Chapter 25
Beatrice
‘Who is Tommy?’ He asks the question so carefully as though he’s aware it carries weight, but he can’t possibly comprehend that such a question is a vacuum; a black hole ready to swallow me up and suck all of the air from me until I combust under the weight of my own self.
How do you describe someone who once brought colour into your life, and then sucked it all back out again when they left?
How do you explain that you have a gaping human-shaped wound in your life and the regret of it all has haunted you out of happiness for years?
How do I explain that when he died, so did I in every way except physically?
My face is wet when I re-emerge from my own mind and find the tears snagging on my cheeks. Arthur’s expression contorts in concern. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t—’
‘It’s okay.’ I cut him off before I can chicken out of talking about him again. ‘I just … it’s just I haven’t heard anyone else say his name for so long.’ I smile and a salty droplet slips over my lips and leaves a bitter taste on my tongue.
‘You don’t have to tell me anything, if you don’t want to.’ He seems almost as nervous as me. But he holds my hand so delicately, with such warmth, that a kernel of confidence pops inside me and the words flow before I can think to stop them.
‘It’s hard to explain Tommy in words alone.
He was unlike any person I ever met before, and I will never meet anyone like him again.
He was my best friend from the very first day I rocked up to uni in London.
Even though we were from opposite sides of the country, he felt like home to me.
He didn’t talk with an RP accent like everyone else around us, he came from a council estate in Stoke, grew up as a boy with a dream in a place where the arts were never considered to be a viable job option.
We were so alike, and yet he was all of the things I was too scared to be; he always used to wear trousers in such bright colours, pair them with shoes of all kinds of shapes and materials that I couldn’t believe you could actually buy them in a shop.
He never once seemed bothered that people would pull faces or think he was a little strange. ’
I can picture him so vividly now, colourful in every sense of the word, dressed up like he’s about to present a show for children’s TV yet listening to Slipknot in his headphones, which he would never go anywhere without.
I love to remember him like that, seeing him from the window of my flat, walking home from classes absorbed in his music, a beacon of individuality, completely and unapologetically him.
‘I was so shy when I moved there. I knew absolutely everyone back home and they all knew me, so to suddenly be in a flat with a bunch of kids with the sorts of generational wealth I thought only existed on TV shows, I was bloody terrified. I had no idea who I was. I was just Rog and Hilary’s babby, I was just whatever everyone back home had told me I was, and all of a sudden, I was given a rare chance to become whoever I wanted to be.
And it was Tommy who helped me do that.’
Arthur says nothing, only watches me closely as he listens to my story.
This here is more intimate than sex could ever be.
I am naked before him right now, baring all.
Never before have I felt so vulnerable, so on display for a man to see me in my whole entirety, and yet, his eyes caress me with such tenderness that I don’t shy away.
‘We did everything together. He pushed me so far out of my comfort zone and we did things together that I never could imagine just weeks before meeting him; we’d sneak into these huge corporate fairs, just to see what freebies we could find.
We’d go to gigs in the basements of buildings that looked abandoned from the outside.
He saw adventure in everything, and adventure we did.
He showed me films I had never even heard of.
We’d spend days and nights in the cinema and I could always guarantee that if I liked the movie, he’d hate it and vice versa.
Then we’d spend the early hours debating who was right.
I was finally alive. But Tommy, he …’ I pause to swallow down a sob ‘… he had his struggles. He spent most evenings in my flat, playing Trivial Pursuit, and it was only when he didn’t come down to meet me to walk together to class that I went into his flat.
‘The place was knee-deep in plastic bottles, bin bags, all sorts. His hair that he used to brag that he could head-bang better than anyone else with started to get matted. He took so many pains to show me how to live, but he couldn’t even give himself the basics to survive.
Every time I saw him, he seemed so happy, so alive, but there were just the odd things that kept slipping in that finally showed me that he wasn’t a happy man.
I tried to help him. I offered to clean for him, to write his essays for uni, to give him the best bowl cut that London had ever seen, but I couldn’t stop the downward spiral. ’
Tears drip from my chin freely, and still I persist. Arthur leans forward and snares my pinkie finger in his, a tiny moment of contact that keeps me going, keeps me strong enough to carry on.
‘We ended up living together in our second year of uni but that’s when things got really bad.
The writing, the films, that was our dream, together.
We would have good days; we’d write and write.
Every idea he had was like gold dust. But I couldn’t stop him from spiralling.
I knew things were bad, but I don’t think I ever knew how bad.
I put too much pressure on him; I know that now.
I asked too much of him. I had my own aspirations.
I wanted nothing more than to be the next big thing in film.
I wanted a title to take home to New York, and be respected like your dad.
He had the burden of both of our dreams on his shoulders when he was trying to just get through the day.
‘It all sounds so silly now, but me and Tommy would fall out about stupid things like an old married couple and it just got to a point where I felt I had to put myself first, focus on my career, because I didn’t think that being around each other was helping either of us.
I had convinced myself that it was him holding me back.
I was right, in part. I found my success in leaving him behind, but it wasn’t worth it anymore.
And leaving that day, that is the thing I’d change in my life if I had one wish.
Because if I hadn’t left, if I had been that light, the colour, that he had been for me, for him, maybe he’d still be here. ’
‘Oh, Beatrice.’ Arthur’s voice cuts through the memories for the first time as he clutches my fingers tighter.
‘I didn’t see him for a year, except through the posts of friends.
He looked happy, healthy. He’d cut his hair; he kept smiling.
I thought I’d done the right thing, that I was a darkness in his life and he could thrive without me bringing him down.
And then one day, I was driving home from set, and I got the call.
The worst thing of all? I knew exactly what the person on the end of the phone was going to say to me; I knew before I even answered that call that they’d tell me he was dead.
I never got to say goodbye. He died thinking I hated him, when he will always be my best friend.
I never got the chance to apologise, and I never got the chance to tell him how much I love him.
‘I tried to stick it out in London, but it didn’t feel right anymore.
I couldn’t even bring myself to go to his funeral.
How could I stand there and cry over a man I had abandoned a year before when he needed me?
How could I look his mother in the eye and tell her how much he meant to me if I’d left him?
Almost half of the time I knew him, we never even spoke, and yet he has ripped such a hole in my life that the city, my dreams, the idea of being happy just didn’t appeal to me anymore.
It’s strange to say that your soulmate was a friend who was only in your life for such a small, inconsequential amount of time.
But he was my soulmate, and I lost him.’
With my closing breath, Arthur pulls me close to him.
He threads his fingers through my hair and presses my head to his chest in an embrace so desperate, so heavy that all I can do is sob into his shirt as he massages my scalp with his tender touch.
‘You’re okay,’ he whispers into my ear. ‘It’s not your fault.
’ He rocks us both back and forth. My senses are wrapped up in him and the smell of his musk mixes with the hay of the loft and soothes me to silence.
I’m not quite sure how long we stay like this, pressed together in embrace, needing each other, but the time slips away.
‘No one in New York knows about Tommy. He is one secret that I never intended to keep and yet he’s the only one they haven’t sniffed out instantly.
And that secret right there is the whole reason I am back here, artistically spent, emotionally scarred, and a miserable bastard.
’ I try and laugh but there’s no amusement in the expression, just neat numbness.
Arthur holds me for a little moment longer, his attention fixed upon nothing in particular across the other side of the barn, his expression absent as though he’s thinking of being anywhere but here.
Has my honesty been too much for him? Does he think less of me now that I’ve confessed?
What if I’ve scared him with my candour, with my neglect of a friend who needed me?
Have I finally unveiled the depth of my sadness and he doesn’t wish to bother with me?
A rush of cold air hits me as he drops his arms from their embrace around me.
Getting to his feet, Arthur brushes down his clothes and little flakes of hay fall into my lap.
With his eyes still vacant, distant, his expression is serious as he gathers his wallet and phone.
He presses the buttons on it a few times and then shoves them into his pockets with urgency.
‘I’ve got a few things to take care of, a few enquiries to make.
You’re welcome to stay here, or I can drive you home.
It’s up to you.’ He makes for the stairs and pauses at the top for my reply.
‘Oh …’ The U-turn on emotion renders me bewildered and I struggle to form a sentence. ‘I-I’ve got some work to do on the farm.’
‘You sure?’ He rushes as though his mind has run off ahead and he’s annoyed with his body for holding him back.
With my nod, he shoots down the stairs with one last glance back to see me sat cross-legged in a nest of hay and linens, tears hardly even dry on my face.
I don’t move, even long after the barn door creaks open and slams shut behind him.
All I can do is stare in the direction in which he left and wonder why the hell I opened up.
Why would Arthur Cavendish care about my feelings?
He’s worlds apart from me, and I need to start remembering that.
He’s here because he’s been told to be, not because he wants to, and certainly not for me.
He only wants me when he needs me, only interested when he can get something out of it.
Just because he’s shown me glimmers of a different side, he is, and always will be, a selfish nepo baby who thinks about himself first.
But why is it when I finally open up, when I release the floodgates with no chance of ever backtracking, no one is there for me? My life is fetching and carrying for other people, listening to their woes. I belong to this village; I look after them all. But who looks after me?
This pain is exactly why I’ve kept my grief so tightly bound up inside me for so long.
I couldn’t cry more if I tried. The pressure in my head had grown so tight I can almost feel my skull cracking with the ache.
Why didn’t I just keep my mouth closed? Waking up in his arms was enough intimacy, was it not?
Fuck it, I should have just shagged him.
It would be less revealing; it would have hurt less to have him leave without a word as if it meant nothing. I’m a fool.
As much as I would love to crawl into my own bed and rot in my own stink of depression, I abandoned the farm yesterday, and it needs me. Or perhaps it’s me who needs the distraction. New York has been the place I’ve hidden away from Tommy for two years. That doesn’t need to change now.