Chapter 20 #2
‘How is he this morning?’ she asks. ‘How’s my d— How’s Guy?’
It’s terrible to hear her course correct like that, and to see how off-balance she is. It’s also worrying that she thinks I know how he is, when in reality she’s seen him more recently than I have.
‘I don’t know,’ I reply honestly. ‘He said he needed some time alone. Like you, he was really shocked. How did you leave it with him?’
‘Umm… Not as well as I’d have liked. I was pretty angry, even though I knew it wasn’t his fault at all.
And when I get angry, I get kind of sulky and basically turn into a giant bitch.
So yeah. That’s how we left it. I assumed he’d come round to yours after.
So now I’m worried in case he’s left, and I’ll never see him again, and it’s all my fault… ’
Tears are shining in her eyes, and her lips are trembling with the sheer complicated, confusing emotion of it all. I have every sympathy with her, this young woman who has worked so hard to build a good life for her and her son. Life has not been fair to her.
‘I’m sure it’ll all be fine, and nothing is your fault,’ I assure her, keeping my voice even and calm, although that’s the last thing I feel. I feel like she does, but times ten – what if he has left? What if I never see him again? It’s crazy, but it’s where my mind goes anyway.
I tell her I’ll check in with her later, and head off behind the little row of buildings, taking the familiar route to the field at the back of Archie’s greenhouse.
There’s a real chill in the air, and the sun is weakly poking around ominous-looking grey clouds.
The sunflowers are long gone now, and I mourn their passing.
My feet automatically take me where I need to go, my Converse knowing the way even when my mind is too distracted to concentrate. I follow their lead, battling against my lurking sense of anxiety as I walk.
I reach the point where I can normally look ahead and see Guy’s little base camp. Tent, chair, the tiny gas stove he uses to boil water for his coffee. All the signs of him and his life here.
This time, though, I see nothing. There is no tent.
There is no chair. There is no tiny stove.
I carry on walking, my breath coming in panicked gusts, staring around the empty space ahead of me as though I could have been mistaken.
As though I might be in the wrong place, that I will turn around or look slightly to the east and there he will be, waving me over with his book, ready with a little metal mug of tea.
I do a full circle just in case, my eyes scanning the horizon in all directions as I slowly spin.
No. Nothing. He is not here. I find indications of his presence – the flattened grass where his tent was placed, the tiny dents in the ground from his camping chair.
He was here, but now he has gone, and I feel like an emotional archaeologist digging for evidence of what once was.
I take deep breaths, place my hands beneath my ribs. The baby is kicking, and for once it does not fill me with joy. It fills me with sadness that Guy is not here to share this with. Where is he? How is he? What can I do?
I stave off the impending meltdown by doing something sensible and getting out my phone. Maybe there is a message from him. Maybe he has called. Maybe I’m worrying about nothing…
Except there is no message, there is no missed call.
Guy is as absent from my phone as he is from his camp.
He came here to find his daughter, and now he knows that she is not his daughter, never was.
Isn’t it understandable that he’d struggle with that?
That maybe he’d want to cut his losses? How must it feel for him to be confronted with that awful truth, especially when his girlfriend is pregnant with another man’s child?
It must feel terrible. Perhaps the only way he could deal with that is by leaving.
By reverting to his default setting: being alone.
I don’t know quite what to do next, so I carry on walking.
I can’t face going back to the village and dealing with all of the lovely people who live there.
If I told any of them what was going on, how upset I am, how distressed I feel, they would be kind and understanding and look after me.
They would ply me with tea and sympathy, and wrap me up in their cocoon of care.
Right now, though, I would not be able to tolerate that.
Like Guy, perhaps I am reverting to my default setting too.
I need to be alone – I need to think this through and let myself feel all of the unacceptable feelings that are flowing through me.
So I walk, and I cry, and I occasionally stop to get my breath when the sobbing starts to choke me.
I give myself pep talks and tell myself off in equal measure.
I wander through the woods, stomp over fields, and trample through damp grass that is tinged with deep-set frost. My feet are wet and cold, my legs tired, my sciatica sending shooting pains up to my hip.
I welcome the physical discomfort, the chill, the soggy toes.
They are all distractions from the real pain – the sense that I have been abandoned. That I risked everything, and I lost.
On autopilot again, I stop when I realise that I have walked all the way to the house.
Our house. The place where we were planning to live together.
I remember the day we found it, the way he visualised our future here.
Miranda and Evan were part of that future – is it any surprise that he now feels differently about it?
I am tired, and I am filled with gloom. I need to stop, to rest for a little while before I head back to the village.
I climb up the terraces, now scattered with crisp fallen leaves in rich golds and oranges, and sit on the wrought-iron bench in the secret garden.
I gaze up at the sky and see that the sun has finally chased the clouds away.
There is warmth on my skin, however weak.
The sea is still rolling, the birds are still singing, the world is still turning, no matter how bad I feel.
Will I still live here, I wonder, gazing at the house?
Will I want to, without Guy? Probably not, I decide.
I can’t imagine this place without him. Then again, I can’t imagine much without him.
I start to cry again and feel the baby kicking furiously away inside me.
Back on that first day here, he suggested the baby knew it was home.
Now I wonder if the baby knows that has changed.
The baby certainly knows that I am upset about something, that’s for sure. It will be affecting my blood pressure, my heart rate, my hormones. And what affects me affects my baby.
‘I’m sorry,’ I tell him, having sneakily become convinced that it is a boy.
‘I’m sorry I’m a bit rubbish right now, and I’m sorry if I’m upsetting you.
I’ll do better, I promise. I’ll be as good a mum as I can, but right now I’m so bloody sad I feel like I might actually dissolve into a cloud of misery.
And where would that leave you, eh? Nowhere good.
So, this is the deal, little one – I’m going to give myself another ten minutes of complete and total self-pity.
I’m going to cry and bawl and complain, get it all out of my system.
And then I’m going to give myself a giant kick up the backside – figuratively, not literally, because I’m not that bendy any more – and get on with my life. With our life. How does that sound?’
The baby doesn’t reply, due to being a human mango, but I feel like he understands. I check my phone again, and when it remains empty of messages, I open up the clock and set a time for ten minutes. That was the deal, and I am a woman of my word.
I am possibly three minutes through my allotted crying time when I hear footsteps crunching on the leave-strewn pathways, distant but distinct.
My eyes fly open in alarm, my fight or flight response kicking in despite the tears that are pooling in the hollow at the base of my neck. I’ve cried so much I might drown.
I stand up, stare down the hill, and see him.
Guy. My Viking warrior, carrying a blanket and a flask.
He is making his way towards me, and when our eyes meet I don’t know whether to run to him for a hug or run to him so I can get up close and personal and punch him in the face.
In the end I stay exactly where I am, paralysed by the sight of him.
I am relieved and anxious all at once. He is here, he is real, and he has not left.
But what if he has come to say goodbye? What if he can’t stay here now, knowing the truth?
I am unsteady on my feet, and he looks concerned as he approaches. Concerned and tired, with dark circles beneath his eyes suggesting he has not slept well, if at all.
‘I saw you from the window,’ he says simply, his gaze taking in my tear-stained face, my soaked-through shoes, my trembling lips. ‘And I thought you must be cold. Come on, sit down.’
I realise as soon as he says it that I am in fact freezing.
It’s a cool day, and I’m not wearing a proper coat, and I am filled with strange emotions that have somehow stopped me noticing the temperature.
I sit, suddenly weak, and he sits beside me.
He tucks the blanket around us, and I am grateful for the warmth. For the contact.
Grateful, but still uncertain. I have no idea what is going on in his head.