Altered States (17 page)

Paused for Thought

I was pretty sure no one at the agency knew about Gemma, but I didn’t want to chance it. That’s why I had to go completely off the radar for a while. That’s why I couldn’t tell her. She needed deniability in case anyone came calling.

The next six months were as close to unbearable as my inexperienced soul could imagine at the time. Although it was to prove a useful taster for the rest of my life. I desperately wanted to speak to Gemma – for all she knew I was dead. For all
I
knew
she
was dead. But picking up the phone was way too risky. NSA were all over the phone lines these days.

I tried my hand at being a tourist for a couple of months, embarking on a low-key tour of New England. I’d never been up there and was kind of curious as to just how Englandy it really was. Conclusion: more cars, less teapots – much like the rest of the US.

After that I settled in New York, for no particular reason other than there is a song that suggests you should do it at least once in your life. I don’t advise basing life strategy on popular music – but then it’s probably as good a method as any.

The days began to feel almost viscous as they passed by ever slower. I waded through them in a continual fog of non-existence, trying to find myself – a new self. There was nothing left of my old life, not even my name. I needed to shop for a replacement, and New York was supposed to be good for shopping, but something was holding me back. Something inside was not allowing me to make any decisions. After a while I realised why that was. I didn’t want to make any decisions about where my life might go until Gemma was here to make them with me. That was the least I could do. That was how I was to show commitment to her; if she could ever stand the sight of me long enough for me explain.

I planned to wait six months from my disappearance before getting back in touch. Until then it was like someone had pressed pause on my life, and all I could do was wait until the remote-control wielder got back from the bathroom to continue with the show.

Finally, the day arrived. I’d had plenty of time to think about how I would do it. I couldn’t call or email; didn’t want to leave my trace of electrons. And I couldn’t pay a visit in person either because I didn’t know who was snooping around my flat, which was right next to hers.

Lucky, I recalled those antiquated papery things we used to stick stamps on. It’s somewhat ironic that in this age of advanced cryptography, the most secure way of sending a message to someone is by post. Even if it were intercepted it couldn’t be traced back to anywhere more specific than a city district, with no record of who posted it.

I knew this was going to prove a tough letter to pen. I wasn’t sure how best to phrase it. ‘Sorry, forgot to say, I’m
not
dead!’ But then I got worried about being too specific in case the agency did know about Gemma and were intercepting her mail. So I had to be cleverer than that.

I mocked up a letter from a fictitious
American Eating Disorders Association
informing her where and when the next social event was being held. I was the only person in her world that knew about that part of her life – at least, I hoped I still was – so I trusted she would understand the message. I knew she would be pretty pissed at me referring to her as having a ‘disorder’, but I figured this would be quite a long way down the list of things she hated me for right now so as not to count.

I stood at a blue mailbox on the corner of a street. I’ve always had trouble posting letters – literally, I mean – and hitting Send on an email. Not very often do you hand over control of something so instantly and irreversibly. One way or another my life was going to change on the words in that letter, and I was finding letting it go hard to do. After what seemed like about an hour some old man tottered up beside me with a bundle of mail. I steeled myself. If this old fella could post a whole stack of letters then I should be able to handle one. I let it drop and it was gone.

Two weeks later I waited expectantly in a diner in the middle of nowhere. And only at this point did I realise how ironic my choice of venue was for this supposed social gathering of the
Eating Disorders Association
. I might have smiled, if I’d remembered how.

Pushed aside was a plate sporting two half-eaten waffles. In my hands I was cradling a bottomless mug of coffee which was beginning to test the bottomless patience of the waitress – who, incidentally, most certainly wasn’t bottomless. She glided over again to top me up, continually chewing on gum like a grazing camel.

My eyes flicked to the door every time it opened, but each time they landed on no one but a stranger. I’d been there for almost an hour and now something was growing acutely urgent – my need to pee. I didn’t want to leave my post but my bladder had other ideas.

I headed over to Chewy behind the counter to explain that I was waiting for someone and to ask if she could keep an eye out for me whilst I visited the bathroom.

Then, the door opened, and this time my eyes fell on known territory. Only it was different. She was different. Her hair was shorter. She seemed thinner, even though I hadn’t realised there was anywhere she could have been thinner before. The clothes she wore didn’t seem like hers – I didn’t recognise any of them.

Suddenly, I experienced a pang of fear as I realised what these changes represented. They were the changes of a woman that had moved on. But what was I expecting? Six months was a long time. The question was, could she ever move back?

Neither of us stirred. Neither of us spoke. The tension was such that even Chewy’s lower jaw stopped rotating.

I turned my body to face Gemma but took no step forward, so as to offer an open posture without rushing her. This was her moment. She was boss. It was important this was understood.

Eventually, Gemma walked toward me with purposeful steady strides. She stopped before me, then she slapped me across the face. Hard. Fair, I thought. I didn’t move. She slapped me again.

‘I need to explain,’ I said, rather obviously.

‘Yes, you fucking do.’

She started to pound on my chest with clenched fists. I let her for a moment before grabbing her wrists. She struggled against me as months of anger and frustration burst out. I pulled her in, wrapped an arm around her and held her firmly. She resisted for a moment, writhing in my arms, but then she gave in and began to sob.

‘Never leave me again,’ she whispered into my chest through tears.

‘I won’t,’ I said, genuinely not knowing how hollow that promise was.

Nascent Truth

Gemma joined me in New York. She worked as a placement teacher, and I freelanced out my skills. To begin with I could not be too overt as to what I was offering, and I touted myself as a Business Negotiator. I knew I could come in handy in the boardroom as an advisor, with my unique skills at communication. To get the ball rolling I had to offer my services on a trial basis, gratis – or at least do a little demonstration of my abilities.

After a few legit contracts I started to make some slightly greyer contacts. This suited me as I wanted to keep off the radar. Fortunately, no one who hired me was ever likely to shout about it. Secret weapons are best kept secret.

The establishment of my new life was complete and I was, dare I say it,
content
. I don’t have the kind of temperament that allowed me to be actually
happy
, but I had finally reached a place where I wanted to stay.

For a while, at least.

Time passed and there was never a knock at the door. Even if the agency didn’t buy my dying stunt they obviously couldn’t find me, and that was good to know.

One year after fleeing, Gemma fell pregnant with our child. To describe the emotion I felt at this news I won’t resort to such clichés as, ‘the happiest man alive’, because I’m not so dumb to believe they mean anything. But I finally understood why people feel the need to spout such twaddle. This was quite a significant development for me. It’s true to say that I reached a new extreme on my emotion scale.

It began with a pain in Gemma’s stomach and a tenderness about her abdomen. Then later that day she called to me from the bathroom saying she was losing a lot of blood, and that it wouldn’t stop. I was overwhelmed by a sickening fear that I can’t even begin to describe. But I was lucid enough to get her into the car.

By the time we reached the hospital Gemma was in extreme shock and they took her from me immediately; left me standing all alone in a clinically white corridor as they whisked her away from me.

There can be no greater sense of impotence felt by a man than when he finds himself pacing uselessly up and down a hospital corridor as his family fight for their lives without him. This was possibly the only time in my life when I wished to believe in a god. Any god would do. So that I could fall to the ground and pray till my knees were raw.

I was not present for any of what followed but I pieced it together later. Doctors sometimes aren’t keen to talk in medical terms because they think you won’t understand. But I needed to understand. Every last detail.

Gemma had suffered a major placental abruption: the placental lining had separated from her uterus. She had lost a lot of blood so they gave her a blood transfusion immediately.

The complication led to something called disseminated intravascular coagulation, which means that blood clots were forming inside blood vessels throughout her body. It prevents normal blood coagulation and in Gemma’s case led to her starting to bleed from her skin, mouth, nose and pretty much every other orifice in her body.

Due to the nature of this condition the decision was made not to attempt to deliver the baby by caesarean section and so a natural birth was induced.

The baby was born successfully.

But she survived no longer than a few minutes.

The only saving grace was that Gemma was no longer conscious to witness this. Her organs began to fail one-by-one and she was rushed into intensive care.

And all this time ... I just paced.

Now I will allow myself to use a cliché because it
does
have meaning. The next eight days were the longest days of my life. I probably got hours of sleep that barely ventured into double figures over this period. I spent most of it on an uncomfortable plastic chair drinking weak vending-machine coffee.

Eventually, Gemma pulled through and was able to leave intensive care. Then I had the task of telling her that our daughter had died.

And so began the task of rebuilding our lives. Although it turned out that we were not such great builders. Our relationship never really recovered. And if I’m honest, it was mostly my fault. The final nail was only a little thing.

It was late, nearly midnight. I was rummaging for morsels of entertainment amongst the perpetual trash of late night TV. Meeting with no success I made my way through to the kitchen and poured myself a gin and tonic. I poured a second in optimistic anticipation of Gemma’s return. No ice, it hurt her teeth. It hurt mine too sometimes but in my opinion a G’n’T wasn’t complete anywhere but on the rocks. I smiled as I recalled the number of occasions Gemma and I had had that conversation.

I carried both drinks back through to the living room that flickered under the light of
The World’s Scariest Chip Pan Disasters
. As if on cue I heard a key at the door to the apartment and headed down the corridor to greet Gemma with a kiss and a gin. She seemed to welcome the latter more and she smiled at me with a widening of her eyes that indicated just a hint of distance that hadn’t been there before.

We’d been together two years and she hadn’t hidden anything from me. Nothing big, nothing bad – nothing I couldn’t live with. I get used to knowing people’s little secrets.

I’d always felt that her name was apt. She was to me a gem amongst a sea of dishonest people. A rare find – someone I could be with. But that night was going to be different. Her shine was going to tarnish. She would no longer be my flawless Gem.

‘Good day?’ I asked.

‘Yes, thanks. Busy, you know.’

I knew. We exchanged small talk for a few minutes and I knew. She didn’t need to tell me. I figured it out. Well, I figured out there was something I needed to know about where she’d been, who she’d been with. She filled in the details for me when she knew she had no option.

She’d been with her ex-boyfriend, Sted – what sort of a name is that? I met him just the once, and that was about three times too many. He was a bit of a lout in my opinion but then my judgement was clouded just a little. There is no person more abhorred in this world than a lover’s ex. They are your nemesis. The one person you have to compete with at every level. You can take being slaughtered at squash by your best mate or surpassed in the kitchen by your mother or beaten to the bonus by your colleague, because secretly you know how much better you are than them at everything else. But with your lover’s ex, there is no option; you have to succeed them in every sense. And you know that it’ll only get harder. Because time has this annoying habit of toning down, even erasing, the bad memories from past relationships, leaving the rosy parts to shine through like diamond in kimberlite. So, you’re fighting a forever-strengthening opponent as you are only weakened through an attrition of daily life that just makes you a less nice person to be with. And one day you realise – and you don’t have to be me – that you don’t match up. In some tiny respect in their eyes you’re just not quite as good. And as soon as you realise that, the bond is weakened, sometimes beyond repair.