Clare Mackintosh - I Let You Go

I have two hours before he arrives. It’s dark out, but I don’t want to stay here. I put my coat back on and go outside.

The beach is a curious place to be at night. There is no one up on the clifftop, and I walk down to the water’s edge and stand in the shallows, my boots disappearing for a few seconds as the tail end of each wave reaches me. I take a step forward and the water licks at the hem of my trousers. I feel the damp creep up my legs.

And then I keep walking.

The slope of the sand at Penfach is gradual, leading a hundred metres or more out to sea before the shelf ends and it falls away. I watch the horizon and put one foot in front of the other, feeling the sand sucking at my feet. The water passes my knees and splashes my hands, and I think of playing in the sea with Eve, clutching buckets filled with seaweed, and jumping over foam-tipped waves. It is icy cold, and as the water swirls around my thighs my breath catches but I keep on moving. I’m not thinking any more; just walking, walking into the sea. I hear a roaring, but if it’s coming from the sea I don’t know if it is warning me or calling to me. It’s harder to move now: I’m chest-high in the waves and dragging each leg forward against the weight of water. And then I’m falling; stepping into open space, and slipping under the surface. I tell myself not to swim, but the voice goes unheeded and my arms begin thrashing of their own accord. I suddenly think of Patrick, forced to search for my body until the tide throws it up, broken by the rocks and eaten by fish.

As though slapped on the face I shake my head violently and take a gasp of air. I can’t do this. I can’t spend my whole life running from the mistakes I’ve made. In my panic I’ve lost sight of the shore and I flail in a circle, before the clouds shift and the moon shows the cliffs high above the beach. I begin to swim. I’ve drifted further out since I stepped off the shelf, and although I kick downwards, searching for a foothold, I feel nothing but freezing water. A wave hits me and I choke on a mouthful of salty water, retching as I try to breathe through my coughs. My wet clothes drag in the sea, and I can’t kick off my laced boots, which weigh heavily downwards.

My arms are aching and my chest feels tight, but my head is still clear and I hold my breath and push under the water, focusing on slicing my hands cleanly through the waves. When I look up and take a breath, I think I am a little closer to the shore, and I repeat the movement again, and again. I kick a foot downwards and feel something on the toe of my boot. I swim another few strokes and kick again, and this time I step on to solid ground. I swim and run and crawl my way out of the sea, salt water in my lungs and ears and eyes, and when I reach dry sand I crouch down on all fours and anchor myself before standing up. I am shaking uncontrollably: from the cold, and from the realisation that I’m capable of something so unforgivable.

When I reach the cottage I strip off my clothes and leave them on the floor in the kitchen. I pull on warm, dry layers, then go back downstairs and light the fire. I don’t hear Patrick approach but I hear Beau bark, and before Patrick knocks at the door I have thrown it open. I crouch down to say hello to Beau, and to hide my uncertainty at seeing Patrick again.

‘Will you come in?’ I say, when I eventually stand up.

‘I should get back.’

‘Just for a minute. Please.’

He pauses, then comes inside and pulls the door closed behind him. He makes no move to sit down, and we stand for a moment or two, Beau on the floor between us. Patrick looks past me to the kitchen, where a pool of water has seeped from my sodden clothes. A hint of confusion clouds his expression, but he says nothing, and that’s when I realise any feelings he had for me have evaporated. He doesn’t care why my clothes are soaked; why even the coat he gave me is dripping wet. All he cares about is the terrible secret I kept from him.

‘I’m sorry.’ Inadequate, but heartfelt.

‘What for?’ He’s not going to let me off so lightly.

‘For lying to you. I should have told you I had…’ I can’t finish the sentence, but Patrick takes over.

‘Killed someone?’

I close my eyes. When I open them Patrick is walking away.

‘I didn’t know how to tell you,’ I say, the words falling over themselves in my hurry to speak. ‘I was frightened of what you might think.’

He shakes his head, as though he doesn’t know what to make of me. ‘Tell me one thing: did you drive away from that boy? The accident I can understand, but did you drive away without stopping to help?’ His eyes search mine for an answer I can’t give him.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes, I did.’

He pulls open the door with such force I take a step back, and then he is gone.

28

You stayed the night, that first time. I pulled the duvet around us both, and lay beside you watching you sleep. Your face was smooth and untroubled; tiny flickers of movement beneath the translucent skin on your eyelids. When you slept I didn’t have to pretend, keeping my distance in case you realised how hard I was falling for you. I could smell your hair; kiss your lips; feel your soft breath on mine. When you slept you were perfect.

You smiled before you had even opened your eyes. You reached for me without prompting, and I lay back and let you make love to me. For once, I was glad to find someone in my bed in the morning, and I realised I didn’t want you to leave. If it had not been absurd, I would have told you right then and there that I loved you. Instead I made you breakfast, then I took you back to bed, so that you would know how much I wanted you.

I was pleased when you asked to see me again. It meant I didn’t have to spend another week on my own, waiting for the right time to call you. So I let you think you were calling the shots, and we went out again that night, and again two nights later. Before too long you were coming over every evening.

‘You should leave some things here,’ I said, one day.

You looked surprised, and I realised I was breaking the rules: it is not the men who fast-forward relationships. But when I returned from work each day only an upturned mug on the drainer told me you had been there at all, and I found the impermanence unsettling. There was no reason for you to come back; nothing to keep you here.

That night you brought a small bag with you: dropped a new toothbrush into the glass in the bathroom; clean underwear in the drawer I had cleared for you. In the morning I brought you tea and kissed you before leaving for work, and I tasted you on my lips as I drove to the office. I called home when I got to my desk, and could tell from the thickness when you spoke that you had gone back to sleep again.

‘What’s up?’ you said.

How could I tell you I just wanted to hear your voice again?

‘Could you make the bed today?’ I said. ‘You never do.’

You laughed, and I wished I hadn’t called. When I got home I went straight upstairs without taking off my shoes. But it was fine: your toothbrush was still there.

I made space for you in the wardrobe and gradually you moved in more of your clothes.

‘I won’t be staying tonight,’ you said one day, as I sat on the bed to put on my tie. You were sitting up in bed drinking tea, your hair tangled and last night’s make-up still around your eyes. ‘I’m going out with some of the guys from my course.’

I didn’t say anything; concentrated on tying the perfect knot in my dark-blue tie.

‘That’s okay, isn’t it?’

I turned around. ‘Do you know it’s exactly three months today since we met in the Student Union?’

‘Is it really?’

‘I booked a table at Le Petit Rouge for tonight. That place I took you on our first date?’ I stood up and put on my jacket. ‘I should have checked with you beforehand, there’s no reason why you would have remembered something as silly as that day.’