When he is gone, I am gone too. I am in a different place, and I know immediately, instinctively where that is and who I am without even opening my eyes.
The ball of grief that has always felt so suffocating when I return is so welcome that I want to extract it from my body, to cup it in my hands, to kiss it and all the memories it contains.
I am home.
***
When I arrive at Luigi’s, it’s after nine. The waiters shake their heads sadly. Gone, they mouth, hands upturned like small children.
I run from the restaurant and gaze out across the glittering promenade. And there, moving along the horizon, his steps furious, hurt, marked by grief and memories and life, is Daniel.
I race towards him, across the blinding lights of the roads and trams and people, through the blazing colours and shouts, over the damp, hard sand.
I shout his name over and over again, the cold air ripping through my chest, the joy that I am never, ever going to forget it again propelling me so far forward that I almost fall.
‘Daniel,’ I say as I reach him. I can’t stop saying his name and I am crying huge gulping sobs and laughing too. I grip him and pull him towards me, his warm skin and soft stubble and smell of ink and earth and home overwhelming me.
‘You left,’ he says simply. ‘I waited over an hour. I told you I can’t do this anymore, Erica.’
I put my hand on his face, which is cool with the wind but warm with the blood that surges beneath. ‘I was so desperate,’ I say.
‘And?’ he says, because he can’t quite give up on me like he said he would.
‘I never, ever want to go back. I promise. I swear on everything we have ever touched.’
He looks at me for a while. ‘What happened?’
I shake my head, the image of Daniel’s head lolling and sticky with black blood still bright and terrifying. I don’t tell Daniel that if I hadn’t met him at the party, and he hadn’t taken me out to the Lake District on that day instead of getting in his car to drive to Manchester to play a game of football, then he would have lost everything. I’ll never tell him that. Because then he would think I had saved him. When really, all this time, he saved me.
‘I didn’t have you,’ I say simply, because really, that’s all there is to it. Nothing changed my life as much as the moments leading up to me meeting Daniel and all the moments that went after. ‘Nothing is worth not having you,’ I tell him. ‘Nothing. I know it’s taken me way too long. But I’m here now.’
‘Timing has never been our strong point,’ he mutters as he takes my hand in his.
‘Oh, I’m not so sure about that,’ I say.
‘I got you another birthday present,’ he tells me, and digs in his pocket. He hands me a small box. Inside is a bracelet. The letter J dangles from it and twinkles in the moonlight.
‘I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what you’ve been saying, about how we might have had a better life. And I’ve tried to see it like you do, Erica. Honestly, I have. But I just can’t get there. When we bought the house and we had each other, and Joshua, and everything was ahead of us, I was so happy.’ He glances at me as we stride over the rippled sand and I smile at him, nodding for him to continue. ‘Some people never know that kind of happiness. So my conclusion is always the same. It was shorter than we expected and hoped. And losing it has almost broken us beyond repair. But we still had it. Part of that happiness was having each other, and we still have that. And we had Joshua, and he was perfect and we can remember how it felt to have him, how it felt to be that happy, for the rest of our lives.’ A memory scorches my mind and squeezes my chest: my wedding finger bare, hands that weren’t mine.
‘I know that now,’ I tell him. ‘I really, really know that.’ I slide the bracelet onto my wrist, the silver cool against my skin. ‘I love it. I’m so lucky,’ I say, relief that I am with Daniel in this life almost choking me.
‘I kind of got it for both of us. I think we were both trying not to think about him. I was as guilty of it as you. But it doesn’t work. Not thinking about him doesn’t make the pain go away and it makes me feel guilty too. He deserves us to think about him, doesn’t he?’
I nod vehemently, wiping a tear that skims my cheek.
‘But if it doesn’t work for you, and it’s too soon or it’s too much pain,’ Daniel continues, his endless stream of words a part of him I want to pull and hug to my chest, ‘then that’s okay. We can put it in a drawer, or we can swap the charm for another. But we have to do it together.’
‘I would never do that. I’ll never swap it.’
Daniel puts his arm around me. ‘Shall we head back? It’s late.’
I shake my head. ‘Let’s walk. We have the time.’
‘All the time in the world.’ We walk for a while, the glittering tide nearing us with each wave. Daniel picks up the pace, walking too quickly, and I reach out and pull him back.