Page 52 of Close to You
It’s like a reflex. I love you-I love you, too. One sentence follows the other like night after day. I’ve said the words without thinking about them and then, before I know what’s happening, our livesarechanging. In the middle of the service station forecourt, David drops to one knee and pulls my hand towards him.
‘Will you marry me?’
Twenty-Four
THE NOW
It takes me a few moments to figure out where I am. The mattress is too hard and the covers are too warm; like sleeping on a pavement next to a bonfire. I fight against the quilt, freeing myself from the temporary straitjacket and then roll over to see Andy’s eyelids fluttering. He’s breathing deeply, lost in a dream, and I watch him for a couple of minutes. He always looks older in the mornings, before he shaves. Shearing the stubble from his face each morning skims a few years from his age.
Sometimes when we’re like this, I see David in him. They don’t look alike and they couldn’t be more different in terms of personality, but, when they’re sleeping, they share the fact that they are completely out of it.
I roll off the bed and pad around the bare-wood floor until I’m in the hallway. Andy doesn’t have a cleaner and yet his place is always immaculate, as if there are pixie maids who visit in the night. Sometimes, I feel as if I’m making the house dirty simply by being around.
The bedroom next to the main one has been cleared, ready for me to move in. Andy has put three identical wardrobes side by side into an alcove; and there is a pair of shoe racks under the window. This space is mine to do with as I please… although it will never feel likeourhouse. It’s his space and always will be.
Back into the main bedroom and Andy is still breathing deeply. He’s not snoring, because it’s not the type of thing I can imagine him doing. He has far too much control over his life for that. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him sneeze, either. David was all about chaos and lethargy; Andy is calm and meticulous planning. His clothes for today are laid out neatly on a chair at the end of the bed, with a chosen pair of shoes underneath.
I watch him and it’s easy to see the circle continuing. I married David because I didn’t want to grow old and be lonely. Here I am, three years on, moving in with someone else for the same reason.
I close the door to the bedroom and head downstairs into the kitchen. There’s so much white, just like Andy’s juice bar. Everything clean and in its place. A bowl is on the counter, filled with a precise measure of bran flakes that Andy will top up with an exact amount of almond milk when he gets downstairs. The espresso machine is already loaded with a levelled, double shot of coffee; the mugs are lined up perfectly on the side, ready to go.
I wonder if living together will work. Whether Andy will end up trying to organise me in the way he organises everything else in his life. Even if he does, I don’t know if it will necessarily be a bad thing. Perhaps that’s what I need?
The inside of his fridge is like a spread across the pages of a health food magazine. There are juices, obviously; plus fruit, vegetables, almond milk, soy milk, and five different types of yoghurt. One day soon, this will all be mine.
Orjointlymine.
I put a small handful of raspberries into a bowl and head for the sofa. There’s a photo of Andy and me on the coffee table that I don’t remember being there before. It was taken when Andy did a charity race up Snowden last summer. I helped the support team at the top and he raised almost £13,000 for the scouts to buy a new minibus. Our faces are smushed together and, though he’s slightly red-faced, I’m the one who’s a sweaty mess, as if I did all the running. It was taken on Andy’s phone by one of the other volunteers and I have no idea when Andy printed it out, or found a frame. It’s certainly not very flattering to me, although it was a fun couple of days away. We drank beer in the sunshine and I ate the best roast meal of my life the afternoon after the run. It was then that I decided Andy and I might just make it; that I wasn’t destined to become a bitter, divorced middle-aged spinster.
There’s a power cable that leads to the shelf underneath the coffee table. I follow it to Andy’s laptop, which is sitting with the lid half-open, as if he put it away in a hurry. The screen is glowing a bluey-white onto the keyboard as I lift the lid and pull it out. The main screen shows the desktop but Word and Chrome are minimised into the corner.
I know I should close the lid and leave it – but it’s not what people do, is it? Not what I do. I click to open the web browser, which reveals the BBC Sport home page. The next tab along is theGuardian– of course it is – and then there’s the home page for Andy’s scout troop. The three pages are him in a nutshell; all it’s missing is a fourth fromMen’s Health.
I’m about to snap the lid closed when I’m drawn to the ‘History’ button. I almost want Pornhub to be top of the list – it would prove he wasn’t quite the saint he always seems to be.
That isn’t what he was looking for before he drove out to the pub last night, though. Instead, there are a series of Google searches: ‘Morgan Persephone’, ‘Morgan Noble’, ‘Morgan Persephone award’, ‘Morgan Persephone talk’.
It’s like a tree where I’m the trunk. He’ll search for something relating to me and then the branches take him off in varying directions. Andy looked at the awards page to which Steven directed me that contains the photos of the night. He spent five minutes clicking around the home page for my studio. He did an image search.
And then, below all that is the two-word search term that leaves me feeling as if I can’t breathe.
‘David Persephone’.
Twenty-Five
THE WHY
Three years ago
Jane waves me across to an alcove underneath the trophy cabinet. It’s the first time I’ve visited the rugby club since I was a teenager and this was one of the few places that would serve underage. It also helped that it was largely frequented by beefy men. It’s probably the only time in my life that I’ve ever remotely noticed men’s thighs. Sometimes it feels like I was a completely different person then. As if I woke up one day and the person I used to be had gone to be replaced by whoever I am now.
With a bottle of wine in one hand and an empty glass in the other, Jane is already a large part of the way towards sleeping while slumped over a toilet seat tonight. We’ve both been there before. She takes a swig from the bottle and then fills the glass and has a mouthful from that, too, before nodding across to where my mum is sitting at David’s side. They’re close to the bar, but it feels like he has eyes only for her tonight.
‘Your mum loves him,’ Jane says.
‘More than me.’
Jane looks between us but doesn’t deny it. The great love of my mother’s life was my dad. When he went there was nobody else. I was a square peg who had no chance of getting through the round hole. A part of her died with him.
