After You Left(61)

‘I’ll try.’

I go back into the dining room, thrust forty pounds at Victoria’s friend for my share of the bill, and run.

It’s 7:25 when the taxi pulls up at my building. All my instincts say he’s been and gone. I pelt up two flights of stairs. When I reach the door, I stop and try to catch my breath.

I can barely get the key in. Please God don’t let him have been and gone.

When I go in, I see that his things are still there, exactly where I left them, in the middle of the floor. I gaze at them in baffled relief.

He hasn’t been.

He isn’t coming.

This is some sick game.

The flat is deadly quiet; not even the molecules in the air move, I think. I pluck at the strap of my bag, and let it drop off my shoulder, to the floor.

And then I’m aware of a presence.

Justin is sitting on the sofa, carefully watching me.





TWENTY-SEVEN


He’s wearing a high-collared, pea-green shirt, open at the neck, and a new gunmetal-grey suit. He has one arm extended along the back of the couch, legs wide apart, like a sitting statue, the kind you see in the gardens of Parisian stately homes.

I sink into the nearest chair. ‘Justin.’

Despite wanting to hate him, when I look into his face right here and now, I just want to go back to the way it was. I’d give anything.

‘I thought you’d been and gone. That I’d missed you . . .’ I’ve never seen such shadows under his eyes. Such rapid weight loss, especially in his face. He looks like he hasn’t slept for days.

He’s ill. I knew it all along.

‘Been and gone? Good heavens. No. Why would you think that?’

He’s still wearing the ring I slid on to his finger just over two weeks ago, which gives me a crazy sense of hope. And yet I see the distance in his eyes.

He studies the hand I’ve placed over my stomach. ‘Are you okay?’

I nod, then quickly say, ‘No, Justin. How can I possibly be okay?’ I’m just trying to process all the mixed messages I’m getting. He continues to stare at me, but I could be a stranger he’s mildly concerned about. Someone who slipped in the shopping centre.

‘What about you? Is there something wrong with your health?’

He shakes his head, seeming surprised. ‘No. Of course not. I told you, I’m fine.’ Then after a moment or two, he says, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know why I just took off. I just . . .’ His misery, his conflict, is written all over his face; it’s palpable. ‘I’m sorry, I wish I could, but I can’t really explain it to you.’

Our eyes lock and stay locked, for all the things that neither of us can say. Then tears spill down his face.

This stuns me. I have never seen him cry. Justin usually only displays his feelings once he’s reflected on them, packaged them and positioned them. He is staring at a fixed point in space, just letting tears roll as though he can’t even feel them.

After what seems like a very long time of my watching him like this, he rests his head on the back of the sofa. The shadows either side of his nose look more like bruises. I literally cannot get over how ghastly he appears. I stare at his prominent Adam’s apple and feel a frustrated surge of pity. ‘Why would you be so deliberately unkind, Justin? Who marries someone when he’s got doubts, and then changes his mind a few days later and just walks out? What kind of person does that? And what was I? Blind, and stupid, and so into myself and my own happiness that I managed to miss the fact that my own fiancé didn’t want to marry me?’

He raises his head and looks at me now. ‘I didn’t have doubts, Alice. I loved you, and that still hasn’t changed. But other things have.’

‘What?’ I practically shoot up from the chair. ‘Just tell me, for God’s sake! I know you’ve got someone else. I’ve virtually seen it with my own eyes.’ My throat prickles. I have never shouted at anyone like this before. ‘I know. But I don’t know why.’

He continues to look at me, calmly. Calm but distant. It strikes me that we were closer when we first met than we are now, as husband and wife. I can’t rush to him and have him hold me, to have him ease and reassure me. It’s illogical, almost. The emotional stop sign is right there. I can see it. He can, too, given he’s the one who put it up.

I swipe tears with the back of my hand.

‘It’s not like that. Not at all what you’re thinking.’ He sighs, shakily, and I honestly can’t tell which of us is finding this more traumatic. I know it’s coming. I am listening and pushing it away with all my might. But I can’t look away. ‘What I should have told you, Alice, is that I have a son. His name is Dylan. He’s three months old.’

I am falling in slow motion from a twenty-storey building and have just hit the ground. There should be profound pain, but I’m just too busy thinking how I could possibly have fallen from such a great height and still be alive.

‘You have a son?’ Oddly, despite my shock, a small part of me is thinking, Is that it?

‘With Lisa.’

‘Lisa.’ I repeat the name of his ex-girlfriend. It echoes, trying to form significance, but it can’t quite get there.

‘It happened right before I met you. Literally, a few days. I ran into her at the courthouse. We went for dinner, probably because neither of us had anything better to do. I hadn’t seen her in a very long time. She ended up back at mine. It was just that one time. But I suppose it’s enough, isn’t it?’ He shakes his head as though still unable to fully fathom it. ‘I didn’t use a condom. I wasn’t thinking. We never used them because she was always on the pill. I suppose I was falling back on old practices.’