Page 64 of The One Day You Were My Husband
I imagined having a fridge again, filled with fresh food; music coming out of Johan’s radio; the bike he’d bought me to commute to St. Mary’s Hospital. Autumn creeping in with regretful yellow light, the days rapidly shortening. Returning to my life—our life—without him.
Tears filled my eyes, and I let them fall. I cried for Johan, for us, but above all for the person I’d believed myself to be. An adult woman with agency in her own life. A woman who understood, finally, what it meant to be truly happy.
—
Johan had a black eye, a split lip, and nasty cuts near his hairline.
He didn’t pick up the phone at first. He just looked at me warily, as if weighing up the pros and cons of talking.
“Are you OK?” I asked, when he finally did.
He half nodded, half shrugged.
“What’s happened?”
“Your mum’s friend continued to poke around, even though I told you to stop him. So they fired a warning shot.”
I blanched. “Someone attacked you?”
He snorted. “Trust me,” he said. “This was not an attack. At most it was a polite warning.”
“Oh God, Johan. Are you sure it was because of Prawat?”
“Very sure.”
“I…OK. He was paid a visit, too. He’s done, if that helps.”
Johan nodded. “Good.”
“How are you feeling? How are you doing, inside there?” I pointed at his head.
“Not good.”
He looked up at the greasy brown sky behind me, emptying rain, the odd thunderous rumble rolling through.
At that point, I cracked. “Could you at least have the fucking courtesy tolookat me?” I snapped. “Even for half a minute?”
Johan actually jumped in his chair.
“You still haven’t told me anything, Johan. Not a fucking thing about what you’ve done or why. I’m a doctor. My entire adult life has been about helping people to live. And yet here you are, smuggling some shitty, miserable drug over the border for a bunch of thugs you refuse to talk about. My job is in jeopardy, my life is in shreds, I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I don’t know what to do. Will you please just fucking welltalk to me?”
He stared at me.
“Not least about the many lies you must have told me? How long they’ve been going on? Perhaps you could tell me if anything that happened between us was real! And, indeed, who the fuck you actually are?”
I was shouting now. People were looking. I didn’t care.
Still, he didn’t speak. Sedimented anger moved in my abdomen, but there was fear, too. I realized I didn’t actually want to hear what he had to say.
After a long pause, he switched the handset to his other ear. “I am going to say this one more time, Carrie. Icannot talk to you. No amount of shouting can change that.” He sighed. “Look. We’ve been seeing each other three months. And it’s been good. Very good, at times. But it’s over now. There is no other outcome, with me in here and you out there.”
“I…What?”
There was a large dent in the grille in front of me, as if someone had thrown a stool against it. I felt some sympathy for whoever had done this.
“Listen to me, Carrie.” He spoke slowly. “I don’t want you to visit me. And I’m not just trying to save your skin—I’m done with this. Us.It was fun, and I did love you, but I’ve got bigger fish to fry now. You need to go home.”
I tried to speak, but he carried on.
