Harriet Evans - Love Always

Mum flattens herself against the wal , away from the path of glass which has splintered closest to her, and pushes shards towards the centre of the room with one velvet toecap. ‘Oh, my gosh,’ says poor Mary Beth, her hand flying to her mouth. ‘Darn it.’ She crouches on the ground and Louisa flies in with a dustpan and brush screeching, ‘Don’t touch the glass! Careful!’

There’s a brief moment’s silence. I watch them, watch the splinters and the stem of the glass, rol ing slowly around the lino on its side.

‘Nat?’ Jay is stil behind me, I hadn’t seen him. ‘You’ve left Oli? What? Why?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ I say, and then helpful y, the floor feels liquid beneath my feet and is rising up to meet me. I step back, away from the glass, and shapes and colours swim before my eyes and it is almost a relief when gradual y, everything goes black, and I sink to the ground in a dead faint.

Chapter Six

When I awake, I’m not sure where I am, or what’s going on. It’s dark. I sit up and look around me, blinking in confusion, and slowly, it al comes back to me.

The first thing I notice is that I’m in my old bedroom. The curtains are half drawn. They took me up here, Jay and the Bowler Hat lugging me up the wide staircase, and I fel into bed and fel fast asleep – a sort of narcolepsy, I could barely keep my eyes open.

I look at my watch; it is a quarter to five but I don’t know how long I’ve been up here. I stretch and yawn, running my hands through my hair. I have a throbbing feeling, as if I don’t have a headache but am about to get one. I run my fingers slowly, experimental y, over my skin. There is a plaster on my forehead, and underneath a swol en lump forming, hot to the touch. Perfect. A massive bruise should be there by tomorrow. Just in time.

Oh dear, I think again. I fainted like a lunatic. My elbow is very sore, from where I must have hit it on the way down. As is my thigh. I feel dreadful, as though I’m hungover and I’ve been beaten up, but more than that I am embarrassed, mortified, even.

I didn’t want to tel my mother my marriage was over, not like that. She didn’t deserve that – none of them did. At Granny’s funeral too – I wince; it’s awful.

There’s a soft tap at the oak door. ‘Come in,’ I say.

The door opens slowly, and Jay’s handsome face appears around it. ‘How are you?’ he says.

‘You want the truth? Pretty rotten,’ I tel him. I crane my head, to see him better. ‘And sorry. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean you to find out like that.’

‘What the hel , Nat? What’s going on with you?’ he says, advancing into the room. He sits down heavily on the bed next to mine and switches on the bedside lamp, his body casting a huge shadow on the opposite wal . ‘You’ve left Oli? But you guys were – he was your life!’

He is looking at me as if I’ve just kil ed his pet rabbit.

‘Yeah?’ I say. ‘Right.’

‘Yeah!’ Jay says, almost angrily. ‘What’s up with you?’

‘It’s not me,’ I say. I laugh. ‘Wel , perhaps it is. He – he slept with someone else.’

It sounds so weird when you speak those words. They’re such a cliché but you never expect to be saying them out loud, and in relation to your own life.

‘He what?’ Jay looks blank, as though he doesn’t understand the words.

I swing my legs off the side of the bed. ‘She’s a client. It was after a conference.’ I am looking for my shoes. I can say it out loud if I just disassociate myself from it, completely pretend it’s not happening.

‘But . . .’ Jay is frowning. ‘But it’s you two. You’re like my perfect couple. You can’t split up.’

‘We’re not a perfect couple.’ I want to cry. He looks bewildered. I say gently, as though it’s him I’m breaking up with, ‘Things . . . things have changed. I don’t know him any more.’

‘But – you’ve known him for ever, Nat. He hasn’t changed.’ I met Oli at col ege. He was the first person – the only person – to tel me my green eyes in my sal ow skin were beautiful. We were already friends by then. It was in the student union bar; we were both in Dramsoc, celebrating the end of our successful run of HMS Pinafore with a themed nautical party Oli had organised. I think I fel in love with him a little bit then, though we didn’t get together for years after that. Six years, in fact. I hugged him, when he said it. He looked so pleased, he was easily pleased back then.

I have to remind myself of this now, but Oli wasn’t a cool kid when I met him. Over the years, he transformed himself from an earnest young man from a smal Yorkshire vil age with a spluttering manner of speech and a terrible habit of blushing. Now his enthusiasm is much more high-octane.

He likes doing the deals, meeting the clients, pressing the flesh; he wants people to like him, I guess. He always did. I used to find that intensely endearing. Until the way he got them to like him turned into shagging them. That I don’t find endearing.

‘But that’s just it,’ I say. ‘I don’t think I do know him any more. Even before he told me about . . . about it. Things haven’t been right. With either of us.’

Jay stares at me. He looks as if he’s about to say something, and then stops. We’re both silent, listening to the rumble of conversation from downstairs.

It seems such a long way away from here, that London life we have, ful of expensive meals and hospitality suites, the cool flat with its seventies film posters on the wal s and the bright red Gaggia espresso machine. From our disinte-grating marriage and secrets that we – both of us – have been keeping from each other. Smal secrets, biting the lip here and there, not talking, not tel ing the truth, the kind of secrets that grow and grow until they fester within you, and you can’t go back and make them right. We started lying to each other too long ago for that. I see that now I’m here, far away from it al .

I draw my legs up and hug my knees. ‘Open the curtains,’ I say.

‘It’s getting dark, you know.’

‘I know.’

The light is fading and the moon is just appearing, ful and yel ow. The sky is gun-metal grey, the sea an oily lavender-black. It feels too soon for it to be dark; we’ve only just got here. Suddenly I wish with al my heart I could stay, that I didn’t have to go back to any of it, to tomorrow. We are silent for a moment, Jay sitting next to me, and above the voices downstairs I can hear the faint roar of the sea outside, like a shel against my ear.

‘We should go down,’ I say. ‘Sure, in a minute.’ Jay wrinkles his nose, and takes his watch off his wrist, holding it in his hand, an old habit of his.

‘What you going to do, then? Are you going to kick him out?’

‘He’s gone already, that was the night he told me.’ Two weeks ago.

‘Seriously? And you didn’t tel anyone?’

‘He wants to come back, he didn’t want to leave. He keeps saying how sorry he is, what a mistake it is.’ I drum my fingers on my forehead, and wince as they touch my bruised flesh. ‘I didn’t . . . know what to do.’

‘You could have talked to someone about it. So – no one knows?’ He looks incredulous. I take a breath.

‘Cathy knows. And – wel , Ben.’

‘Ben?’ Jay makes a loud clicking sound with his tongue. ‘You told Ben but you didn’t tel me? Or your mum?’

Ben has the studio next to me. He’s a photographer, an old friend of Jay’s from col ege, that’s how I heard about the studio in the first place.

We have tea most days. Ben wears wool y jumpers and loves Jaffa Cakes, like me; he’s a very comforting person to be working next to al day, like a shaggy dog, or a nice old lady who runs a sweet shop. I cried al over him the day after Oli left.