The Girl I Used to Be(96)

Those books were now back there, looking as though they’d never been away. Most of the DVDs and CDs had gone. All of the vinyl was gone.

I turned to the other corner. His record player was no longer there; neither was his iPod dock. My old stereo was back; his had gone. Gone, too, were the headphones he’d bought when I’d complained I couldn’t watch television because of his music.

I felt as though my legs were about to give way. I sat down on the sofa and looked at the room. My stomach was clenched so tightly I almost doubled over.

What’s happened?

I didn’t dare go into the rest of the house.



* * *



*

I TOOK MY mobile from my bag. I knew I shouldn’t call Matt—what was the point? He’d sent me the clearest message he could. At that moment, though, I had no pride. I wanted to talk to him, to ask him what was happening. I knew, though. I knew exactly what had happened. What he’d done.

There were no missed calls, no new messages, no new e-mails. Suddenly furious—he might at least have had the decency to let me know—I clicked on Recent Calls and scrolled down to find his name so that I could call him. I frowned. I knew I’d called him a few nights ago. I’d been in the car, just about to leave work; my friend Katie had sent a message saying that she and her boyfriend, James, might come round and I’d phoned Matt to check we had some drinks in. There was no record of that call on my phone. I scrolled down further. Months of calls flashed by. None of them was to him or from him.

I closed my eyes for a second and tried to take a deep breath, but I couldn’t. I felt as though I was going to faint and had to put my head down on my knees. After a few minutes, I looked back at the screen, clicked on Contacts and typed M for Matt, but nothing came up. Panicking, I typed S for his surname, Stone. His name wasn’t there.

My fingers were suddenly hot and damp, slipping on the screen as I scrolled down the list of text conversations. Again, there were none to him and none from him, though we had sent a few each week. We tended to do that rather than call lately. There were still messages to friends and to my parents and to Sam at work, but nothing to Matt. I’d bought that phone at Christmas with my bonus. I sent him a message then, though he was only in the kitchen, asking him to bring a bottle of prosecco into the living room. I could hear him laugh when he read the message and he brought it in with some more chocolate mousse. I was lying comatose; the agreement had been that I’d cook Christmas lunch for his mother and us, but wouldn’t have to do anything else for the rest of the day.

I double-checked now and looked at my texts to Katie. It took a while to scroll through them, as we sent several a week—several a day at times—but eventually I found the first one, wishing her a happy Christmas and telling her that Matt had bought me a Mulberry bag. She’d acted amazed, but I knew he’d asked her advice on it. I don’t know how she’d kept it a secret.

My mind whirled. What had happened to Matt’s texts and calls?

I switched the phone off and on again, hoping that might do something. There were text messages from Katie, sent yesterday afternoon, asking me about my trip to Oxford today. She’d phoned me just before the training started this morning, too, to wish me luck, knowing how much the day meant to me. I’d spent a few minutes talking to her in the car park before I had to go in. There were texts to and from Sam, my friend at work, and Lucy, my assistant, as well as some from my mum and a few from my dad, including those exchanged in Oxford just hours ago. There were also messages from Fran and Jenny, old friends who I run with sometimes, and some from university friends that I still saw occasionally. There wasn’t anything from Matt at all.

Of course I knew what was going to happen when I opened my e-mails. No new messages, but that wasn’t a surprise. I tried to think of the last time Matt had e-mailed me; usually he’d text. Back when we first met we’d e-mail several times a day; we both used to have our private e-mails open on our computers while we were working, so we could chat to each other throughout the day. You’d think that would have made us less productive but the opposite happened and we found we were firing on all cylinders, working fast and furious and making great decisions. We were so fired up we both got promotions and it was only when Matt’s company started logging network accounts after some idiot was found to be looking at porn all day that we had to stop. My heart sank now as I looked at the folders; the one with all his e-mails in it was missing. I opened a new message and entered “Matt” into the address bar. Nothing came up, not even his e-mail address.

I could hear myself breathing, short, shallow breaths. There was the beginning of a red mist around my eyes and I could feel myself starting to hyperventilate.

I had no way of contacting him.





THREE


FOR A WHILE I couldn’t move. I sat on the edge of the sofa, holding my stomach as though I was in labor. My mind raced and my palms were tingling. When the lights of a car came to our end of the street and shone through a gap in the curtains, I jumped up and before I knew it I was flat against the wall next to the window, pulling the curtains slightly to one side.

If it was Matt, I wanted to be ready for him.

Someone had come to the empty house next door. Car doors opened and slammed; I heard a man say something and a woman laugh in response. I looked through the gap in the curtains and saw a young couple standing at the boot of their car. I watched unnoticed as they unloaded suitcases and boxes and took them into the house. They must have just left them in the hall, as within a minute they were back in their car and driving off down the road. My new neighbors, I assumed. I looked at my watch. It was after eight o’clock. It seemed an odd time to move in, but then I remembered my other neighbor, Sheila, saying that it was a local couple who had bought the house; maybe they were moving their things themselves.