He pauses, takes another sip. ‘Made me think about you, mate. I mean, it must be wearing you down in a serious way.’
I make a non-committal sound, because I don’t want to have this conversation. Gemma was the last one who tried it – tried telling me that I would eventually go under if I couldn’t find a way of carving out more freedom for myself. I chose to take it as a criticism of my mother and we had a fight, but I knew, deep down, that she was probably right.
‘There’s nobody who can do what I do, though,’ I say now. ‘It’s not like she needs someone to wash her, or make her food – she just needs a person she trusts at the end of the phone, or to come round if she goes into overwhelm. I take her shopping, I sort stuff out, I talk to her. I’m her buddy. Not her carer. ’
Alan nods, but I don’t think he sees it in the same way. ‘Just think about it,’ he says. ‘But as for Sarah . . . You did the right thing, Ed. You did the only thing.’
‘Mmmm.’
‘Think about Romeo and Juliet. Or Tony and Maria.’
Alan’s love of musical theatre delights me normally, but I’m not in the mood for West Side Story tonight.
‘They knew it was wrong to get together,’ he persists, ‘but they went for it anyway and then ended up dead. You’ve been a lot smarter than that. You’ve resisted, which takes much more courage.’
‘Well, that’s great to know, Alan. Thank you. But the real problem is that I have to stop loving her and I don’t know how.’
Alan looks thoughtful. ‘I’ve often wondered how that works. Making yourself fall out of love with someone,’ he says. ‘What do you actually do ? Why haven’t Haynes published a manual on it?’ His hayrick hair sticks crazily out from the sides of his head as he ponders the question. Alan’s never had to stop loving anyone. He and Gia have been married for nine years, together for nineteen. Before her there was only Shelley, whose heart Alan (very guiltily) broke, and a small handful of girls from school with whom he was mostly just trying to subdue his never-ending teenage erection.
How do you just stop loving someone? The love I felt for Sarah wasn’t just a version of something that already lived in me; it was something I built from scratch, something I grew. By the time we said goodbye, it was as tangible as she was.
How do I just kill it? Even if I let time wear it down, there would still be fragments scattered all around inside me. The unexpected earthiness of her laugh, the fan of her hair on a pillow. The sound of a sheep’s baa, the sight of Mouse in her slim fingers.
‘I have no idea how you stop loving someone,’ I say eventually. Alan’s watching me again. ‘I guess you just sit and wait for . . . I don’t know. The intensity to fade? Right now, though, I feel like a pressure cooker.’
‘Maybe that’s why so many poets have written about heartbreak. Helps them let off steam. Like bloodletting. Rapid discharge of overwhelming feelings.’
‘Right,’ I sigh. ‘Rapid discharge sounds good. Release.’
There’s a pause, and then a snort, and then we both start laughing. ‘If you want to take yourself off home for a bit of rapid release, I won’t mind,’ Alan says.
He gets up and goes to the bar. I look at his ankles and smile. He is of normal build, Alan, but he has ankles so slender you can get a hand round them. He gets really cross when I do that.
The wine fridge hums. In a distant kitchen, someone is scraping plates.
I look at my watch: 8.40 p.m. I wonder what Sarah’s having for lunch, and I can’t stand it.
Alan returns with our pints and sits down, rubbing his hands with glee at the thought of the steaks he’s just ordered, and I want more than anything to be him at this moment. To be Alan Glover, smelling lightly of yoghurt, secure in his life, responsible only for the well-being of his lovely little girl.
‘Just going to the loo,’ I tell him.
On my way back to the table, I notice that a couple has taken residence at a table in the corner. They’re dressed in black and I can tell, straight away, that something about them isn’t quite right. They aren’t talking, although the woman is holding on to the man as if they were in a strong wind.
At the same moment I realize the woman is crying, I realize I know her. I slow down, so I can get a good look at her, and after a few seconds I recognize Hannah Harrington. Sarah’s sister. Less than two metres from me, curled into the side of a man I take to be her husband. Her face is red, disfigured with sadness, but I can see her . A shadow of Sarah. Just like she was on the beach when I left her – stunned, miserable, utterly silent.
Hannah doesn’t spot me and I move quietly back to our table. I tell Alan about the funeral cars I saw heading to Sarah’s village earlier on. Then, because my stomach is churning, I blurt out that if Hannah’s crying, it must surely be someone Sarah’s family knows very well. ‘Sarah could have flown back for the funeral,’ I whisper, and my voice has tipped just a bit too far towards madness. ‘She could be a few miles away from here, Alan!’
Alan looks alarmed. ‘Don’t go looking for her,’ he says eventually.
Our steaks arrive soon after, and he ends up eating mine.
A little later on I get up to buy a round and see that Hannah and her husband have gone. I can’t stop thinking about who might have died. For a terrible moment I even consider the possibility that it could have been Sarah herself.
It’s irrational, of course, but as the evening passes I struggle to let it go. It fits far too comfortably with those intrusive thoughts I had when I got back from LA. That voice, asking if I’d still feel like I’d done the right thing if Sarah died.
I get embarrassingly drunk, and at some point I thump my fist on the table at the general hopelessness of things.
I am not the sort of man to thump a table. When Alan says he reckons he’ll come back to mine to drink whisky and watch the Olympics, I don’t argue. I’m not sure I’d leave me to my own devices if I were him, either.
Chapter Forty-Three
Dear You,
Enough: I have to let go of Sarah. Not just tell myself to do it and then spend all my time thinking about her – I have to stop the thoughts as soon as they’ve begun. Because they’re not just unhelpful, they’re dangerous. Once they’re out of the starting gates, they spread faster than a virus and I find it almost impossible to control them – and when I look at Mum, I see how far they could take me.
So this is it, Hedgehog. It’s time to exercise that power of choice I like to bang on about.
Thank you for being my witness. As ever.
Me x
I reread the letter before reaching for an envelope, as if trying to hold on to Sarah for a few moments more. Early morning sun falls steeply through the window, across the forest of detritus that lives on my desk: dusty catalogues, invoices, a ruler, endless pencils and offcuts, cold cups of tea. Through these obstacles a narrow finger of light makes it through to the rectangle of purple paper on which I’ve just written. It points at the letter, seems almost to trace along the words as the trees move outside. Then a cloud passes, gobbles it up, and the letter lies once again in the thin grey of morning .
I pull out a purple envelope, just as a creak overhead announces Alan’s awakening. A muffled voice: ‘Ed? Oi, Ed!’
He fell asleep on the sofa while writing a text to Gia about the state of my mental health. I need to keep an eye on him , he’d written, before passing out. I finished the message and sent it to Gia, so she wouldn’t worry. He lost it in the pub , I wrote. Best that I stay over. Gia is extraordinarily tolerant when it comes to Alan and me.
Alan snored from time to time. Team GB won bronze in the men’s synchronized diving. I sat on the sofa, trying not to think about Sarah.
Sounds of hungover padding above my head. Alan’ll be poking around in the kitchen now, like a hungry bear, sniffing out tasty things he can stick his paw into. He’ll want a large cup of tea, at least four pieces of toast and then a lift to work. Probably some clothes, too, because his are covered in strawberry yoghurt.
I’ll gladly provide these things, because Alan is a real friend. He knew I needed the company last night. He knew I’d be miserable about Sarah, and he also knew, somehow, that I’m not in a good place with Mum. The least I can do is make him toast.