The End is Where We Begin Page 4

  I shrugged. “Stress maybe. I don’t know. I think it might be linked to Josh, I feel like it started in the build-up to his birthday, months ago, this kind of tightness in my chest. I know that makes no sense, it’s just—”

  “Josh?”

  “Turning fifteen. Just… turning that age.”

  I saw him nodding slowly out of the corner of my eye and I knew he understood.

  “Yeah,” he said thoughtfully, “I know. It brings a lot back, doesn’t it? Watching him.”

  I looked down on the blue Corsa beside us also trying to exit from the roundabout. The young couple were arguing about something; her gesticulating wildly at the wheel, him shaking his head despairingly. Relationships. Why bother?

  “Do you ever think about it?” I asked quietly.

  Michael sighed heavily. “Of course I do.”

  I watched raindrops gathering on the windscreen like an invading army hastily claiming territory, the wipers intermittently brushing them away before they attacked again.

  “I think about it all the time at the moment,” I admitted. “More than ever. Me, you, Tom, Max, Libby… everything that happened. Something will happen in the day – a feeling, a word, a sound – and it just triggers all these memories. Memories I didn’t even know I had. But they’re so vivid. And it’s hard, you know. It’s really hard.”

  I traced my finger along the scar under my right thumb. I felt Michael watching me and I knew, without even turning towards him, the expression upon his face: brow knotted in concern, eyes full of a desire to help. This is why I kept things from him, hid them away until I reached bursting point. Because he cared so much. And I wasn’t sure he had the resources to care like that.

  Michael stretched his legs out, placed his trainers up on the dashboard.

  “The past weighs heavily on you, doesn’t it?”

  I turned away and gazed blindly through the window, rubbed at my jaw, chewed on my thumbnail, my throat constricting with the accuracy of his statement. I had to get a grip on things.

  “I mean, it gets to me too at times, of course it does, but you… it’s like it overshadows you. It always has done.”

  I didn’t answer. I never realised he understood that about me. How strange to have never known he saw right through me when I felt like I’d been hiding it all. All that effort for nothing.

  “We’ve never talked about it much, have we?”

  I shook my head, swallowed hard, suddenly wishing I hadn’t brought this up.

  “Why is that?” he mused.

  Inappropriately, I smiled, even laughed a little. It wasn’t funny in the slightest, but it’s often what I do when I’m angry, when I’m hurt, when I want to scream something out loud but I know that I can’t because I don’t want anyone else to be angry, to be hurt. The truth was I’d wanted to talk to him so many times, but how could I?

  “None of us talked about it,” I said, hearing my own voice tinged with resentment.

  He heard it too and turned sharply towards me.

  “I tried to talk to you about it. At the time. And you shut me down time and again—”

  I shook my head. “I don’t remember anybody wanting to talk about it.”

  “Really?” he said, suddenly taking his feet off the dashboard and twisting towards me in his seat, incredulous. “Because I remember very clearly trying to talk about it on several occasions and you literally telling me I do not want to talk about it. Believe me, I wanted to. I tried.”

  “It wasn’t exactly an easy thing to talk about, was it?” I said, feeling defensive. “I didn’t know how to, I was a kid, I couldn’t. But I’ve wanted to talk to you about it since—”

  “Then why haven’t you?”

  “When? When could I have done that?”

  I could feel it now, spilling out, spilling over, leaking through the floodgates that I’d held so tightly shut.

  “When would have been a good time to bring it up, Michael? When over the last few years would have been the right time for that? When you were sky-high and unable to take in a single word I was saying, when you were lying comatose on the bathroom floor—”

  “Oh, come on—”

  “No, you come on. Seriously. When exactly have you been in a place when you could have dealt with that?”

  “I have dealt with it. I’ve spoken about it.”

  “With who?”

  “With Catherine,” he said, as if I’d asked a stupid question.

  “Really?”

  “Of course. What the hell d’you think? That I wouldn’t have discussed it?”

  “I don’t know. I just… I didn’t realise… Yeah, I suppose you would’ve.”

  I felt strangely jealous, excluded. It had never occurred to me that the details of that night – a night that felt so secretive, so personal – had been shared with an outsider.

  “You’re the one who’s never spoken about it,” said Michael. “And you should. Because you need to move out from under the weight of it. I know it was a horrible, horrible thing, and you don’t witness something like that and come out the same person, but it’s like it shut you down or shut you off or something. I feel like it’s always one step forward and two steps back with you. You open up, then you shut down, you invite people in and then you push them away. You’re hard, Jay.”

  “I’m hard?”

  “Yeah, and I’m bloody hard too, in different ways, I know that, but I’ve been working on my shit for years. I just think it’s about time you started working on yours.”

  I sighed, inched forwards in the traffic. I gazed ahead at the line of cars, the grey sky, the concrete industrial buildings lining the grimy North London road. He was right, I couldn’t go on like this. Too many regrets, too many thoughts going endlessly around in circles. Too much pushing people away, not wanting them to see to the heart of me, not wanting to risk it all again. Not wanting to have anything worth risking.

  “I’m sorry if you’ve ever wanted to talk to me and haven’t felt able to,” Michael continued. “I understand why, and I wish things could have been different. But I promise you I’m strong enough to talk about it now. You’re right, I couldn’t have heard you before. But I can hear you now. So if you want to talk…”

  The rain pattered down, and apart from the intermittent creak of the wipers, we sat in silence. Michael rested his head back and I chewed at my thumbnail until I tasted blood. I rubbed my eyes and sighed. He was right, I’d never tried to talk to him about it, not really. Talking about it had only ever been a notion. And maybe I did remember him trying to raise it, trying to explore what had happened and why and how. But when he wanted to talk about it, I wasn’t ready, and when I wanted to talk about it, he couldn’t. Somehow, we just missed each other.

  “I’m sorry too,” I muttered.

  A horn blasted behind us. I quickly put the van in gear and accelerated into the gap ahead of us, coming to a halt behind the black BMW with darkened windows that we’d been following forever. I suddenly wanted to tell him everything, to get every desperate, lonely thought out of my head in the hope they could be left there, on that wet, depressing stretch of road. But I didn’t know where to start.

  “I think about Libby a lot,” was what came out.

  “What, right now or…?”

  “Yeah. And just… generally. But a lot right now.”

  Michael waited for more, gave up, prompted me.

  “Think what about her?”

  I shook my head. “I really hate the way things were left. I always have done. And I know it was all a long time ago, but I’ve always really regretted the ways things went. It was just left a mess, and I wish there’d been a chance to tie it up. There are things I wish I’d said, and I just didn’t have the chance. I suppose as you get older you start to think about what you’ve done with your life, what you’d change. I don’t want to always have these regrets.”

  Michael shrugged. “It was complicated, wasn’t it? What could you have said? And then she left—”


  “Because of me.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Not maybe.”

  “Well, okay.”

  “I imagine what it might be like if I could see her now, what I’d say.”

  “Yeah? So what would you say?”

  I didn’t even know how to start recounting all the imaginary conversations that had played out in my head over the years.

  “I dunno, but I’ve been thinking about what it would be like to find her,” I confessed.

  Michael was thoughtful for a long time. “Well, I guess she’d be a very different person now,” he said eventually.

  I was tempted to make a joke about how long it had taken him to come up with that incredibly obvious statement, but I didn’t because I realised that actually I’d never really thought of her as being a different person. I knew she’d be older, that her life would be unrecognisable, but I’d never contemplated the idea that she would be fundamentally changed. But of course she would be. No one’s the same person at thirty-one as they were at fifteen. Life alters the core of you.

  “You know what I heard Josh say the other night just before he headed out for his birthday?” I asked, the memory suddenly jumping into my head. “This friend of his, some girl, asked if his mum had called. And he said, ‘Fuck no, she probably doesn’t even remember it’s my birthday.’ How screwed up is that?”

  “He’s not screwed up. Believe me. I work with teenagers and he’s probably one of the most stable, together—”

  “I don’t mean that’s he’s screwed up necessarily, just the whole situation.”

  “There are loads of kids out there growing up without one of their parents. Life’s no fairy tale, is it?”

  “But you know what the tragic thing is? He may be right. It may not even register with her that it’s his birthday.”

  “Of course it does. It has to. She’s still a mother, even if she’s not capable of being there—”

  “Not capable?”

  “Yeah, not capable, as in not emotionally able to—”

  “Give a crap?”

  “Connect.”

  “Connect?” I laugh. “Jesus, that’s a generous analysis.”

  “Yeah, maybe. Well, I’ve come to see things differently over the last few years. We can’t all be who we want to be, can we? However hard we try.”

  “I think she might have missed the trying bit,” I mumbled.

  We fell silent for a while.

  “I guess it was all tied up, wasn’t it?” said Michael, eventually. “What happened that night. You and Libby. The way that ended. I can see why one thought leads into another right now.”

  I nodded. “Sometimes it feels like that one night defined the rest of my life.”

  Michael sighed, placed his feet back up on the dashboard. “Then you need to stop letting it define you. Find a way to step out from its shadow.”

  I looked at him, raised an eyebrow, shrugged to show I had no idea how to go about that. He shrugged back. We smiled, a silent agreement that this conversation was over, that we’d hit a dead end.

  “I’ll tell you something I do know,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m never driving to fricking IKEA again on a Saturday afternoon.”

  He laughed heartily. “Well, there you go, my friend,” he said, reaching over and slapping my thigh hard, “at least you reached one conclusion on this journey.”

  And so here I am. Putting my plan into action. My plan to get closure on the past. I thought, for a time, that I’d be with Libby for the rest of my life, a dream built when we were young and life was simple, and when wanting something seemed enough to make it happen. Now the prospect of even walking a few metres in her direction seems too daunting.

  But then I remember pacing the floorboards in the middle of the night, lying awake in the early hours, thinking of all the things I wish I’d said and done. I remember the feeling of tightness in my chest, the breath that just won’t come.

  I don’t want to carry these things with me anymore. Libby, Max, Tom… All the relationships, so important to me once upon a time, they all need to be resolved so that new relationships can grow in their place, unfettered by the chains of the past. Jeopardise, that’s what Michael says I do. Jeopardise my relationships, my chances at happiness. He’s right, and I don’t want to be that person anymore.

  I put my head down and walk quickly along the towpath, determined to shut out all the questioning voices, all the doubts.

  And before I know it, I’m there.

  Paintings are propped against the walls and hung on the railings of the bridge, all of them depicting canal scenes: brightly coloured river boats, locks, bridges, water, reeds, wildfowl, kingfishers. Just at a glance I know the first ones aren’t Libby’s. They’re nothing like the paintings on her website, nothing like her. I don’t know a thing about art, but these look like classic oil paintings: heavy, intense, dramatic. That was never Libby. Her paintings were always light, airy, slightly removed from reality. She wasn’t concerned with showing what was actually there. She said that was what photographs were for. She wanted to interpret, present a different way of seeing things. That was Libby all over. Reality was nothing but a hindrance, nothing that she couldn’t think beyond. She never saw the limitations of things, including me. The paintings on her website still carry her same stamp, but, of course, they’re better these days, far more skilled but just as quirky.

  I wander further along, hearing the voices of bystanders.

  I love the colours on that one…

  That reminds me of that place we went on holiday… Bathampton, was it?

  More paintings. No, this time photographs. Sunlight reflecting off a blue canal, the tiny, shimmering particles captured up close. The intricate detail of a brightly painted narrowboat mirrored in the water. The open gates of a lock, the power of the water captured in full force, tumbling down, shimmering in the winter light. I like these ones. They show canals at their best; places where holidaymakers can make pleasantly slow, relaxing journeys. Places where nothing bad ever happens.

  And then the photographs give way to more paintings; subtle tones, blocks of light, undefined edges, angles that don’t seem quite right. Libby’s work.

  My stomach tightens and I can barely turn my head for fear of staring straight at her. But slowly I start to look around me, scanning the faces for one I might recognise.

  Maybe I’m missing her. Could she have changed that much? Dyed her hair? Put on weight? If only she’d put a photo of herself on her website.

  But then I spot her. She’s coming down the steps from the bridge, two polystyrene cups in her hands, concentrating. My heart jumps with the shock of it, adrenaline suddenly pumping through my system. She looks so much older. A grown woman, and yet so familiar. The same brown hair, only shorter, just past her shoulders now instead of halfway down her back. And those dark eyes that I remember. I spent hours of my life gazing into those eyes.

  A man in a beanie hat and glasses gets up from a fold-up stool and takes a cup from Libby’s hand. They both laugh about something she says, and he briefly places his arm around her, gives her a little squeeze. Is that her husband? I’ve always imagined she’d be married by now. It was what she guiltily craved, deep down. A bit of security and stability.

  I was the only one who really knew that about Libby. It was something she confided in me, like a terrible secret; that underneath all the confused juvenile talk about anti-capitalism, feminism and individuality what she really wanted was to get married and live a regular life. She was a paradox in so many ways. Capable of such original thought, such different ways of seeing the world, and yet all she really wanted was the norm. She felt terrible about it, this aspiration to nothing more than the mundane and traditional, torn between what she wanted to be and what she was raised to be. The one thing she knew for sure was that she wanted to be a mother. The irony of how things turned out wasn’t lost on either of us.

  I keep looking in
her direction, knowing that any minute now she’ll look over and meet my eye. But she seems to be looking everywhere but at me. I need to approach her, but my feet are rooted to the ground. Despite all my fantasies about our reconciliation, now that I see her, so changed, I realise we’re strangers. We were little more than children when we last saw each other, and now look at us. I’m not great at making conversation at the best of times, let alone with people I don’t know, and at the end of the day I don’t know her anymore.

  My heart is racing and all of a sudden I don’t think I can do this. It’s fear that’s brought me here – fear of the unresolved, of the unsaid, of eternal regrets. And now it’s fear that’s urging me to turn around, go home, forget I ever saw her.

  Fear. My eternal nemesis.

  Chapter 4

  Fear

  I remember saying: “He’s going to die.”

  I’d whispered it without meaning to, without even realising the words were forming on my lips. Perhaps, on some level, I believed it would be helpful, somehow lessen the blow by preparing me for what was inevitably coming my way.

  “He’s not going to die,” said Michael quietly but forcefully, putting his arm around my shoulders, “don’t say that. It’s going to be okay.”

  “The doctor said—”

  “The doctor said they’re doing everything they can.”

  I buried my head in my hands, rocked back and forth on the plastic chair, my thoughts wild and entangled, frantic. I stood up abruptly, strode quickly down the corridor, stopped, strode back. What if one of the doctors returned? I wasn’t going to leave this spot. But where the hell were the doctors? What were they doing? Every second felt like an eternity. I paced quickly, halted, pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes, leaned against the wall, tried to breathe, pushed my hands through my hair, paced some more, gazed up at the strobe lights until they dazzled me, leaving white blotches swimming in my vision. What was I meant to do? Just stand here?

  I felt utterly useless. I was meant to protect him. That was my job, to keep him safe. And I’d failed. If only I hadn’t left him. All that time I’d spent checking door and window locks whenever I put him to bed, keeping an eye on who was entering the playground behind us, who was getting a bit too close in the supermarket or on the street, making sure the car doors were locked whenever we pulled up at traffic lights, telling him never to talk to strangers, never to go off with anyone we didn’t know… none of it had been enough. Because when he really needed me, I hadn’t been there to spot the danger.