Of course I couldn’t phone him when I wanted. In fact, I couldn’t phone him at all, and so I was always waiting. Even when we did get to talk, it was impossible to speak about what really mattered. I couldn’t see his face, I couldn’t tell what he was thinking and I didn’t ever know if I was saying too much or too little.
I lived a suspended life: reading without remembering what I had read, looking without seeing, hearing without listening. Ade came round because he hadn’t seen me for a while. He said I wasn’t looking so good (thanks, Ade) and that I should put a stop to it all before I got hurt. I told him it was too late for that.
Then he announced that the first affair in a marriage is the one that doesn’t last: people sometimes have two or three affairs before the eventual break-up, didn’t I know that?
‘You want to be the last-affair girl, not the first.’
‘How do you know I’m the first?’
‘I don’t. But Martin isn’t the type to play away.’
‘Then what’s he doing with me?’
‘You’re the exception. But you want to watch it, Linda. I can’t see him leaving his wife. Can you?’
‘He’s got to.’
‘That doesn’t mean he’s going to, though, does it? He’s not going to come back and live here.’
‘Why not?’
‘In Canvey? The place he ran away from?’
‘He didn’t run away. Anyway, we’ll find somewhere else.’
‘We were never good enough for him, Linda. We couldn’t give him what he wanted …’
Everything Ade said came out harder than he meant it. ‘I think you should take a deep breath, dump him and start getting over it. It’s not doing you any good, all this.’
‘I can’t.’
‘That means you don’t want to.’
‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘I think I’d rather have this and be unhappy than nothing at all. I don’t ever want to feel nothing again.’
‘You’re mad, you are.’
‘I know. But I don’t want to be normal. I can’t stand being normal. If I could just talk to him. If I could just see him then he’d know. I could talk to him and persuade him. I know I could.’
‘This isn’t good.’
‘I know it isn’t good. You don’t have to tell me it isn’t good.’
‘I don’t like seeing you like this.’
‘Well, I don’t like being like this.’
‘Come on,’ said Ade, ‘let’s go to the pub.’
Of course that was the one time Martin phoned. Masood left me a note.
Your boyfriend called. No message.
It was Friday night; at least forty-eight hours before I could speak to him again unless he escaped the family and got to the phone box down the road.
I started to write to him, I could always send the letter to his work, but I couldn’t find the words. I didn’t know whether to be grateful to him for coming back in the first place or to be angry that he’d gone again. I kept drinking and smoking and scrunching up bits of paper through the night.
‘Dear Martin …’ (Was that enough? Perhaps it should be ‘Darling Martin’ or just ‘Darling’ or ‘My Love’? But was that being too keen too soon?)
‘Dear Martin, Thank you for coming back to me …’ (Too dependent.)
‘Dear Martin, I love you …’ (Too raw.)
‘Dear Martin, I don’t think you know how much it means to me …’ (Too accusatory.)
‘Dear Martin, I miss you already …’ (Too desperate.)
‘Dear Martin, I don’t understand why you had to go …’ (Too demanding.)
‘Dear Martin, I understand why you had to go …’ (Too placatory.)
‘Dear Martin, Stay with me …’ (Too honest.)
I gave up, found an old postcard and wrote: ‘However quick the stream may be, it does not carry away the reflection of the moon.’
I wrote the phrase ‘Linda Turner’ in my sketchbook. I wrote it a second and a third time. Then I found I couldn’t stop writing it.