Chapter 16
Josh
I know I need to explain. But short of teleporting Rachel into my head – into that moment, last night, when I was convinced I was dying – I know any explanations I have to offer will fall short.
‘I thought I was having a heart attack. I genuinely thought I was going to die.’ I lean forward, my arms heavy on the table, linguine abandoned. ‘I mean, now it seems . . . But, last night, it felt real. You have to believe me, Rach.’
She doesn’t say anything. She just stares at me, with wide, disbelieving eyes.
‘All I could think about was survival. Not leaving you. Wanting to live. I kept thinking about every other bloody man in my family and the way they . . . It seemed inevitable. A given that I was going the same way.’
Eventually, she speaks. Her voice sounds blank and taut, not at all her own. ‘But that pill isn’t designed to save you in the middle of a heart attack. If it works the way Wilf says it does, wouldn’t it do the opposite?’
I swallow. ‘I know. It was . . . I wasn’t thinking straight.’
‘So then . . . it can’t have been a heart attack.’
I look down at the table. The wood is pockmarked with imperfections, little waymarks of our life together. The dent from a stray hammer, courtesy of some bank holiday DIY two years ago. Red wine rings from last Christmas. A scorch mark left by a hot wok, Valentine’s Day 1995.
Maybe I will feel relief, at some point. But right now, in the gentle heat of Rachel’s gaze, I feel nothing but shame.
We move to the living room and lie flat on our backs, splayed out together on the rug. From this angle you can see all the cracks in the ceiling, the fraying paint, the brown bloom on the plaster where the upstairs flat leaked a year ago.
But, for some reason, flat on our backs on the floor has always been our go-to place to talk. What is it about gazing skyward? An instinctive need to see the bigger picture perhaps, gain some kind of perspective?
Or maybe it is more primal than that. Maybe, deep down, we are all just animals, using the night sky to guide our way.
‘They made us do one of those personality quizzes yesterday, at the away-day,’ Rachel says, after we’ve been lying side by side in silence for a while. ‘You know: Do you like networking with strangers? Do you feel more easily persuaded by emotional arguments, or rational ones?’
On the rug, I turn to look at her. The air in the flat is cool now, and her skin is sprinkled with goosebumps. She is staring straight up at the ceiling, as if she’s stargazing, or waiting for a comet that may or may not come.
‘Anyway. It said I’m extremely prevention-focused.’
I think for a moment. ‘Does that mean pessimistic?’
‘It means I’m not a gambler.’
I just wait. But I think I know what she is getting at.
‘I’d been starting to think that if you took the pill I would have to take it too, if you and I were going to have any kind of future.
But I’m not sure I could ever bring myself to do it.
I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I’m just not the sort of person who could swallow it and hope for the best. The idea of it being irreversible scares me.
And you can’t change who you are, can you? ’
‘No,’ I admit. But the truth is, I wouldn’t want to change a single thing about the person Rachel is.
She turns her head to mine. The tenderness in her brown eyes feels strangely sharp. ‘I’m happy, Josh. I love our life. Or I did. I was so excited for our future.’
I shut my eyes against her use of the past tense. Against everything it might mean. The forks and branches of what I have done are starting to streak through my mind now, like cracks across ice.
‘I spent my childhood feeling like the odd one out. Like there was something wrong with me. And I can’t inflict that on my own children, if I’m lucky enough to have them.
I want to be a completely normal mother.
The most boring mother that ever was. I don’t want to still be twenty-nine when they’re ninety. Can you imagine?’
I swallow and say nothing. Because – ridiculous as this may seem, given what I did last night – I can’t, actually. Aside from anything else, the thought is oddly creepy, on a similar plane somehow to those old guys in Hollywood with girlfriends young enough to be their granddaughters.
It is not the family picture we’d always imagined. Not by a long shot.
‘I want to experience life, Josh. I want to grow old with my friends. I want to go through adulthood the way everyone else goes through it. I want to bitch about my stretch marks and worry about my pension contributions and tut when I see kids riding pushbikes on the pavement. I’ve got zero interest in staying this age forever. Do you know why?’
I just wait, still soundless.
Her eyes are brimming with tears now. ‘Because all I’ve ever wanted is the entirely normal experience of growing old with the man I love.’
And, at this, I know – although I think, if I’m honest, I always knew – that it’s not going to be as simple as asking her to take the pill too. I was na?ve to believe, even for a moment, that it might be.
‘I just know that if I took it . . . I might struggle to ever be happy again.’
Her voice is soft, but her words still sting. Snow falling on skin.
I realise, now, that by taking that pill I have stolen Rachel’s peace of mind. The person who deserves it the most out of anyone I’ve ever met.
‘Taking it will never be an option, for me,’ she says, but sadly, as though she wishes the opposite were true.