Fifteen years earlier
You put on Sticky Fingers , an album we’d listened to almost incessantly in our four months together.
First song, ‘Brown Sugar’, my least favourite but the one that usually invoked your Jagger impression – a microphone-toting snake-hipped strut.
You did it perfectly.
Suddenly the three of us were dancing.
My balance was off; it was more weaving than dancing, and propping myself against you the moment the track changed.
And then it was ‘Wild Horses’, a song I loved so much, transported each time by the raw beauty of Mick Jagger’s voice and the sorrow of his words, and I was dancing alone now, no self-consciousness, none at all, as I swayed with my arms above my head and my eyes closed.
This song had always been for us, we said, for nothing else could capture the strength of our passion.
We were young and sentimental and so newly in love – nothing would ever drag us apart, we thought, not even wild horses.
I was lost in the music and the song and it took me a while to realise you were standing in front of me, trying to talk to me.
‘Catherine,’ you said.
‘Catherine.’
I opened my eyes.
I stopped swaying.
‘What?’ I said, smiling.
But your face was serious.
‘I just got a call from my uncle. Didn’t you hear the phone?
’
You told me he was upset, that he’d broken up with his lover again and you were worried about him.
Or at least that’s what I imagine you told me, because the truth is I have no real recollection of this conversation.
And then you said you were going to go and see him, and this bit I do remember.
‘To make sure he doesn’t do something stupid.
’
We had a sort of argument, I think.
I was paranoid about drunk-driving and terrified of losing you when we’d only just found each other.
Sometimes when you came home later than you said you would, held up in the pub, another drinking session with Jack and Harry, I’d lie in your bed dreading a knock on the door.
I’d picture the accident, your body lying motionless on the side of the road, and I’d lie in the darkness brushing away silent tears until you came home and climbed into bed with me and made everything instantly great again.
I told you this sometimes.
‘Silly girl,’ you always said.
‘Why must you think the worst is going to happen?’
But that should have been obvious.
My best was so good, so dizzyingly, euphorically, absurdly good, I knew I wouldn’t be able to live without it.