13
“I’m here if you ever need to talk. You know that, don’t you?” Matt said when we stopped outside my house.
“Thank you,” I said, emotional all over again, kissing his cheek.
He kissed mine. “Good night, Lily.”
“Night, Matt.”
When I got home, the lights were on in the house. As I’d expected, Alex was home before me. The front door opened as Matt’s car drove away.
“Was that Matt?” Alex asked, staring up the road.
“Yes.” I thought quickly. Conjured up a lie. “I went to the library to write my report in the end. Matt passed me when I was walking home.”
“You should have asked him in.”
“I did. He had to get back.”
We went inside. Alex closed the door. “What made you go to the library?”
I shrugged. Took my jacket off. Hated myself. “Change of scene, you know? I remembered on the bus that I had the memory stick with me. Thought it would help me focus.”
“And did it?”
I nodded. “Yes. All done. Want a cup of tea?”
“No thanks. I had one while I was waiting for you. Want me to make you one?”
“No, that’s okay. I can do it.” I walked past him. “Are you hungry?”
“Not in the least.”
“Me neither.” Lying to the man you share your life with can take the edge off your appetite, I suppose.
I felt like shit. Especially when Alex followed me into the kitchen and carried on with the conversation he’d started at the hospital.
“You should have seen Mum after you left. The wedding’s really given her something to focus on. She reminded me there’s that community centre near their house we could use for the reception. You know, the one where we went to see that play that time? I know it’s a bit rough and ready, but you and Inga could make it nice, couldn’t you, with your artistic flair? Oh, and Mum said you can wear her wedding dress, if you like? You’ve seen it, haven’t you? Classic, stylish. Not an eighties meringue or anything like that. We thought it’d save a bit of money. Speed things up, too, if you haven’t got to shop for one. You’re the same size, aren’t you, and you’d look gorgeous in anything, anyway.”
The kettle had boiled, but apart from taking a mug from the cupboard, I’d done nothing to make my tea. My face was turned away from Alex, but he must have caught something of my gathering tension because he broke off to say, “Sorry, it was just so good to see her fired up about something. You don’t mind, do you?”
I turned then, feeling about a hundred years old, my body suddenly aching and heavy, as if Matt and I had gone for a long hike instead of a gentle saunter around his garden. “Alex,” I said, “we need to talk.”
I reached for his hand. Led him back to the sitting room.
“I’m sorry. It feels as if Mum and I are taking over, doesn’t it?” he said, eyes searching my face as we sat down on the sofa, so wide off the mark it was as if we were complete strangers instead of long-term lovers.
“It isn’t that. It’s the whole thing. Bringing the wedding forwards.” I took a deep breath. Made myself look at him. “I can’t do it, Alex.”
He was frowning. “Why not? It’s only a few months earlier than we planned.”
“I know, but ...”
“You should have seen her face, Lil. She was so happy.”
I couldn’t speak. Alex filled the silence.
“Look, I want her at my wedding, okay? Christ, I want her at all the major events of my life.” His voice cracked. “But I can’t have that, can I? Because she’s fucking dying.”
“I’m so sorry, Alex.”
He swiped an angry hand across his eyes. “If you were really sorry, you’d agree. Why won’t you? Is it because you don’t want a dying woman spoiling the wedding photos, or what?”
I recoiled from him. “Of course not. What do you take me for? You know I’m not like that.”
“I’m not sure about anything at the moment,” he said spitefully.
I took another deep breath to pull myself together. “It’s got nothing to do with the type of wedding or the wedding photos or any of that crap. None of that stuff is important to me.”
“What is it, then?”
I sighed. “Like I said, there are things we need to talk about. Things I’d hoped we could deal with sometime in the future.”
“You mean after Mum’s dead?” Alex said bitterly, and once again, I flinched.
It was what I’d meant, but put like that, it sounded brutal. This was no good. Alex was overwrought, not in any kind of frame of mind for this discussion.
“I think we ought to talk about this tomorrow,” I said. “When we’ve both calmed down.”
Alex shook his head. “Oh, no. Neither of us will be able to sleep with this—whatever it is—hanging over us. Come on, tell me. Tell me what’s wrong.”
I studied my fingers for a moment. Found the courage to dive in. “It’s about children. Alex, I don’t want to have them. I never have done. And you ... suddenly you’re all, we can put a cot in the small bedroom , and I ...”
He stared at me with disbelief. “That’s it? Really? Lily, that was nothing. Just a stupid daydream. Forget about it.”
“Alex, I saw your face. It wasn’t nothing.”
He sighed. “Well, all right, I guess I just assumed that one day, somewhere along the line ... I mean, people say they don’t want kids all the time, don’t they? And then they get older, and they change their minds.”
“I’m not going to. And I can’t marry you if you’re waiting for something that’s never going to happen.”
He took my hands in his. “Look, I just want to marry you, Lil, babies or no babies.”
I looked into his eyes, trying to read them, searching for something to convince me he meant it. “You say that now, but ...”
“I say it because it’s true.” He pulled my hands up to his mouth. Kissed them. “I honestly can’t imagine my life without you.”
It would have been so easy just to accept that. To allow myself to be convinced and to let him lead me upstairs for some reassuring make-up sex. But the subject was just too important to gloss over.
“But can you really imagine living your life without being a father, Alex? Because I’m honestly not going to change my mind. And if deep down, you’re going to regret committing to someone who can’t see children in her life, then ...”
He stared at me. Dropped my hands as if they’d suddenly become something deeply unpleasant. “What are you saying? This is crazy. I make one little slip-up, and suddenly you want to break up with me? It was one throwaway comment, that’s all.”
Wait a minute , I wanted to say. Who said anything about breaking up? But then I supposed that was just what I was saying. If Alex wanted someday to be a father, and I didn’t want to have kids, then the brutal truth was that there was no future for us.
My throat was suddenly bone dry, my hands shaking in my lap.
Alex was looking at me as if I was a stranger, suddenly angry again. “The thing about you is you never do show your true feelings, do you? You’re closed off. Daren’t let yourself feel anything. Won’t talk about things that upset you. That’s the real reason you don’t want kids.”
It felt as if he’d kicked me in the stomach. “If I do keep things to myself, it’s only because they’re painful,” I managed.
“You think my mother dying isn’t painful?” he said bitterly. “The fact that you apparently don’t give enough of a shit about her to do something that would make her happy in the last few weeks of her life?”
“Your mother has always adored you,” I told him quietly. “She may not be around much longer, but you’ll have a million memories of how much she cared.”
“Well, bully for me, eh?” he spat out, then sighed, running his fingers through his hair, trying to pull himself together. “Look, I know you were very young when your mum died, but ...”
“My mum was an alcoholic,” I burst out. “A wasted alcoholic who went on binges for days on end. I was a kid, but I had to take care of Violet because there was no one else to do it. Only I can’t have done a very good job, can I? Because I have no bloody idea where she is. She could be dead, for all I know.” My voice ended on a sob, and I knuckled the tears away, reaching for a tissue in my pocket.
Alex was staring at me. “Jesus,” he said. “Why don’t I already know about this?”
I shook my head, suddenly exhausted. “I don’t know. Maybe because it was easier to forget about it? To live in the present? Pretend it never happened?”
“But we’re a partnership, Lil. Lovers. We’re supposed to tell each other everything.”
He reached out to pull me against him, holding me. “Look, I’m so sorry you had to deal with that. You were a child. It was awful. Wrong.” He pulled back to look at me. “But, Lil, it wouldn’t be like that if we had a child together, would it? He’d be part of me and you. Or she. Part of our lives. You wouldn’t be on your own. Hell, I could even be the main caregiver, so you had all the time you needed to paint.”
Nobody who’s never been neglected or abused can ever really understand, that’s the trouble. Just as nobody who isn’t an artist can ever really grasp what a creative person needs to be able to create.
“It isn’t only about having the time I need to be creative; it’s about having the mental space. It’s not wrong to want children, Alex, but it isn’t wrong to not want them either. It’s a choice. And I choose not to have them. That’s it, that’s all.”
Alex sat and looked at me. My heart was suddenly beating very fast. He’d wanted me to open up, but now I’d expressed my thoughts and feelings in no uncertain terms, and by the look on his face, he couldn’t cope with it.
He shook his head. “You know what,” he said at last, “I think all this is just an excuse. I think you wanted to break up with me anyway, and this is just a convenient out for you.”
I couldn’t believe he thought that. It wasn’t in the least bit true, and suddenly the contrast between the way he was acting, and the way Matt had received my confession about my mother’s neglect slapped me in the face. As he’d said, we were a partnership. Alex was supposed to be the one who understood me and gave me comfort.
“That’s not fair, Alex. And it’s not true.”
“Not fair?” He got to his feet, heading for the door. “Breaking up with me when my Mum’s about to die, that’s unfair. But d’you know what? I can’t deal with this right now. I’ll tell Mum we won’t be getting married anytime soon.”
Jesus. How was this happening? It didn’t feel real. And yet there was Alex, at the door, so it must be.
Then he stopped, putting his head in his hands. “Oh, God, how am I going to do that? She’s already going through so much. This will destroy her.”
“I’ll tell her,” I said. I’d be the bad guy so Janice could hate me. It was the least I could do.
It played out pretty much exactly how I’d imagined it would when I went to the hospital the next day. Janice was lying back in bed with her eyes closed when I arrived, looking so frail it was difficult to believe she’d have been able to attend a wedding even if we had gone along with her plan.
I hesitated in the ward entrance, feeling like a total shit, uncertain whether to stay or not. Then her eyes opened.
“Lily,” she said. “Where’s Alex?”
I sat down in the chair next to her bed. “He’s at work. I wanted to come and see you on my own. How are you feeling?”
“That sounds ominous,” she said, ignoring my last question.
I didn’t say anything straightaway. I’d rehearsed my words on the way over, but now, face to face with her, none of them seemed right. It might have been easier just to have got married to Alex rather than put myself through this.
“You’d better say it, whatever it is.”
So, I did, my voice shaking but resolute. I told Janice that Alex and I wouldn’t be getting married in the next few months. I didn’t tell her we were breaking up, perhaps because, despite what Alex had said the previous night, I couldn’t quite believe that was going to happen. By the end of it, there was no mistaking the dislike on Janice’s face. And I wondered whether, deep down, she’d always felt that way about me.
“You always have been selfish, Lily,” she said. “I sensed that about you right from the start. I don’t know what happened to you in the past—if you’ve ever told Alex about it, he’s never confided in me. He wouldn’t do—he’s too loyal. But whatever it was, it left you lacking somehow. Withdrawn. Self-obsessed. I’ve never forgiven you for the way you wrecked Alex’s Christmas like that, after we’d all gone to so much trouble to make you welcome. But to deny a dying woman’s wish, well, that’s taking things to a whole other level, it really is.”
Her voice may have been weak, but it was still whip sharp, and it found its target.
“I’m sorry. It’s just that Alex and I have some issues to work through, and I can’t just—”
If Janice had been able to move towards me, she would have. Instead, her eyes did it for her. “Look, if you’re going to break my boy’s heart, then do it now, while I’m still here to pick up the pieces. Please. He deserves better.”
Maybe he did. Maybe Janice was right. I was scarred by the past. Defective. Focused on my art to the detriment of anything else because when I was painting or drawing I lost some of the pain I carried with me always.
Tears were suddenly streaming down Janice’s cheeks. “The pity of it is, I won’t be around to see who he replaces you with.” Her eyes narrowed spitefully. “Because he will replace you, Lily, as quick as you like. My son is a catch, even if you can’t see it.” She closed her eyes. “Now, I’d like you to leave, please.”
So, I left. And when Alex returned home from visiting his mum after work, he went straight upstairs to pack a bag.
“I’m going to stay with Dad for a bit. I think that’s best,” he said, avoiding my gaze.
I didn’t want to ask if he was planning on coming back or not. Whether this was it. I couldn’t believe me and Alex were really over, I suppose. Everything had happened so bewilderingly quickly. So, I stayed silent, following him back down the stairs.
“Call me, won’t you?” I said. “If I can do anything at all.”
He looked back at me from the door, lips twisting resentfully. “Anything you want to do; that’s what you mean, isn’t it, Lily?”
“Alex,” I started to say, “that’s not fair.”
But he didn’t answer. Didn’t even look at me. Just went out the door and slammed it shut behind him. Leaving me on my own to deal with the wreckage of my life as best I could.
I didn’t deal with it at all well. Once I’d craved some time to myself to be creative. Now I had all the time in the world, but I couldn’t so much as pick up a pencil or a paintbrush. Not even to express my sorrow and despair.
Inga visited me the day after Alex had left, demanding to know why I hadn’t called her straightaway. Anyway, she soon forgot about being indignant and just held me, allowing me to do whatever my misery directed me to do. Talk, sit in silence, sob in her arms. Her support was deeply comforting. But then she left, and she wasn’t there in the long, lonely nights when I tried fruitlessly to sleep, wondering how Alex was.
Janice died three weeks later. As soon as Inga told me, I phoned Alex. When he didn’t pick up my call, I texted and sent a sympathy card, attempting to put into words everything I was feeling. Alex didn’t respond to any of it.
I wasn’t invited to the funeral. I heard from Inga that Alex’s father didn’t want me there, and I guess Alex can’t have wanted me there, either, otherwise he’d have fought for me to come.
Wanted or not, I hated that I wasn’t there to support Alex. I wanted to comfort him. To talk to him about Janice and all the ways she loved him. Remind him that she would always be with him because of the way she brought him up, her love and care shaping the man he’d become.
I still couldn’t paint, even with the flood of feelings clamouring for expression. I tried, a few times, but it seemed pointless. All I wanted was for Alex to poke his smiling face around the studio door and ask, “Want a cup of coffee? Happy Valley is about to start. Shall I record it, or are you coming down?”
Then, on the afternoon Alex was burying his mother, my creativity suddenly returned. It came from a dismal, joyless place, but it did come. I painted me and Alex naked, sitting back to back, our knees up to our chests, curled away from each other. I used burnt sienna, carmine, magenta, and crimson—the colours of blood and flesh. Then I mixed some greens and painted a plant growing up from the ground—bindweed, wrapping around us, tying our legs and arms to our bodies, separating us into two tethered bundles. My hair was loose in the painting, not scraped back into a ponytail as it was in real life, flying around my shoulders as if caught in a wind machine. It would only take one strong gust to send me toppling over, rolling away from Alex forever.
By the end of the afternoon, I was as wrung out as if I’d been to the funeral, tempted to slash the canvas to ribbons with a knife. But the painting told a truth I sensed I should preserve, so I closed the studio door and went downstairs to cook pizza with painty fingers, still dressed in the painting overalls Inga always said made me look like Bozo the Clown.
Inga herself came round when I’d finished eating, still wearing her black funeral clothes.
“Where’s Matt?” I asked when I saw she was alone. “Does he think it would be too disloyal to come round and see me?”
“Don’t be daft,” Inga said, giving me a hug. “You know he isn’t like that. I wanted to see you on my own, that’s all. That’s okay, isn’t it?”
I nodded, pitifully glad to see her. “I’ll put the kettle on.”
Inga produced a bottle of wine from her bag. “I think we can do better than that, don’t you? I’ll get some glasses. Then you can show me what you’ve been painting.”
I didn’t really want her to see the painting, but, Inga being Inga, she wouldn’t take no for an answer, and we trooped upstairs to the studio with our wine.
Inga gasped when she saw it. “Bloody hell, Lily. I mean, it’s fucking brilliant. But bloody hell.”
I wasn’t surprised she was shocked. I was, too, seeing it again.
In the painting, Alex’s skin was toned and suntanned beneath his plant tethers. Mine, on the other hand, was flayed, stripped to the bone, blood pooling on the ground beneath me.
I didn’t realise I was crying until Inga held me. “Come here, you,” she said, and I began to sob, great shudders of emotion ripping through my body.
“This will pass,” Inga soothed me. “I know it may not feel like it now, but this will pass. You won’t always feel like your skin’s been ripped off. Lil, this is the most powerful thing you’ve ever painted. Hideous and shocking, but utterly amazing. It must have been so therapeutic to paint.” She held me at arm’s length. “Promise me you’ll never destroy it. It will be in an exhibition of your work one day. Reproduced in art books. I mean it.”
I couldn’t bear to look at the painting any longer. “All right,” I said, mostly to end the conversation. “I promise. Come on, let’s go downstairs. Tell me about the funeral.”
“From what I can gather,” Inga said later, “Janice would have been too ill to attend your wedding even if you had brought it forwards. She ought never to have asked you to. It was selfish of her.”
“I suppose dying is an excuse to be selfish. How is Alex? Was he ... did he hold up okay?”
“He’s ... how you’d expect. Bowed down by grief. Like someone knocked him over and propped him upright again. Half the person he was because you weren’t with him.”
“I wanted to be.”
“I know you did, sweetie.” She sipped her wine, holding my hand in her free one, reminding me of how I’d comforted her in London that time. Now, here we were, our roles reversed.
She put her glass down. “Look, you should probably know, Alex wasn’t at the funeral on his own. He was with an old school friend. A female school friend. Felicity. Fliss. She was ... comforting him, shall we say? They left together.”
I’d never heard either Alex or Matt mention anyone called Felicity. I wanted to know everything about her. Nothing about her. I imagined them fucking. Her offering him the comfort I’d wanted to offer.
“Me and Alex are really over, aren’t we?” I said, starting to cry all over again, realising that, despite everything, a part of me must have been in denial these past few weeks.
Inga sighed. “It does seem that way, yes. I’m so sorry. Look, let’s go out somewhere. Get drunk. Forget about all this.”
“I can’t.”
“You can. You should.” She gave me a little push. “Go on, scrub that paint off, dry your tears, and put on something sexy.”
I allowed myself to be bullied. Probably because of the mention of getting drunk. Suddenly I craved oblivion more than anything else.
At the second place we went to—after a lot more wine and several shots—we ran into Harry, one of Inga’s work colleagues, with his friend Patrick. With Inga and Harry launching straight into work gossip, Patrick and I were left together. He was blond, like Alex, but there the similarity ended. There was no little-boy-lost expression on that chiselled face. It was the face of a man who knew what he wanted and was confident he would get it. And judging by the way his gaze roamed over my body, he wanted me.
“So,” I said. “Are you an estate agent too?”
“No way,” he said. “I’m an IT consultant.” He saw my expression and laughed. “I know it sounds boring, but it’s not. At least, not to me. But let’s not talk about work. Let’s dance.”
So we did. And when we weren’t dancing, we had shouted conversations with each other. Made suggestive eye contact. Kissed, right there amongst the dancers, me reckless from the drink and a determination to push the past miserable weeks out of my mind. I was very glad Inga had persuaded me to come out.
Whenever I glanced over at her, she and Harry were leaning in towards each other, smiling and laughing. I couldn’t help thinking about Matt.
“Inga has a boyfriend, you know,” I told Patrick. “A live-in partner.”
“Sure she hasn’t forgotten that?” His smile was lopsided, his mouth pulled up more on one side than the other.
I shook my head. “Matt’s lovely,” I said. “Harry’s out of luck.”
“What about you?” he asked, pulling me into him, his cock rock hard against my body. “Have you got a boyfriend/live-in partner waiting for you at home?”
I let my hands stroke up the nape of his neck to the soft buzz of his hair. “Nope. I’m completely single. Unfettered. Free.”
“Well,” he said, “how about we go back to yours, then?”
It was very tempting. But Inga and I had a rule about not leaving each other alone in situations like this. Because of Matt and Alex, it had been a very long while, indeed, since we’d needed to act on that rule, but it was a rule, nevertheless.
“Inga and I came together. I can’t go off and leave her here.”
“She looks like she knows what she’s doing,” he said. “But let’s go and see what she says.”
We went over. Patrick spoke before I could. “We’re ready to make tracks. You guys coming?”
Harry’s arm was around Inga now in a way I knew Matt wouldn’t appreciate. I wasn’t sure why Inga hadn’t shrugged him off yet. Poor Matt.
Inga saw me looking and got to her feet, hitching her bag onto her shoulder.
“Sure, time to go.”
The four of us stumbled out of the club to the taxi rank laughing. A taxi pulled up straightaway. Patrick opened the door for me. Inga smiled approvingly in my direction—her message clear. “ Go and fuck away your heartbreak, kiddo! ” It was precisely what I intended to do. But it still didn’t feel right to leave her.
“You can sleep on my couch,” I told her. “Drive home in the morning.”
Inga flapped a hand. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll probably call Matt and ask him to come and get me.”
So I kissed her goodbye, gave her a hug, and got into the taxi. Patrick kissed me all the way home—hot, passionate kisses.
By the time we got back, I was on fire. The front door had barely closed before Patrick pressed me against the wall, still kissing me deeply, his hands pulling up my skirt. Then I caught sight of Alex’s jacket hanging up in the hallway and suddenly needed to come up for air.
“D’you want a coffee?” I said, pushing back a little.
“No,” Patrick said, holding my hips. “I want a tour of your house. Specifically, your bedroom.”
I smiled. “Sure. It’s this way.”
“Up the stairs?” Patrick teased, holding my hand as he followed me up. “I would never have guessed.”
In the bedroom he picked me up and threw me onto the bed. The smell of oil paint and turpentine was filtering in from the studio—if I could smell it, I was sure Patrick could, but he didn’t mention it, too absorbed in divesting me of my clothes and kissing me so hard I didn’t know where my breath ended and the kiss started.
The room was suddenly spinning. Too much wine. I would have a hangover to end all hangovers in the morning. In fact, it felt as if it were starting now. As if I’d be sick, if I wasn’t careful. Either that or start sobbing my heart out.
A tear ran down my cheek. I quickly wiped it away before Patrick could see it, but more followed—too many to hide, spurting from my eyes like a sprinkler system.
He pulled back. Looked at me. Raised an enquiring eyebrow. “No?”
“Sorry. I just broke up with my boyfriend. I thought this was what I wanted, but ...”
“I get it.” There was a strong note of frustration in his voice. He slumped onto his back away from me. “Shame you didn’t realise while the taxi was still here.”
“I really am sorry.”
He hauled himself off the bed. I hadn’t removed any of his clothes, so he only had to slip his feet into the shoes he’d kicked off.
“No problem,” he said, looking down at me. “See you around, Lily.”
He left, his feet clattering down the stairs, leaving me spread-eagled on the bed, the tears wetting the pillow, my mouth burning from his kisses.
God. God.
I tore the rest of my clothes off, shrugging into my cosy, unwashed pyjamas, and called Inga, needing to speak to her. There was no answer—her phone was either off or on silent. But what could she do, really, anyway, except lend a sympathetic ear?
This was how it was going to be from now on—me dealing with things alone. I might as well get used to it.