The Two Lives of Lydia Bird(72)

‘No,’ I whisper, kissing him. ‘Don’t.’

I’ve never imagined having sex with anyone but Freddie. Well, apart from the occasional Ryan Reynolds fantasy, obviously. But Kris is everything I need him to be. And it’s okay that I cried because he cried too, his forehead resting against mine, his hand warm behind my neck.

We lie still in the quiet of the evening, catching our breath, until finally he lifts his head and looks down at me, serious-eyed.

‘Well, that took my mind off the kettle.’

I bury my face in his shoulder, laughing.

I’m back at the kitchen table, alone now, breaking my alcohol ban with a late-night measure of brandy unearthed from the back of the Christmas cupboard. My grief guidebooks warned me that it’s normal to do out-of-character things like this; there’s even a list. I won’t be throwing myself out of any aeroplanes or white-water rafting, though I can’t rule out the classic ‘getting all my hair cut off’ at some point.

I’m going to try hard to not let myself regret what happened with Kris this evening. It was wonderful and all the more powerful because we knew it for what it was: goodbye. Perhaps I should think of him as my metaphorical parachute jump; I couldn’t have asked for a softer place to land. He understood the sense of profound absence when your love is no longer present in your life, how it can feel as if they’ve taken too many pieces of you with them for you to function. Not as you were, anyway. I’ve had to examine the pieces of me left behind and build a new version of myself, Lydia 2.0, bolting new bits on over time. I’ve assimilated a small, life-affirming fragment of Kris tonight and I gave him a sliver of myself in return – a fair exchange, I hope.

I finish the brandy and, as I load the dishwasher with our coffee cups from earlier, I wonder why it is that we fall in love with some people and not others, even when we wish we could. Billions of humans, all of us scurrying around the planet, falling in and out of love with each other for no reason explicable by logic or numbers or common sense. How unaccountably strange we are.





Friday 12 July


Jonah called me at work earlier and asked if he could come over this evening, said he was at a loose end, all very casual, but I think the wedding is on his mind. He probably wants to check in and make sure I’m not privately falling to pieces as the date approaches.

I panicked for a couple of seconds after I hung up, and then I reminded myself that Jonah Jones here is not the same Jonah as in my sleeping universe. Here he is dependable, kind and undemanding, and I’m more than ninety per cent certain he hasn’t secretly loved me for years. He’ll come over for an hour, chat about things in that circumspect way of his, and then I’ll send him on his way to The Prince to find Deckers and co. Or maybe I’ll find a way to talk to him about Wales; I’ll see how it goes. I’ve been putting it off if I’m honest, but I’ll try to look past my own needs tonight and think about what’s best for him. And then I realize, that’s what this is. He’s coming to tell me he’s leaving.

‘Okay?’ I ask, hovering on the doorstep.

He shrugs, one shoulder higher than the other. ‘Not too bad.’

‘Want to come in?’ I say eventually, even though I know perfectly well he does.

‘Ta,’ he says, following me in, closing the door behind him. I go for the kettle, he reaches for the cups, and between us we make coffee, the TV in the lounge providing welcome background noise. I’ve never felt this kind of awkward around him before; I’ve been mad at him, sure, but never been so nervous that it’s rendered me silent.

‘Sit down,’ I say, backing my bum down on to the end of the sofa, cradling the mug between my hands.

He drops into the armchair he always sat on, the one opposite Freddie’s.

‘Nice cushion.’ He says it with a slight question mark – he knows as well as I do the significance of it.

‘How’s work?’ I ask, as if he’s a passing acquaintance in the doctor’s waiting room.

‘Winding down for the summer, thank God,’ he says.

‘Of course,’ I say listlessly. ‘Lucky.’

Jonah’s lengthy school holidays used to turn Freddie green with envy, even though he knew perfectly well that much of Jonah’s time was spent catching up on paperwork and doing lesson prep.

‘That’s kind of what I want to talk to you about,’ he says. ‘I’m going away for a while.’

Here we go, I think. He’s going to tell me that he and Dee are going to spend the summer in Wales, see if it feels like a place he could put down roots.

‘It’s okay, I already know,’ I say. ‘Dee told me about Wales.’

He puts his coffee down on the table and rubs his hands over his face. ‘I’m not going to Wales.’

‘You’re not?’

He shakes his head slowly, looking at a spot on the rug. ‘It’s over, me and Dee,’ he says. ‘We called it last night. Or, rather, I did.’

‘Oh,’ I sigh, lost for words now because I’m not entirely sure where this is leading. ‘But I thought …’ I trail off.

‘She wants to live in Wales,’ he says. ‘Closer to her family.’

‘She said,’ I say. ‘I think she was hoping you might go with her.’