After You Left(6)

‘Then why couldn’t he just tell you? Why would money problems mean he has to walk out on you in the middle of your honeymoon?’

I feel the distant rumble of panic. ‘I don’t know. I honestly have no idea . . . Say he was having second thoughts about us, Sal, why wouldn’t he have just told me before he married me?’ I take a steadying sip of my wine. ‘I’ve had a million break-ups. I’d have coped. How could he have married me knowing he was making a mistake?’ It’s a question more to myself than to Sally. ‘He must have known he didn’t want to do it – we’d only walked down the aisle a few days before! It’s not even like him to do something as reckless as this. He doesn’t make stupid decisions. He always thinks of the consequences and contingencies. He’s too aware of the fallout. Too sensible . . .’

‘It’s completely mystifying.’ Sally shakes her head, and finally picks up her cutlery. ‘I wish I could speculate but you can’t, can you? It’s just such an insane thing to have happened.’ She bisects her pizza, as though she’s aggrieved by it.

‘I wonder if he’s ill.’

The fork freezes halfway to her mouth. ‘Ill?’

‘You know his dad died suddenly in his early forties with a heart thing. His twenty-year-old nephew is waiting for some big procedure. There’s a lot of ill health among the men in his family. Remember? I told you. That’s why he was always so paranoid about staying fit. I always sensed he was convinced he was never going to see old age.’

Justin is always jogging, pumping iron, checking his BMI, weighing himself. His fixation with zero trans fats, low salt and omega 3 fatty acids is an ongoing joke between us. But it’s not feeling very funny now.

‘He’s not ill, Alice. His note said he can’t do this any more. Those aren’t the words of a man who’s just heard he’s dying.’

I nab the waitress as she passes. ‘I don’t want this. Sorry.’ Suddenly, I need it all gone. The food. The smell. Sally. Perhaps it’s just me, but I’m finding her disappointingly unsympathetic, which is not like her. I want to run out of that door and keep going, to run until all this falls off me, until I don’t have to carry it any more. Whose husband walks out on them on their honeymoon? Whose?

‘Me neither,’ Sally says to the waitress. ‘Take this away, too. All that bread filled me up.’

As the girl removes the plates, I have to fix on a spot of oil on the tablecloth to try to steady my thoughts and suppress the meltdown that I sense coming. Breathe!

Then Sally says, ‘You know, have you considered that maybe you never knew him? Maybe you just thought you did.’

‘Knew him?’ I’m not sure I’m hearing straight. ‘Of course I knew him.’

‘But you did only meet him a year ago. You have to admit, it was fast. I mean, I could tell he’s a bit like that. When he wants something, he wants something. It’s his personality. But you’ve never been that way. You’re far more level-headed than the person you became after meeting him.’

It’s so odd hearing someone describe you, who knows you so well. Especially when they pinpoint a change in you that you don’t entirely disagree with. It was a little true. I had allowed myself to suspend my cynicism about men when I met Justin. ‘But we didn’t need to wait longer. Look where waiting got me with Colin! Justin and I knew we wanted a life together. And, frankly, I’m a bit sorry you’d think I’m so whimsical or easily influenced.’ My heart is pounding from the effort it takes me to say this to her. I recognise we are on the brink of having words, which feels insane. Not at all what I was expecting from this.

I should have kept quiet.

The restaurant has gone from warm to instantaneously suffocating. The pungent smell of garlic and charred salami makes my stomach lurch, and I burp up the taste of sick. I’m gripping the edge of the leather seat. When I release my hand, it’s dripping with sweat.

‘I didn’t mean it that way, Al. I really didn’t! Sorry!’ Her eyes are full of concern for me. Sally and I never have confrontations – disagreements, yes; but that’s different. ‘I just didn’t know what the rush was, that’s all. Wanting a family is one thing . . .’

‘I didn’t marry Justin just to pop out his baby! I could have had one on my own if that was what I’d wanted. There are ways.’ Ways I would never have taken up, of course. ‘I didn’t wait because there was nothing more I could have learnt about him that was ever going to change my feelings for him, that’s why.’

It’s there in her face. No. Maybe there wasn’t then. But you can bet there is now.

We eat the free tiramisu in silence. The words everyone’s sake are back, but now they’re underlined with doubt in red ink. I feel the profound shift of things. The inescapability. The unlikeliness of us ever going back to the way it was – or to earlier perceptions, even – no matter what happens next.

We pay up and leave. As I’m slipping on my coat and we step outside, I say, ‘He’s gone. And yet I still think he’s going to come back.’

There. The truth. So quiet, I am not even sure I’ve said it. Sally looks terribly moved for a moment, then puts her arms around me and gives me a long, tight hug. I am stiff as a board. It strikes me that I’m unable to cry.