Page 124 of The Spark

On my last morning, I get up at dawn, making my way outside and to the water’s edge via the narrow steps leading down from Felix’s garden. The sky is patched with lilac clouds, the blue sea unpleated by wind. I taste salt in the air, the sweet tang of morning. Above my head, a few gulls caw and soar, riding invisible breezes. The sight of their freedom comforts me. Because I am sure that freedom is where Lara lives now.

Lara. The other love of my life. I’ve begun to believe her spirit still lingers somewhere here – that maybe, right now, she is watching me and smiling, willing me to do this.

Long time coming, you idiot, I’m sure she’d say.

I finger the paper bag that’s filled with the remains of everything I kept related to Jamie. I tipped it all into Felix’s firepit last night. Tickets from Mamma Mia! Birthday and anniversary cards. Champagne corks. The insert from a London Grammar CD. Beer mats from pubs we’d been to. Cinema ticket stubs from before we were even officially dating. Answer sheets from quizzes, busy with Jamie’s handwriting. Even crumpled parking tickets, from days spent at the beach.

I crouch down now and upturn the ashes into the water, watch the dusty residue of my former life get swallowed up by the sea.

The last remnants of a love for someone I thought I knew, but never actually did.

I wanted to do it here, because I know she would approve. I know she would be proud of me. I know she’d want to look on as I finally say goodbye.

Chapter 53.

Soon enough I am back at work, and life is rolling unimaginably on.

Most days, it still feels impossible, the certainty I will never see her again. During our lost decade, there was always the chance that we would be reunited one day. But it’s a different thing entirely to know I definitely won’t be at her wedding, or her mine. That we won’t ever meet each other’s babies. Or go out for coffee in our retirement to bitch about the price of milk. That our friendship won’t ever evolve. That it will be permanently frozen in time.

And Felix... He will move on, eventually. Of course he will: he’s only in his thirties. I know he’ll always love Lara, but one day, he will meet someone else. That’s just the way life goes.

So I do what I always do when I’m struggling to make sense of things: I throw myself into work, staying in the office until it’s ten at night and my head is pounding, my eyes stinging from staring at a screen. I get up before dawn each day and power-walk around the block, not wanting to be alone with my thoughts for too long. I start drinking soluble vitamins as a substitute for food.

But, as with all sticking plasters, this strategy eventually begins to weaken. I begin losing weight and the headaches are lingering. I know this way of coping isn’t actually coping at all.

I reconnect with my counsellor, Meena. I book a session, my first since Lara told me she was dying.

Meena asks how I’m dealing with it all.

‘Work. Work helps.’ I don’t mention the headaches.

‘How does it help?’

‘It takes my mind off everything. And... I clean.’

She nods neutrally. ‘You clean.’

‘I know that sounds a bit... you know. But I find it calming. And I like the distraction.’

‘What might happen if you weren’t distracted?’

‘I’d . . . fall apart.’

‘Why do you think you’d fall apart?’

‘Because I wouldn’t be able to... The pain would be too much.’ A sob rises in my throat, and I swallow it down.

‘Have you ever done that before?’

‘Done what?’

‘Experienced your feelings without any distractions. Focused on what you’re feeling, rather than jumping onto your laptop, or cleaning, or leaving the house?’

Why would anyone do that? ‘I don’t think so, no.’

‘You know, the benefit of really allowing yourself to feel all your emotions in the present is that you can begin to process them, rather than storing them up to dwell on, weeks, months, or maybe years down the line. There’s nothing wrong with healthy coping mechanisms – we all need them, in some form or another – but not if we use them to avoid our emotions altogether.’

Touché, I think.

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