Page 18 of The Moment I Met You
We both know we probably should be resting, conserving our strength and our air supply, but I think we both also need this connection. Both need to communicate, to share, to laugh, to feel human – to avoid the panic that will result in us trying to claw our way out of the ground like characters in a Gothic novel.
The water bottle is now only a third full, and we are still lying in the same space, unable to move more than a few inches. The fullest range of movement that either of us has is turning onto one side and back, bending our knees, stretching fingertips into the air, and contorting into a strange half-sitting position.
The minute I allow myself to think about how trapped we are, how we can’t get up or walk away or even sit completely upright, my breath speeds up and my heart booms with palpitations.
It feels like we have told each other everything – and now, finally, we are here. Anna.
‘I don’t talk about her a lot,’ he continues. ‘And that is unfair. She deserves to be talked about. She deserves to have her name said out loud. It’s like … like I’ve hoarded her memory somehow. I’ve cut myself off from the friends we did have. I work from home. I’ve kept her to myself. But here we are … in this insane predicament. And there is so much about her that I don’t want to leave unsaid.
‘At first, she was feeling bloated, and tired,’ he says, ‘and she had to pee all the time. We thought she was pregnant, and we were delighted. She was young … she was healthy … we’d been trying for a while. With all those signs, we assumed it was going to be the very best of news, not the worst. A beginning, not an end.’
He pauses, and I feel him shudder.
‘It was very early; we were hopeful but she hadn’t taken a test yet. Then I came home from work one day, and she was wrapped up in a blanket on the sofa, looking sad. She didn’t often look sad, my Anna. I wish I could show you a picture of her … she was full of energy. She viewed living as one giant adventure. But not that day – she just looked deflated, like something had gone out of her. She’d done a pregnancy test, while I was out. She’d been planning to wrap it up and give it to me as a present. But instead, it was negative, and she was so disappointed. I remember sitting next to her, and wrapping the blanket around both of us, and her crying so much it soaked through my shirt.’
‘Oh, how horrible, for both of you.’
‘I told her we could do another test, later – that it might be a false negative. That even if she wasn’t pregnant, we had lots of time. I just wanted her to feel happy again. But for the next month or so, she carried on feeling sick. Her appetite went. Her tummy was sore. She did about three more tests, but they were all negative, and eventually I persuaded her to go and see the doctor.’
He pauses again, and I don’t push him.
‘She had some tests, and it was ovarian cancer, not a baby. In fact we were warned the whole baby thing might not happen, and that the priority now needed to be keeping her alive. The next couple of years was a blur really – she had surgery, she had chemo, then she had more surgery, and more chemo. She was brave, and determined, and incredibly positive all the time … until she wasn’t.
‘Until she couldn’t do it any more. Until the doctors told us that she needed to be moved to a hospice, that it was the end of the road. Honestly, I think even then, she was more worried about me and how I was going to cope without her. She was probably right – she knew I would fall apart without her. Wouldn’t know how to go on.’
‘But you have gone on,’ I say firmly. ‘You’re still here. Still living. You lost the love of your life, your companion, your soulmate – but you’re still here. Still trying. You’ve not done so badly. She’d be proud of you.’
He doesn’t reply immediately, then says, ‘Maybe. It’s a nice thought. I do sometimes wonder what she’d think of me now. Mainly I think she’d want to give me a kick. I often feel like I’m floating, detached from the world, not really engaging with everything around me. The exact opposite of what she’d have wanted me to do.’
‘I’m sure she’d understand. I’m sure she knew you better than anyone else.’
‘She did, and that’s why she was worried about leaving me behind … she knew I’d be lost without her.
‘She even told me to make sure I found someone else. Although she did say it couldn’t be anyone as good as her – and not too quickly, or she’d come back to haunt me.’
He chuckles lightly, but stops himself, clearly in pain from his ribs. ‘As if I could ever forget about her. I knew Anna better than I know myself. Coming on this trip was my attempt to give myself that kick to start living again.’
‘Well, I know it didn’t go as planned,’ I say, ‘and that you probably didn’t expect to end up trapped with a weird English girl, but here we are …’
‘She’d laugh her head off at this. The irony of it all would be too much for her – I come on holiday to find some meaning to a life without her and I end up in an earthquake. Although, I think in a strange way, it has helped. I thought I’d had enough, that nothing was worth it – but now I know I’m wrong. I want more. I want to live.’
‘Well, that is definitely a silver lining. Maybe there’s been a smidgeon of good in all the bad?’
‘I’ve never heard that word before – smidgeon? What does it mean?’
‘It means a tiny, teeny bit. Like, we have a smidgeon of water left. We have a smidgeon of room. We have a smidgeon of everything. Which is definitely better than having no smidgeons. And now that thing’s happened, where you say a word over and over again and it suddenly sounds ridiculous? Although with the word smidgeon, it probably always sounded ridiculous …’
I tail off, realising I’m doing that thing where I just keep on talking again – and that nothing I say will ever be able to capture the pain he’s been through. The loss he’s been through.
‘I lost my dad when I was young,’ I say. ‘Just a little girl, really. I felt very lonely. My mum didn’t cope well, and I … well, I suppose I became the grown-up, way too soon. I looked after her, and the house, and pretended everything was fine at school because I was scared of losing her as well. Even when she met Ian, got her life back on track, I felt tense, worried about her … it was only later, when I met Harry, that I realised how much I needed other people. How much I’d closed myself off from everyone. Harry … he helped me open up again. Showed me how to relax, to live. I’ll always be grateful to him for that.’
‘I’m sorry you went through that,’ he says. ‘Grief is … well. You know what it is.’
We are both silent for a few moments. The kind of silence that does not feel uncomfortable.
‘Anna always planned for us to move out of the city,’ he says, completely changing the subject. ‘Once we had kids. She used to describe her dream house to me, and make me draw up plans for it – then every time I had it done, she’d change her mind. She had too many dreams to commit to paper. What about you – if you could live anywhere, where would it be? And what would your home be like?’
‘Why? Will you design me my dream house if we get out of here?’
