Loving Danny (14 page)

‘Are you OK, Naomi? You seem so miserable. Where’s Debbie? I thought she was staying.’

‘She went home,’ I said. ‘I think we’ve grown apart.’

‘But you’ve been, like, best mates for years.’

‘Yes. I guess things change.’

She rubbed my arm affectionately. ‘I’m sure you’ll sort it out.’

‘I don’t think so. Maybe we were never as close as I thought and it took her going away to make me realise. And she doesn’t like Danny.’

‘What?’ Emily cried. ‘When did she meet him?’

‘She hasn’t. She didn’t like his picture and she actually said she thought he was bad for me.’

‘That’s ridiculous! I think he’s great, not to mention incredibly good-looking. I know you’ve had a bit of a barny and he was out of order and I called him a bastard, but
I didn’t mean it. You’ll get it all sorted, I know you will.’

I really appreciated Emily’s support. She may have been angry with Danny on my behalf the day before, but she genuinely cared about him. She had been out with us several times and Danny
had been very sweet to her, letting her come backstage after a gig and introducing her to the band. She’d told me her school friends thought he was really cool which, by association, made her
cool too. She’d even said that she looked forward to Sunday lunches now that he was a regular guest.

‘I hope so,’ I said.

‘You’re perfect for each other, Nay. Anyone can see that.’

‘Thanks, Em,’ I said. ‘You’ve really made me feel better.’

And she had.

S
unday was the longest day. I itched to call Danny checking my mobile and my watch every few minutes, wondering if it was too soon to call, whether
he would be home yet, if he would ring me. I ate lunch with my parents, went for a walk in the park, bought myself a glossy magazine and read it page by page. Still, I heard nothing. By five p.m.,
I was restless and sick with nerves, fussing with my hair and my clothes and chewing the skin around my fingernails. The words I had confidently planned – and rehearsed – to say to
Danny no longer seemed appropriate. Like any words repeated too often, they had become meaningless, nonsensical, a jumble of syllables and sounds. ‘
Hi Danny
,’ I had intended to
say.
‘I’m so glad you’re back. Haven’t we been a couple of idiots? I’ve missed you and can’t wait to see you.’
But the longer I waited, the more my
courage deserted me. I was afraid that if I dialled his number and he replied, all that would come out of my mouth was ‘Dannyyyyyyyy . . .’

The way things were, it would not have been sensible to send him another text. It’s so hard to choose the right words, to make sure they don’t have any other, unintended meanings.
You can text something with one tone of voice in mind and it will be read in quite another. And, even at the best of times, Danny, always perceptive, had a tendency to analyse everything, to read
between the lines. That day, even the inauspicious use of a question mark could have made things a hundred times worse.

Why hadn’t he called? Surely he must be home by now. Had he met somebody else in Brighton? Had something happened – a fight, an accident? Was he lying in a hospital somewhere, alone
and frightened, unable to call me? I knew I was letting my imagination run away with me, but the idea that he was injured seemed preferable to the alternative explanations: that he simply
didn’t want to talk to me, or worse, that he was over me.

At about seven in the evening, I put on my coat and told my parents I was going to the twenty-four-hour garage up the road to buy some cotton wool so I could paint my toenails. I couldn’t
think of any other reasonable-sounding excuse for going out on a cold and rainy Sunday evening. I figured that the walk would kill a good twenty minutes.

I was about to open the front door when I noticed a small, white envelope lying on the doormat.
That’s odd
, I thought.
We don’t get post on a Sunday.
It didn’t look like a pizza-delivery flyer or a leaflet advertising window cleaning services. I bent down to pick it up and, on turning it over, saw that it was addressed to me. There was no
stamp, just my name and address, handwritten. I recognised the writing immediately: it was Danny’s. I had seen the same slanted, curly-topped lettering in the books of song lyrics he had let
me read, and he had used the same purple ink.

Why had Danny written to me? When had he delivered this? He must have been here, at my house, while I sat in my bedroom upstairs. Why hadn’t he rung the doorbell? I was breathing faster
now, my heart beating loud and erratically against the wall of my chest. Still crouching in the hallway, my hands shaking, I ripped open the envelope. As I pulled out the three neatly folded sheets
within, a five-pound note fluttered to the floor. I was confused. Why had Danny given me money? What did he have to say that he had to write down?

I don’t have to try to remember the contents of the letter – I have kept it, to this day, with all my old photographs and mementoes, in a little trunk under my bed. Even now, it
pains me to read it.

I pulled myself upright, leaning on the door frame for support. The acid was rising from my stomach into my mouth and I thought I was going to vomit. I swallowed it down again,
burning my throat and leaving an acrid taste in my mouth. From my first reading only five words had stayed with me, jumping out from the text and obscuring everything else:
I’m ending our
relationship now.

Danny was finishing with me. He was telling me he didn’t want to see me again. He was leaving me. I was finding it hard to breathe, gasping for air, my ears filling with blood and a
strange rushing sound. Was I having a heart attack? Was this what it was like to die? I tried to call out to my parents, but nothing came out of my mouth.

Focus, Naomi, focus, said
a strange, calm voice inside my head. Although I had no control of my body, I managed to slump down into a sitting position. I closed my eyes and concentrated on
breathing deeply, in and out, in and out. Then I read the letter again. This time different phrases leapt from the pages:
I love you. You are the most special person I have ever met.
Danny
loved me. He loved me. So why was he dumping me? It didn’t make sense. Because of Debbie? Because I was going to university in October? But I loved him too – didn’t he realise?
Didn’t he understand that nothing and nobody else mattered? Now I was angry. How could he simultaneously tell me he loved me for the first time and finish with me? How could he make this
decision on my behalf? Who did he think he was?

I dragged myself up again and opened the front door, drinking the cold, damp air into my lungs. I had only one purpose: whatever the outcome, I had to tell Danny that I loved him too. He HAD to
know. My legs started to run of their own accord, pulling my body with them. Soon I was running faster than I’d ever run before, past houses and across roads, dodging traffic and pedestrians,
uphill, downhill, through puddles and muddy grass and around sharp bends. I’d never been a very good athlete – I even hated running for the bus – but adrenaline was pumping
through my body and fuelling my muscles, propelling me forward. I had no sense of time or distance; I might have been running for five minutes or an hour, covering a hundred metres or a hundred
miles.

I didn’t stop running until I was standing outside Danny’s front door, breathing so fast that I thought my lungs would explode. I pressed the doorbell and left my finger on it,
making it scream continuously until somebody came to let me in. I didn’t care what anybody thought, didn’t mind if I was disturbing the peace. I would have stood there all night if
I’d had to.

‘What the hell is going on?’ Danny’s mother was standing at the door. When she saw me her expression changed from anger to shock to alarm. ‘Are you all right, Naomi? You
look terrible – you’re soaked through. What’s happened?’

I was still hyperventilating, tears streaming down my face, my jeans and coat splattered with mud. ‘Please, I need to see Danny. Please . . .’

Shaking her head, she let me pass her, stepping away from me so, I assume, I didn’t stain her pristine dress.

‘Danny’s in his flat,’ she said. ‘You know the way.’

I didn’t thank her – I was already banging on his door.

He opened it almost immediately. ‘Naomi?’ he said, bewildered. He had dark circles under his eyes and it looked as if he hadn’t shaved for a couple of days. ‘What are you
doing here?’ His mother was still loitering in the hall, curious. He nodded at her. ‘It’s all right, Mum, you can go now. I’ll deal with this.’

He led me into his flat, locking the door behind us. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked again. His arm twitched in my direction and I could tell he wanted to touch me, but he
wouldn’t let himself.

‘Your letter . . . I . . . how could you? I don’t understand.’ I began to sob, huge, chest-filling sobs, like hiccoughs that I couldn’t control.

‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘Sit down and have a drink and then we’ll talk.’

He made me a cup of tea and watched as I sipped it. Soon I had stopped shaking and my sobs had begun to subside. Suddenly self-aware, I felt foolish and then worried about what I must look like,
with my hair plastered to my face and no make-up.

‘I’m sorry, Omi. I didn’t mean to upset you like this,’ said Danny gently.

‘I don’t understand,’ I repeated. ‘You tell me that you love me and then you finish it. It doesn’t make sense.’

‘It made sense to me when I wrote it. I thought it was for the best. It is for the best.’

‘But why? What about how
I
feel? I love you too. I didn’t know how to tell you, but I do. And—’

‘You what?’ he exclaimed, his eyes growing wider.

‘I love you,’ I muttered, embarrassed.

His eyes pierced into mine. ‘You do?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Say it again,’ he demanded.

‘OK, I love you.’

‘Again!’

I was almost laughing now. ‘I love you.’

‘Again!’ he cried. ‘You have no idea how much I’ve wanted to hear you say that.’

‘I love you, Danny,’ I told him, frustrated that I couldn’t infuse those three syllables with the colour and depth that lay behind them. ‘I love you, I love
you.’

‘That’s amazing,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I can’t tell you how happy you’ve made me.’

He walked over to me and took my hands, pulling me up from my chair. Then he wrapped his arms around my back and pulled me tight into his body, kissing me so hard and so urgently that I was
momentarily afraid I might be swallowed whole. Soon I was kissing him back, channelling all the emotions within me – all the words I should have said and the thoughts I couldn’t
articulate – into kisses. I was kissing him with my body and my mind and my soul. After that kiss, there was no going back for me, no escape. Danny had me. He was no longer just my boyfriend,
he was part of me. We were one entity: NaomiandDanny, DannyandNaomi.