Chapter 48
Josh
It’s late for visitors, or delivery drivers. After ten. But my doorbell goes anyway.
When I open the door, Rachel is standing on the front step, eyes a little glazed.
I can see straight away that she is drunk. And I can’t help smiling. Because drunk Rachel is actually one of my all-time favourite Rachels.
She eventually asked me to leave, that night I was at her flat and told her I still loved her. We’ve exchanged the odd text message since. But we haven’t spoken properly in over a year.
‘My mum died,’ is all she says.
I stare at her, confused. As far as I knew, Rachel’s had no contact with her mum for a good couple of decades. Should I tell her I’m sorry? Or is this more of a solemn high-five, let’s-bitch-about-her-over-a-tumbler-of-whisky kind of situation?
‘That’s . . . not what I was expecting you to say.’
She leans against the wall of the porch. ‘Can I come in?’
I just open the door.
I change my mind about the whisky when Rachel zigzags along my hallway as if she’s figure-skating.
‘Let’s have a drink,’ she says, as we head into the living room.
‘Nope. No more units for you. I’ll get some water.’
‘Hey,’ she says, stopping abruptly, ‘you decorated.’
‘Long story,’ I say.
I had the bizarre urge, one night, to paint the living room charcoal-grey, to eradicate the magnolia it had been when Rachel lived here. But as soon as I’d finished I realised I hated it. Half an hour later I was back in Homebase, shelling out another forty quid to make it all neutral again.
I guess Rachel has only surmised the walls have turned from magnolia to pale cream. But I’m pleased, deep down, that she has noticed.
‘It looks nice.’ She sighs, heavily. ‘God, I miss this flat.’
I venture a smile, amused despite the churning in my chest. ‘As in, the bricks and mortar?’
She nods earnestly, completely missing my implication. ‘Yeah. My place is nice, but it’s so bland. It’s like living inside a yoghurt pot.’
‘You’ve lost me.’
‘You know – all-white. A bit sour. None of my neighbours ever says hello.’ She sways a little, sits heavily down on the sofa.
She adjusts the straps of her green dress, crosses then re-crosses her bare legs.
Her skin is kissed with summer, blonde hair a torrent around her shoulders. ‘Do you have any coffee?’
‘Is that a serious question?’
She looks up and blinks. ‘Why, have you run out?’
She sounds so disappointed, my heart crumbles. ‘No, of course not. Coming right up.’
In the kitchen, I make coffee stronger than even I usually take it. Then I return to the living room and sit down next to her on the sofa, switch on a lamp.
‘Can’t believe you still have these,’ she says with a smile, patting the Aztec-print cushion next to her. It’s one of four I’ve held on to since the early nineties, and is an eyesore, quite frankly. But I am pathologically unable to throw anything away.
Rachel’s breath is hot, and laced with booze. We used to call it dragon breath: pure ethanol. Steer clear of open flames, Rach, I would call out, whenever she went to brush her teeth after a particularly heavy night. At which point she would lob something soft at my head, and almost always miss.
She leans against my shoulder, and within moments begins to drift off. Her breath deepens, slowing against my skin. I don’t get up, because I just want to keep feeling it.
After about ten minutes, a car door slams outside and Rachel stirs. With some effort, she blinks her eyes open, then swallows.
‘Sorry,’ she murmurs, shuffling upright.
‘Don’t be.’ I pass her the coffee. ‘It’s still warm.’
She smiles, takes a sip. ‘Thanks.’
I notice her hands are flecked with paint.
I heard from Polly via Darren that she quit her job just before her maternity leave was up, to pursue her art.
The news made my heart bright with pride, a planet in the strange black hole of my feelings for her.
She always used to play down her talent, but it never passed me by just how good she was.
Still, I know how much it must have taken, for her to leave her job.
I think it will always sting, that she no longer shares these life changes with me first. That any updates I get are watered-down, second-hand. That I’m not the one she goes to raise a glass with now.
Gently, I ask how her mother died.
‘Officially? Pneumonia. But she had dementia. She got it young, apparently. She wasn’t even seventy.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, even though I have felt pretty hostile towards Rachel’s mother for most of my adult life. But my sympathies are really for Rachel. For the way I know that information will have made her feel.
‘I went and stood outside the church earlier.’
‘How come?’
‘Um, honestly? I don’t know. Closure, maybe.’
‘And did you get it?’
She wraps her hands around her cup. She seems to be sobering up a little. ‘I’m not actually sure. What does closure feel like?’
I just laugh, and shake my head.
‘Hey, you still wear your watch,’ she whispers.
I look down at it, turn my wrist gently over. ‘Why wouldn’t I?’
‘And your ring.’ She raises her eyes to mine. They are still a little weighty from the alcohol.
She’s never brought it up before. I suppose she might have wanted to, and not known how. But I don’t reply, because there is not really a sentence on earth that could cover it.
Fortunately, she doesn’t press me. ‘The funeral reminded me how weird life is. You know: one minute you’re drinking tequila. The next, you’ve got dementia, and then you’re in a coffin. And people will cry for a bit, but then the world moves on. Which made me think . . .’
She is holding my gaze. My breath kicks in my chest.
‘I mean, take now, for example. I’m thirty-six, and you’re twenty-nine. That’s not really such a big deal, is it?’
‘Rach—’
‘So maybe you and I should just spend the next few years . . . not worrying about the future till it comes. If it even comes. Life is for living, right?’
It’s so strange, to hear Rachel talking like this, saying all the same things I was, five years ago. It’s very unlike her. But a lot has changed since we broke up. And that’s what funerals do for you, I guess.
In the next moment, I feel the press of her palm against my face. Gently turning my head to hers, leaning in to kiss me.
With an almighty effort I push her gently away, get to my feet. ‘Rach, we can’t. I can’t.’
She blinks up at me. ‘But you said before—’
‘That was before. This is now, and you’re . . . really drunk.’
‘I’ve had coffee,’ she protests, as if this is any sort of legitimate argument. But she says it with such sincerity that I almost laugh.
I look down at her, heart cartwheeling. ‘I don’t ever want to be something you regret in the morning, Rach.’
She tugs her knees into her chest and rests her chin on them, says nothing.
‘Sorry,’ she whispers, after a while. ‘That was lame of me.’
I sit back down, rock gently into her. Don’t worry about it.
A few moments pass.
‘Rach?’ I say.
‘Yeah.’ In the lamplight, her body looks almost completely gold.
The words are out of my mouth before I’ve even really thought what it is I want to say. ‘You should know . . . I still have the second pill.’
Her eyes swim a little, then refocus. ‘The second pill,’ she repeats.
‘I thought you might want it now. Given how your mum died, I mean.’
Her brown eyes dart back and forth across my face, as if she’s trying to work out when I started shedding brain cells. ‘You said you were going to look for an antidote. To reverse the effects. But now you’re offering it to me?’
‘That was before . . . this stuff with your mum. I thought you might want to take something to prevent it, before it—’
‘I should go.’ She sets down the coffee and gets to her feet, wobbling a little.
I feel a lurching sensation inside me. Like a car hitting ice, the misjudgement all my own. After the last time, I swore to myself I would never offer her that pill again. But, having heard this about her mum, I couldn’t not.
‘Please don’t. You can stay. Please. Have my room, I’ll take the sofa.’
She shakes her head, fishes around for her bag. ‘I’m sorry I came here. I shouldn’t have.’
My heart clenches, hard. ‘Rach, forget I said that. Please. I should never have suggested it. I didn’t think.’
But in the time it takes me to shut my eyes and punch out a breath of pure frustration, she is gone.