After the End(68)

I open a bottle of whiskey.

It is six days before I’m sober again. I’m woken by the doorbell, confused by the sun streaming past the open curtains in the bedroom, when the clock on the nightstand reads two o’clock. Is it two o’clock in the afternoon? Where has the day gone? What time did I go to bed? Why do I hurt all over?

I open the door, blinking at the light.

“Jesus.” Tom Bradford looks me up and down. He wrinkles his nose, and I realize the sour smell I detected when I heaved myself out of bed has followed me downstairs. There’s a long pause, then: “It’s customary to ask guests if they’d like to come in.”

“Sorry.” I step back, pulling the door open fully. Tom wears a pair of chinos and an artfully crumpled white linen shirt. I follow him into the house, leaving the front door ajar because I’m suddenly conscious of the stale air. When did I last open a window?

“Alistair told me to pretend I was passing. So . . .”—he shrugs—“I was just passing, thought I’d pop in and see how . . .” He trails off as he sees the state of the kitchen. Crusty cereal bowls line the counter, bypassing the sink, and not quite making it as far as the dishwasher. Empty bottles circle the full recycling bin. On the table, two flies fight over a congealed slick of curdled milk.

“You’ve taken it well, then?”

I ignore the sarcasm. “Have you spoken to her? Is she OK?” I wonder if Pip is having some sort of breakdown.

He eyes me critically. “Better than you.” He sighs, and looks at his watch. “Right, go and have a shower, strip your bed, and bring the laundry downstairs.” He takes out his phone, and as I’m halfway up the stairs I hear him say, “Darling, can you do the daycare run? It’s even worse than we thought.”

In the bathroom I look in the mirror. My hair is lank, and dry patches of skin flake off my chin when I rub it. I clean my teeth, scrubbing my tongue and gargling Listerine until the fetid taste in my mouth has gone, then I get in the shower and use every product in there. I emerge fifteen minutes later, not quite a new man, but smelling less like an old one.

“Thank God for that,” Tom says when I get downstairs. The kitchen door has been flung open, and the smell of sour milk replaced with the sharp tang of citrus.

“Sorry. And thank you. You didn’t have to do all that.”

“I quite fancied having a cup of tea without contracting botulism, so . . .” Tom opens the fridge, then thinks better of it. “I’ll have it black.”

Pip is at her parents’ house. She doesn’t want to see me.

Shock, I conclude. The fallout from losing Dylan, and the memorial service . . . “She just needs time to process it all.”

“Max, I don’t think she’s going to change her mind.”

“You don’t just fall out of love with someone like that. We’ve been through so much together, surely we can work this out—”

Tom looks at me. “Let her go, Max.” He speaks softly, the words wrapped in sadness. “You can fight and fight for what you want to happen, but sometimes it’s just time. Sometimes you have to know when to give up.”

It’s only afterward, when Tom has gone home, and I’m getting the clean washing out of the machine and hanging it on the drying rack, that it occurs to me he wasn’t only talking about my marriage.





thirty





Pip


   2015


Would you like anything else, sir?”

“A beer and your phone number?” The man in seat 3F has amber eyes and an optimistic grin.

“Just a beer, then.”

“You can’t blame a guy for trying.” He grins, and I shake my head and get him his beer, and before too long it’s time to dim the lights and distribute extra blankets and pillows. This is my favourite time, when the cabin is quiet and there’s nothing outside but dark sky, and nothing inside but the whisper of passengers shifting in their beds. The only seat still upright is 4B, where a woman with frizzy hair flies fingers over silent keys, her face lit up by her laptop screen. I think of Max, who works more than he sleeps, and try to remember his schedule. It’s been strange, adjusting to our both working again, to being in different time zones, but I slipped back into my job a year ago like I’d never been away.

“Cuppa?” Jada already has two mugs out.

“Go on, then.”

An inch off six feet tall, Jada wears her uniform like she was poured into it. I never put back the weight I lost when Dylan was ill, and on my straight-up-and-down figure the red jacket and pencil skirt look corporate; on Jada, they’re undeniably sexy. Her Afro hair is relaxed and, like mine, twisted into a neat chignon.

“Ethan reckons the Ice Bar for shots, then Dusk Till Dawn. Up for it?” The Ice Bar. Airline staff’s favourite Hong Kong destination, despite being essentially a walk-in freezer with a cocktail menu.

“Try stopping me.”

“Party girls!” She waves her hands in the air and shimmies her hips, and I hide a smile. Jada is twenty-two to my thirty-seven, and her life so far has been such a roller coaster of fun that she assumes everyone else is a passenger on the same ride.

We hit a patch of turbulence an hour before landing, and I keep an eye on the rotund businessman in 1A, who has knocked back a bottle’s worth of red and whose florid face has acquired a greenish tinge. I am as relieved as he is to land without mishap, and Jada and I stand by the exit as our passengers leave.