Going Home

‘Get off!’ said Dad, brandishing a poker, as if he and Mike were little boys again. Mike scowled and flopped into the armchair next to him, then picked up an old Eagle annual and popped a chocolate into his mouth.

Rosalie sat in one of the battered old chintz armchairs to their left, with Chin perched on the arm. They were both laughing – I could hear Gibbo reaching the end of a convoluted story.

Suddenly Mike caught sight of us. ‘Hello, you two,’ he said, leaping up and striding towards us. He slapped Tom on the back. Come and get a drink – get one for Lizzy too. Here, have one of my chocolates!’

I sat down on the one empty sofa and felt the old springs sag. Mike handed me a glass of whisky, and Rosalie winked at him.

‘All right, darling?’ hissed Kate across the room, under cover of Gibbo’s story.

‘Yes, thanks.’ Tom grinned.

‘And then,’ Gibbo continued, ‘they said, “Get out of Bangkok, and if you show your face in here again, we’re going to put you in prison.” And I said, “Well, that’s not fair,” and the bloke cuffed me and I woke up on a boat with all my stuff gone.’

‘Right,’ Jess said. ‘Have you ever been to the street where they film Neighbours, Gibbo?’

Several more stories from Gibbo, a lot more alcohol and three Frank Sinatra albums later, our Christmas Day party broke up and, one by one, we trickled off to bed. Mum went first, followed by Kate, then Chin and Gibbo, till only the hardcore were left. Tendrils of ivy clattered against the panes as we talked. Each of us was eager to reassure Tom. Mike, with the grace of the seasoned conversationalist, picked up the baton and referred affectionately to Tom’s ‘break-out’. Tom, the lawyer, laughed in bashful but genuine amusement and threw it back, with a comment on Mike’s new comb-over. My father, the erstwhile captain of his university debating team, rolled the thinning-hair and outed-nephew gags into one with an anecdote about Oscar Wilde that gracefully touched on each but undermined neither. Jess, whose grey matter I sometimes worry might be composed of dead skin cells, sat up suddenly and said she didn’t get it, so we took the piss out of her until she dozed off on the sofa.

By the time I got into bed the wind was howling. I pulled the duvet tightly round me as rain lashed against the windows. A gate was slamming and creaking in the gale, and as I wondered when it would stop I heard Mike pad downstairs and venture out into the storm.

I peered outside and saw him, in a battered old woollen dressing-gown and stripy pyjamas, twisting a piece of wire round the catch. As Confucius so rightly said, ‘There is nothing more pleasurable than to watch an old friend fall from a rooftop.’ The wind wailed louder. Wait! It was a human wail. I got up, unfastened the window and looked out. Rosalie was hanging out of hers. ‘…eee…areful…ike…’ she yelled. ‘Ohmigod…don’t sli…Wet path!’

‘Aaargh!’ Mike shouted, and slipped. He got up, looking furious, knees and hands covered with mud. ‘…ucking…couldn’t…simple thing…a gate?’ he growled, his normally unruffled nature clearly very ruffled.

‘Are you OK, honey?’ I heard Rosalie say as the wind dipped momentarily.

Mike brushed himself off, spread his arms wide and beamed up at her, rain streaming down his face. ‘I am coming back up to you, my sweet,’ he bellowed. ‘Wet, dirty, covered with mud and rust, I shall bring you this token from my garden.’

He picked up a handful of streaming wet gravel. ‘I’m putting this down your nightie. Now lie still, I’ll be up in a minute, to give you a—’

I shut the window hurriedly.

And that was Christmas. As I lay down, the events of the day rushed through my mind in reverse order, a bizarre kaleidoscope of images: Mike yelling up to his wife in the pouring rain; Mum washing up in the kitchen; Tom’s redwine smile; the clinking of glasses as we sat down to lunch; Rosalie flicking through the papers in the study; the hollows beneath Kate’s cheekbones as she laid the wreath on Tony’s grave; David at the church, looking at me with those dark eyes…and all the way back to this morning, when I ran downstairs, excited as a little girl by the prospect of what the day would bring. And then I must have fallen asleep. Perhaps it was inevitable that I’d dream about David. I hadn’t for a while, those dreams where he still loved me and I could see him, hear him, so clearly that I was sure I wasn’t dreaming and that we were back together again until I woke up. Six months ago I had them every night. And it was still the same feeling then, as now – it was still the most bittersweet torture of all.

EIGHT

In the year and a bit that David and I were together, I was sure of three things: one, that I loved him; two, that he loved me; three, that this was the way it was always going to be. I didn’t worry about whether we’d get married or look at cots and sigh longingly. I never thought about the future because all that mattered was that I’d found him and he loved me.

I’ll never make that mistake again. I learned a lot from David, but the most important thing is that loving someone so much your heart turns over with happiness every time you draw breath isn’t enough. It can’t save you; the only thing you can do is to try and get over it.

When we’d been going out for nearly a year, he was offered a job in New York. It was a good one – with a highly respected newspaper – and it meant more money as well as a step up the career ladder. In every way, it was the most simple decision to make – except one. I didn’t want him to go, and he didn’t want to leave me.

Of course, we were terribly adult about it. I never said, ‘Oh, God, please don’t go. I’ll miss you so much. I’m glad you’ve got this job and I’m so proud of you but don’t go.’ Sometimes now I wish I had, just so he knew how much I loved him. How much I really loved him.

It was strange helping him pack up his flat, having endless farewell parties and dinners, where the same conversations were rehashed over and over again. ‘You’ll miss him, won’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you going out to see him?’

‘In a fortnight’s time.’

‘Well, you’ve got email and the flight’s really not that long, is it?’

‘No.’

Sometimes, when I was having these conversations, I’d look up and see David watching me, as if he wasn’t sure about something. As if he couldn’t decide whether he wanted me to be weeping and devastated, or calm and businesslike about his going.

I loved him so much it hurt. When I closed my eyes and thought about him, my heart would clench – even if he was standing next to me. And I was almost as happy when he wasn’t there, because having him in my life, loving him, knowing he lived in the same place as me, that I had held him and made love to him, made me feel gorgeously lucky, young, happy and in love. Until I knew I had to say goodbye to him.

On one of the first days of late spring, a beautiful English day when the trees, the grass and hedges are at their most green, we went together to the airport. We checked in his bags, then sat at a café in near silence. I couldn’t cry: I didn’t want him to leave a weeping, drooping fool (and I didn’t want his last memory of me to be as a honking, pink-nosed pig with rivulets of mascara around my eyes and on my cheeks). As the time drew near for him to go through, the silence between us pooled, lengthened. I felt dizzy, hot, muffled with cotton wool. Suddenly I wanted to say, ‘I love you. Don’t go. I don’t want to spend another night apart from you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I love you.’ I opened my mouth: my throat felt dry.

The flight was called. David drained his coffee and said easily, ‘Right, I’d better go.’

I should have made my speech then but he was swinging his backpack over his shoulder. Instead I said croackily, ‘Did you pack the Rough Guide in your suitcase or have you got it with you for the flight?’

‘In here, thanks,’ he said, indicating his rucksack.

‘Good.’

As I stood at the gate and kissed him, he drew back. I smiled brightly and swallowed.

‘This is for you,’ David said. He handed me a crumpled brown-paper bag. ‘I should have given it to you earlier. Listen, I – oh, God, they’re calling the flight again. I’m late. Open it when you get home. I love you, Lizzy. Tell me you love me.’ His eyes were on me, almost pleading, alert, looking for something.

‘Of course I do,’ I said, clutching the package to my chest. He kissed me suddenly, turned and walked through. He didn’t look back.

When I got to my flat, I threw myself on the sofa and cried as if my heart would break because it physically hurt, him having gone. Then I made myself a strong gin and tonic. I reread the letters David had sent me, looked at some photos of our holiday in France the previous year, and cried some more. I moped, drank more gin, put a scarf round my neck, which made me feel like a tragic film heroine or Edith Piaf, and sang ‘I Know Him So Well’ drunkenly into my remote control. Then I remembered the package. I tore it open, and found his copy of the Rough Guide to New York. Stupid man, I thought. He’s given me the wrong present. He’d been annotating it for weeks, putting sticky markers on pages of restaurants, bars, shops, museums – anything people had recommended to him. Now he was half-way across the Atlantic and without this book, which had maps, and information on where to buy milk, headache pills and sheets – I started to cry again, huge racking sobs for him on his own and me on my own and him without his Rough Guide. He’d wrapped an elastic band round the spine as a marker and the book fell open at the title page, where David had written, ‘Lizzy, I need you and I need this book. Bring it over soon. D. PS I tried to give you this ring last night. Wear it, I love you.’ It was threaded on to the elastic band, thin yellow gold, battered and beaten, with a cluster of tiny diamonds that formed a flower.

But it turned out that the old chestnut ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder’ isn’t true. Perhaps our relationship wasn’t strong enough to survive our separation; still that doesn’t explain why we split up, and every time I force myself to think about it, none of it makes sense.

When David had been away for a fortnight, I flew out to see him. I’d been to New York a couple of times before, for work, but I love it so much that flying there and seeing David again meant I was almost sick with excitement. While the dreary suburbs and endless grey roads into London must be a shock for your average tourist coming from Heathrow who’s expecting castles and thatched cottages, New York doesn’t disappoint. There, you arrive and the following things happen, as if you were in an episode of a super-merged programme called Cagney and Lacey and Sex and the City:

1. Woman with enormous hair and nails shouts at you to move on in queue for Passport Control. ‘Hey, you! Yeah…you, lady! Move it!’

2. Get into yellow cab. Hurrah!

3. During drive past graveyards and factories, you look up and there in front of you is the river, with Manhattan, including real-life Chrysler Building and the Empire State, gleaming in the sunshine!

4. Three doors down from your scabby hotel there will always be a bar like an old hairdressing salon that stays open till two a.m., where Cosmopolitans are three dollars each, and an old guy plays brilliant jazz piano!

I love it. But now the thing I loved most was David’s being there. The city would be ours, the wide streets, the park, the tiny bar I’d told him about opposite his apartment. We’d live in black and white and Gershwin would play in the background, like in Manhattan. We’d ride through Central Park in a horse-drawn carriage. We’d laugh in slow-motion and wear Gap scarves and David would push tendrils of hair off my face.

But it wasn’t like that, quite. And that was where it all started to go wrong.

The night I arrived one of David’s colleagues was having a party in a downtown bar. I wasn’t tired. I wanted to go out and see the city, and I wanted David to cement his friendships with his new work pals. David wanted to stay in, watch a movie and have sex, basically. I pointed out we’d just spent three hours doing that. He said we could happily spend another three hours doing it, and came up with some suggestions that I’ve been wishing ever since that I’d taken up. We had a bit of a row and went to the party in a slight atmosphere, neither of us understanding why when we were so pleased to see each other.

And how life laughs at you when you don’t realise it’s about to. For as we walked into the bar, a trendy, dim-lit place off Spring Street where the seats were cubes in primary colours and everyone wore black, I saw Lisa Garratt. The frienemy to end all frienemies. Lisa, an old acquaintance of mine from university, Lisa, who by coincidence worked on David’s paper too. Tall, tanned, muscular. She had thighs like tree-trunks, I remembered – she was captain of the ladies’ rugby team. She was always louder, more confident, more energetic than everyone else around her at university – an irritating mix of sporty and horsy with a bad slutty-party-girl edge. She was the one who’d say, ‘Hey, I know! Let’s stay up late and play Scrabble all night doing tequila shots and strip poker at the same time!’

‘Oh, God,’ I murmured to David as we walked in. ‘It’s Lisa.’

He was checking in our coats. I smoothed his hair and kissed him, relishing the luxury of being able to touch him. ‘Lizzy,’ he said, pulling something out of my coat, ‘Why did you bring gloves with you to New York? It’s June.’

‘I’m aware of that, thank you,’ I said. I’m never quite sure what temperatures to expect around the world and I believe in being prepared. Gloves don’t take up much room.

‘Is this like the time you took that bobble hat to Prague because you thought it always snowed there?’

‘No,’ I said, affronted. ‘I’m using the gloves to store things in.’

‘It was thirty degrees in the shade and you packed a woolly hat because you thought Prague was snowy all year round, didn’t you?’

‘You patronizing ratbag,’ I said, hitting him. ‘Don’t forget that you thought Adrian Mole was a real person writing real diaries until you were sixteen.’

‘I wish I’d never told you that.’ He kissed me. ‘Hmm…’ he said, a moment later. ‘What were you saying before the glove debate, bobble-hat girl? Who’s here?’

I remembered. ‘Urgh, yes, Lisa Garratt. Does she work with you?’

‘You know her?’ David said. ‘Don’t you like her?’

‘She’s the original frienemy,’ I said.

‘The what?’ David said, kissing my neck. ‘Let’s go in. Lisa’s OK. I’ll fetch you your gloves if you get cold. How’s that for a deal?’

‘I’m sure she is. It’s just I’ll have to pretend we’re really friendly and I don’t like her much. Hey,’ I pressed closer to him, feeling his hard chest and strong arms round me, ‘I’ve changed my mind, let’s go home and have sex all night. I want to try the thing with the ice cube and the needle now.’

But David broke away from me and took my hand. As we pushed through the crowd he said, slightly brusquely, ‘Come on, Lizzy, we’re here now. She’s nice, honestly. A real laugh. Hi, Garratt. How are you?’

Lisa was still the original boys’ girl. She was a massive flirt, the biggest drinker, likely to start a fight, and to wear slaggy clothes. Because she was a real lad the blokes loved her company, and because she was a real sex bomb they all wanted to shag her, but thought it was OK because they could explain her away as ‘one of the lads’. I’d never liked her at university and I didn’t now. I saw her appraising me as she smiled a sharky smile and slapped David on the back. I saw her deliberately exclude me in the subtlest of ways as she drew David and the other men into her group. Jokes about the office, about the subway ride into work that day, about what was on TV last week. I couldn’t make a fuss about it because I wanted David to be happy and have friends.

The rest of the weekend was fine, but it wasn’t as wonderful as I’d assumed it would be. We didn’t mention the future, although I was wearing the ring. I didn’t know what it stood for, and I couldn’t bring it up without sounding either ungrateful or hysterical. The thin end of the wedge was already there. It wasn’t Lisa. I don’t blame her. Well, I do, the evil whore: she was a woman on a mission. But it was other things too. We were separated, leading different lives. And neither of us noticed until it was too late.

A month after I got back from New York I had a bad row with David. It started when he told me he wasn’t coming over for a friend’s wedding, and escalated into all sorts of things. I missed him; I was miserable. He told me he missed me too. But while I was still living the same life, if without him, I’d heard enough to know that he was having a great time, try as he might to deny it. And, of course, I wanted him to – I wanted him to be happy. So I felt guilty about being jealous of him, and he – well, I don’t think he missed me that much. I think he got along just fine without me.

He had this thing about how us being together was a big step – ‘It’s a big step’, ‘We’re taking a big step’, ‘Our relationship is a big step’ – which made the word step lose all meaning for me. I found it vaguely amusing, but now, in the cold, Davidless light of day, I realized he was trying to tell me that he wasn’t in serious-long-term-relationship mode. So while I think he bought the ring meaning to propose, he must have bottled out at the last minute. And that says all there is to say, really, so the row ended with us both half-heartedly saying sorry and ringing off. What I should have done was call him back; I should have been the bigger person. But I didn’t. I was afraid, and so I bottled it.

Then, three days of silence later, Miles rang up and took me out to dinner. Miles and I had been friends when we were teenagers; he’d lived in Spain with his and David’s father till he was fourteen, then come back to Wareham, which was when Tom and I became his pals. David was at university then, in Edinburgh.

In addition to having a variety of jobs to pay his way up there, he volunteered to visit an old couple twice a week, did their shopping, and was on the committee for rag week, stuff like that. He rarely came back for the holidays, and when he had we’d never met him. I remember saying to Miles that he sounded like a Goody Two Shoes, and Miles offering me a Mayfair cigarette and saying, in a bored tone, that he was, and it was annoying to have such a girl for a brother.

Miles, Tom and I thought we were a right cool teenage gang. On my eighteenth birthday I went to the Neptune in Wareham with them and some friends from school, and got royally drunk. Miles and I even snogged. In fact, in the summer of our first year at university we nearly slept together, but Miles got stage fright and his enthusiasm, as it were, wilted. He was mortified, but I told him I took it as a sign that we were meant to be friends and that was what we became. Of course, it was a bit different after I’d met David and fallen in love with him, but old friends stay old friends whatever happens. They’re there for you when things go wrong. They’ll tell you what no one else will because they love you.

So, over dinner, with anguish on his face and in his voice, Miles told me that David was sleeping with Lisa, that she was virtually living in the apartment, that – and even now I think he could have spared me this bit – they had been caught in the photocopying room together. My David cautioned for fucking a colleague at the office, with his trousers round his ankles.

I called David, and he was out. I left him a message. I couldn’t bring myself to mention her name. I just said that because of what had happened it was over and I never wanted to see him again. So, theoretically, I dumped him by leaving a message on his answering-machine, which is something you do to someone you barely know, not someone you’d wanted to spend the rest of your life with.

I had an email from him in reply, just as I was leaving work.

Lizzy

If you say it’s over, then it’s over. I think it’s for the best and you obviously do too. I’m sorry for what’s happened. Anything else sounds trite.

For what it’s worth, I never thought this would happen. I’ve missed you.

D

And then another, thirty-two seconds later:

PS Keep the ring. I don’t want it.

Lisa emailed Emma, a mutual friend from university, and told her (really – what a total cow): Emma rang and asked Georgy was it true about Lizzy and her boyfriend? Georgy happened to be at my flat trying to cheer me up. I could hear Emma’s braying, strident tones from my end of the sofa, the first of what would be too many calls and questions about what had happened. Georgy looked at me – what should she say?

I leaned forward. ‘Tell her it’s not true. Tell her it was Lizzy’s ex-boyfriend. Because he’s not my boyfriend any more.’ The Rough Guide was lying on the floor. I picked it up and put it on my bookshelf, the spine facing away from me and since then I’ve tried not to think about David and anything to do with him at all. I try not to. But, occasionally, I dream about him again and it all comes flooding back.

This time I dreamed we’d just split up because we’d both received anonymous letters saying we hated each other, and then David’s father had died and he had to scatter the ashes in my flat, and I kept saying I needed to Hoover them up and he kept yelling that I was insensitive and horrible for not understanding those were his father’s ashes.

I woke up as David was coming towards me in my flat, smiling at me with his dark eyes and kind, stern face and banging the anonymous letters together incredibly loudly. (It turned out Jaden had sent them out of jealousy. I know, I know.) I could feel myself swimming back into consciousness, as you do when you wake from a deep sleep, and I rolled over and looked at my watch. It was ten thirty a.m. already and after a few seconds I realized that Tom had woken me by banging my hairbrush on my dressing-table.

‘Tea! Wake up, young laydee, wake up,’ he screeched, as I rubbed my eyes and tried to focus on him. ‘Mum’s bouncing off the walls. She wants to go for a walk. So’s your mum. Rosalie’s wearing a fantastically humorous outfit – kind of Burberry meets the baroness in The Sound of Music, and I’ve already found her counting the pewter bowls in the dining room. Mike’s about to make scrambled eggs for late risers, so get a move on.’

I stared at him in frank astonishment. ‘Who are you?’ I asked.

‘Whadyou mean?’

‘I mean,’ I said, pulling my knees up under my chin, ‘last night you were so drunk you passed out for three hours. How can you be so chirpy this morning?’

Tom handed me a mug of tea and strode to the window. He pulled back the curtains to reveal a grey, overcast day. ‘I’m right as rain. Must have slept it off. And I feel fantastic. Everyone knows. No more secrets. No more lies. Layers stripped away. Family reunited. Ho, yes.’

I took a gulp of tea and, amazingly, felt better too. ‘I’m so glad, Tommytom.’

Tom gazed out of the window, musing and stroking his chin. Then he stopped and picked up Flossie, my first doll, who had a tremendously exciting tulle skirt and light blue top and used to be the centre of my world but now led a nice quiet life, sitting on my windowsill next to Manfred, a boy doll with a willy it could wee through (it was French). Tom looked challengingly at Flossie, as if he expected her to give him some backchat. Her flecked-blue marble eyes rocked open as he picked her up and she gazed blankly at him. ‘I want everyone to know what it feels like to be totally honest.’ He put Flossie back on the windowsill. ‘To free yourself from the tyranny of repression.’

‘What?’ I said.

Tom sighed. ‘Never mind. No more secrets and lies in this family, is all I’m saying. Come on.’ He threw me an ancient baggy jumper that my grandmother had knitted for me. I pulled it on and rolled out of bed, yawning. I felt incredibly tired.