Chapter 38
For the first time in my whole life I don’t sleep at all for an entire night. Not one wink. I watch the trains rush and rattle past until they don’t and then when they do again in the morning. I can’t eat. I can’t even hold down tea. I open one of the warm mini bottles of tonic water Mum keeps down by the tumble dryer and sip it because I’m pretty sure doctors prescribed it like medicine in the Victorian days, when lovesickness was an actual real disorder. It’s six in the morning. I should wait it out, until at least eight, but it’s clear, warm and light. I can’t stop the clubbing palpitations in my chest, this heart-dropping feeling. My thoughts are taking my body hostage; I’m completely in debt to my emotions.
I shove on the first pair of shoes I can find, throw on a hoodie over my pyjamas, and walk. I just open the door and begin to walk, then I speed up to a bit of a run … I’m following my heart. I can’t stop now; I don’t know what I’m doing; I’m fucking crazy. I’ve completely lost my mind. HERE I AM. I run down the high street, and I can see us, that night he cycled me home when we were kids, my arms wrapped around his chest, my palms over his beating heart; that was all that mattered then. Past the train station where we’d bunk tickets in the rain. Through the common where we’d chat shit on the swings until we were just silhouettes and our faces were outlines, where time was a half-pipe dream, an exhale, a cloud of smoke, a polaroid picture. Where we’d share drinks, lips wet with fizzy sugar. We were in love. I can taste it now. I’m reversing the spell. At the traffic lights I stop for a second. What am I doing? This is insane. Red. Amber. Green. And off I am again, running into the present, to the sweet little street and the early risers and the flower market. And I’m there. At his dad’s house on Orchard Road.
Quiet. The blinds down. I’m here. Just one mad woman on the street.
I ring his phone.
‘Hello … ?’
‘Hello … ’ I pant, breathlessly. ‘I’m outside.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘No, I’m not.’
Lowe opens the door. His eyes are gemstones and wet; he’s wearing everything he was wearing from the night before, as if he fell face-first into bed. Still the same old Lowe then. His dad is out. He’s home alone.
Our fingers moving closer and closer. I feel the tips of our noses meet; our lips nearly touch, his mouth near mine, hands go underneath my hoodie where it bunches and I’m just wearing a vest. His fingers tuck under the fabric and onto the skin of my belly, which shrinks under his reach and I can tell. I know he knows it’s time to use words.
‘I want this … ’
I smash like a chandelier crashing towards a ballroom floor and finally all these years later the guy’s learning to clarify so he adds, ‘ … to be with you. But I want to get it right this time. I do. I want it to be for real. I still have to sell that bloody house; Heather is still involved and I don’t want you to get caught up in the mess of that.’ What is he worried about? That he’s going to get papped? ‘I’m sorry but I don’t want us to run away with the idea that … ’
‘Run away with what?’ I am fucking fuming. ‘Lowe, I just ranto your house. RAN! No, no, no!’ I’m pacing, zipping my hoodie up to the neck. ‘No!’ I find myself pointing.
He tries to explain but I don’t let him speak. He tries to bring me close again but I push him away.
‘Maybe I’m overthinking it’ – YOU ARE OVERTHINKING IT – ‘but I want us to have the best possible chance to make this as great as it can be.’
I feel so fucking angry and betrayed. I can’t believe I’m here again, saying my feelings, being all vulnerable – for what?
I walk towards the front door. Stupid, stupid girl.
He rubs his head in distress; his eyes are starting to plead. ‘I really believe that if you trust me, if you wait … ’
‘Wait? Are you really that selfish? Have you slept through the last … ’ I count on my hands, which isn’t easy under pressure ‘ … EIGHTEEN YEARS?’ Eighteen. Christ almighty. It’s BAD. Only over half of my goddam life. THAT’S how long I’ve been in love.
‘I just want to be ready for you.’
‘What do you mean ready? You’re not a bloody virgin bride, Lowe! I’m here.’ I bang my chest, standing by the front door, waiting for him to say something, anything, and as always, silence. ‘And you’re not here at all. All you do is break my heart over and over again. I can’t take it. I wish I’d never met you.’
I open the front door and walk away as fast as my body will take me. I don’t look back. Not once.
I pound down the road like I’m on fire. And no one will put me out. So instead, I singe everything in my path. Trees crumble; cars rust and wreck; people blister.
I run into a café. Tremoring. Not drinking makes you feel a LOT. I order coffee. No, tea. No, coffee. No, tea. Please. Sorry. I’m just— Thank you. In a takeaway cup. Yes, please. A little girl eating an iced cinnamon bun stares at me, eyes locked in that intense way kids have, frosting on her mouth. I must look like a friggin’ banshee. She holds the bun out to me. And it just makes me cry – not ugly crying but enough to know I’m just a little girl in a scared woman’s body in a café crying in the face of a child.
Back out onto the street, which is too overcrowded and thin for drama like this, and he’s there, searching for me as the city stirs, as people try to get in and out of the coffee shop, step around him. The yellow yolk of the morning breaking, spilling out everywhere.
‘Ella.’ He’s breathless; he doesn’t want to do this in front of strangers, to cause a scene. ‘Ella, please, can we find somewhere to talk?’ He steps towards me. I step back into the seating area of the coffee shop, on the pavement with the fold-away tables and chairs that rattle. ‘Ella, please, I’m really sorry. I’m just trying to do things right. Please can you just let me talk to you?’
‘After nearly twenty-fucking-years of silence?’ It’s way too early in the day for outdoors swearing but I’m hurt and embarrassed, annoyed at myself.
I see real fear on his face. The type I’ve never seen when he’s on stage or riding his bike. He’s endangered here on the normal street, without the backup of his band or the gang of mates that used to fly behind him on bikes like a V of geese. But I’m comfortable here; this is my territory.
He puts his arms out how he might approach someone thrashing about a sharp knife. People stop and stare; a florist throws a bucket of water down the drain, eyes on us; a bin-collector whistles to state they are minding their own business. Lowe puts his hands back in his pockets.
Prams push; kids scoot; dogs bark; joggers run. Lowe steps into the road, to make space on the pavement. I see him catch his ashen reflection in the coffee shop window; the urge to fix his messy hair must be enormous. He hangs like a soaking anorak in a lost property office. His eyes hit the tarmac, his feet. Is he going to cry? Because tears are rolling down my face, burdened with yesterday’s mascara. His expression, a mix of he-knows-he-deserves-this acceptance, pleading and utter powerlessness. More passers-by stare, and I hear a faint ‘Isn’t that the singer from … ?’ The little girl with the bun steps out of the café, holding her parents’ hands. She turns her neck to look us, at raw adulthood and the way it bleeds. I manage to produce a smile for her and she turns her head like we’re not mates.
‘I used to think you were the love of my life, you know?’ I can tell the words are hard for him to hear. ‘But you’re not even my friend. You’re an enemy.’ I want to scream plus, my fucking book comes out next week, you selfish prick! but I don’t want to look like a privileged artist raging in the street or make it seem like I’m doing some inventive performative promotional stunt. Instead I say, ‘This is NOT how friends treat each other.’ My voice breaks. ‘I’ve realized you’re actually lucky to even know me.’
He nods, and says, more desperately now, ‘I know I am, Ella – you’re incredible.’ He tries to laugh, but it doesn’t work. I just scowl. ‘Please give me a chance – please forget what I said about waiting. You’re right, let’s try, right now – please let me take you out?’
Of course, everybody on the whole street is looking now, waiting for my answer.
And I say, ‘Sorry, Lowe. No.’
And nobody likes that.
I turn and walk away from him, standing there, thinking What the fuck was that?
See, it hurts, doesn’t it?
He chases after me. I do like it that for once he’s the one chasing me, but, turns out, being chased makes me feel extremely anxious, so I turn and snap, ‘Just leave me alone!’
And that makes him retreat. He stands there, for I don’t know how long; I don’t care to look back and see. Just bolt up and off the main road, down some side street where the houses are in perfect rows, promising lovely freshly squeezed orange juice lives. Lowe is ringing my phone. I screen the calls.
I ring Aoife instead. ‘Whaaaat?’ She’s half asleep; I’m crying. She clears her throat. ‘What’s the matter?’
I say, ‘I’m a dick. I’ve done it again.’
She just says, ‘Oh gawd.’ Like she knows exactly what I’m talking about. ‘Come now.’
We hang up and I try and get my shit together to make my way over to hers, walking in a direction, I’m just not sure which one. Lowe is calling and texting: please answer, I’m sorry, tell me where to come and I’ll be there.
Later, I will learn that Lowe drove his dad-car round the streets for hours to find me, his head hanging out the window. He drove to 251 Palace Road and back again – where every person looks just like me but nobody is.
At Aoife’s I say big and bold things like how I’ve got to pull my shit together. I’ve got a book to release. I’m sorry, this guy is not GATECRASHING the next decade of my life! And Aoife feeds me toast and tea, and says things like, ‘Absolutely!’ and ‘Totally’ and ‘A hundred per cent’ and ‘You’re right.’ I feel insecure and self-conscious. I want to live a quiet and simple life, to shut myself inside, to not get out there and live. I announce that ‘I have doubts about my book; nobody needs a pointless, stupid shit book like this!’
Aoife says, ‘Fuck off! I do! I love pointless, stupid shit. It’s the best. That’d be like saying nobody needed Bridesmaids!’ She holds my hand. ‘We need that shit.’
Later, Ronke comes over with Avanna, who plays hide-and-seek with Aoife’s bra that’s hanging off the clothes horse before spreading a bowl of pasta everywhere and being put to sleep in Aoife’s bed. Ronks shows us photos of her incredible new house. We’re so happy for her; she works so hard. Then Bianca arrives and I decide it’s finally time to exorcise this unceasing love story for Bianca and Ronks, whilst Aoife – who has heard it many times now – orders takeaway.
‘We always always knew you loved him,’ they say, ‘but we always knew he loved you too.’