Page 9 of The Moment I Met You
‘I don’t know for sure,’ I say. ‘But I want to travel. I love my job, as a teacher, but I feel like I’ve gone straight from home to uni to work, and I … it sounds like a cliché, but I want to see more of the world, you know? It’s so big, and so beautiful, and I’ve seen hardly any of it! So travel, yes, but maybe not just that … my work in England matters, it really does, but I feel like I could do more. Give more. Experience more … I’ve applied to work as a volunteer at a school in Guatemala. I don’t know if I’ll get it, or if I’ll take it even if I do – but I need to shake things up. At the moment I’m too settled. My life feels too planned out. Too fixed.’
‘Like all of eternity is stretching out before you, every day the same, onwards and onwards forever?’
‘Yes! Exactly like that. I need to stretch my legs. Unfurl my wings. Escape from the bloody butterfly board.’
‘I’m not quite sure what you mean about the butterflies, but I do understand what it’s like to be trapped in your own life. It sucks, to use a technical term.’
I laugh, and realise that this is the first time I have said any of this out loud. I have thought it, vaguely, but never discussed it with Harry – the timing has never seemed right.
‘Why is it that it’s sometimes easier to speak to someone you don’t know than to your family and friends?’ I ask.
‘I don’t know. I find it difficult to speak to anyone. I can only apologise for my lack of social skills, and if I made you feel awkward earlier.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ I reply, pouring a little more wine for us both. ‘I ambushed you. It was a totally selfish move, anyway, I just didn’t want to sit here talking to myself. Mentally at least. Anyway, it might work in my favour – I haven’t told my boyfriend any of this, so please don’t start getting all chatty.’
‘It seems unlikely. You might not have noticed this, but I’m not one of life’s great talkers.’
‘Ha! I had noticed that, yes. Very much the strong and silent type, aren’t you?’
‘Definitely silent. Still working on the strong. But don’t worry – what happens in Santa Maria de Alto stays in Santa Maria de Alto … that sounds much better with just “Vegas”, doesn’t it?’
‘It does, but you work with what you’ve got,’ I reply, smiling. His English is fluid, but his accent underlies it.
‘So – the boyfriend. Is he one of the things you want to escape?’
I want to deny it, even to myself, but I need to stop lying. He is looking at me so searchingly, so honestly, that I don’t even want to any more.
‘Maybe,’ I say. ‘I don’t know. We’ve been together since we were eighteen. Harry and I, well, we wear each other like comfy old sweaters. Everyone falls in love with him, he’s so easy-going, so charming. But something has changed. It’s not his fault, or mine. It’s just that I don’t … I don’t …’
‘Love him any more?’ he suggests.
‘I think you might be right,’ I whisper. ‘Though I’m struggling to even say it, never mind accept it. Maybe I’m expecting too much? Don’t all couples reach a stage where they’re more like friends than lovers? Where they … I don’t know, settle for what works, rather than what fairy tales tell us relationships should be? Isn’t it normal for some of that fire to fade?’
He seems to ponder this deeply, and is, probably without knowing, twisting that wedding ring around on his finger.
‘I’d like to say yes,’ he says, ‘to make you feel better. But in my experience? No. You don’t have to settle for anything. And that fire? It doesn’t have to fade. It can burn even brighter with time, with the right person. With someone who ignites your passion, who inspires you, who challenges you. Who argues with you but makes you feel safe. Someone who makes you feel … more alive. It’s not just about finding someone you can get along with – it’s about finding someone who makes your whole world better.’
I am momentarily stunned by this small speech, by the raw emotion in his voice, by his sheer conviction. I feel an unexpected sting of tears in my eyes, and reply, ‘You’re very lucky, to be married to someone like that.’
‘I was,’ he says quietly.
I register the past tense, and wait. He will tell me if he wants to – and if he doesn’t? Well, I’ll probably ask anyway.
‘She died,’ he adds, staring at his wedding band. ‘Two years ago last Monday. We’d always planned to come here together, and I didn’t want to be at home, in our home, on the anniversary of the day I lost her … I almost didn’t get through it the first time. So here I am, in a place about as different from Stockholm as I could possibly find. Still missing her.’
I reach out, take hold of his hand, cradle it in mine. He looks up, shocked, as though he hasn’t been touched for all that time. Perhaps he hasn’t.
‘That’s terrible,’ I say. ‘I’m so sorry. What was her name?’
‘Anna,’ he replies, frowning. ‘And that’s not the usual response when people find out … to ask her name. Thank you.’
‘What is the usual response?’
‘Oh, you know, sympathy, nice words, but underneath it all? Fear. Once you drop the D-word into a conversation it dominates everything. Within seconds people are trying to find out how she died, if it was a car accident or suicide, if she had any underlying health conditions, what the symptoms were … was she a smoker or a drinker or did she come from a long line of haemophiliacs? It’s like people think it could be contagious. They’re scared by the proximity of death; fear on some animalistic level that it might be catching, a fatal bug they can’t clean off with hand-sanitising gel.
‘I become the Grim Reaper by association, and even though people want to be kind, they back off. I probably don’t help. I’m not exactly encouraging.’
‘Because you want to avoid conversations like this, where you have to talk about it?’
