‘Bye then,’ he says, disappointed I haven’t slipped my fingers into the hand he has been holding out, I haven’t committed myself to him because of the circumstances we find ourselves in.
‘Bye.’ I grin at him and shut the door, pushing him away and out.
*
‘What was that?’ Fynn asks the moment I re-enter the kitchen.
‘What was what?’ I say.
‘You and him.’ He spits out the word that refers to Lewis Bromsgrove like it is dark, yellowy-green infected phlegm. ‘He was holding your hand last night and today … What’s going on, Saff?’
‘Phoebe is pregnant. She will not speak to me. For some reason, she speaks to him and she speaks to his son, the boy who got her pregnant. I am trying to find out what I can in any way that I can. That is what is going on.’ Did I decide what I’d make for dinner? Carrots? Maybe I’ll make something with carrots. I have two bags of them in the fridge. Maybe I’ll add butternut squash, ginger and apple, and make a soup. Joel liked soup. He loved that soup. ‘And he wasn’t holding my hand last night, he touched me for some reason and I’m sure you saw that I took my hand away.’ Do I have ginger? I move towards the fridge and, without seeing the photos I’m staring right at, I open the door, pull out the clear plastic drawer to the salad crisper. I went shopping on Monday, when I didn’t realise until I was making pesto how low I was on olive oil, so the vegetable drawer is quite full with various coloured items, some in plastic wrappers, others in brown paper bags, others au naturel, and it takes a couple of goes to open it fully.
‘There is obviously tension between the two of you, beyond all this Phoebe stuff,’ Fynn persists.
‘If you say so, Fynn. But I can’t help but wonder if you’d be like this about any man I talk to because he’s not Joel.’
‘You were not just talking to him.’
Celery … tomatoes … carrots … cucumber … rocket … carrots again … three-pack of peppers … lemons … ginger. I have ginger. But no butternut squash. When did I use butternut squash? I’m ignoring Fynn. It’s the only way sometimes. When he gets a bee in his bonnet about something, I ignore him, allow him to ramble on until he runs out of steam.
I remove chicken pieces from the meat drawer, then remove a full head of garlic from the bottom shelf. No, I don’t know what to make with that. I return them to their places in the fridge. I’ll think of something. I take them out again. I do this several times and when I shut the fridge, without the chicken or garlic, Fynn is standing right behind it, close enough to make me start.
He’s let his hair grow in the past year or so, and it falls in dark, haphazard curls all over his head and around his face. It’s his face I focus on now. He has a straight nose, defined cheekbones, gentle eyes, and a beautiful mouth. I know what that mouth is going to say and I wish more than anything it wouldn’t. I wish he wouldn’t. I wish he would let it go.
‘Are we ever going to talk about what happened between us?’ is what he says.
I knew this day would come, it had to, of course. But, sometimes I manage to convince myself that it didn’t happen so there’ll never be a need to have this conversation. Sometimes it seems like the most ludicrous idea that I – we – could ever have done such a thing. Sometimes I remember it all and I think I’m going to die of shame.
‘I never ever want to talk about that,’ is what I say to him.
His navy blue eyes stay linked to mine. ‘We’re going to have to, though, aren’t we?’
Yes, I think at him as I slowly nod my head, we are.
Sometimes, I wish I could go back and unmake all the mistakes I’ve made since that day – this would be the first one I erase.
XVII
6 months after That Day (April, 2012)
‘I don’t know what to do with myself any more,’ I said to Fynn. ‘I’ve been so focused on getting through the last months with the admin, budgeting for every penny, the funeral, the inquest, and making sure Phoebe and Zane are as OK as they can be, that I haven’t had a chance to stop and think.
‘Now I’ve stopped, there’s this emptiness inside, and I keep expecting it to be filled up again. For me to roll over in bed and to see him there and realise that it was some terrible mistake. I wouldn’t even mind going through all that stuff if it meant I’d be told it was a mistake at the end of it. Do you understand what I mean?’
In the darkness of my bedroom, Fynn looked over at me from his place kneeling up on the brown leather love seat in the bay window and nodded. ‘I know I said it gets easier, and it does. Not sure when, but … Oh I don’t know what to say,’ he admitted. ‘I talk, I hear words coming out of my mouth, at the funeral, for example, I knew I was talking to people and they weren’t turning their backs on me or trying to punch me, so what I said couldn’t have been terrible, but now, I don’t remember what I said. It was all words to fill the space. Like what I was saying just then, they were words to fill a space where a person used to be. None of them can, though. And none of it is meaningful enough to ease your suffering.’
‘You’re suffering, too.’
‘Please don’t do that,’ he begged. ‘Please don’t diminish what you’re feeling to think about me or anyone else. Unfortunately, there’s enough grief to go around. Don’t try to comfort someone else at your expense.’
‘You’re not just “someone else”.’
We peered through the wooden slats of the blinds at the outside world. Joel always liked to keep the blinds open, I always liked to shut them. Whenever he wasn’t around or if I went to bed first, I would shut them. Since that day, I’d left them open. Just like I’d continued to sleep on my side of the bed, not properly close the lid of the toothpaste (even though it used to drive me disproportionately wild when he did it) and place the TV remotes on the floor by his side of the bed. It’s not been a concerted effort to do it like he did, it’s more a need to keep as many things as possible how they used to be. My life wasn’t bad before so there’s no need to change it.
The dark orange-brick houses opposite were in darkness, but the orange-yellow glow from the street lamp still illuminated them. Light pollution blotted out some of the stars above the houses, washing out the bright pinpricks and casting the night sky as a shimmering navy grey instead of a deep, endless black.
Joel and I used to kneel like this sometimes, staring out into the night, talking. We’d talk in bed, too, but sometimes, even after sex, kneeling in the dark, spying on the outside world felt like we were in a time machine and we’d been sent back to a shared childhood where we snuck out of bed and stared into the night.
When nothing moved or stirred outside, I returned my gaze to Fynn. He looked how I felt: exhausted; like the drip, drip, drip of grief was slowly wearing him away. The last few months had scored deep, grey trenches under his eyes, had ploughed furrows into his forehead and had shed so much of his weight he looked fragile.
‘You look so tired,’ I stated.
‘It’s always nice to get updates from the talking mirror,’ he replied, a grin not far from his lips.
‘Ouch, I deserved that.’
‘Yes, you did. But you’re right, I’m tired, you’re tired, I’ll do the decent thing and go. Or I can stay downstairs on the sofa if you want.’ He used to do that, in the early days. When I was still wandering around the kitchen in circles, unsure what to do, what to think, what to feel. I would wake up every half an hour and come down to the kitchen, searching for something, looking for something, never finding it. I think it was Joel I was looking for and I knew I wouldn’t find him, but that nagging feeling wouldn’t go away. Fynn would let me walk for a few minutes, then would come in from the living room, would take me by the hand and would lead me back to my makeshift bed on the love seat in the bedroom. I’d slept there because I was terrified of losing his smell on the sheets, on his pillow, on the duvet. If I didn’t sleep in the bed all the time, I would be able to climb in whenever I wanted and would be greeted with the smell of Joel, I’d be transp
orted to where he was. At that time, I wasn’t ready to accept he was gone, but I was even less ready to do anything to destroy something precious he had left behind.
‘No, no, those days are over. But it is a good idea if we both get some sleep.’
‘Night,’ he whispered at the bedroom door, about to open it and not wanting to wake Phoebe and Zane.
I went to reply to him, to murmur my own goodnight, but my voice stopped working. Closed over, plugged up with a sudden thick and heavy sadness. I couldn’t get another word out. I could just about breathe, but I could not speak. Fynn turned back to me, concerned. His fingers slipped away from the handle … and I desperately wanted him to stay. ‘Are you OK?’ he asked, still whispering.
Unable to speak, I found another way to communicate what I was thinking. It wasn’t a coherent thought, something I’d formulated and considered, it was an urge. I stood on tiptoes and pressed my mouth against his for a long moment. He immediately jerked his head away.
Like modelling clay in the hands of an expert, the thought was quickly taking shape, becoming more certain and clear in my mind, but I couldn’t voice it; the words wouldn’t find their way out of my throat, through my mouth, into the world. But I could speak without words. I could tell him I wanted – needed – him to stay without saying a thing.
I did it again: I pushed my mouth onto his, wanting a reaction. Again he pulled back, but didn’t jerk away his head this time, simply moved it. The lines of his face, partially hidden by the darkness of the room, struggled with something. Probably confusion. I was confused, too. Confused, uncertain, scared.
Terrified.
Terrified of his reaction beyond confusion. Would he scream at me that I had lost my mind? I wanted him to, because I had. Would he push me away and leave as fast as he could, making it clear he’d never come back here again? I longed for him to react like that, too. Or, would he do what I needed him to? Would he lock the door, would he then extend his trembling arm and uncertainly slide his fingers into the dark curls at the nape of my neck and pull me towards him as he lowered his head and returned the kiss?
I’d cried.
I’d cried and cried, when I was alone, when I had nothing else to fill my time, fill my mind, I cried and cried to try to set myself free. Yet, I remained where I had been. I was still chained to this precipice of pain, high up above the world I used to live in, no way to climb down, no chance of releasing myself. I was chained here, like Prometheus in Greek legend, who every day was cursed to experience the same horror of watching his liver pecked out – I was fated to experience the same horror of having my heart plucked out when I remembered every morning Joel was gone. I had cried and cried to liberate myself and I was still trapped. Maybe there was another way.
I trembled too as I reached out to open his trousers. My fingers felt large, clumsy, as I tried to release the buttons of his jeans from their holes. Still kissing me, his fingers came down and moved mine aside to open his flies. He reached for the bottom of my T-shirt and we broke apart for him to pull it up over my head. I tugged his T-shirt up as far as I could before he took over and removed it himself. The T-shirt ruffled the dark brown strands of his messy hair. We came together again and I audibly gasped. Skin against skin. My body, which had felt cold and barely alive, suddenly felt reanimated, wanted, loved at the touch of skin against mine.
We half-fell, half-climbed onto the bed; my clumsy, paddle-like fingers urgently trying to pull his jeans over his hips. I wanted more skin-to-skin contact, I wanted all of me to be reminded of what it was like to feel alive again. I’d been living all this time but this made me feel alive, my body actually experiencing something.
Fynn used both hands to pull my lower half garments to my thighs and then he was off the bed, standing back to finish taking off his trousers and underpants, while I wriggled and dragged my way out of my grey joggers and black knickers.
The heat of his body, his skin, which pulsed with reminders of what it meant to be alive, was back on mine, and I held him close as his kisses grew firmer. I dug my fingers into his back, into his bum, urging him on, encouraging him to push inside me, to show me in another way what it felt like to be alive.
We moved together, each thrust a delicious blend of pain and indescribable pleasure, each arch of my back an incredible mixture of profound agony and ecstasy. I dug my fingers into his back, whimpering against his lips, encouraging him to move faster, harder, bringing us closer to orgasm; to the sweet emptying feeling of freedom and release.
I wanted emptiness, to purge my body of all the locked-in feelings of grief I’d been force-fed. I wanted to feel my body again, to be in control of it, of something in this world of anarchy I’d been thrown into. My body, what happened to it, was the only thing I had any authority over, and doing this meant I was in total control, I was in charge of what happened. Fynn began to move even faster, harder until I froze as I reached the peak of the build-up, then my body shuddered as waves of pure, undiluted bliss rippled through me. Fynn continued to move fast and hard until he broke away from our kiss, buried his head in my neck and, groaning, he orgasmed with several short thrusts.
Neither of us moved for several seconds and the room felt unnaturally stilted after what we’d done.
Eventually, he placed his hands on either side of me on the bed and lifted himself up until we were apart. His dark blue eyes stared down at me and I stared back up at him. Like an image appearing on developer-submerged photo paper, regret began to take over Fynn’s face: faint at first, merely a shimmer, then a slow, stain-like progression that became more defined and solid until it was clear and real. His breathing matched mine: deep but fast; the physical expression of our confusion.
He waited for me to speak. I waited for him to speak. One of us had to say something. After more silence he lifted himself completely off me, and collapsed back onto the bed, unintentionally wedging himself between my body and the foot of the ornate wooden bedstead. Like mine, his breathing slowed as we both stared up at the ceiling. The silence rolled on, neither of us willing to name what we had done by speaking of it. I turned to him but did not try to catch his eye. It was safe here, it was my side of the bed, the side by the door, and it was at the very foot of the bed, which was usually piled up with clothes I hadn’t hung up, or hadn’t chucked into the laundry basket, so we weren’t anywhere near where Joel and I had been this intimate, or even had slept beside each other – there was no danger of blotting out Joel by what I’d just done here.
I curled into Fynn’s body, relishing the feel of his skin against mine again. That had been the best part, the warm reminder of what being alive was about. I moved my arm across his body, resting my head on his shoulder, and I closed my eyes. I let go. I wasn’t pretending he was Joel. Not now, and not back when we did what we did. I was being in the moment.
And I was doing something that I’d begun to crave: I was having sex. I was ashamed to admit it, but in the midst of it all, I missed sex. It’d been very few weeks, not many days, hardly a blip in the number of hours I was going to have to spend without Joel, but I still missed this. Joel had always been willing, and I’d unintentionally taken that for granted. Having a good sex life with the man I loved had become as usual to me as having a glass of wine – there whenever I wanted it.
Now a lot of the other stuff had been dealt with and what I was staring into was the abyss of a new existence without him, I realised this physicality of life was something I missed. I wanted sex. And I couldn’t tell anyone that because they wouldn’t understand. They’d think it awful of me to even be considering such a thing after losing the love of my life. I thought it awful of me to be craving such a thing after losing the love of my life, but my body had wanted this, it’d needed this. It’d been yearning for skin-to-skin contact, it’d been longing for the ability to move against another person, it’d been dying to be released.
Fynn’s arms cautiously encircled me, as if worried about holding me, then more confidently they came t
ogether, tightening until he enveloped me in a secure embrace. With Fynn’s arms around me, with the constant beat of his heart against my body, I let go of this reality and drifted away into sleep.
*
Hours later, I woke up to find Fynn standing on the other side of the room, rolling his grey T-shirt down his once-taut torso. Now he was thinner, his body diminished by the loss of his best friend. He glanced up, saw I was awake and managed an awkward, selfconscious half-smile that was doused in remorse and shame, as he finished buttoning up his jeans. He headed towards the door in bare feet, the sinews of his toes sinking into the deep pile of the carpet. I thought I might speak then: might utter a ‘bye’, or ‘I’m sorry’, or even, ‘thank you’. Anything. But nothing would come out, there was nothing to say that would mean anything.
As he pulled the door shut after him, he raised his hand briefly in a half-hearted wave. Don’t come back, I said in my head at him as he negotiated the creaky floorboards and stairs to the front door. We can never do that again.
*
In the present, I’ve decided on carrot, ginger and apple soup. I’ll oven-bake some herb-crusted strips of chicken and I’ll nip out while it cooks to get some crusty bread. And olive oil. I’ll have to fry the onion and spices in butter, though.
I’ve peeled the carrots in silence even though Fynn is standing right beside me. Now I am cutting up the carrots in the same noiseless atmosphere, with him so close I can feel the heat from his body.
Joel spent many hours teaching me how to slice carrots properly. I was meant to plant the tip of my blade into the chopping board, then to move the carrot along while bringing the knife up and down. ‘Almost like you’re feeding James Bond through a guillotine,’ he’d said. ‘Up and down, chop, chop, chop.’