Eighteen
Stay
“I’ve just been almost killed,” I gasp into my phone.
Jools is laughing—I guess because escaping death is better than succumbing to it. “What?”
“Mopeds.” I turn to survey them, buzzing like bees along the road I’ve just jumped out of. “They’re everywhere.”
I’ve been in Bali for less than an hour. According to the map (and Caleb’s super-helpful colleague from the cultural heritage team, Gabi), the beach hotel I need to head for is just a short distance from the airport. But the reality is much more confusing than Google Maps. I can only see streets and trees and tall buildings and dense clumps of people, all of whom look like locals, not tourists. Every road seems to loop onto the next, and none of them appear to lead anywhere that isn’t the airport periphery. And I can’t see the beach—nor are there any signs suggesting where it might be. It feels a bit like I’ve wandered out of Heathrow Airport and attempted to walk to Covent Garden.
Anyway, I was so intent on trying to navigate that I forgot to check both ways before crossing the road, which was when I almost got knocked down by a speeding moped, whose rider didn’t flinch, swerve, or even brake.
I hitch my rucksack higher up my shoulders. I’m already sweating. The air when I first left the terminal felt like stepping inside a preheated oven. Why did I think it would be a good idea to walk? For some reason, I’d imagined Bali to be blue sky and sea breezes. But so far, it’s just sticky and muggy and noisy, the sky the color of a dirty puddle.
“Luce,” Jools says calmly, like the nurse she is. It’s morning in London, and her day off. I picture her sitting in the cool shade of her back garden in Tooting, sipping a coffee. “Please just go back to the airport and get a taxi.”
I rotate slowly on the spot, searching for anything that could hint to where the terminal might have gone—an ascending plane, for example, or a person with a suitcase. Maybe I should FaceTime my dad and his sixth sense for direction—he’d probably be able to tell which way I should walk just from checking out the clouds above my head.
“That’s a good idea in theory,” I say. “If the airport hadn’t vanished into thin air.”
It’s now May. I haven’t seen Caleb for five months, and somewhere around the four-month mark, the missing him began to get too much. The drawn-out good-byes at the end of our phone calls, the pangs of regret when I saw a couple holding hands in the street, the shameful rushes of envy whenever Jools WhatsApped me with another update on her wedding plans. The wanting to touch him and kiss him and feel the warmth of his form lying next to me in bed.
“You could do that,” Jools said casually, one day in early April. I was in Tooting for the weekend and we were having a lazy start after a late night out with Nigel and his extended family, lounging on her sofa, watching Friends for the umpteenth time as we mainlined buttered crumpets.
“Do what?”
Jools nodded at the screen. Emily had just turned up in New York, having flown in from London to surprise Ross. “Fly out there. Surprise him.”
I snorted. “What?”
Jools shrugged, like the suggestion was no big deal. “You’ve been missing him like crazy. You could do something to show him . . . just how much you love him. It would be so romantic, Luce—flying out there, turning up at his hotel. I mean, why not?”
“Because,” I said, a little too sharply, before I could help it, “you know why.”
Jools smiled conspiratorially, like this objection was so weak it wasn’t even worth acknowledging. “Imagine how much he’d love it, though.”
We didn’t talk about it again that weekend, but she had planted a seed. I’d thought until then that my no-long-haul-travel stance would never soften, but over the next few days, I did begin to imagine how much Caleb would love it if I joined him. I started mulling the idea over, rolling it around in my mind ever so gently, like a ball of clay that I knew had the potential to be something exciting, though I wasn’t sure quite what. I let it linger in the recesses of my mind, daring—while I was showering, or walking to work, or cooking—to picture myself getting on a plane. I even wrote it down on my laptop: a short story about two unnamed characters being reunited after a long time apart, though in the end I had to stop because things got a little too steamy.
After a few days, I realized that the lurch in my stomach whenever I thought about actually doing it didn’t resemble fear as much as I’d thought. It felt more like excitement. Butterflies rather than wasps. A tiny thrill at the prospect of possibility—the realization that if I wanted to, maybe I could change the way I saw the world. I could do things I’d previously thought were beyond my reach. Maybe it had just taken missing Caleb this much for me to realize it.
I was still afraid, but—perhaps for the first time ever—I was starting to wonder if being afraid wasn’t, in fact, a reason not to do something. Maybe it was even more of a reason to try.
The taxi reaches its destination and I pass the driver a handful of rupiah. He retrieves my rucksack from the boot, and I thank him, then stand back and look at the hotel. It’s a modest place, one road back from the beach, its entrance shaded beneath a pagoda roof and crowded by palm trees.
This is it. Five months apart, and Caleb is now just meters away from me. I stay where I am on the pavement for a moment, staring up at the building like I’m standing at the steps of a castle in a fairy tale.
I venture inside, nod politely to the man behind the desk, and walk through the lobby. Gabi’s told me Caleb’s in room 12, so I follow the signs and make my way along the corridor, flip-flops slapping the floor tiles as I go. I’m paranoid I’ll bump into him heading out somewhere, headphones in and camera around his neck, which would be disastrous. Because here in this corridor is not where I want to do this. Our reunion has been on loop in my mind ever since I booked my ticket: he’ll open the door, I’ll throw myself at him, he’ll respond, and we’ll barely be able to breathe or speak until much, much later.
Room 12. Here it is: an innocuous brown door, with a fair bit of its varnish rubbed off. I take a breath, rest my palm against the peephole just in case, then knock.
There’s a long pause. For a moment I’m afraid he’s gone out, or that he’s on the phone, or in the shower. I’ve been dreaming about this moment for so long, I don’t think I could bear it if it didn’t go exactly to plan, after so many hundreds of pounds, thousands of miles, and countless skipped heartbeats.
And then, a muffled “Hang on.”
The door opens.
He blinks at me for several moments. And then, “Oh my God.”
“Hey,” I say, my whole heart bursting open with joy.
“Lucy . . . Oh my God.” He steps forward. He is deeply tanned, his dark hair slightly lighter, and he seems taller somehow—though that’s impossible, of course. He looks tired, but a good kind of tired. The kind of tired that says he’s ready to stop missing me.
“Thought I’d surprise you,” I whisper, even as the tears are beginning to swell behind my eyes. “Being apart was getting too hard.”
“Please tell me I’m not dreaming,” he whispers back. Then, without waiting for me to reply, he takes my face between his palms and sets his lips against mine, like he absolutely has to check that I am, in fact, real. And now his hands are in my hair, and mine in his, and we are kissing the way they do in films—what Jools would call apocalypse-kissing—fierce and frenzied, a kiss on fast-forward because it’s just been too long.
We stumble together into his room, which I can already feel is hot, under-air-conditioned. But it doesn’t matter. A groan falls from Caleb’s mouth into mine as we find our way down onto his bed, grabbing at limbs and pulling at clothes. We become quickly slick with sweat, burning and hungry. The mattress squeaks comically with every small movement, but neither of us cares. And soon after that he is pushing up my dress and I am tugging down his shorts, and all I can think about is drinking in every second of this moment I’ve been craving since the day he left.
Afterward, we lie unclothed on the mattress together, the ceiling fan spinning hypnotically above our heads as we collect our scattered senses. From outside drifts the soundtrack of a foreign country, horns sounding and traffic shunting, woven through with the reeling of mopeds.
Next to me, Caleb shakes his head. “I still can’t believe you’re here.”
I smile, shuffling round on the pillow to face him. “Are you surprised?”
He turns his head to mine so we’re nose-to-nose. His eyes are shining. “Surprised doesn’t even come close.”
“I couldn’t wait another month.”
“You have no idea how happy that makes me.”
“Knowing I’m impatient?” I tease.
“Well, if this is what impatience gets us,” he says, “please never, ever change.”
I roll onto my front and prop myself up on an elbow, drawing shapes against his chest with one finger. “Look at that tan. I feel so pale next to you.”
He smiles. “Pale and beautiful.”
“God, I’ve missed you. This is . . . so much better than I even imagined it.”
He reaches out and tucks my hair behind my ear, his eyes flitting over me, seeming to drink in the sight of me. “You look amazing. I love your hair like that.”
I’ve been wearing it loose a lot more recently. Rapunzel hair, my mum calls it. It’s spilling out across my shoulders, albeit temporarily roughed up from Caleb grasping it. “Thank you,” I whisper.
“Just . . . tell me you’re not in transit or something. That you didn’t win some sort of . . . twenty-four hours in Bali competition.”
“Nope,” I say, happily. “Ten whole days.”
He shakes his head again, like he’s still half thinking I’m some sort of mirage. “Perfect.”
“Although . . . I totally get that you’re working. You don’t have to be a tour guide, or anything. Just so long as we can do this every day.”
He arches an eyebrow. “I’m not going to take much persuading to do this every day.”
I smile, let my gaze roam over the room. “This is really nice.” Though basic, the space seems bright and in good order—if slightly messy, with Caleb’s clothes and photography kit strewn across every available surface. There are books too, and maps, ticket stubs, and travel documents. I can only think housekeeping doesn’t attempt a daily clean.
“Sorry about the state of it. I’d have tidied up, if I’d known you were coming.”
I smile. “Believe me, I could not care less.”
He runs a hand down one side of my face, like he’s finding it hard to stop touching me. “So . . . what changed your mind? About traveling. I mean, you’ve literally come halfway across the world, Luce.”
I shrug gently. “After you left . . . I started thinking a lot about what you said. About Nate stealing experiences from me, and not letting him win. And I was missing you so much, and I started to get . . . I don’t know. Sort of angry. I couldn’t stop thinking about you, and then me and Jools watched that episode of Friends where Emily flies to New York to see Ross—”
He nods sagely. “Classic.”
I smile. “—and I know we can be apart, but I just . . . didn’t want to be anymore. I wanted to see you, and if getting on a plane was what it took to do that, then I wasn’t going to let Nate be the reason I chickened out.”
He’s stroking my shoulders now. “So, was the journey okay? Did you feel all right?”
I nod. “Yeah, actually. It was pretty good. I brought my laptop. Spent most of it writing.”
Just forty-eight hours after Georgia sent her my manuscript two months ago, Naomi Banks got in touch to ask if we could meet at her offices in Bloomsbury. We discussed the book—why I wrote it and her vision for it—and chatted through her comprehensive list of edits. I’m working on those right now, after which we’ll submit the finished version to publishers. It’s a long game, with absolutely no guarantees, so I’m still working at Pebbles & Paper, which to be honest I do really enjoy, despite Ivan being something of a control freak who’s added two more customers to his barred list over the last five months alone.
I do know, though—however the novel works out—that Naomi and I are the perfect match. We work together so well, and are so aligned in many of our thoughts and ideas. She gets my book, and me. I’m now convinced Ryan’s agent turning it down was so Naomi and I could be brought together, even though at the time it felt like such a kick in the teeth.
Caleb sketches the outline of my collarbone with one finger. “This is going to be the most amazing ten days, Luce. I’m so happy you’re here.”
“Me too,” I whisper, and then for a moment we are just looking into each other’s eyes without speaking, our happiness hopscotching through the space between us.
“So, what do you fancy doing now?” he says, eventually. “Do you want to go out? This is a hot surf spot, apparently. Loads going on.”
I shake my head and lean forward, pressing my lips to his. He responds instantly, his hand moving to my back and trailing down between my shoulder blades, a tease traced out across my skin. “Maybe later,” I murmur. “I’d say we’ve got some more reuniting to do yet.”
We spend every spare moment of the next ten days together. Caleb shows me the work he’s been doing and introduces me to his colleagues, and I get to go with them on trips to Hindu temples and museums, and to restaurants after hours when they’ve clocked off, plus a Balinese dance show, a couple of nightclubs. When Caleb’s not working, we explore together, venturing out to the palaces of East Bali, hiking Mount Batur at sunrise, visiting the rice paddies, sinking our feet into the sand of countless beaches. We eat breakfast in cafés and lunch at stalls, drink in what feels like a thousand sunrises, enjoy massages at a local spa. And we end our days with what we’ve been missing most—to touch and undress and soar sky-high with pleasure before lying bare-skinned together in the throbbing heat, almost numb with bliss, talking into the night and making plans for our future, as outside, the sky pops with a million stars.
On my last night, Caleb tells me he’s made a booking at a fancy restaurant overlooking the beach. So I wear my nicest maxi-dress and leather sandals, twist my hair up and add a flick to my eyeliner, and put in the silver earrings he bought me on our trip to Seminyak a couple of days ago.
As we stroll hand in hand toward the beach, I think about what I’d be doing if I were back in Shoreley right now, if I’d never come out here. Probably FaceTiming Caleb as I walked to Pebbles & Paper on an overcast morning, feeling that deep gnaw of longing in my stomach, oblivious to the magic of being here with him. I think about how glad I am that I pushed myself to do this, that I didn’t let fear overtake me and Nate steal this experience from both of us.
The restaurant is on a vast decked area right on the sand, candlelit and fringed with palm trees, raspberry-pink frangipani flowers adorning the tables. The setting sun makes the sky look ablaze, a tropical bonfire.
Once our drinks have arrived, freshly squeezed watermelon and pineapple, Caleb reaches out across the table and takes my hand. A warm breeze is trickling through the air, waltzing across my bare arms and shoulders.
“This . . . has been the most amazing ten days,” he says, eyes glimmering with emotion.
I nod and grip his hand. “I’ll remember it forever.”
“Really wish I was coming back with you tomorrow.”
“Just a month,” I remind him. “Four weeks. That’s it.”
“It’ll feel longer now.”
I smile. “That wasn’t the idea, but . . . I know what you mean. I feel the same.”
Caleb clears his throat. “You know, if you being here has made me realize anything, it’s that . . . I don’t want to be apart from you ever again, Lucy.”
“Me either,” I say, a warm tingle of relief spreading through me. “From now on, let’s just agree to be a couple of co-dependent limpets, okay?”
He laughs, then trails off. I feel a leap of love for him and, momentarily, I can almost see it suspended between us, like hot breath on a chilly day.
Caleb sets down his glass, and before I can fully register what’s happening, he’s getting off his chair and dropping to one knee in front of me. The restaurant is full, and straightaway I can sense heads turning. Somebody whoops. My pulse begins pumping hard, my heart breaking free from my body.
In the next moment, Caleb has slipped a hand inside the pocket of his jeans and retrieved a ring. I catch my breath. It’s the one I lingered over in Seminyak the other day, momentarily entranced by the dazzle of its stone. I didn’t say anything to Caleb—I hadn’t even known he’d been watching me examine it—but he must have gone back to get it. It’s slender and silver, studded at its center with a bright blue sapphire. He holds it out to me now between finger and thumb, his hand shaking slightly.
“Lucy, I love you so much. My whole life . . . I never believed in soulmates. But then I met you, and you proved me so wrong. I don’t ever want to be without you again. Will you marry me?”
There’s not a single breath of hesitation inside my body. “Yes. Oh my God. A million times, yes.”
And now we are kissing, and crying, and laughing, and the other people in the restaurant are whooping and applauding, and Caleb’s slipping the ring onto my finger, the man I am meant to spend the rest of my life with, the man whose heartbeat feels like home.
Go
I’m just going through the motions when I find it. Drifting from room to room with Macavity at my ankles, picking things up and then putting them back down, pretending to clean the flat but in reality doing little more than moving stuff around. Max’s vitamins. That slightly intimidating book he was reading on the power of habits. The aftershave I don’t dare smell. Dumbbells, cuff links, breath mints. His work scarf, soft as satin. His running shoes, one pair of many. The box of belongings from his desk at HWW that his boss, Tim, dropped solemnly off last week. Two copies of the FT, from the days preceding the accident, which have now, inconceivably, become precious artifacts.
The flat just feels ludicrous without Max in it.
It’s now a mess of crusty crockery and strewn items of clothing and half-drunk cups of tea and sauce-stained takeaway cartons. I know I need to do something about this, if only out of respect for Max, because he always took such good care of his things. And it’s as I’m putting some of his T-shirts away—I’ve been wearing them at night, but I can’t bear to wash them—that I see it, nestled deep inside the drawer. A small box, in leather the color of cream.
I prize it open, and my world caves in all over again.
I try calling Jools, but she’s at work and her phone just rings out. So, in desperation, I call Tash.
For the first couple of weeks after the accident, I couldn’t even look at my sister. There’s nothing quite like losing a loved one to bring past resentments springing vividly back to life. I just couldn’t square the idea of her being sad on my behalf, because she had, albeit years ago, tainted me and Max in a way that would be there forever. Like a chip in a precious object, not constantly on show, but unmissable if you tilt it just the right way, or hold it to the light. An imperfection, a flaw that can’t be fixed.
But then I rang her one night, when Jools couldn’t pick up, a little like I’m doing now. And I realized after we’d spoken for a few minutes that I was clinging to the sound of her voice, to the knowledge that my sister was probably more invested in being there for me than anyone else I knew. The time had come for her to really and truly prove herself, and I knew she would rise to the occasion.
Two months ago today, shortly after I told him to turn the car around, Max’s SUV was crushed against the central reservation of the M25 by an articulated lorry. The driver escaped without injury, but Max died at the scene. The police investigation is ongoing.
His funeral was a month later, my only chance to say good-bye, as I opted not to see him at the mortuary due to the nature of his injuries. Nearly one hundred people gathered at Lambeth Crematorium to pay their respects, after which we scattered his ashes at the garden of remembrance. It was never in question that he would stay in London. His heart was always here, not in Cambridge.
I found it bizarrely hard to cry that day, even when we played “Wonderwall” at the end of the service. I was still in shock, I think, struggling to feel anything but numb. My memory of those first few weeks is so foggy. They say love is a drug—but so, I’ve learned, is grief. I was having a hard time believing Max was actually dead: I kept checking my phone for messages from him, staying up into the small hours in case he walked through the door. I would think I’d spotted him at the shop, or crossing the street in front of the flat.
Only his mother, Brooke, was conspicuous by her absence at the funeral. I’d asked Tash to track her down with the details, as I couldn’t face speaking to her myself, so soon after the accident. And Tash did manage to find her, but Brooke didn’t show up. And I hated her for that. Because even after Max had died, she couldn’t bring herself to be there for him.
I wondered afterward if she was angry, because it turned out that Max had recently written a will, in which he’d appointed his friend Dean Farraday as executor. Dean told me Max had left his flat, money, everything—aside from a few items for Dean and his family—to me. Brooke got nothing. Dean said Max had made the arrangements shortly after the fire at my parents’, but decided not to tell me because he was worried I’d argue it should be Brooke’s name on that document, and not mine.
Max knew me so well. Because at the time, yes—I probably would have said that. Now? I’m not so sure.
It wasn’t until after the funeral that I think I finally understood—the realization as brutal as swallowing dynamite—that I would never see Max again. That the only man I’d ever truly loved was gone forever, because I’d told him to turn the car around.
Since then, I’ve been surviving from hour to hour, moving through the days but not experiencing them. The grief has seeped into my bones, invaded my body like a disease. People think you’re sad when you’re grieving, but it’s so much more primal than that. That’s why grief has its own word. It becomes a part of you, alters you without permission.
Every time death takes a life, it steals a few more too, just for kicks.
“You okay?” Tash asks when she picks up.
I start stammering into the phone. “I found . . . I found . . .”
“Lucy? What did you find?”
I’ve been off work since Max died. Zara’s been amazing—far more compassionate than I might have guessed she would be. She even gave me that promotion in absentia, in recognition of the nearly two years of hard work I’d put in at the time of the conference. When she told me, I burst into tears. It should have been such a proud moment, not the bittersweet wrench it was.
I have no idea what Tash is doing right now, or even what day it is: it could be the weekend, or perhaps she’s just stepped out of a meeting at work. But you’d never know: she talks to me as though she’s my own personal helpline, like she’s got nothing better to do right now than listen to me gabble.
“A ring. A ring in a box. A ring in a box.”
“Oh, sweetheart.” I can hear precisely the moment my sister’s heart breaks with mine.
I tell her I’ll call her back, then run to the toilet and throw up. I can’t keep anything down at the moment. Last week was my first session back with Pippa, the psychologist I’d been seeing before Max died (yes, died: if one more person says passed, I won’t be responsible for my actions). Pippa explained that nausea is a common physical manifestation of grief, as is my lack of energy and complete loss of appetite, as well as the constant metallic taste in my mouth, which only serves to further put me off my food.
I look awful, I know it. Like a ghost of myself. And the only thing that would bring me back to life would be if Max were to walk through that door again right now.
How you holding up?” Dean kisses me on both cheeks. He smells of spicy aftershave, and I am suddenly conscious of my state of unwash. He passes me a coffee and a paper bag from Gail’s. “Thought you could use some sustenance.”
“Thank you,” I say. Gail’s is my favorite, but I’m not sure I can stomach cake at the moment. We head into the living room, where I sit down in an armchair, drawing my cardigan around me. It’s May now, warm, and London is at its gleaming best, exultant with early-summer skies and sun-dappled parks and drinking at dusk. But my mood is more suited to January: gray, cold, never-ending.
Like always, Macavity springs silently onto my lap. He’s been clingy ever since Max died, and I’m convinced he’s pining for his lost companion. I take so much strength from the warmth of his little body against mine, from the rhythmical, comforting percussion of his purring. He has loved Max too, I often think. He understands. Max’s hands have stroked the same patch of coat I am stroking now. Macavity is like my little lifebelt, tethered by time to the man I love.
It’s Saturday, I’ve realized—early afternoon, and another warm day. Sunlight is glancing off the furniture, my reward for having cleaned up. This time last year, Max and I might have been walking hand in hand through South Bank, the Thames shifting and heaving beside us like a serpent. We might have lunched in Borough Market, picked up some things for dinner, then meandered back to the flat eating our favorite gelatos, our hearts and bellies full.
I motion for Dean to sit, which he does, on the sofa. He’s wearing Ray-Bans pushed up onto his head and a T-shirt, his face faintly bronzed from the last couple of weeks’ sun. I suppose he’s been out somewhere with Chrissy and his daughter, enjoying some much-needed family time. Because it’s Saturday, and life goes on. Or at least, it does for Dean and Chrissy, and they’d be crazy not to make the most of every single second.
I’ve got to know them well over the past year or so. Chrissy works in television, is high up at a production company specializing in factual entertainment. We’d become quite a tight little foursome, hanging out at our flat or at their house in Chiswick; picnicking on the Common; enjoying long, lazy weekend lunches; walking the Thames Path on Sundays with their daughter Sasha on her little bike. It’s hard to know how our friendship will change, now that Max is gone. I suppose, inevitably, it will. I’m fairly sure there’ll only be so many times they’ll let me play gooseberry: that’s not how socializing’s supposed to work.
I messaged Dean after finding the ring. I had to know the story, and I was pretty sure Dean would have it. He and Max had become super close in the years since leaving uni—perhaps because as everyone’s friendships evolved, broke up, or moved on, they discovered they had even more in common as adults than they did as students.
“Can I see it?” he asks now.
I pass him the box. He lifts the lid, then smiles, like it brings back a warm memory. “That’s the one. I helped him choose it. Hatton Garden. It’s five carats, emerald cut—”
“When?” I whisper.
Dean is never lost for words, but he takes a really long time to answer. “The week before he died,” he says, eventually, his voice gentle as an echo.
“Did he say . . . how he was going to . . . ?”
Dean smiles faintly, then shakes his head. His blue eyes look watery. He’s lost weight too, since Max died. Chrissy told me recently he’s been working nonstop. “He mentioned some ideas. Like doing it at the Observatory, or the Eye, or the Shard. But to be honest, I think he probably would have just dropped down on one knee right here in this flat, Lucy. He didn’t need to perform some grand gesture to prove how much he loved you.”
I shut my eyes, let his words swim through me. I would trade anything—anything—for Max to walk into this room right now, if only for a few moments, so I could give him my answer. Yes. Oh, I love you so much. A million times, yes.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before,” Dean says. “I didn’t know what was best. Chrissy’s been saying I should, but . . . I thought it might make everything worse.”
“No,” I say softly, shaking my head. “It’s the opposite. It’s like . . . me and Max have just had another conversation, and I never thought I’d get that chance.”
We don’t say anything else for a few moments, just sip from our cups, contemplating. I get that strange metallic taste on my tongue again, try to wash it away with the coffee.
On my lap, Macavity shifts, stretching and flexing a paw before tucking it neatly back where it came from.
“In case you ever doubted how much you meant to Max,” Dean says, eventually, “you should know, Lucy, that you were his whole world. He’d been so happy since you guys got back together.”
My eyes fill with tears, and though I can’t speak, I nod my thank-you.
Dean wipes away a couple of his own tears now, leaning forward to grab some tissues from the box ever present on the coffee table. He passes me one. “God, I miss him.”
I blow my nose, then decide that since Dean is here, I will ask the question that plagues me constantly. The one always flickering in my line of sight, like an insect I can’t dispatch. “Dean, do you blame me?”
Until the family liaison officer confirmed that Max had died twenty minutes after we’d finished speaking that night, I’d been tormented by the thought that our conversation on the phone had had a part to play in his death. To know the two events were unconnected didn’t make losing him any more bearable, but at least it put that particular fear to rest.
Still. Max had been on his way to see me, and I’d told him to turn around. If I’d said yes, got excited, seen it for the romantic idea it was, he would still be alive.
Dean already knows what I said to Max that night—in the immediate aftermath of the accident, I seemed to be on a mission to tell as many people as possible, maybe because I was seeking the punishment I felt sure I deserved. But he’s never displayed even the tiniest glimmer of resentment toward me for it. Still, the nature of grief is so fluid, so fickle. Perhaps now he’s had time to think about it, he’s realized I am partly culpable.
“Nobody blames you,” he tells me firmly, leaning forward so I’m obliged to meet his eye. “Nobody would, not ever. You couldn’t possibly have known, Lucy.”
I nod, then look away from him and down at my hands, which are dry and neglected, much like the rest of me. “But I just keep thinking . . . if only I’d said yes.”
Pippa’s been encouraging me to stop this—questioning everything, agonizing over every tiny decision I’ve ever made. Because, she says, even if I had all the answers I’m looking for, the reality of losing Max would be exactly the same.
Dean nods as though he truly understands. “That was Max all over, wasn’t it? Just wanting to help.”
I pause. When you’re grieving, people say a lot of odd things to you—sometimes because they feel they just need to say something—and occasionally you have to stop and work out what they mean.
“Help?” I repeat.
“You know, with your . . .” Dean clocks my expression, trails off.
I feel a coldness wash over me. But not cold like a breeze—cold like a deep, deep chill. “With my what?”
He waits for a couple of moments. “Ah, sorry. I’ve put my foot in it.”
“Please tell me what you mean.”
He hesitates. “I had lunch with Max that day. He said you had this . . . thing about being on your own in hotel rooms, so he was going to drive to Surrey that night and surprise you. So you wouldn’t be by yourself.”
And now it’s like the armchair has slid sideways, because my face has somehow landed in a cushion, and Macavity has fled my lap. And I am sobbing hot, messy tears for the sweetness of Max’s gesture, feeling like I’ve lost him all over again.
Dean stays with me until it gets dark, leaving only once I’ve assured him he’s not made everything a hundred times worse. I’m not sure if he has or hasn’t, really—my head is swarming with new questions and self-recriminations, but at least my brain is busy. It makes me feel less alone, somehow.
I curl up on the sofa with Macavity after Dean goes, thinking—as I do most days—about what would have happened if I’d told Max to come to the hotel that night. If I’d never met the man who gave me my phobia of strange places. If Max had never slept with Tash. If we’d never split up.
But eventually, as the darkness drains into a pink-stippled dawn, I realize Pippa is right. No amount of rumination or soul searching will change the fact that Max is gone, and he isn’t coming back. What Dean told me last night doesn’t change anything, not really. It only confirms what I already knew—that Max loved me to the tips of my toes. He’d made mistakes, sure. But he had more than made up for them in the nineteen months since we’d got back together.
It’s Sunday now, so beyond the living room window, the world is quiet, though I do hear the occasional sprinkle of conversation, the slapping of trainers running past on the pavement. Then I realize I’m nauseated again.
It occurs to me as I rush to the toilet that I haven’t eaten in twenty-four hours. The cake Dean brought me lies untouched on the coffee table. A waste of quality patisserie, but I can’t stomach anything sweet. So at eight a.m., I make canned macaroni cheese. I don’t have the energy to create anything more nutritious, which is just as well, because I throw it up about twenty minutes later, at the same time as Jools’s number starts flashing on my phone.
“Again?” she says, once I’m back in the kitchen and have returned her call, told her why I couldn’t pick up.
“It’s fine,” I say, thinking about what Pippa said. “It’s normal, apparently.”
“But you threw up yesterday. And the day before. And the day before that.”
“I know,” I say vaguely, sensing she might be trying to make a bigger point, though I can’t quite grasp what that is. It’s not up to me how my body responds to losing Max, is it?
“Lucy,” Jools whispers. I hear her voice wobbling slightly down the phone. “Is there any chance . . . you might be pregnant?”
For a few moments I don’t reply. I just stare straight ahead of me at the letter magnets on the fridge, which Max arranged to spell MAX LOVES LUCY 4 EVER XO. I’m so paranoid about someone messing them up I must have taken about fifty photos of them on my phone.
Working saliva onto my tongue, I dare to taste the magic of Jools’s words, just for a moment. And then—for the first time since Max died—I detect the faintest wisp of something unfurling, spiraling to the ceiling like a smoke signal. It is strange, and at first, I can’t quite tell what it is.
And then I realize. It is hope.
So, thirty minutes later, I head into the bathroom with a pregnancy test in one hand and my heart in the other. Jools offered to come round and sit with me, but I need to do this alone.
Almost robotically, I take the test, then perch on the edge of the bath to wait. My hand is shaking.
I wish you were here, Max. I wish you were sitting next to me, squeezing my hand. I wish we were praying together for that little blue cross to appear. I never actually believed in the afterlife until you died. But now, I do. Because I know you’re here. I know that somewhere, your heartbeat is hammering just as hard as mine.
A mewl slides through the gap beneath the bathroom door before it nudges open to reveal Macavity, like he’s as impatient to know the outcome as I am.
I take a breath and turn the test over. And there it is: my hopelessness diminished, my despair drifting away. Because against all the odds, Max is still here. His baby boy or girl is two months old and nestled inside me, gifting me with a joy I thought I’d never feel again.
I think back to the day I moved in here with him. To him asking me, playfully, how I saw our future panning out.
How many kids?
Three. No, four.
I steady my racing heart, stare down at my stomach.
Just the one, as it turned out. But you’re the most precious gift I’ve ever been given.
In a few more months’ time, I will look into the eyes of my baby and whisper, Oh, hi. It’s you. I’ve missed you so much. I’m so glad you’re home.