Tyler is like the Sun sometimes – you have to try to avoid looking directly at it because of what it can do to your body. The Sun can damage your eyes if you look directly at it – with Tyler, he’ll make your stomach flip several times in a few seconds, and will unleash unnecessarily potent lust throughout your veins.
‘Now, I’m going to skate backwards for a bit …’ I must look horrified because he adds quickly: ‘I won’t let you go. I’m going to skate slowly backwards, taking you with me until you feel safe.’ He moves while he speaks, carefully but slowly dragging me with him. ‘Any time you feel yourself slipping, grab tightly on to my hands.’ We continue to move. It’s not so bad now. I’m actually enjoying the feeling of passive motion, of moving forwards without even trying. ‘See, this isn’t so bad, is it?’ he asks.
‘No,’ I reply. I don’t want to speak too much in case I throw my balance off and end up on the floor.
‘Good, this is good. You’re doing well. Keep moving, keep coming forwards. That’s it.’ He keeps looking behind him, to check where he is heading, but at that time of night there are few people around and the promenade is thankfully hazard-free.
We’ve moved quite far despite my terror and I am starting to feel comfortable on wheels, as though I could one day possibly, maybe feel like I belong on them.
‘Now, I’m going to let go of one of your hands. I’ll still have the other one so once I let go, if you feel at all worried, you can just grab my hand again. OK?’
‘OK.’ I can do this. I remember when Dad sat me down and told me that it was back, that there was nothing they could do, that it was now just a question of marking time on our new calendars, I thought I couldn’t do it. I thought I would never get through. But at some point, I don’t remember when, I realised I was doing it. I could do it because I was doing it. I had no choice, and because I had no choice, I managed to do it.
At some point, when exactly I didn’t notice, my feet have stopped being passive, they have started to move, to be the cause of my motion. Clumsy, clunky and awkward at first, then smoother, easier, nearly a hint of graceful. ‘Put your free arm out to balance yourself,’ Tyler says. He is beside me now, holding on to one hand as we move. Without hesitation or fear, I put my arm out, and without panic I feel the shift of my weight as I find my centre on the two lines of wheels.
‘See? See?’ Tyler says. ‘You can do it. You’re doing it.’ I can hear pride in his voice.
I can do it. I am doing it.
Looming right ahead of us is my building. We have skated all the way from Beached Heads to my flat and I haven’t fallen over, Tyler hasn’t let me down. ‘That’s where I live,’ I say to him.
‘Really?’ he replies. ‘I’ve always wanted to see inside that building. It looks incredible. Is it authentic on the inside?’
‘The communal areas are, and the windows have to be the right style for the planning department, but most of them are double-glazed. And there’s a cage lift like you see in old American movies.’
‘You do realise that you’re talking and skating now?’ Tyler replies. ‘You’ve done brilliantly.’
‘Yeah, yeah, but tell me, how am I going to stop?’ My building is coming towards us very fast. ‘Because it seems my only option is to fall over or crash into the wall.’
Turns out that stopping involves hitting the wall with my hands instead of my body, and pulling myself to a standstill. I watched Tyler do it gracefully then did it myself.
Unusually, for that time of night, the car park is virtually empty. Normally it’s a bun fight to get any space here because it is free, off-street parking that is exempt from the attentions of traffic wardens. Red, white and shiny, Lottie sits in her place at the far end of the car park, probably loving the view she has of the sea but not loving what the salt is doing to her metal parts. I need to take better care of her, take her out for a drive more.
Now that I’ve stopped, I feel a little less steady on my feet. ‘I think my days of skating are over,’ I say to Tyler, who is standing beside me at the wall. ‘Maybe I should quit while I’m upright.’ His laughter in reply is easy and calming. From the bag slung across his body he produces my flat red ballet pumps. He bobs down as though he isn’t on skates and starts to unlace me. Every so often his hands stray to my ankle, and the heat of his touch sends pleasure all the way up my legs. It’s a let down almost literally when my left foot is freed from the skate and returned to my shoe. I feel like I have fallen from a great height. Once I am back in my pumps I feel tiny compared to him. The speed with which he changes into his own trainers tells me that he was lengthening the process of taking off my shoes so he could touch me. Which I do not mind at all.
‘So, that was an experience,’ he says, once we are both back to normal height and on solid ground.
‘It certainly was.’
‘One you might want to repeat?’
This is ‘end of the date’ talk – we’re not only talking about skating, we’re discussing whether we’re going to ‘see’ each other again.
‘I feel strange not rolling around,’ I say. ‘I almost feel unsteady on my feet because I’m steady on my feet.’
‘Ah, classic avoidance of the question,’ Tyler says. He drops the bag, which now contains the two sets of skates, on to the ground.
‘More like nerves about what might happen next,’ I explain.
‘What do you think might happen next?’ he asks.
‘Well, on any other normal date I might ask you in for a coffee – only instant, I’m afraid – and see once we’re inside if I fancy progressing it to something more, tonight or another night … But, right now, I not only have my mother staying with me, my cousin and her daughter are here as well. I have a full house so it’d require far too much sneaking around. And anyway, who’s to say you’d want to come up? Drink my coffee? Want to progress things? You might not even want to see me again. I realise those were some pretty big assumptions I was making, which makes me nervous.’
Tyler takes my hand, slowly presses his palm against mine until they are flat against each other like a reflection in a mirror. Staring intently at me, he reaches out with his other hand and slips it around my waist. His body against mine feels different to— I stop myself short. I’m not supposed to be thinking about him. He’s all part of the stuff that’s been put to one side.
Tyler is simply different. I haven’t related to another man’s body in this way in over a decade. A frisson of excitement at being about to embark on something new tingles down my spine.
‘I told you before, you’re silly,’ he says quietly. ‘How could I not want to see you again?’
Our lips are suddenly millimetres apart and then they are together. My body feels like it did when I first stood up on the skates, wobbly and out of control. This is all good, wanted, though. This is the kind of out of control I enjoy. Tyler’s kisses intensify, he presses me back against the wall, my hands go to his face, and he moves his body so close to mine I can feel the hammer of his heart against my chest. These mouth touches are incredible, they shoot shards of pleasure through me that pool in my stomach, explode in my chest, cause an ache between my legs.
‘Get a room!’ someone shouts at us from a passing car, and we immediately jump apart. Above the sound of the car engine driving away, we can hear the shouter and his friends laughing loudly.
Tyler lowers his forehead on to mine and chortles. ‘That’s the sort of thing that would only happen to me when I’m with you.’
‘I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not,’ I reply.
‘It’s a good thing. Being with you is a good thing.’ He lowers his head. ‘Here, let me prove it to you.’
Right before our lips slot together again he pauses as though something is wrong. Tyler frowns, then turns his head towards the sea, towards where Lottie is parked. My heart almost leaps out of my chest when I realise there is someone leaning against Lottie in the otherwise empty car park.
That person wasn’t t
here before. At least, I don’t think they were. But I maybe didn’t notice much in the excitement of being with Tyler. I had glanced at Lottie, noted how shiny she looked, decided I needed to drive her more, but did I really look, take a note of the shadows she cast, the shadows others cast upon her? The shadow stops reclining against my car and stands to its full height.
‘Sorry, is there something I can do for you, mate?’ Tyler asks. He sounds pleasant and reasonable enough, but the way he has stepped slightly in front of me, has checked over his shoulder to make sure we’re not going to be pounced on from behind, suggests he thinks trouble could be about to come our way. It is, unfortunately. But not in the way he thinks.
‘No, not really,’ the man who was watching us replies. ‘Not unless you want to tell me why you’re kissing my wife.’
42
Abi
To: Jonas Zebila
From: Abi Zebila
Subject: Sigh
Wednesday, 22 July 2015
Jonas,
Thank you. Thank you for sending me that email. I know it only said, ‘I love you, little sister’ a couple of hundred times, but it lifted my spirits. It made me feel less alone.
Gran is back in hospital. It’s very serious. Seems like last time was just a trial run. I’m trying to make light of it but it’s incredibly stressful. A diabetic crisis, a mild heart attack and various other minor things that all added together to put her back in hospital. She’s probably going to have a stent put in.
I keep thinking, if I was like Gran is, what would I want? Would I want to be looked after by family, or would I want to be in a place where I get looked after by strangers who are experts? It’s not like she and Mummy get on and she knows Mummy’s doing it out of love and concern instead of duty and obligation.
Or would I want to be around at all, is the other question I keep asking myself. The thought of not being here, not seeing Lily and Declan and the other people I love, is terrifying to me. The thought of being alive but living this half-life of knowing that I’m never going to get better and will need dozens of different types of medication every day to keep me going is terrifying, too. But then, I’d want to live, I think.
No matter how ill I got, I’d want to live.
No matter how ill Gran gets, how awful she is to me and everyone else, I think I want her to live, too. I just want her experience of life to be better and pain-free. I can’t imagine a world without Gran. I can’t imagine her carrying on as she is, getting more sick and relying more on others and hating every second of that, either. But what’s the alternative?
Gawd, that got a bit maudlin, didn’t it? I’m so happy because you actually replied to one of my emails and Clemency came with me to … OH MY GOD! She called the ambulance for Gran and I haven’t even told her if Gran’s OK or not. Better go.
Abi
xxxxx
43
Smitty
Tyler reacts by moving his confused gaze from Seth to me, back to Seth, back to me. I don’t deny what the man from the shadows has said, I don’t call him a liar, which means to Tyler … He takes two steps backwards, putting distance between us.
The only real light we have shining down on the car park comes from the flats in the building above, and a streetlight on the corner where the cycle path disappears from view around the building. Standing here, in the near dark, the sound of the sea suddenly seems to have been magnified. Its volume is deafeningly loud all of a sudden, or maybe it is all the blood in my body rushing so forcefully to my head I fear it is about to explode.
This really shouldn’t be happening. I’m not altogether sure how it is happening.
‘Time I went,’ Tyler states.
‘Tyler …’ I begin. Then nothing more comes out because I’ve run out of words. What do you say when the man who asked you if you were single before he arranged a magnificent date and was showering you in glorious kisses, discovers you’re married?
‘Yes?’ he asks.
‘I …’ What do you say? Nothing. Except: ‘I’m sorry.’
‘So am I,’ he replies.
Everyone was in their beds with their doors shut, only the corridor light was on so it was easy to unlock the front door and shunt Seth through to my bedroom without being seen. He walks across the room towards the windows, leans against the sill and folds his arms over his chest. I shut the door, lock it behind me. This shouldn’t be happening and I have no idea why it is happening. As it continues to happen, though, I take a couple of deep breaths before I turn to face him.
He’s grown a beard. In all the years I’ve known him, the only time he ever even flirted with facial hair was when Sienna asked him to grow a beard so he could be like Father Christmas. He got to three days before the itching was too much for him. In our separation he has managed to change that, though. It’s made up of short brown, neatish hairs, so I’m guessing he trims it but doesn’t groom it. His hair has grown as well – the grade-two shave replaced by a shortish back and sides from not bothering to have it cut. The skin under his eyes is a pewter colour, his normally healthy peach skin is pale, almost grey. He’s lost weight, probably from not eating properly. How he looks is how I feel most of the time.
‘What are you doing here?’ I ask him when he doesn’t speak, simply stands with his arms folded. ‘In fact, how did you know where “here” was, considering I never told you?’
‘Your mother called me.’
‘Which one?’ is on the tip of my tongue before I remember he doesn’t know the half of what’s been going on. And seeing as only one of them knows about him … ‘Of course she did,’ I reply. I know the exact day she called him, too: the day she met Tyler and decided he wasn’t good enough so she’d better make do with the other not good enough one who she at least knew. ‘What did she say? No, wait, don’t tell me. No, actually, do … Actually, no, don’t. I don’t think I can bear to know what she said. Actually, d—’
‘She said at this time of her life she should be planning on what to knit for her grandchildren, not worrying about whether she should be signing up her daughter for online dating. And that she didn’t know how I could stand to look myself in the mirror every day when I’d wasted almost all of your child-bearing years. And that if she ever saw me again she wasn’t sure if she could restrain herself enough to not slap me into the middle of next year. Oh, and when you did meet someone else, not to show my weaselly little face anywhere near you as she might instigate said slapping. Or words to that effect.’
‘Had quite a lot to say for herself, didn’t she, my mother?’
My husband nods. ‘Yeah, quite a lot.’
‘Erm … hang on, how do you get from “slapping you into the middle of next year” to “here’s my daughter’s address, turn up whenever you fancy … oh, and, don’t worry, I won’t warn her in any way”?’
Seth pushes up the sleeves of his navy blue sweatshirt. On his left wrist he wears his divers’ watch and the leather, intricately plaited wristband I made for him at the height of the loom-band craze last year. On his right hand he has the silver cuff that I engraved with our initials in the same design he’d come up with for our engagement party. I keep staring at his arms, the pale skin covered in light hairs, so I do not have to stare at his face.
‘I told her that she was right; that I’d thought about it and was incredibly sorry for everything that had happened. That I’d tried to get in touch but you wouldn’t talk to me so could she tell me where you’d gone so I could come and beg your forgiveness and maybe get our relationship back on track.’
‘And she handed over my address, just like that?’
‘Yes. She told me she’d moved with you.’
‘Well, it’s a good thing I hadn’t fled from you in fear of my life, isn’t it? I swear, that woman doesn’t think sometimes.’
‘She was only trying to help.’
‘Yeah, that’s what she was doing,’ I say sarcastically. ‘If you and her are such good buddies, why weren’t you in here inst
ead of waiting outside? Which, by the way, is a really creepy thing to do. If I’d been on my own I might have died with fright. Especially with your new facial hair.’
Seth raises one of his hands, runs it over the bearded lower half of his face. ‘I called your mobile and it was off, so I called your mother and she said you were out, probably working, and would be back later. I decided to sit on the bench and wait.’ Even though I’m not looking at his face, I know he is staring at me. I can feel the weight of his gaze on the top of my head. I raise my eyes to meet his.
If I’d been on my own is currently playing on loop in his head. I knew the moment I said it that I shouldn’t have. Betrayal and a deep sense of wounding have settled on his face.
‘How long have you been seeing him?’ Seth asks.
‘What?’ I know what that note in his voice is implying.
‘How long? It’s a fair enough question.’
‘I didn’t cheat on you,’ I tell him. ‘You know I wouldn’t do that.’
‘Answer the question then: how long have you been seeing him?’
‘I met him a week or so after I moved here and this was the first time we’ve been out, not that it’s any business of yours.’
He opens his mouth to say something and I cut in with: ‘I can’t talk any more right now. My head is fried about this and so many other things. I am not able tonight.’
‘OK, fair enough, but can you answer me this: weren’t you going to sort out us before you moved on?’
I say nothing in response because I don’t want to talk about this right now, I am not able.
He takes my silence as a green light to ask another question. ‘Or have you already “moved on” and this guy is just another step further along the road?’
That is goading enough to get me to bite. ‘What are you saying?’ I ask. Even though it’s obvious, blatant, what he’s accusing me of.
‘You’re not exactly shy about sex with different people is what I’m saying. How many of them have there been in the past three months?’