The Other Side of the Story (50 page)

Lily

For over a week I lived with the certainty that Anton and I were finished. I held it within me, a hideous knowledge, like being aware of a murder weapon under my bed - unsettled constantly by it, but unable to take the first step.

My conviction that we were out of time was given extra weight because I had been here before; not in my own life but with Mum and Dad. I knew the worst
did
happen and it happened every day. Anton and I thought we were special, somehow immune from love's travails but, in truth, we were nothing out of the ordinary, just another pair of souls who could not hold it steady when the going got tough.

Nevertheless, I was deeply surprised by Anton's reaction when I said that I was leaving. I had thought that he was of the same mind as me: that we both knew it was over but were simply going about our business until the appropriate time came. In the weeks since the move, we had been so silent with each other that I genuinely believed we were finished in all but name. I was sure that he would let me go quietly, acknowledging sadly that it was a shame it had not worked out, but that under the circumstances it was a miracle we had stayed together as long as we had, etc. But he went wild.

When Ema had gone to bed that night, I picked up the remote and, without preamble, turned off the TV. He looked at me in surprise. 'What?'

'Irina has said Ema and I can stay with her for a while. I think we should go sooner rather than later. Tomorrow?' I was ready to deliver my little piece about how he could see Ema whenever he liked but I never got to say it because he lost it.

'What are you talking about?' He gripped my wrist so hard that it hurt. 'Lily?' he questioned. 'Lily? What?'

'I'm going,' I said, faintly. 'I thought you knew.'

'No.' He looked utterly horrified.

He implored. Pleaded. Took my keys from my bag and stood with his back to the door even though I was not actually planning to leave there and then.

'Lily, please,' he choked. 'I beg…
implore
you to think about it.'

'But Anton, I've done nothing but think about it.'

'At least sleep on it?'

'Sleep? I haven't had a proper night's sleep in months.'

He rubbed his hand over his mouth and muttered some imprecation; I caught the words 'please' and 'God'.

'What did you think was going to happen to us?' I asked.

'I thought things would get better. I thought they were getting better.'

'But we never speak to each other any longer.'

'Because we've lost our home, a terrible thing has happened. But I thought we were regrouping!'

'We're not regrouping. We will never regroup. We should not have been together ever, it was wrong from the beginning and it was always going to end horribly. We always
knew
this.'

'I didn't.'

'You persist with looking on the bright side but the reality is that we are disastrous together,' I reminded him. 'Look at the mess we've made of our lives. We had a lot going for us and we've screwed it all up.' I said 'we' but what I really meant was, '
I
had a lot going for me and
you
screwed it up.' I did not need to say it; he was no fool, he would have already grasped that.

'We were unlucky,' he insisted.

'We were arrogant and grandiose and foolish.'
(You
were.)

'Because we tried to buy a house with money that everyone thought would pony up? What's grandiose about that? Common sense combined with bad luck is what it sounds like.'

'Reckless and risky is what it sounds like to me.' He leant heavily against the door. 'It's because of your history, your dad losing the family home. It had a terrible effect on you.'

<>

I said nothing. It was probably the truth.

'You're angry with me,' he said.

'Absolutely not,' I said. 'I hope that eventually we will be friends. But Anton, we're bad for each other.'

He looked at me, his face stricken and I dropped my eyes. 'What about Ema?' he asked. 'Us breaking up can't be good for her.'

'I'm doing this
for
Ema.' Suddenly I was furious. 'Ema is my number-one priority. I don't want her brought up like I was. I want security for her.'

'You're angry with me,' Anton repeated. 'Very angry.'

'I'm not! But keep on insisting that I am and I probably will be.'

'I don't blame you for being angry. I could shoot myself for getting it all so wrong.'

I decided to ignore this. It did not matter what he said, he would not change my mind. Anton and I were finished completely and I actually felt it was necessary for us to part, that we would both be dogged by bad luck, until we had righted the wrong we had committed when I first stole him from Gemma.

When I told him that, he exploded, 'You're just being superstitious. It doesn't work like that.'

'We were never meant to be together, I always knew it would end in disaster.'

'Lily, but Lily…'

'It doesn't matter what you say or do,' I said. 'I'm going. I have to.'

He lapsed into beaten silence, then asked, 'If you're really going to do this, can I ask one thing?'

'What?' I asked warily. Surely he would not be crass enough to ask for some form of sex as a farewell gift?

'Ema? I don't want her to see this. Could someone take care of her while you're…' he paused, then choked on the word, 'packing?'

He began to cry silent tears and I watched him in wonderment.
How had this come as such a shock to him
?

'Of course. I'll ask Irina to take her.'

Then I went to bed. This was proving a lot tougher than I had expected and the sooner it was over the better. I heard him come to bed and in the darkness he lay his head on my back and whispered, 'Please Lily,' but I lay rigid as a crab, until he moved away again.

In the morning, I rang Irina who came, nodded at Anton with something akin to sympathy and took Ema with her. Then I tried to persuade Anton to go out. I did not like him being there, hanging around, looking sick, following me from room to room, watching my actions like he was watching a snuff video. I was not enjoying any of it and his manifest misery made me feel worse. He watched me pack three bags, refusing to pass anything, saying, 'I want no hand nor part in this.' But when I struggled to get a holdall from the top of the wardrobe, he muttered, 'For God's sake, don't kill yourself,' and swung it down for me.

'Perhaps it would be better if you weren't there when I actually go,' I suggested.

But no way. He kept trying to talk me out of it, right up to the last minute. Even as I was getting into the taxi, he said, 'Lily, this is only temporary.'

'This is not temporary.' I held his eyes. I had to let him know this. 'Please get used to it, Anton, because this is for ever.'

Then the car drove away, taking me to my new life, and I know this sounds horribly cruel but, for the first time since I had met him, I felt clean.

For far too long now, I had coexisted with wretched guilt about Gemma. Freedom from it brought delicious relief and almost from the second I left Anton, life began to improve: I got work immediately - via an agency, doing freelance copywriting from home — and this was the sign I needed.

Irina's apartment was big and quiet. I worked in the morning when Ema was in playgroup and in the evening when she was asleep. If I needed to work in the afternoon, I had no shortage of babysitters: Dad and Poppy were regular visitors and Ema and Irina got on beautifully. I think Ema's quarter Slavic side responded to the Slav in Irina and Irina regarded Ema's round little face as the perfect showcase for the latest Clinique products. I tried to stop Irina but I was not capable of impassioned pleas. Or impassioned anythings.

I liked my new life. It was peaceful, devoid of drama and very little happened. I never saw any neighbours in the silent landings; no one else even seemed to live in the building.

Even the nondescript weather conspired to numb me. Colourless skies and mild, still air guaranteed an absence of response from me. When we went on walks to nearby Regent's Park, I felt nothing.

There was no hope of me doing anything creative. After the succession of knockbacks, I had nothing to write and I was quite content doing press releases and leaflets. I had no grand plans, no vision for the future, all I wanted was to get through the day. I enjoyed my life's smallness. Until recently everything had been done on a grand scale - novels and book deals and houses - and I was happy that it had all been reduced to bite-sized pieces.

Anton had been right about one thing: I was angry with him for being so flaky with money. But since I had left him, it was as if my anger was happening to someone else; I knew it was there, I knew it affected me, but I could not feel it. All I could feel was gladness at being in charge of my own destiny.

Not that every day was easy. There were some dreadful moments, like when Katya, a Russian friend of Irina's, came to visit, bearing a beautiful brown-eyed baby boy, only six months old. He was called Woychek and he even looked like Ema. This plunged me into an awareness of all the other children that Anton and I would never have. The brothers and sisters that Ema already had in a parallel universe but that we would never meet. That started something terrible within me but before the grief had me fully in its grip, Katya said of Ema, 'This child has werry beautiful skeen,' and my attention was diverted. Had Irina been putting stuff on Ema? Again? The pore-minimizer? She was obsessed with it and pressed it, with evangelical zeal, on everyone. Yes, Irina admitted surlily, she had given Ema a 'barely there' layer of pore-minimizer. When pressed further she also confessed that she had used some glow gloop and in my irritation I forgot to be sad.

One day clicked over into the next and all of them were interchangeable and without character. Not once did I contemplate the future, except in terms of Ema. Constantly I watched her, alert for signs of dysfunction. She did not wet her bed at night but that was because she had not yet been fully nappy-trained. Sometimes when she heard Irina's key in the door she would widen her eyes and gasp, 'Anton?' But other than that it was business as usual.

She had always been a hardy little creature, and perhaps her physical robustness was also an indication of emotional resilience. I had to admit she certainly did not seem shaken by her ruptured life. But I fretted that she was 'internalizing' and everything would emerge at age thirteen when she would become a shop-lifting, glue-sniffing termagant.

My one comfort was that I had made what I thought was the best choice for her and I knew that being a mother means experiencing almost constant guilt.

Even though she was living separately from him, she saw Anton frequently. Most days he took her to the park after work, and she stayed overnight with him on Saturdays. After the first few visits where his eyes were bleak with heartbreak, I could not bear to see him and asked Irina if she could oversee him picking up Ema and again when he returned her home. To my extreme gratitude, Irina agreed. This arrangement worked well, until one evening, perhaps three weeks after I had left him, when Irina was in the bathroom at precisely the wrong time and I had to open the door to readmit Ema.

'Lily.' Anton looked shocked to see me. As I was shocked to see him. He had always been thin but during the weeks since I had seen him, he had become haggard. Not that I was in imminent danger of gracing a fashion shoot myself. (If it had not been for Irina's lavish generosity with her pore-minimizer, I would have needed a head transplant.)

Ema scooted past me into the apartment and seconds later I heard the opening notes of
The Jungle Book
.

'I wasn't expecting to see you…' Anton said. 'Look…' He fumbled in his leather jacket and produced a letter. It was so crumpled and battered it looked as if it had been in his pocket for weeks. Regularly, he had been bringing my post but I knew this letter was different. 'This is from me. I wanted to give it to you by hand, to make sure you got it. You won't want to read it now, but you might want to some time.'

'Fine,' I said stiffly, unsure what to do. I wanted to read it but instinct was warning me not to. Horribly shaken by seeing him, I said goodbye, closed the door on him, then went into my bedroom, put the letter in a drawer and waited to forget about it.

I was standing at my second-floor window, still feeling my heart beating in every part of my body, when I saw Anton leave the building. When Irina was on duty, I never permitted myself even a sneaky glance but today the routine was ruined and I remained watching him. He walked along the pavement, a few yards from the front entrance door, then paused and his shoulders began moving up and down, as if he were laughing. I stared, wounded to the quick, and thought, what the hell is he laughing at? Meeting him face-to-face had upset me terribly but he thought it was funny? Then with a heave of dreadful insight I understood that he wasn't laughing, he was crying. Crying with his whole body. I stepped back in horror and at that moment I thought the grief would kill me.

It took me the rest of the evening and a quarter of a bottle of dog-rough vodka to regain my equilibrium. But then I was fine. I understood that inevitably this would be painful. Anton and I had been in love, we had had a child together and we had been each other's best friend from the moment we had met. The ending of something so precious could only be bloody. But at some stage in the future the pain would stop and Anton and I would be friends. I just had to be patient.

I knew that one day my life would be utterly different; full of feelings and friends and laughter and colour and with an almost entirely new cast to the one currently peopling it. I was wholly certain that some day there would be another man and more children and a different job and a proper home. I had no idea how I got from the small bare life I was now living to the full, colourful one I envisioned. All I knew was that it would happen. But right now it was a long way away, happening to a different Lily and I was in no rush for it.

So complete was my passivity that I could not even feel guilty about Irina's staggering generosity with her home and with caretaking Ema. Under normal circumstances, I would be a squirming mess, fashioning plans to leave as soon as we could and feeling like a wretched freeloader each time I switched on a light. Sometimes I had to borrow money from her - my copywriting paid spasmodically - and I even had no shame about that. Invariably, she handed it over without comment, except for once when I came in from yet another feeling-free walk in the park and said, 'Irina, the cashpoint wouldn't give me any money. Can you loan me some until I next get paid?'