42

‘Well it’s obviously gonna be a ring,’ Beth says, her hair and body wrapped tight with towels.

‘Don’t be daft, pal. Jack wouldn’t put a bloody ring behind it.’

‘You won’t know ’til you look.’

‘Beth. Please.’

‘What?’

‘Jack wasn’t corny like that.’

‘To be fair, babes, you only knew him for five minutes. Oops. I mean months.’

God, she is such a brazen little bitch, isn’t she? Sitting on her throne – yes, a throne – stylishly placed beside the bay window of her new home in a building called (no word of a lie) ‘Princess Mansions’.

‘Watch your gobby mouth,’ I tell her. ‘You’ve only been with Paul Rudd for five minutes and he’s already got a key.’

‘I can always change the locks, can’t I?’

The drive from the Carmichaels’ back to Beth’s took forever. I got every single red light. I want to be home. In my home. Our home. Whatever Jack put behind that picture is exactly what I’m ready for. I’m sure of it. Beth can see I’m itching.

‘You better get going,’ Beth says, unravelling the towel from her head and shaking out her wet hair. ‘Paul Rudd’ll be here in a mo and last time he came over, he had a rose between his teeth.’

‘Gross.’

‘You know I love that shit.’

‘Do I look okay?’

‘Honestly, you need your roots doing. But I’m sick of telling you. Why?’

I want to feel good when I look behind the picture. Can’t pinpoint why. That sounds insane in my head, so imagine how Beth would react if I told her.

‘Oh, babes. It’s your birthday. I thought we were ignoring it, but are you feeling a bit …’ she lowers her voice, scrunches her petite nose, ‘old?’

‘We’re still ignoring it.’

‘’Cause you definitely look younger than thirty-seven. By a couple of years at least.’

‘An honest compliment. Ta. Right, I’m off. Be careful with Paul Rudd.’

‘Babes. I’m more than aware he’s me rebound. The next fella I meet after him’ll be the one I have me babies with,’ Beth states, although I can hear a wobble in her voice. She’s determined to get pregnant, and soon. I can only hope all her meticulous plans – Beth’s version of dreams – come together. She’ll be a brilliant mum one day. ‘By the way, who’s Paul Rudd?’

I steal a spray of her perfume.

‘You know. Funny guy, handsome. The one who marries Phoebe in Friends.’

‘Oh, him! God, you’re right. He does look like Paul Rudd.’

I blow her a kiss and run to the tube station.

Maybe Beth’s right? Maybe it is a ring.

It’s a cute idea. But come on. It’s cheesier than a packet of Wotsits.

Maybe Jack would’ve done it to gross me out. Even his dad said he was transparent. He was asking me outright to wonder what was behind the picture.

Waiting two minutes for the next train to arrive is agony. I watch the digital clock ticking, wondering if there’s a fault – the seconds are passing by too slowly.

So, if it’s not an engagement ring, then what is behind the picture?

Tickets?

And where to? What for?

I’ve got it. Vietnam. It was supposed to be our next big trip, wasn’t it? Maybe Jack had gone ahead and booked it without telling me. The flights would have been for last month, October: wasted money, a wasted surprise. It’s tragic. A holiday waiting behind the picture, never to be taken.

Nah, I don’t buy it. I don’t think that’s what it is.

I board the tube and curse every station it stops at, and every tourist moving at the pace of a tortoise, a humungous rucksack shell, not standing clear of the doors, causing them to open and close again and again.

Come on! Get me home!

Okay. What about tickets to Vegas? Did Jack want us to elope? I vaguely recall us having a chat about that when we were drunk one night, saying how cool it would be to get it done and dusted, and even cooler to see the look on people’s faces when we told them we got hitched in Vegas. When did we talk about that? Was it at our local? A pint and a pizza after work one night, an innocent idea, until three bottles of house wine later … God, we were absolutely hammered. I’m surprised I remember that now.

I have to switch lines, get to the Overground. I’m walking so fast that my calves burn.

Actually, I bet it’s just something really sweet and simple, like a letter. A love letter. Oh, that sounds so mushy, so ancient; a gesture that belongs to a century long ago. Maybe Jack bought me a postcard, one from the stand by the till in Paperchase. You know, a unicorn with an avocado or something. The London Underground sign with a witty slogan as the station name. Maybe he wrote down how he felt, put his words into a stupid poem or changed around the lyrics of a song. That’s totally Jack. He knew that sort of thing would make me tick.

But why hide it behind the picture?

Why not just give it to me before I went to work?

The train emerges from the tunnel and my 4G returns. I pass the time scrolling through birthday messages on Facebook, mostly people I haven’t seen for years who aren’t aware of what’s happened to me this year. There’s a few who’ve acknowledged it, some keeping it subtle. Some, not.

Si Sully

How could I not? x

… and a YouTube link to ‘Being Alive’ from Sondheim’s Company.

Gareth Allen-Roscoe

HB. You deserve the world

Carol Dooley

Happy Birthday dear Chloe. Your mum said you don’t want to celebrate this year and that’s understandable but hope you have a lovely day anyway and get spoilt rotten and enjoy a drink or three. See you soon. Your mum misses you loads. Love Carol and family. Xxxxx

Under an old photo of me as a baby:

Sue Roscoe

Can’t believe I’m the mother of a thirty-seven year old. Where does the time go? Always a baby to me Chloe Roscoe love you millions xxx

There’s never been a better time to delete my account.

I tap through the settings, get a bit lost in the whole app. Why’s it so hard to delete? And hold on – if I do delete it, do I lose everything? Forever? Maybe I need to spend some time going through my profile, seeing what I want to keep and what I’m happy to kiss goodbye to.

I abandon Facebook – it’s too complicated to think about – and switch to Instagram. I find the unread message from Justin, still there …

Shit! The train doors slide open and I almost miss my stop!

Almost.

I run to the house and down the stairs to the basement flat. I can’t get my key in the door quick enough. I don’t kick off my Converse; I let my suede coat drop to the floor and it lands upon two envelopes, one pink and one lilac, Liverpool postmarks. I’ll open them later. I’m not going to hesitate any longer. I’m doing it. I drag a stool to the cooker and clamber onto it, kneeling up and steadying myself with my hands against the mug cupboard. I reach over. One hand. I tap the bottom edge of the picture, lifting it gently, sliding my fingers beneath the canvas. With a little push up, it unhooks from the wall. Afraid of what might fall down from behind it, I jump down from the stool and duck, but I trip, fall, and lose my grip on the picture.

I land on my hands and knees, the kitchen tiles a cold slap to my palms.

The picture tumbles down beside me, clattering like a dull cymbal.

My eyes dart about the floor, looking for something.

What? What? What am I looking for?

I pull myself up on the work surface and scour the hobs, hunt behind the chopping board. Did something fall down the back of the toaster? All I find is old crumbs. How old are those crumbs?

I shake the picture.

Nothing falls out.

‘No!’ I cry out. ‘There can’t be nothing!’

There must be something.

I pace the flat. I need to sense him, feel him. But I can’t. It’s been a while since I imagined Jack, and even longer since his presence was so huge that I believed he was still here. His scent has been washed away with the candles I’ve burnt, the windows I’ve opened. His clothes are in his childhood home. His bedsheets have been washed. The bathroom is a feminine shrine to Boots, and the last male deodorant in there was Freddie’s. I pick up the picture of the man sat in the shopping trolley, hold it out: just canvas on a wooden frame. I shake it again.

‘No!’ I cry again.

I close my eyes. Tears.

They kiss my eyelashes, stream down my cheeks.

‘No!’

For almost six months, I’ve been searching for answers to questions I was never asked, holding tight onto something that was already gone. I wail, releasing long, loud sobs, desperate to be free.

And then I see it.

Through my tears, through the canvas, through the white wall that now hangs bare. I see it all. Everything that was behind the picture.

Everything.

I see my lips, intense red and puckering up to the mirror as I apply an extra coat for good luck. I see the empty seat at the Everyman Theatre, the one that Dan Finnigan should’ve sat in. I see Jack’s suit, his hand brushing my leg, the froth from his pint that sat on the tip of his beard that I didn’t have the heart to tell him about, the chips and curry sauce we ate for breakfast the morning after because it wasn’t morning, it was three in the afternoon – oh yeah, we’d stayed in bed until then.

I see the trains, going north, going south, meeting in the middle; the gin in a tin and packets of M&S crisps; always meeting by the Burger King.

I see the flights and the frogs, Patpong and ping-pong, a Ladyboy winking.

I see the key.

I see the school, the double doors, the desk, the interview, the pints and pizza after I got the job, and God – that was it – the night we’d joked about Vegas – that was it.

I see Jack pulling my socks off my feet when I’m watching Netflix, squashing them into a ball and trying to throw them into an empty mug, annoying the shit out of me every time he did it, and he did it a lot. I see him missing and knocking the mug – which wasn’t empty after all – onto the carpet.

I see his chest resting against mine, keeping me warm – sometimes too warm – and I’d have to wait until he fell asleep to unravel myself.

I see us brushing our teeth, elbowing each other until it became a strange little dance, bobbing and swaying in the small cabinet mirror.

I see his phone and him fixating at the footy scores.

I see us getting Belgian waffles in Covent Garden and both coming to the conclusion that they smell better than they taste.

I see us wake at four in the morning, gravitating into each other, making love that’s slow and sleepy.

I see us in a beer garden, laughing about the ridiculous names people call their kids these days and losing it when we imagine a baby named Barry.

I see Jack walk in on me having a moment, playing the Evita soundtrack and giving it my best Eva Perón out of the bedroom window when I thought I had the flat to myself, and his disgust at either my singing or my taste, or both, but I never asked.

I see us dancing, headbanging and slow dancing, whatever took our fancy, whilst swigging from a bottle of Prosecco, ’cause it was Friday and ’cause we could, and we’d talk about how this was it, we did it, we found each other before forty.

I see us bickering, Jack making me a fried egg because he asked if I wanted eggs and I said, ‘ooh yeah, fried please,’ and he hated making fried eggs because he always broke the yolk, but he never told me, just muttered under his breath, passive aggression, which led to us yelling at one another, our first fight, which made us both cry, and – eventually – laugh.

I see Rudolf.

I see the fridge and Jack telling me he’d won a raffle.

I see my hand encased by Jack’s, in a kebab shop near the flat, and we order shish taouk and chips and extra garlic sauce and as we wait, we kiss, like really kiss – snog – and the fella behind the counter mocks us, calls us a pair of lovesick teenagers, and we keep kissing – snogging – our teeth touching because we’re both smiling, bashful yet brazen, a kiss that’s addictive and desperate and ends with sex.

I see the pecks on the cheek, the lips, the neck; busy kisses that get us through busy weeks and that morning peck before rushing off to work. I see the Rice Krispies. I see myself opening the fridge and saying, ‘we’re out of milk again’.

I see Jack.

And then I go.

And I never ever see him again.

‘No, no,’ I sob, heaving with cries, emptying out all I have until there’s nothing left.

I can’t keep looking for something which isn’t here.

I grab hold of the picture again, but I don’t look at the man sat in the shopping trolley. Instead, I turn it around, look at the canvas stretched over the wooden frame. This picture was from the height of our happiness. I’d written him a message, short and sweet, but now faded, smudged. I’d used a pencil – the pen in my satchel had run out of ink before I got through the first letter. The message simply said, of course:

And I reckon I love you, too, Jack Carmichael.

I blink, hard. Thick, satisfying tears drip from my cheeks and splash onto the canvas. Right there, above the words I originally wrote, is another sentence, added later and written in bold capitals, in permanent black marker pen:

I RECKON I LOVE YOU, CHLOE ROSCOE.

This is what we were. What we will always be.

Not love. But almost.

I breathe in.

I breathe out.

I’m alive, and at last, I let go.