Chapter Thirty-Four
For most of the seven months I’ve lived in this country, I’ve found myself defending the weather to people from home.
Sure, it rains, but when it’s not raining it’s lovely.
Even winter is cozy, with the streets lit up for Christmas and everyone in the holiday spirit.
But as January drags on, I see what everyone’s been banging on about: This island is garbage.
The rain is unrelenting, the gray oppressive.
We go weeks without seeing the sun, and I don’t think I’m ever properly dry.
The cold and damp cling to my bones until I can’t remember what it felt like before they took up residence.
Okay, yes, there may be additional reasons for my awful mood, but the weather does not help.
One bright spot: A few days after my banishment from his future kingdom, little Hamza comes screaming into the world. It’s clear he’s inherited his mother’s spiritedness, as Amina says he does not stop screaming for several weeks. I feel his pain.
Dragging myself to work every day in the same building as Lachlan is like a constant silent scream, for weeks on end.
It’s finally given me a new type of loneliness to add to the collection I was building last summer: the loneliness that comes when the person you loved, the one who broke your heart, is nonetheless everywhere you look.
He’s skulking around the corridors of the training center, he’s doing extra sessions in the gym with his headphones on, he’s sitting alone in the first-team dining room.
He’s on posters, he’s on shirts, he’s on television, he’s a tiny little figure running around on the pitch while I sit in the Comms box and try to remember how to be happy.
February brings no change to the weather, but I do manage to lift myself out of my funk long enough to bid the Westlife boys adieu.
The one incontrovertible upside of living with Lachlan for months is that I barely spent a dime of my own money, so I’ve accumulated enough of a cushion to rent a one-bedroom of my own.
It’s not much to write home about, but it’s just one bus away from work, and the only person who gets to have sex in the bed is me.
Well, maybe one day—certainly not soon. Saint Amina bundles Hamza into a BabyBjorn and takes us back to Ikea, and we both try not to remember what we talked about the last time we were here, when the idea of Lachlan and me falling in love was so ridiculous, so exciting.
I thought that living alone for the first time in nearly six years would be terrible—and I was right.
The first few weeks are unbearable. It turns out the effects of depression are greatly compounded by the slow ticking of a clock in an empty room.
Breaking myself out of my ingrained couple habits was hard enough post-Steven, but there were always people around me, stewing lentils or playing video games or fucking each other’s brains out.
If I thought I was alone then, I was wrong.
It’s only now, on my own in this small apartment, that I can reckon with the full extent of my solitude.
It takes me a month to stop checking every nook and cranny as soon as I come home, just in case a murderer somehow snuck in while I was away (the tipping point is when I open the fridge with a knife in hand, as if an assailant might be lurking in the crisper drawer).
But, like so many things in life, it gets better with time.
I like having total control of the space, rotting on my couch and making the kitchen dirty and not cleaning it up until I’m good and ready.
I like being able to sing as loud as I want, as off-key as I can manage, and not worry about disturbing anyone.
I like the brief moments that crop up when it feels like I could be happy here, could build a life from this little flat on the outskirts of Liverpool.
As for work, it’s going as well as can be expected.
On our first day back in January, I told Phil I wouldn’t be riding the bus anymore.
He was disappointed but seemed to buy my excuse that it would be a good opportunity for other Comms people to “bed in” with the team a bit.
I flinched at the expression and wondered if I’d ever be able to tell him about the members of the team I’ve bedded in with.
I still make my way to all the matches, but #EarnTheShirt has well and truly taken on a life of its own, so my demure stripteases probably aren’t missed.
But I miss the lads: the joy, the banter, the intensity, the cacophony of languages and music and noise that carried us those few miles to and from Knowsley.
And I miss Lachlan. Of course I do. I’m still angry, but it’s tinged with a palpable ache.
The training center, which was starting to feel so intimate and comfortable, has become surprisingly large, as the two of us discover new ways to avoid running into each other.
I come in early and leave late, long after the players depart.
I eat lunch in my office. I bury myself in work, taking on as much responsibility as I can, as it fills my hours and my head.
We haven’t spoken since that night—in fact, we’ve barely even made eye contact.
We have had some near misses. Once, while I was half-paying attention to a Zoom call, I swear I saw him stop outside my office door for a moment.
But by the time I looked over for real, he was gone.
Once, Phil and I were arranging the squad for a team photo and I had to say his name out loud several times to position him; I was amazed the words didn’t turn to ash on my tongue.
He did what I said, swapped places with Riva, moved to the back row, adjusted his collar, and the whole time, his eyes were on me.
But I couldn’t look right at him. One brutally cold day in late February, my bus was severely delayed, meaning I got to the front door at the same time as him.
I was in a rush and he had his head down, hat pulled low over his eyes, so we didn’t realize what was happening until our hands brushed against each other on the door handle.
Our eyes met, and I hated mine for filling with tears.
Lachlan looked surprised, then flustered.
“Sorry,” he muttered, but it was the kind of “sorry” that British people say twenty times a day, not the kind of “sorry” that I needed to hear from him.
At first I was surprised at our total noncontact, but now I get it.
What is there to say? I couldn’t absolve him of his guilt about leaving Claire, so I have ceased to be of use to him.
I couldn’t give him what he wanted, so the friendship is over.
Why should I expect him to apologize? Josh was right: Lachlan was just using me.
It’s an uncomfortable parallel to the dying days of Steven, when I finally let myself accept that he was only staying with me to hedge his bets, to make sure that his other relationship would pan out in a way that meant he no longer needed a backup.
I try to keep things as normal as possible with the other players, laughing and clowning around with them whenever I can.
If they notice that there’s something false in it, they don’t say anything.
If they notice that I leave the room every time Lachlan enters, they keep it to themselves.
Kieran has been a doll about it, always calling me over to his table in the cafeteria, always high-fiving me when we pass each other in the hall.
And Sadie knows everything; I confessed the whole sorry business to her over several bottles of Prosecco at her flat.
She has stepped up in an extraordinary way, stopping by my office, taking me to the pub on Thursday evenings, maintaining extreme situational awareness so that if Lachlan crosses a perimeter, she can make up an excuse to drag us both out of the area and into safety.
Because Sadie and Bashie seem to have actually blossomed into something real, I assume he knows everything as well.
After all, his invitations to join them in a threesome have become more frequent, like he wants to make sure I’m included in something. Very considerate, really.
The irony of it all is that since our conversation in December, Charlotte has been warmer than ever.
I wonder if it’s just her natural shrewdness or if Matt Fletcher said something to her, told her to stand down because the situation had resolved itself.
Fair play to him if that’s the case. Regardless, it’s clear that my visa is no longer in danger of being revoked.
Great, though I’m not sure what’s keeping me here anymore.