Nick
Nick
What are the chances that every year he nearly forgets his mum’s birthday, but that this date feels seared on his soul forever more?
He’s tried to forget it. He even googled it once: how to forget something forever. There was lots of uninspiring advice online about memory suppression and exposure therapy and drugs and methodically, he tried it all, but none of it worked.
He would catch himself sometimes, completely lost in elementary statistical theory, and then he’d hear a voice in his head, almost from nowhere, saying something like ‘six days to go until the anniversary of the fire’ and it would be like a punch to the head.
He might have saved Anna. If only he hadn’t posted that stupid record under Beth’s door. If only he hadn’t gone for a walk with her that night.
If only he’d gone back into the building.
If only, if only, if only…
Anna might still be alive today.
It wasn’t Beth’s fault. He knows this, on a fundamental level, but the week they spent together in the hotel room was like being slowly suffocated by the physical manifestation of his guilt. Beth: needing him, wanting him so badly, and he, on some level, wanting her too but feeling disgusted with himself for it. And whenever he closed his eyes, he saw Anna’s face, the last time she looked at him.
Had he broken her heart? And then left her to burn?
Christ, it was too much. Too much for anyone to deal with.
And then, there was the thought of his mother. Back at home, needing him just as much.
So he’d run away.
But it turns out that all the clever dicks are right about that. Running away is never a long-term solution to a problem.
Wherever you go, there you are.
He takes his phone out of his pocket. He’d asked Beth for space last year, when he’d left university, and she had given it to him.
He looks at their messages to one another. They are nearly all from before the fire. Only a handful from afterwards, during that excruciating week in the hotel.
He can hardly bear it, but his eyes force him to read the final message.
From Beth to him, the day after he left.
Call me when you feel like it. Whenever you’re ready. I miss you x
He never called her. He was never ready.
But maybe today… the day before the first anniversary. Something feels different today.
The year apart has been good for him. The unjust anger he felt towards her immediately afterwards has faded, been replaced by something else: shame.
Maybe today he’s ready to try to make amends.