Sophie Hannah - Hurting Distance

‘Why can’t you pin him down? If he can’t leave Juliet now, when will he be able to? What will change between now and then?’

I want to protect you against the sting of Yvon’s hostility, so I say nothing. You could have lied about why you won’t leave Juliet immediately; many men would have. You could have made up a story that would have kept me at bay: a sick mother, an illness. The truth is harder to accept, but I’m glad you told me. ‘It’s nothing to do with Juliet,’ you said. ‘She won’t change. She’ll never change.’ I heard what sounded like determination in your voice, but perhaps it was a sort of furious resignation, anger filling the gap where hope once was. Your eyes narrowed as you spoke, as if in response to a sudden sharp pain. ‘If I left her now, it’d be the same as if I leave her in a year, or five years, from her point of view.’

‘Then why not leave her now?’ I asked. Yvon isn’t the only one who has wondered.

‘It’s me,’ you admitted. ‘This won’t make sense, but . . . I’ve thought about leaving her for so long. Planning it, looking forward to it. I’ve probably thought about it too much, in a way. It’s turned into this . . . legendary thing in my mind. I’m paralysed. It’s become too big for me. I get too preoccupied about the details—how and when to do it. In my mind, I’m already caught up in the process of leaving her. The grand finale—what I’ve been working towards for so long.’ You smiled sadly. ‘Trouble is, the process hasn’t yet manifested itself in the world outside my head.’

You took a long time to say all this, taking care to choose exactly the right words, the ones that most accurately described your feelings. I’ve noticed you don’t like to talk about yourself unless it’s to say how much you love me, or that you only feel truly alive when you’re with me. You’re the opposite of a self-absorbed, oblivious man. Yvon thinks I’m obsessed with you, and she’s right, but she’s never seen you in action. Nobody but me knows how you stare at me hungrily, as if you might never see me again. Nobody has ever felt the way you kiss me. My obsession is dwarfed by yours.

How can I explain all this to Yvon? I don’t entirely understand it myself.

‘What if leaving Juliet always seems too big?’ I asked you. ‘What if you always feel paralysed?’ I’m not a total fool. I’ve seen the same films Yvon has about women who waste their whole lives waiting for their married lovers to get divorced and commit to them properly. Though I will never regard you as a waste of time, no matter what happens. Even if you never leave Juliet, even if all I can ever have of you is three hours a week, I don’t care.

‘I will always feel paralysed,’ you said. It wasn’t what I wanted to hear, and I turned my face away so that you wouldn’t see my disappointment. ‘I’ll always feel the way I do now: hovering on the verge, not ready to throw myself over the edge. But I will do it. I’ll make myself do it. Once, I really wanted to marry Juliet. And I did marry her. Now you’re the one I’m desperate to marry. I look forward to it every minute of every day.’

When I replay things you’ve said and hear your voice so clearly in my mind, I feel like a dying animal. It can’t be over. I have to be able to see you again. There are two days to go until Thursday. I will be at the Traveltel at four o’clock. As usual.

Yvon nudges me with her elbow. ‘Probably I should keep my big gob shut,’ she says. ‘What do I know about anything? I married a lazy alcoholic because I fell in love with the summerhouse in his back garden and thought it’d be ideal for my business. Got what I deserved, didn’t I?’

Yvon lies about her romantic history all the time, making herself sound worse than she is. She married Ben Cotchin because she loved him. Still does, I suspect, despite his aimlessness and his drinking. Yvon and her business, Summerhouse Web Design, now live in the converted basement of my house, and Ben’s summerhouse, if Yvon’s spies are to be believed, is used primarily as an extra-large drinks cabinet.

We are nearly there. I can see the police station, a blur of red bricks in the distance, getting closer. There is a large obstruction in my throat. I can’t swallow.

‘Why don’t we go away for a couple of days?’ says Yvon. ‘You need to relax, detach a bit from all this stress. We could drive up to Silver Brae Chalets. Did I show you their card? I could get us a chalet for next to nothing, being well connected, you know how it is. After you’ve done whatever you need to do at the police station, we could—’

‘No,’ I snap. Why is everybody talking about bloody Silver Brae Chalets? Detective Sergeant Zailer quizzed me about it, after I stupidly gave her the card by mistake. She asked if you and I had ever been there.

I don’t want to be reminded of the only time you’ve ever been really angry with me, not now that you’re missing. It’s funny, it never bothered me before. I forgot it almost as soon as it had happened. I’m sure you did too. But this one bad memory seems to have taken on a sudden significance, and my mind swerves away from it.

It can’t possibly have anything to do with you being missing. Why would it make you decide to leave me now, four months after it happened? And everything has been fine since then. Better than fine: perfect.

Yvon had a pile of those wretched cards lying around her office and I picked one up. I thought you needed a proper break, far away from Juliet and her leech-like demands, so I booked us a chalet as a surprise. Not even for a whole week, just for a weekend. I had to negotiate a special rate on the phone, with a rather ungracious woman who sounded as if she actively didn’t want me to boost her profits by staying in one of her cottages.

I know you don’t like being away overnight as a rule, but I thought that if it was just a one-off, it’d be okay. You looked at me as if I’d betrayed you. For two hours you didn’t speak—not one single word. Even after that, you wouldn’t get into bed with me. ‘You shouldn’t have done it,’ you kept saying. ‘You should never have done it.’ You withdrew into yourself, drawing your knees up to your chest, not even reacting when I shook you by the shoulders, hysterical with guilt and regret. It’s the only time you’ve been close to crying. What were you thinking? What was going on in your head that you couldn’t or didn’t want to tell me?

I was distraught all week, thinking it might be over between us, loathing and cursing myself for my presumptuousness. But the following Thursday, to my amazement, you were your usual self. You didn’t refer to it at all. When I tried to apologise, you shrugged and said, ‘You know I can’t go away. I’m really sorry, sweetheart. I’d love to, but I can’t.’ I didn’t understand why you hadn’t just said that straight away.

I never told Yvon, and can’t tell her now. How can I expect her to understand? ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I didn’t mean to snap at you.’

‘You’ve got to get a grip,’ she says sternly. ‘I honestly believe Robert’s absolutely fine, wherever he is. It’s you who’s cracking up. And, yes, I know I’m in no position to lecture you. I’m the proud owner of the shortest marriage on record, and I’m extremely precocious when it comes to ballsing up my life. I got divorced while most of my friends were taking their A levels . . .’

I smile at the exaggeration. Yvon is obsessed with the fact that she is divorced at thirty-three. She thinks there’s a stigma attached to having a failed marriage behind you at such a young age. I once asked her what was an okay age to get divorced and she said, ‘Forty-six, ’ without a moment’s hesitation.