty much blown my life to bits.”

She starts developing that worried-big-sister look.

“There’s a million things you could do with the writing. You could train as a journalist, maybe.”

“I’m thinking about it. Mary paid me last month, incredibly, but after Christmas I’m going to have to make some serious decisions.”

We’re laying into the mozzarella balls and bagel chips when the doorbell rings. I look at Jules, baffled.

“Shall I ignore it?”

“No, you need to answer it.”

“But I don’t know anyone except you, and there’s three flights of stairs.”

“Could be important.” I get up, sighing grumpily. She wiggles a finger at my feet. “And you need to lose those socks.”

“Don’t be so bossy.”

“Seriously. You might slip.”

I toil down the three flights of smelly stairs, shivering.

“Hello . . .” I say, through the reinforced door.

“Hello,” replies a familiar voice.

My heart pounds in my chest, my legs shaking like a baby colt’s.

“Are you going to open the door? It’s perishing out here.”

“Yes,” I say, without actually making a move to open it. Tears are streaming down my face, my heart too open, too undefended, for this. I can’t bear another perfectly constructed conversation about why we can’t be together. If he’s here to tie up the loose ends, I’d rather leave them trailing.

“I can absolutely see why you’d want to leave me outside a walk-up in Chinatown. I would probably feel exactly the same way. But I would very much like to talk to you. When I told you I’d miss you infinitely more than you would know, I had no idea how infinite infinite might prove to be.”

“I can’t be your friend.”

“I don’t want you to be my friend, Livvy. I want you to be beautiful Livvy. Adorable Livvy. Love of my life Livvy who happened to come along at the worst moment possible.”

Then I do open the door, tears streaming down my face. I grab the lapels of his perfect cashmere coat and shove him.

“Don’t say things like that if you don’t mean them.”

“I do mean it,” he says, wrapping me up in his arms and holding me against his chest. For a moment I relax into it, but then I pull myself out of the circle they make.

“I meant everything I said. And so did you. I don’t want some half relationship. It will hurt even more . . .” I’m crying in earnest now, “even more than this.”

“I’m not going to sell you a pup, Livvy, and I’m not saying that it’s going to be plain sailing. But I won’t abandon you again. And if you’ll let me, I’m going to try my damnedest to overcome the truly atrocious timing and concentrate on the fact that when you meet the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, then you owe it to the universe to do everything that you can to make it happen.”

He looks down at me, his gaze intense, and I look back up into his face. Something there has shifted, there’s an animation and a presence that I’ve never detected before—it’s only now, seeing it, that I realize how much of him was permanently out of reach.

“Can we at least go somewhere and talk about it?” he says, giving me that kind smile that always destroys me.

“Yes, but I’m paying. And we’re not going anywhere fancy. Let me grab some shoes. I’m guessing Jules won’t be surprised.”

She’s not. I turned my cell off a week ago, and apparently William was determined to actually speak to me, rather than send any more e-mails. He contacted Jules the second day she was here, Jules told him how heartbroken I was, and he decided it was time for a grand gesture. The problem is, I’m not sure I believe in grand gestures. Not now—not after all those conversations about how ordinary is overrated. I say as much to him once we’re ensconced in the tiny Chinese restaurant a few doors down. The aged couple who own it are one of the few constants of the last few weeks, and they greet me with a sweet enthusiasm.

“You’re not thinking of staying, are you?” says William, taking in the row of ducks, hanging from their feet, which dangle perilously outside the kitchen. The man slaps down a pair of handleless cups of hot, peculiar-tasting tea and I smile up at him.

“I might,” I say, then watch his face slide downward into an expression of abject misery. I grab his hand, unable to keep it up. “No, of course not. I’m coming back in a few days.”

His face lights up with pleasure, and a lump rises in my throat. It’s so lovely to watch his emotions run free.

“Just tell me how it would be different. Because everything in your letter made total sense. That was almost the worst thing about it. I couldn’t argue any of it, and I couldn’t hate you.”

My voice rises as I say it.

“Did you
want
to hate me?” he says, hurt in his eyes.

“No, but hating you would have been a load easier than loving you and knowing I could never be with you.”

I look at him, stricken. Why did I let that escape? All those months of picking my words with such care, and here I am, throwing open the doors and switching on the lights.

“Do you?” he says, but I don’t answer. “Because I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t love you.”

“Can you even say that?” I ask.

“Yes. In these extraordinary circumstances I think I can. In fact I think I cannot not. It’s not necessarily comfortable or appropriate, but absolutely nothing about this situation is.”

“But how can it have changed so much in a few weeks? How do you expect me to believe in it?”

“I know it must seem abrupt, but . . .” He looks away, gathering his thoughts. “Of course it’s all still a tremendous
shock, but the thing that’s surprising is, that it also isn’t. We half know things, don’t we? We deny them to ourselves. The truth is, it wasn’t a happy marriage. We were trapped in it, we both loved our daughter, but we . . . this might sound callous, but I hadn’t been in love with her for a long time. I knew what my role was, and I didn’t deviate from it. I wish with all my heart that she’d told me about her illness, that she’d let me help, and I know that’s one of the things that will prove hardest. But the truth is, you were right when you said that sometimes it’s better to admit that a marriage is fatally flawed. To not soldier on.”

“What, you think you should have divorced her?”

He shrugs.

“I wouldn’t have wanted to leave Madeline. I would have worried about her being in sole charge. She could be tremendous fun, and then she could suddenly seem almost indifferent to her.” It makes sense of those lines she scribbled in the diary. “But us as a couple—we talked about half relationships, but I’ve shared more with you in these last months than we had in years. I loved the idea of it, the memory of it, more than the reality.”

“Really?”

“Yes, and I buried myself in my work. I’m utterly disgusted by the thought of her and Richie, but in a way I was more involved with my work than I was with her, the two of us communicating via Madeline. It’s a lot of pressure for a little girl.”

“What a dreadful situation.”

“Don’t feel too sorry for me. I do feel intensely guilty for ignoring the signs. I should have realized that her moods were more than just a tendency toward depression and a quick temper, but it was easier to simply feel grateful when
the sun shone.” He smiles a crumpled sort of smile. “As you may have noticed I’m not always terribly good at talking about feelings.”

I think of the first time I saw Sally in full meltdown, that night the Nutty Professor had dumped her. I can still remember how helpless and terrified I felt in the face of her desolation. I’m not surprised he backed away from its force.

“You’re doing pretty well now,” I say, tracing his knuckles with the very tips of my fingers.

“Don’t get too used to it. It might very well be a one-off.” I roll my eyes at him, and he smiles again. “I don’t remember her being like that when we met,” he continues. “It got much worse after we married.”

“She was the same when we moved in together. Once she knew that she had you, she needed to see how much you could take.”

“There’s so much to try and work out. You were right, incidentally, about the counseling, we both need it. In fact Madeline’s already begun. Play therapy, it’s called. Apparently she makes the most tremendous crashes happen between her dinosaurs.”

“I’m glad.”

“But knowing that I didn’t drive her to her death—the relief of that. Whatever I might have said, it was always my fear. And I do truly believe it was an accident. The diary entries, they’re so up and down. She might have been devastated about Richie, but she might as well have decided he was beneath her notice a few days later. She just shouldn’t have been driving in that terrible weather in such awful distress.”

“But walking away from the hearing—it’s so brave. Have you been left with the most horrendous debts?”

“What’s the phrase? I’m going to downsize. That apartment’s got about as much character as a fridge, and there’s no earthly reason why Madeline needs to be privately educated. My parents are appalled, of course, but I’m too old to subject myself to living off pocket money.” He looks at me, sheepish. “I’m sorry he was so rude to you at the christening. And most of all that I didn’t stand up for you.”

“There are going to be a lot of people who are horrified by this,” I say, holding his gaze. “And I’m not prepared to sneak around like we’re the ones having an affair.”

“I know. But I’ve wasted so much of my life worrying about what’s socially acceptable. I’m ashamed to say it was probably a big factor in me not admitting that my marriage was a sham. And I don’t care anymore. I’ve been amazed in recent weeks by how long the list of things I don’t care about has turned out to be. And the other list, the things I do care about . . .”

He looks at me and smiles.

“We can take it gradually. Baby steps.”

“You mustn’t treat me with kid gloves. I’ll get terribly spoiled.”

“I won’t,” I say, and he reaches across the table and kisses me.

“Shall we eat?” he says. “I’ve heard the duck’s outstanding.”

Once dinner’s finished we wander out onto the street. William puts his arms around me again.

“I suppose I should ignore my internal howls of protest and let you get back to Jules?”

“No,” I say, reaching up to touch his face. “I’ve got a request.”

I do. I want to go dancing, somewhere silly and uncool and ridiculous. I want it to be so loud that we can’t hear each other, and we can’t carry on talking about the vagaries of life and death. William does some Googling and finds somewhere suitably awful back in midtown. It’s bloody freezing, but I ask him if we can walk: I love having him there beside me, pointing out landmarks and telling me stories of his own New York life. It’s so utterly different from the time I’ve spent getting to know the city on my own, the loneliness of not having a person to share the wonder of it with.

When I tell him that I’m moving out of my apartment-share, he stops in his tracks and spins me toward him.

“Gosh, I’m so relieved to hear you say that. I did sense . . .”

“Sense what?”

“You and James. That I was something of an intruder.”

“Really?”

“Yes. It wasn’t just about you feeling that
my
heart was out of bounds.”

I squeeze his hand, glad in a way that he cared enough to notice. I had my own ghosts. James and I have agreed not to speak for a little while, but I’ll get in touch when I’m back. I truly believe that in time we’ll find a healthier version of him and me. I don’t want to lose him too.

We walk through SoHo and NoHo, past the boutiques and cool bars, my love affair with New York well and truly in the ascendancy.

“Will you miss it?”

“No,” he says simply. “When a chapter of your life is over there’s no point lingering over the last page.”

And then, finally, we’re there. And it’s terrible, a cheesy bar full of overdressed blondes and smart-casual-clad men,
who William identifies as the very definition of Bridge and Tunnel. It’s perfect.

“Come on then,” I say, dragging him onto the center of the disco-ball-lit dance floor where they’re playing some dodgy hip-hop. And follow me he does, swiftly proving that he’s every bit as left-footed as he claimed all those months ago. I couldn’t care less, because at least he tries. We stumble around, we laugh, we kiss and, just for tonight, neither of us care about anything else at all.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Two Years Later

“Livvy . . .” says Madeline, poking her head around the door of the kitchen. Right at this second I’m trying to get a cake out of the steaming oven, so it’s hard to look around, particularly as I’m the size of a couple of bungalows.

“Yes, darling?”

“You do know I’d like it much, much better if I had a sister?”

“Absolutely. But it’s not something we can choose. You’d love a little brother too, once he was here.”

A look of petulance crosses her face, a look I know from a time long before she was so much as a twinkle in the sky, but then it passes, as it tends to these days. She’s a much happier little girl than the one I met, and I don’t think that’s just my own wishful thinking.

“Okay. I’m going to the beach with Sophie and her mom.”

“Home by six, please.”

She nods, and I smile at her, wanting to know for sure she’s okay. It’s not an easy day.

“Bye, Livvy.”

She’s as good as her word, and as soon as she’s arrived, I call William in for supper. Our Brighton house isn’t grand, but it has a lovely big garden, and William proudly drops a muddy heap of potatoes onto the table, newly yanked out of the ground. It was only me who quit my job—I think he likes the taxing, exciting, secretive world he works in more than he thought he did in the aftermath—but he does love having a proper space to play at being a horny-handed man of the soil. He says it’s meditative, not a word I’d have heard from him back in the day, and I do think it’s helped him get some trust back in the rhythms of the world. The counseling made him feel worse before it made him feel better; he had to rip off a bandage that I think he’d worn his whole life, and for a while the world seemed to him like a very scary place. He would worry that something terrible would happen to Madeline or me, or that I would leave him.

It’s true, it wasn’t easy, but I never would have left. I loved him too much. I didn’t move in with them immediately, and we’re still engaged, not married, but our commitment was total from the moment we found each other again. His family has come to accept me, as much as they accept anyone, and Lola and I at least exchange Christmas cards. I did try talking to her, but I think that Sally’s bewitching power is still too great for her to hear me. I don’t waste too much
time worrying about it. We’ve made new friends down here, and some of the old ones have stuck around too.

James lives with a girl he met at work, a sweet thing who’s five years younger than him and thinks that the sun shines out of his behind. He loves her, I don’t doubt it, but I’m not sure what kind of name I’d give to that particular brand of love. I do feel sometimes, when we see them, that she’s like an exotic pet—a beautiful Siamese cat that he likes to show off—rather than an equal. It’s not in my interests to overanalyze it, even though I know that, for me, the fact that William is my best friend, as well as everything else, means the world. And James and I are proper friends again too, although I don’t think he’s ever entirely got over me choosing a balding stuffed shirt, as he sees it, over him.

“Sorry,” says William, taking my hand. “I should have given you more help, rather than playing around in the mud.” I smile at him, hoping that he can see in my eyes that I know that he was doing more than that—he needs time away from me, thinking time, on a day like this. “Did you get your pages finished?”

I still do some freelance copywriting here and there, but I’m trying to finish a book of short stories, encouraged by the writing group I joined when we moved down here. My friend Susie’s from there, the best friend I’ve made in a long time. She’s the one who made the coq au vin that I’m ladling out.

Then we all sit down together, raising our glasses. William’s is a crisp Chablis (only two small ones these days), while Madeline and I have cloudy apple juice.

“To Sally,” we say.

“To Mommy,” she says.

William has put a couple of candles around that lovely picture of them together, Madeline in her pristine uniform, that sits in pride of place above our fireplace.

“Happy birthday,” says Madeline, her bottom lip starting to wobble. William springs from his seat, and gives her a hug.

The cake is a tradition that Madeline came up with during the therapy, a way of remembering how old Sally would be, and not leaving her stranded at the age she died, getting further and further away from us. I light the candles, and she blows them out, though it takes her a couple of goes. Sally would have been thirty-eight: I think, briefly and vainly, how old I’m getting, and then chide myself. She lost so much. I look at William. “To Sally,” I whisper again, raising my glass a fraction, and he smiles.

“Excellent blowing,” says William, smiling a complicated sort of smile at me.

“Definitely,” I agree, watching her, wondering what’s going round in that clever, willful head of hers.

“You do know that I would much, much rather have a sister, don’t you?” she says, looking between us. “Boys are not at all my best thing. Though Nathaniel is nice for a boy. He will only be a cousin though, I will be a sister.”

That’s the only thing I don’t like about being down here—being separated from Jules. We manage to see each other every couple of weeks, nevertheless. She loves William and Madeline almost as much as I do, so she never minds packing Nathaniel into the back of the car and driving down.

“We do,” we say in unison, then look to each other, our eyes meeting in a way that makes it all feel okay.

“Have I ever told you about the day your mom threw me a surprise party?” I start, knowing that this story, like many
of my stories, will demand some pretty big omissions. Nevertheless, Madeline pulls her chair closer to mine, her eyes rapt. I’m glad, so glad, that now we can remember the good bits without being blindsided by the bad.

To Sally.