Chapter 20
20
FOUR DAYS AFTER I LEFT HER
I begin sanding down the bedroom wall ready to replaster, but it feels like my energy is caught somewhere I can’t reach. Like I need to untangle the leads to get the power back on.
Every time I feel a fizz of energy, it trips and I’m back to square one. Everything I’ve done runs through my mind in quick, mortifying succession. Like a series of You’ve Been Framed clips without the canned laughter. Without the cute kids and drunken grannies falling on the dance floor. No, my reel of You’ve Been Framed moments starts and ends with Liv and the life I’ve just demolished.
I flick open the tub of filler. Mac didn’t ask why I needed it, just told me to help myself from the shed. The edges of the tub are dry but it’ll do. I pick through the rubble – through the remnants of my life – while the shadows of early morning slide along the wall. Christ, I miss her so much it hurts – like, actually hurts my stomach. But I need to find a way to move on without her.
The morning unfolds. I make breakfast, try to distract myself.
I’ve got enough money to tide me over for a few weeks. Then I’ll have to go back. Not that she’ll have me back. Not after this. I wonder how she’ll react when I turn up on our doorstep. Will she slam the door in my face?
How can I have fucked up so monumentally?
There’s a knock on the door, startling me.
Mac is standing there. ‘I need your help.’ The words come from beneath his bushy beard. I’m still no closer to understanding his motivation.
‘Let me grab my coat,’ I reply.
Half an hour later and I’m knee-deep in mud, holding a mallet, whacking it against a wooden stake, trying to get it out of a piece of land that it has clearly been rooting into for decades. I wipe the sweat from my brow and look up. Mac is taking large bites out of an apple, watching me as he leans on another piece of fence.
‘Any chance of you helping?’ I ask, giving the base of the wood another whack, narrowly missing hitting my thumb instead.
‘Can’t. Low blood sugar. You don’t want me passing out, do you? I doubt very much an ambulance will be able to get to these parts in under an hour, and as handsome as you are, I don’t want the kiss of life from you.’
He finishes the apple, throws it with a hefty swing more suited to a javelin thrower and crouches down beside me. ‘Move over,’ he says taking the mallet from my hands. He gives the post three bangs to the left. One to the right. Lifting it out of the earth with ease.
I let out a long sigh. ‘If it’s that easy, then what did you need my help for?’
‘Two-man job,’ he replies, throwing away the fence. He strides over to the back of his trailer where he pulls out a long roll of wire mesh and a new fence post. He passes the roll of mesh to me, hoists the wooden pole onto his shoulder.
‘Who normally helps you with the two-men jobs when I’m not around?’ Something passes over Mac’s face. ‘Tim, but he’s in charge of lambing, unless you want to help with that?’
I try not to outwardly shudder.
‘And I don’t need an extra pair of hands.’
‘And why’s that?’
‘You’re here.’
For the next hour, he gives me instructions. I follow them, but he does most of the job himself. Apart from holding each stake in place, I can’t fathom why he wants me helping him. I’m clearly more of a hindrance.
‘You have a girlfriend, boyfriend?’ he asks out of the blue. One minute he’s telling me how to make hot-water-crust pies and the next we’re delving into my love life.
A memory of Liv’s face as she chopped an onion: a pair of swimming goggles on to stop her eyes watering. I’d joined her in the kitchen once wearing a snorkel mask. Neither of us acknowledged it and we continued cooking the dinner. Setting the table without a word. We’d finally sat down to eat and I couldn’t get the food in my mouth. She’d laughed so hard that she ended up with hiccups.
‘No.’ I shut down the image. ‘I’m recently… separated.’
‘Sorry to hear that.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Why did you separate?’
‘We… just weren’t meant to be.’
‘And why’s that? ’
‘I’m not what she needs in her life.’
‘And you have the right to make that decision for her, do you?’ he asks. ‘Hold that steady,’ he growls as the wind tugs and yanks on the mesh that he’s trying to secure into place. ‘You have the God-given right to make that decision on her behalf?’
‘It’s more complicated. You wouldn’t understand.’ My voice is taut.
‘Oh, you think you know everything about me too, do you? Well excuse me, Mr I write about zombies and I’m from York .’
‘What is your problem?’ I say, anger raising my voice, the wind almost swallowing it at once.
‘I don’t have a problem. You’re the one with the problem or else you wouldn’t have run off here rather than facing up to things with your missus.’
‘That’s not why I’m here . And if your life is so perfect, then why do you keep knocking on my door?’
‘I never said it was perfect,’ he responds. ‘There you go again, thinking you know everything about everyone.’
‘Do you know what, Mac?’ I squeeze the bridge of my nose. ‘I don’t need this shit.’
‘Oh, yes you do. You think you’re the only man who’s made mistakes, has regrets?’
His words are spoken with a chipped edge. I stop to look at him.
Now we’re getting somewhere.
‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m saying…’ He grunts as he tries to hold the post and add another tack to secure it; I grab the post and wait for him to continue. ‘…that you’re not the only man alive who can make mistakes.’ He stands and folds his arms, eyes narrowing. Like he’s daring me to say something. ‘You have time to fix your mistakes. I doubt I’ve got much of a chance to make amends now. ’
I pause for a moment. My mouth opening then closing. ‘You could try.’
He ignores me. ‘Does she love you?’ he asks.
‘Yes.’
‘Do you love her?’
‘Yes. But… it’s complicated.’
‘So, you keep saying. If you love her, she loves you, then whatever it is that’s complicating things. Fix it.’
And with that he calls Caesar to heel and stomps away.
I kick the post a couple of times to make sure it’s secure. It’s rock solid. I lean on it, watching the great hulk of a man heading downhill and wonder if he has any idea of the implications of his ‘mistakes’.
Regardless of his regret, he doesn’t deserve my forgiveness.
At least, not yet.