The Reunion (20 page)

‘Jen?’ Dan brought her back, to the darkness of the living room. ‘You all right?’

‘I’m fine.’ She paused for a moment. ‘I was just thinking, that list. I didn’t write down anything that I wanted for myself. Conor and Jen want this, Conor and Jen will do that…’

They fell into a silence heavy with things unspoken. What she wanted at the time she wrote that list, how that had changed six months later, and six months after that, and then, how everything she’d ever wanted didn’t mean a thing any longer, because the life she’d known no longer existed. Slowly, tentatively, Dan reached out his hand to her. She took it.

‘Not everyone wants the same thing forever,’ he said, as though he’d read her mind.

‘I know.’ There was a moment where she thought she could tell him, what it was that had kept her away so long, a moment where she thought she could explain it perfectly, but then his phone beeped and he said, ‘At last, signal!’ and the moment was gone.

Letter, from Jen to Conor, dated May 1996, never sent

My darling Con,

I need to say this to you, but I can’t say it to you. I can’t say it to your face. I can’t bring myself to say it and see the look in your eyes, I can’t bear it, the thought of how much you’ll hate me when you know what I’ve done. The terrible things I’ve done.

There is no excuse for it. All I can say is that for some reason, some reason I can’t even remember any longer, I woke up one day, or maybe it came upon me gradually, I don’t know, I don’t even bloody know, I just realised that maybe everything we wanted wasn’t everything I wanted any longer. And it’s not that you aren’t enough, it’s that I’m not enough. Like this, I’m not enough.

I can’t say this to you. I can’t even write this to you. I have to write the words down but it frightens me to do it, to end it, to put an end to this, because it will be, once you know, it will be the end of you and me. I know it. I did a terrible thing. I betrayed you. I have to say it to your face, don’t I? I can’t write this down.

I can’t.

WITHOUT BEING ASKED,
the auberge owner’s wife, a large, round lady, living proof of the inaccuracy of the claim that French women do not get fat, brought to their room two plates of stew, a rich boeuf bourgignon accompanied by dauphinois potatoes, and a litre pitcher of red wine.

‘I sink you have not eaten?’ she said, proffering her tray with a hopeful, toothsome smile.

Andrew and Lilah fell on her like starving wolves. They devoured the food ravenously, in silence, sitting on the floor in front of the fire.

After they’d finished eating, Andrew found that the silence ceased to be comfortable, so he said:

‘I called a taxi. It cost me seventy quid to get home.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘You wanted to know how I got back. From Fleet. After we broke up.’

‘Oh. Well. You deserved it. After all, you did sleep with my best friend.’

‘Fair point.’

‘It wasn’t the first time, was it?’ Lilah asked. ‘That weekend?’

‘Yes, it was. I promise you that.’

‘Who… was it you? Who initiated it?’ She laughed. ‘Sorry, I don’t know why I’m asking you this. It’s just, I don’t know, at the time, I spent ages imagining it in my head. Not the sex, but how it started, who made the first move.’ She giggled again. ‘Somehow I can’t imagine either of you making the first move. Or I couldn’t then, anyway.’

‘Lilah.’ Andrew shook his head, embarrassed.

‘No, go on. Tell me.’

‘I kissed her. It was my fault. I started it.’

Lilah was sitting on the floor, leaning against an armchair, a blanket wrapped round her shoulders. Her legs were stretched out in front of her, toes touching the hearth. She wriggled them in front of her, inspecting the dark red polish on her toenails, the polish she’d applied that morning, post-sex, while Zac was in the shower. Before lunch, before the argument. Before. She hooked one ankle over the other, looked up at Andrew. He smiled at her, but he looked uncomfortable and awkward and very sad. Her heart ached a little.

‘Did you do it out of guilt, Andrew?’

‘Did I do what out of guilt?’

‘Did you kiss her because you felt bad for her, for everything that had happened? You knew she was in love with you, didn’t you, that she always had been? And you felt sorry for her. That’s how it started, isn’t it? Is that why it happened?’

Andrew made a noise somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. He hauled himself to his feet and turned away from her.

‘I think it’s time to get some sleep,’ he said. ‘I’m tired. You can have the bed. I’ll take the armchair.’

‘Drew, I didn’t mean…’

He turned back to her, his face reddening with anger, his voice raised. ‘You’re asking me if I got together with Nat out of
pity
? You’re seriously asking me that? You think I would have married her, stayed with her all this time, raised two children with her because I felt sorry for her? Even by your standards, Lilah, that’s pretty deluded.’

She passed her hand over her eyes. ‘That’s not what I meant…’

‘Yes, it was. And,’ he sighed, dropping his chin to his chest, ‘it’s ridiculous. Lilah, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I fell in love with Nat long before that. Years before that. I’ve already told you that. I told you at the time.’ The look on her face was almost unbearable to him. He crouched down next to her, almost losing his balance. He took her hand. ‘Don’t, please don’t look like that.’

‘I didn’t think you meant it,’ she said, her voice small and husky. ‘I thought you were just angry with me. Do you really mean to say that you never loved me at all?’ she asked. ‘Because for the best part of four years you did a really good job of acting as though you did.’

He sat back down next to her, put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. She pulled away. ‘Of course I loved you, Lilah. I loved you very much. I’m not entirely sure that you ever loved me though…’ She tried to protest, but he carried on. ‘Wait, wait. Do you remember how we got together? Do you remember that you only made a pass at me – hang on, you admitted this – you only made a pass at me because you wanted to piss off Karen Samuels?’ Despite herself, Lilah started to giggle. ‘She had a crush on me and you found her really irritating, so you decided you’d have me for yourself.’ She let him pull her closer. ‘That was how our relationship started. And I did fall in love with you, of course I did. You were – you are – irresistible. But somewhere, in the background, there was Natalie. And for me, for some part of me, it was always Natalie.’

Lilah pulled herself away from him again, pulled her blanket more tightly around her body. ‘Mum saw it,’ she said. ‘She warned me. I said she was talking nonsense.’

Andrew felt an old shame wash over him. ‘Oh, God. I’m so sorry. I hate the idea that your mum thought I was messing around on you. Your mum was always so great to me. So welcoming. I always thought she was going to be the perfect mother-in-law.’

‘Shame her daughter was so far from the perfect wife,’ Lilah said with a wry little smile. ‘Don’t feel bad,’ she went on. ‘Not about Mum. She didn’t think you were messing around. She just saw something I didn’t. Something developing. She tried to tell me that I should be careful, that I should take better care of what we had, treat you better than I did.’

‘You treated me fine, Lilah.’

She laughed, loud and sharp. ‘Oh, bullshit, Drew. I treated you horribly.’

They settled into silence for a little while, watching the fire burn down. Andrew could hear the wind in the firs outside. Instinctively he moved a little closer to Lilah, the two of them huddling together in the warmth. Safe from the storm. Protected.

‘How is she, your mum? Does she still have that flat in Winchmore Hill?’

‘No, Drew. I should’ve told you, I meant to get in touch but… well. She died a year and a half ago. Breast cancer.’

‘Oh, fuck. Lilah, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.’ He pulled her tightly to him and she rested her head on his shoulder. ‘You were so close to her. That must have been devastating.’

‘Yeah,’ she replied, a little crackle in her voice. ‘It was. Thank God I had Zac. I don’t think I would have made it without Zac.’

‘Really?’ He heard the tone in his voice as he said it, that slight note of incredulity. She heard it too and he felt her flinch away from him.

‘Yes, really,’ Lilah huffed. She got to her feet, gathering the blanket around her as she did. She poured herself another glass of red without offering him one. ‘I know you all think he’s a pointless himbo just because he’s young and beautiful, but he’s actually not at all.’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t know why I said it like that, I just didn’t think… I don’t know, that it was serious.’

‘Well, it is.’ She sat down in the chair next to the fire. She picked at her nail polish thoughtfully. ‘He saved my life, you know. Twice.’ Andrew didn’t say anything, he waited for her to go on. She held up her left arm, letting the blanket fall away. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen it before: a dark welt, running a good two to three inches from her wrist towards her elbow.

‘Jesus Christ, Lilah.’

‘Yeah. Stupid, huh? I only did one.’ She held up the other arm, for comparison purposes. ‘I can’t imagine how anyone does both.’ She laughed, low and hollow. ‘It wasn’t the will to live that stopped me, it was the pain. You’ve no idea how much it hurts.’

‘Oh my God, Lilah. Oh my God.’ He just kept repeating it, over and over, stupidly, meaninglessly. How could she have done this, how could he have not known? ‘Lilah, I should have been there, I should have made more of an effort to get in touch with you…’

‘Drew, you made plenty of attempts to get in touch with me.’ She smiled at him. ‘I’m not your responsibility, you know. We’re not all your responsibility.’ He might just as well have been talking to Natalie, she said that to him all the time.
They’re not your responsibility, Andrew
. ‘It was stupid, it was just a really stupid thing. Unforgivable, actually, because I did this when Mum was still alive. I can’t believe I did it now, it would have broken her heart if I’d succeeded. I’d have left her all alone.’

Andrew thought, as she said this, that Natalie was right. Lilah was uniquely selfish. Spectacularly selfish. But there was a lot more to it than that, wasn’t there? She wasn’t just selfish, she was broken. Completely broken. When he’d loved her, because he had, there was no denying, he’d been captivated by her for a time, was she whole then? The cracks had appeared in that final year, that was for sure, but could they have been mended, had it not been for him, for Natalie, for what they did? Was he the one that broke her? He wanted to say the words out loud, he wanted to ask her, but he was afraid of the answer.

‘I met Zac at the hospital,’ Lilah said. ‘This was… almost two years ago? Yeah. Anyway. I’d lost my job. I was flat broke, I was drinking, I’d had my heart comprehensively stamped on by some guy, and then Mum was diagnosed with cancer, and one night, I just…’ she mimed the action, cutting into her wrist. Andrew flinched. ‘Anyway, as I said, I only managed one, and being a total fucking wimp I couldn’t take the pain and called an ambulance.’ She smiled. ‘Mum and I were actually in St Thomas’s at the same time for a spell. Only, she didn’t know why I was there. I told her I’d fallen down the stairs while holding a champagne glass. She believed me, I think. I hope she did.’ She paused for a moment, continued to pick at her nail polish. ‘So anyway, I was in a pretty crap way, and they kept me in hospital for a few days to make sure I didn’t have another go. One afternoon I’d gone out for a cigarette and there was this guy coming out of the main lobby, on crutches, and he smiled at me and told me that I should quit, because I was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen and that it would be a shame if I died of cancer.’

‘And that was Zac?’

‘That was Zac.’

‘Very smooth.’

‘I thought so. He had a… ligament something… I can’t remember, some sort of sports injury, anyway, and he was coming in for physiotherapy. We ran into each other a couple of times, after that, when I was there visiting Mum. He asked me out for coffee, and of course I said no, but he was persistent and… Well. He was the best thing, the best possible thing for me. Kind, strong. No bullshit. He took care of me. He enjoyed taking care of me. And you know how much I enjoy being taken care of.’

Andrew nodded. ‘I know.’

Lilah slid down off her chair so that once more they were sitting side by side. ‘So that was the first time. That was the first time he saved me.’

‘And the second?’

She cleared her throat. ‘It was a while later. I’d got a job by then, a crappy PR job, and Mum was very ill. I couldn’t go in every day, to the hospice I mean, because I was working. Zac was doing bar work at that time, a bit of fitness training in the day, but he was mostly free. So he used to go and sit with her. We’d only been seeing each other properly for about four months, he barely even knew me. And I don’t think Mum had a clue who he was half the time, she was pretty out of it by then, but he went anyway.’ She started to cry, her shoulders heaving. ‘Every day, he’d just go and sit by her side, hold her hand, talk to her about
EastEnders
. For four months, at the end, I was there in the evenings and he was there in the day. She was never alone.’ The tears coursed down her cheeks unchecked. ‘I will always love him for that.’