It’s going to be all right, you know, Mum.
‘It is, Ffrony,’ I fancy I can hear Joel say, ‘I promise you, it’s going to be all right.’
LXIV
Fynn has no shirt on and is kissing a woman on his front doorstep.
I watch them from the end of the black and white tiled path that leads to the tiled steps up to his flat. He lives in one of the four apartments in a large house in Hove on one of the roads that goes down to the street that runs parallel to the seafront. There really is no need for him to be doing that out there when he has a doorstep inside.
She’s really quite beautiful, this woman. As tall as him in her designer heels, extremely slender, a well-cut navy blue suit and swathes of long, shiny, ebony black hair that cascade right down to the middle of her back. She has one hand on his face, he has his hand nestled at the base of her spine as they snog like two people who’ve blatantly spent most of last night screwing. And probably this morning, too.
This, I do not need to see. Whether she’s a new girlfriend or a one-night ‘hook up’ I do not need to be watching this. Apart from everything else, it’s confirmation that in the four weeks since we last saw each other it hasn’t bothered him that we’re not friends any more. How things stand between us – with him regularly speaking to/texting the kids and often Aunty Betty – is fine with him. He’s simply getting on with his life without me in it.
The canoodling couple break apart and simultaneously grin at each other, a secret shared without words between them. They say their goodbyes and she smiles, flashing her light blue eyes at me, on her way past. She has on last night’s clothes but she has fresh makeup, and she’s showered, her vaguely woody, musky scent is one that Fynn often smells of. I smile back because it’s the polite thing to do. I even manage a smile for the man at the top of the black and white steps.
He replies with an unfriendly tightening of his lips and a glare, but leaves the front door and the door to his flat open when he goes inside.
The flat is in partial darkness because the living room blinds are drawn and I’m guessing the ones in the bedroom are, too. All the other doors that lead off the corridor are closed, so the flat is subdued and almost sombre. Fynn moved here after he got divorced eight years ago. He was married for two years and neither of them could explain why they got married – they did it in Vegas – nor why they split up. I liked her, but she moved away after they broke up and didn’t want to keep in touch. ‘Need a fresh start away from everyone,’ she texted. ‘I know you’ll understand.’
By the time I enter the flat, Fynn has, thankfully, pulled on a T-shirt and he walks from section to section of his bay window and jerks the strings to open the blinds. He also opens the sash windows as far as they will go with the window locks to let some air in. The whole flat needs proper airing because everything reeks of sex.
He moves around his living room, righting it after last night’s activities: he picks up the wine glasses on the table in front of the television and carries them through to the kitchen. He returns for the shot glasses and the nearly empty bottle of whisky. While screwing up the empty crisp packets and snatching up the empty condom packet that was partially hidden under the coffee table, he finally speaks: ‘What, have you come over to watch me tidy up, or to tell me what else I can’t do because we’re not friends?’
‘Neither … I came here …’ I hold out the white paper bag in my hand, in it is a muffin I made earlier with him in mind. All the flavours I know he loves. ‘Look, see? I brought this muffin: white flour, white sugar, white chocolate, coconut – which is of course white – all in a white paper bag. I mean, yes, it’s got blueberries and the coconut was slightly toasted, but in essence, baked goods crammed with stuff to be used as a white flag.’ I wave the bag around. ‘Ceasefire?’
He says nothing, glowers at me from his ‘hunched over cleaning my coffee table’ position, before he stands upright and pads into the kitchen. His bare feet make an almost comical slapping sound as they hit the tiles.
I follow him. I know he’s hurt, but I am too. The world doesn’t feel right without him and Joel, I can’t believe he doesn’t feel the same.
‘Isn’t it weird to you that we’ve not spoken in a month?’ I ask.
He shrugs dismissively and fills a large tankard I know he and Joel brought home from Oktoberfest 1997 in Munich with water from the tap. Joel confessed it was one of the worst trips of his life because for the first time ever he had memory blackouts from the drinking and hated the thought of not remembering what he’d got up to.
‘So, who was your friend?’ I try again as a punt on something that might make him talk.
Fynn lowers the glass from his lips and aims his head dangerously at me. I think for a moment he’s going to scream at me to get out of his house, to stay out of his life, and brace myself for it. ‘Are you having a laugh?’ he replies.
Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, after all. ‘No,’ I say. ‘I’m asking because I am interested.’ I inhale deeply, an attempt to take the edge off the panic that is amassing inside. I have a normal way of quelling the panic but I am trying not to do that any more. I don’t want to be that person any more. It hasn’t worked completely, but I am getting there. I am here to face the panic instead of continuing to run.
‘Interested or jealous?’ he challenges.
‘Jealous. Of course I’m jealous,’ I say. The panic rises. I lower my gaze to the muffin in my hand. I want it. I want to rip open the bag and cram it whole into my mouth to silence myself, to stop myself from doing this. I toss the bag onto his work surface and turn my back on it.
His surprise is evident, but he does not speak.
I have to redirect my eyes as I continue. ‘You know I’m jealous. You know that I … Wanting you, sleeping with you, was never the problem, Fynn.’
‘That’s not what you said.’
‘I know. I just … both of those conversations caught me off guard. I’m not very good at this. Speaking about what I feel is not easy for me. If it was, I doubt I’d have half my issues. Lord knows I’ve had a crash-course in it recently, but it’s not second nature. I get scared. I panic. I want to do things perfectly and I become so incredibly frightened when it might not work out, and then my mind races ahead to every possible thing that could go wrong which leaves me completely frozen. Except these past few weeks every issue I’ve ever had seems to need to be dealt with. It’s been … It’s been so hard. And with you, I panicked because there were so many trigger points in those conversations.’
Deep, deep, deep breath in, long, long, long push out. ‘I need you back in my life. I want you back.’
‘You’ve got Lewis.’
‘He’s not you.’
‘What are you saying, Saff, sorry, Saffron, because you’re not making any sense?’
Although my hands are trembling, I take his glass from him, place it on the countertop beside the sink. ‘Fynn …’ The panic, it billows up inside, sheets and sheets of soft, feathery panic welling up to smother me from the inside out.
My quivering hands rest gently on his face. I want to see him when I say this. I want him to see me, to watch me speak so he understands.
‘Fynn … I … I love you. So much. It makes my heart ache when I think about how much I love you. Not just as a friend. You’ll never be “just” anything to me. Yes, it was sex, but I couldn’t have had sex with just anyone.’ I squeeze my eyes together, push and shove at the panic to get it out of me; to free it with every word I say. When I am brave again, I open my eyes. ‘I do love you and if I was ever going to have any more children, of course I’d want you as the father. You’re practically a father to Zane and Phoebe as it is. And, yes, I admit a part of me has been expecting us to get together and settle down, too.’
Silent and wary, he watches me speak.
‘But, I can’t be with you.’ The panic continues to gush out of me. ‘You’re too much like him. You talk alike, you think alike, you find the same things funny
. You react in the same way he would to things and you put yourself out so often for the people you love. You’re amazing. And so was he. In so many of the same ways.
‘If we got together, I would lose him all over again. I already lost him once. I was trying so hard to find him again with the cookbook, to bring him back almost. And it didn’t work. And then all the stuff with Phoebe where I had to stop trying to do things his way and do it my way, I had to give up some more of him. I can’t let any more of him go. Not for any reason.
‘Being with you would blot him out. I wouldn’t know where he ended and you began. It’d happen slowly, I probably wouldn’t notice it at first, but then I’d try to remember something he said or did and it would be mixed up with you and soon there’d be nothing of him left. I can’t let that happen.’
Fynn cups my face as though nurturing a flower in the cradle of his hands, and gently his thumbs stroke away some of the tears on my cheeks. His tears are briefly dammed by my fingers, before they continue their downward journey over and around my hands.
The panic, the terror, is not as loud now; it does not seem as overwhelming and dangerous, that it will smother me in its thick, white folds now that I have been honest. ‘Do you understand?’ I ask.
He nods, forcing his pink lips together into an unhappy smile.
‘And do you understand why I couldn’t tell you this? It’s a huge thing to admit to myself that it’s not been two years yet and I’ve fallen in love with someone else, let alone admit it to you when I so want to be with you and I can’t.’
Another unhappy nod.
‘I’m sorr—’
‘Shhhh,’ he hushes, ‘don’t say sorry. Not about that. Be sorry about other things, but not that.’
He takes his hands away from my face as I drop mine from his, then presses the palms of his hands onto his eyes, before he rubs roughly at his cheeks to dry his face. He leaves a trail of red marks as he rubs. ‘God! Why am I always crying with you? It does my reputation no good, you know. You’re no good for me, woman.’
‘You’re not the first man to say that.’
Blotchy-faced, he steps forwards again and slips his arms around my waist. ‘So, fancy a couple of hours in bed for old times’ sake?’ he jokes. I know he’s joking, what he is doing. He is taking my hand and leading us back to surer ground, to where we were. He wants, like I do, for us to go back to who we were before my attempt to find another way to obliterate the pain led to me kissing him when I didn’t want him to leave one night. Before he tried to do the same and we almost irreversibly damaged ourselves in the process. Fynn wants to find the spark of who we were amongst the wreckage of the last twenty months of our lives. We both know we were friends, first and foremost, and we both believe we can have that again.
I laugh, ruefully shake my head while I dab at my eyes and fix my expression to suit the change in conversation. ‘Erm, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t there another woman’s DNA all over your bed right now? Probably all over this flat.’
‘Details, Saff, details. Although you could have a point.’
He closes his eyes and pulls me close. His face against my neck, he murmurs into my skin: ‘I love you. Always.’ The words imprint themselves onto me like an invisible tattoo, to be carried with me for ever.
Before I can reply, he takes several steps away from me. ‘I love you, too,’ I whisper back. ‘Always.’
He grins at me with all the warmth and affection I’d grown accustomed to with a genuine, easy Fynn smile.
‘Will you be my friend again?’ I ask.
‘Of course.’
‘Good. Thank you.’ I pause, inhale as deeply as I can to expand my chest, to make room for as much courage as I can muster. ‘I’m going to get help, too,’ I say. If I utter it aloud I will do it. I will do it. ‘For the … For my eating disorder. I’m going to get proper help and I’m going to get through it.’
He stares cautiously at me but doesn’t speak. It’s hardly surprising he is wary of talking about this again after I lost the plot last time. He’s probably worried, too, that I’m saying those words because it’s what he wants to hear and not because I’m actually going to do it. But I am.
‘I really am going to get help this time.’
‘Did Joel know?’ he asks.
I nod. ‘It’s the only thing we ever really argued about.’
Fynn picks up the bag with the muffin. It is heart-shaped in case I needed to be a bit more obvious about my feelings. ‘Let me try this,’ he says. ‘Which is your favourite flavour?’
He’s testing me. ‘I’m not sure,’ I confess. ‘I haven’t tried it.’
Decisively, he breaks a piece off the muffin and I watch as small crumbs rain down into the bag. He puts it into his mouth and immediately chews. As if it is the most natural thing in the world to simply put food in your mouth and chew. His eyes close briefly before he opens them again. ‘My God, the flavours in that!’ he says. ‘They’re incredible.’ He eats another piece, reacting in the same way. ‘You have to try this, Saff.’ He breaks off a third piece and he visibly inhales, steels himself before he holds it to my lips.
The panic billows up and I am suddenly drowning in the feathery, wispy fronds of my fears. I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I want to do it, I want to be able to do this, but I can’t. ‘I can’t,’ I say.
‘Try,’ he encourages. ‘Just try.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Try.’
I close my eyes, open my mouth and let him slip the food inside. Tears of terror escape from my closed eyes. I can’t do it.
‘Which is your favourite flavour?’ Fynn asks.
I need to spit it out, to remove this poison from my mouth.
‘Try, Ffrony,’ I’m sure I can hear Joel say. ‘I know you can do it, just try.’ This has been happening more since I screamed and cried in the kitchen, I can hear him, feel him, it’s like he has come back to me. I’m no longer falling through potholes in time to be with him, I can sense what he would say. I can feel him when I need him to be there. ‘Try, Ffrony.’
I bite down, chew, and tastes explode quietly in my mouth: the creaminess of white chocolate, a tang of under-ripe blueberries, a subtle stroke of coconut. I haven’t tasted food in so long: I stuff food down, I bring food up, but I rarely eat it, enjoy it, know when I have had enough. I often never start because the fear I won’t be able to stop is too immense.
I haven’t been present while I eat in so long. But it’s incredible. Tasting food is amazing.
‘Go on then, which is your favourite flavour?’ Fynn asks again.
I shrug like Phoebe, frown like Zane. ‘All of them, I think.’
November 2013
(It’s been about 2 years, 1 month)
LXV
‘I’m not sure what you’d like to know.
‘Or if, where you are, you already know. The children, they’re fine. I finally bit the bullet and got them proper, professional counselling. I should have done it a long time ago, but I’ve done it now so I’ll try not to beat myself up too much about the delay. Phoebe is much better. She’s sort of dating Curtis but they’re mates first and foremost, allegedly. Watch this space for more teen angst, I suppose. I try not to freak out when she tells me stuff about them being unsure about restarting their physical relationship. It’s not easy to hear, but at least she’s talking to me. I found her a new school, which is a bit of a drive away, but she seems happy there and has made new friends. She talks to me sometimes about the pregnancy, it still plays on her mind, but at least she talks about it and what she thinks she would have done. I’m proud of her, you know, Joel. Really proud of how she’s grown from this experience.
‘Zane is still at St Caroline’s, I didn’t want to take him away from the place where he was so happy and secure. He is so much happier, I wish you could see him. He talks much more, laughs again, and he loves to spend weekends at your parents’ house every few weeks. You couldn’t get Phoebe there if you paid her, but tha
t’s her prerogative.
‘Ernest and Zane are still friends. A few weeks back Ernest told Zane his dad doesn’t live with them any more, so I’m guessing Imogen and Ray have finally split up. Knowing Imogen, and how much she hated the thought of being a single mother again, I think she probably did all she could to sweep it under the carpet to make it work. But it didn’t. Imogen and I acknowledge each other in the playground but that’s it. She has her problems like I have mine.
‘Aunty Betty is still in the attic and her whole life is now centred around the hospital. I spend a lot of time taking her there and picking her up. When I can’t, Fynn does. It’s like we’re divorced co-parents of a teenager. It’s funny that the most selfish woman on God’s green Earth, as she branded herself, has found her true calling helping others.
‘Fynn is Fynn. You understand what that means. I’m sure he spends copious amounts of time talking to you, anyway, but we take care of each other, we’re the best of friends again, which of course means he drives me insane, sometimes, but that’s what friendship is, isn’t it? I love him as much as you did. He’s helped me put up a greenhouse where the vegetable patch used to be so no more slug orgies. And I’m getting the money together to pay him back for the beach hut.
‘Lewis and I hang out as friends occasionally and it’s nice. Going nowhere despite his best efforts, but that’s all right because it’s nice. He’s nice.
‘And me? I feel better now that she, Audra, has been sentenced. She pleaded guilty to manslaughter, as we hoped, but also pleaded guilty to attempted murder of me, which meant no trial, thank goodness. She’s finally got a minimum twenty-five-year tariff. She’s been warned that if she tries to contact me again the harassment charges will be reinstated so, hopefully, I don’t have to have anything else to do with her. That has helped everyone so much, knowing where she is and that she’s going to be there for a long time. The world seems a less uncertain, scary place.
‘The job is going well, too, now that there is no Kevin and no Edgar. I’m still working on getting that image of Gideon out of my head. But, moving swiftly on, it helps that I’m back in my old role and there’s a possibility of promotion one day.