Page 66 of The Two Lives of Lydia Bird

Ah. ‘Will you take it, do you think?’ I say tentatively.

‘Probably,’ he says. ‘It’s with a friend from uni, he’s expanding his practice.’

‘Right,’ I say. The news that he’s leaving changes the dynamic between us in a great rush; I don’t think I’ll see him again after today.

‘Another coffee?’ I put my hand on his shoulder as I get up to make us a refill.

‘You’re just showing off now because you have a kettle.’

‘Maybe,’ I say, but I’m not thinking about coffee or kettles any more. I’m thinking how easy he is to be around and how his grey eyes have green flecks in when you really look, and when he reaches for my hand to pull me into his lap, I let him.

He sighs and wraps his arms around me, his face in my hair, and I’m not sure which of us is giving comfort and which of us is receiving. He hasn’t come here to talk about his kettle. He’s come here because seeing the woman he loved and lost has knocked him for six; I understand that feeling more than he knows. He’s here because I’m blessedly separate from every other part of his life; I get that too. We don’t know each other’s family or friends – we don’t even know each other very well – but right now that’s precisely what makes this right. I am to him what he is to me: a blank page. I like him a great deal and at a different stage of our lives it might have become a chapter or even a whole book, but he’s leaving for London and my life is just too complicated to accommodate someone new in it. This story has just one page: boy meets girl, they save each other, and then they never see each other again.

‘Lydia,’ he says, his hands bracketing my face, and then he pushes his fingers into my hair and kisses me in a way that vaporizes every rational thought from my brain. His low mood meets my kicked-around heart and we both lose control.

‘I didn’t come here for this,’ he says as I pull his T-shirt over his head, and I believe him.

‘I know that,’ I say, shaking as his fingers find the clip of my bra.

‘Shall I stop?’ he asks, one hand on my bared breast, the other thumbing away a tear as it rolls down my face.

‘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.

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