Page 34 of Jenny James Is Not a Disaster
“How so?”
“I’m not entirely sure. I think maybe I’m only just starting to realize how tied up in knots I was. I was always worried about money, about Charlie, about work, about the bills and the house and the future and the past. I don’t think I understood how special it could be to just slow down, look around, look up... just be, you know?”
“I do. Totally. And all of those things you were worried about were real, and life is hard sometimes, but the value of just standing still is very underrated. We’re always in such a rush—what’s next, what do I need to do, to achieve, to fix. Nights like this kind of calm you down—there is nothing so big, so important, that those stars up there haven’t seen it a million times. That was a big lesson for me as well.”
I turn over onto my side and look at him between the table legs. He is lying on his back, staring at the sky, his arms folded beneath his head. “How did you end up living like this?” I ask. “If you don’t mind talking about it.”
He turns his head and smiles slightly, the merest crooked lift of his lips. “I don’t mind talking about it, but it’s not an easy tale. You might hate me afterward.”
“Impossible,” I respond firmly.
He gazes at me for a few moments, as though trying to weigh up the truth of that one word. “I don’t think so,” he says sadly. “I think I might hate myself after I tell you, at least.”
I can hear in the tone of his voice that he means it, that he is genuinely worried that what he has to say will horrify me. Perhaps, like myself, he has been enjoying this vacation more than he expected and is reluctant to unbalance it. “If you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t have to. I understand. We all have our pasts, our secrets, things we’ve done that we’re not proud of. But I will say this—what we were in the past isn’t necessarily what we are now. Hearing about the old Luke won’t make me hate the new Luke.”
“Okay,” he says eventually. “Here goes nothing... and it’s definitely not a time of my life I’m proud of. After we lost Katie, my wife, Sally, and I tried really hard, but something was broken between us. We’d had years of battling that illness. Our whole lives became dominated by it—caring for Katie; in my case, working, dealing with treatments and hospital stays and doctor’s appointments, and spending hours on the internet looking for miracle cures. We did everything we possibly could, but in the end, that was all that was left of us. When we didn’t have Katie, we didn’t have anything. It was like the glue that held us together had just... melted away.
“We met a lot of other families during it all; some were solid as a rock, others you could see the cracks. When it all first started, after the diagnosis, I was convinced that we’d definitely fall into the rock category. And while Katie was around, we did—for her sake, I think. Then, afterward... well. We were both empty, both damaged beyond repair. We talked about separating, but neither of us was quite ready to let go, even though it might have been less painful for us both if we had. I channeled all of that grief into two things: working and being an absolute bastard.”
My eyes widen in surprise. I have not known Luke for very long, but that doesn’t sound like him at all. “Really?” I ask. “In what way?”
“I’d stay out for days, some of it because I was putting in insane hours at the office trying to make myself feel better by making yet more money. I worked in finance, and I’d always been good at it, and... well, I was used to succeeding, you know? Used to getting my own way. I was a total stereotype—flashy cars, big house in Surrey, holidays in the Caribbean, complete corporate bullshit. The whole thing with Katie made me realize that no matter how much money I had, I couldn’t fix everything. But that particular nugget of wisdom took a while to register—at first, I was even more ambitious, even more driven.
“Looking back, it was just an excuse not to go home. Not to be in the house where we’d raised her, not to walk past her bedroom. Not to be sucked inside and sit for hours on her bed, holding her cuddly toys, inhaling the sheets that smelled of her... not to have to see the pain on Sally’s face, or to deal with her grief when I couldn’t even shoulder my own. We were both suffering so much, but we just couldn’t reach out to each other. And that’s when the cheating started.”
He glances over at me, and I see the sadness and shame on his face. The judgment he has already made about himself, the pain that is still there, just beneath the surface. I stay silent—there is nothing I could add at this stage that would make him feel better, and anyway, I suspect he doesn’t want me to even try.
“It was meaningless stuff,” he continues. “One-night stands. Again, any excuse to stay away—to go to their place, or a hotel, or, on one insane occasion, the boardroom... ridiculous. I don’t even recognize myself when I think about all of that. It’s like watching someone who has stolen my body do all those stupid and hurtful things.”
“I don’t recognize that version of you either,” I say, reaching out to briefly pat his arm. I feel the need to console him, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t shocked. I simply can’t imagine him behaving like that, when all I’ve seen of him has been kind and honorable.
“Well, that version of me existed, and he did a lot of damage. Sally wasn’t stupid; she knew I was pulling away. She never challenged me on it, even though part of me wanted her to. I don’t know why. But eventually, maybe because of some hidden death wish, I got careless—charged a hotel to our joint credit card. Along with champagne and chocolates. I’ll never forget the look on her face when I walked into the kitchen and she was sitting there at the table, holding that innocent-looking sheet of paper. A sheet of paper that destroyed whatever we had left.”
“Was she angry?” I ask, thinking it’s a silly question as soon as it leaves my mouth.
“That’s the thing—she wasn’t. Angry would have been better. It would have been easier if she’d thrown plates at me, called me names, cut up my suits with garden shears... anythingthat indicated she still cared, that there was still some passion left—still something to fight for. Anything other than what I saw—which was sadness and hurt and disappointment. Mainly, underneath all of that, resignation. She’d known, really, what was going on—but, either consciously or not, she’d turned a blind eye to it. Then I forced her into a position where she couldn’t ignore it anymore. I broke her heart, or at least the pieces of it that were left after Katie.
“We have moved past it—she’s remarried, has a beautiful little boy; we are still friends. You don’t go through what we went through and just abandon each other—we will always share the memory of Katie. But still—I will never, ever forgive myself for it. It was brutal.”
I have never met Sally, but I have been on the other end of heartbreak. Of that loneliness and pain. On top of losing a child, it must have been intolerable—for both of them. Rob left me battered and wounded, but I still had my child, and I still had hope. My heart bleeds for Sally—but the big difference here is that Luke is so clearly devastated by what he did. The fact that she has forgiven him speaks to both her kind spirit and his genuine regret.
“Luke, that’s horrible. But you were wounded, insane with grief...”
“All of that is true, but the way I handled it... well, as I said, I’ll never forgive myself. I don’t deserve to forgive myself.”
So much is becoming clear to me now: his lifestyle, the spartan existence, the way he has effectively put himself in solitary confinement. It’s not that it makes him happy—it’s that he thinks he doesn’t deserve to be happy. I am horrified by the things he did, but I can still feel his pain, see the way he is suffering.
“So Sally has forgiven you?”
“I think so,” he replies, smiling. “I’m the godfather to her son, at least, which is a good sign.”
“So she’s the one you were talking about that day? The person you loved but you’d hurt? The person who helped you when you needed it?”
“Yes. She’s the one.”
“She sounds like an amazing woman.”
“She was... She is...”
