Page 80 of The Man Who Didn't Call
‘There’s nobody who can do what I do, though,’ I say now. ‘It’s not like she needs someone to wash her, or make her food – she just needs a person she trusts at the end of the phone, or to come round if she goes into overwhelm. I take her shopping, I sort stuff out, I talk to her. I’m her buddy. Not her carer.’
Alan nods, but I don’t think he sees it in the same way. ‘Just think about it,’ he says. ‘But as for Sarah . . . You did the right thing, Ed. You did theonlything.’
‘Mmmm.’
‘Think about Romeo and Juliet. Or Tony and Maria.’
Alan’s love of musical theatre delights me normally, but I’m not in the mood forWest Side Storytonight.
‘They knew it was wrong to get together,’ he persists, ‘but they went for it anyway and then ended up dead. You’ve been a lot smarter than that. You’ve resisted, which takes much more courage.’
‘Well, that’s great to know, Alan. Thank you. But the real problem is that I have to stop loving her and I don’t know how.’
Alan looks thoughtful. ‘I’ve often wondered how that works. Making yourself fall out of love with someone,’ he says. ‘What do you actuallydo? Why haven’t Haynes published a manual on it?’ His hayrick hair sticks crazily out from the sides of his head as he ponders the question. Alan’s never had to stop loving anyone. He and Gia have been married for nine years, together for nineteen. Before her there was only Shelley, whose heart Alan (very guiltily) broke, and a small handful of girls from school with whom he was mostly just trying to subdue his never-ending teenage erection.
Howdoyou just stop loving someone? The love I felt for Sarah wasn’t just a version of something that already lived in me; it was something I built from scratch, something I grew. By the time we said goodbye, it was as tangible as she was.
How do I just kill it? Even if I let time wear it down, there would still be fragments scattered all around inside me. The unexpected earthiness of her laugh, the fan of her hair on apillow. The sound of a sheep’s baa, the sight of Mouse in her slim fingers.
‘I have no idea how you stop loving someone,’ I say eventually. Alan’s watching me again. ‘I guess you just sit and wait for . . . I don’t know. The intensity to fade? Right now, though, I feel like a pressure cooker.’
‘Maybe that’s why so many poets have written about heartbreak. Helps them let off steam. Like bloodletting. Rapid discharge of overwhelming feelings.’
‘Right,’ I sigh. ‘Rapid discharge sounds good. Release.’
There’s a pause, and then a snort, and then we both start laughing. ‘If you want to take yourself off home for a bit of rapid release, I won’t mind,’ Alan says.
He gets up and goes to the bar. I look at his ankles and smile. He is of normal build, Alan, but he has ankles so slender you can get a hand round them. He gets really cross when I do that.
The wine fridge hums. In a distant kitchen, someone is scraping plates.
I look at my watch: 8.40 p.m. I wonder what Sarah’s having for lunch, and I can’t stand it.
Alan returns with our pints and sits down, rubbing his hands with glee at the thought of the steaks he’s just ordered, and I want more than anything to be him at this moment. To be Alan Glover, smelling lightly of yoghurt, secure in his life, responsible only for the well-being of his lovely little girl.
‘Just going to the loo,’ I tell him.
On my way back to the table, I notice that a couple has taken residence at a table in the corner. They’re dressed in black and I can tell, straight away, that something about them isn’t quite right. They aren’t talking, although thewoman is holding on to the man as if they were in a strong wind.
At the same moment I realize the woman is crying, I realize I know her. I slow down, so I can get a good look at her, and after a few seconds I recognize Hannah Harrington. Sarah’s sister. Less than two metres from me, curled into the side of a man I take to be her husband. Her face is red, disfigured with sadness, but I can seeher. A shadow of Sarah. Just like she was on the beach when I left her – stunned, miserable, utterly silent.
Hannah doesn’t spot me and I move quietly back to our table. I tell Alan about the funeral cars I saw heading to Sarah’s village earlier on. Then, because my stomach is churning, I blurt out that if Hannah’s crying, it must surely be someone Sarah’s family knows very well. ‘Sarah could have flown back for the funeral,’ I whisper, and my voice has tipped just a bit too far towards madness. ‘She could be a few miles away from here, Alan!’
Alan looks alarmed. ‘Don’t go looking for her,’ he says eventually.
Our steaks arrive soon after, and he ends up eating mine.
A little later on I get up to buy a round and see that Hannah and her husband have gone. I can’t stop thinking about who might have died. For a terrible moment I even consider the possibility that it could have been Sarah herself.
It’s irrational, of course, but as the evening passes I struggle to let it go. It fits far too comfortably with those intrusive thoughts I had when I got back from LA. That voice, asking if I’d still feel like I’d done the right thing if Sarah died.
I get embarrassingly drunk, and at some point I thump my fist on the table at the general hopelessness of things.
I am not the sort of man to thump a table. When Alan sayshe reckons he’ll come back to mine to drink whisky and watch the Olympics, I don’t argue. I’m not sure I’d leave me to my own devices if I were him, either.
Chapter Forty-Three
Dear You,
