The Trouble with Henry and Zoe (34 page)

‘You will not. I’ll cook and you can keep my glass full.’

‘Just as well,’ I say. ‘I’m a lousy cook.’

Audrey puts a hand to my face. ‘You’re a good girl,’ she says, stroking my cheek with her thumb. ‘I’m glad Alex found you.’

I nod, because it’s all I’m capable of at the moment. Audrey nods back, wipes her eyes and goes through to the kitchen.

While Audrey is making tea, I close the album and go across to the fireplace. The urn is as cold to the touch as the eye. ‘Hey,’ I say, under my breath, tracing my finger over his
engraved name. ‘Hey.’

‘Holiday?’ says Jenny, nodding at my enormous backpack. ‘You go with girl?’

‘Zoe,’ I tell her. ‘Yes.’

‘Where you go?’

‘Thailand,’ I say, opting for the simple version.

We fly in four hours, check in in two.

Rachel is back from honeymoon now, and while Zoe spent a final night with the girls, I drove the car north. If I left it in the Black Horse car park, there would be nothing left a year from now,
so Dad is going to sell it and send the money on. Now that Mum is a surrogate grandmother, she seems to have finally buried her resentment towards me – instead sharing pictures and talking
endlessly about Violet’s eyes, her rosebud lips, her tiny fingers, her chubby cheeks. And I felt a pang of something like paternal affection. Clearly April and Brian’s input was more
significant, but if I hadn’t been such a stupid dithering shit, then it’s unlikely Violet would be dribbling on anyone’s shoulder. And she really is a spectacularly beautiful
baby. Mum cried when I said goodbye this morning, which is a relief. For a few days there has been an eerie lack of tears, and I thought the Universe had forgotten our contract. But all is well.
Mum and Dad look happier than I’ve seen them for a while, and barely argued at all last night. Big Boots still hasn’t told Mum about his memory lapses, but he tells me he probably will
– ‘If I don’t forget, son.’

Everything in the house is fixed, cleaned and restored. Everything except Zoe. I remember standing on Albert Bridge four months ago and thinking there was something melancholy behind her smile.
It went away for a while, but it’s come back – the heaviness that seems to tug at her eyes. We’re still close, intimate, affectionate; she curls up against me on the sofa, and
rests her head on my chest in bed. But there is also a pressing, almost physical silence. We play music or listen to the radio while we’re cleaning the house, but the weight of that silence
is still beside us. Since visiting Alex’s mother, an air of calm acceptance seems to have come over Zoe. Occasionally she will retreat into herself, gently drifting out of the moment and into
her own inner world. Moving from one room to another, she might stop with her hand on the doorknob, temporarily short-circuited by some thought or remembrance. Two days ago, she cried quietly as
she cleaned grimy fingerprints from around the light switches. And I have wondered several times whether it wouldn’t have been better, after all, to nail the engagement ring away beneath the
floorboards.

The flight time to Bangkok is eleven hours and twenty-five minutes and I’m hoping the sleep that has eluded me for the past week will find me in the clouds. When Zoe first told me about
Alex, we stayed up all night talking. We talked about her travelling; how she wanted – needed – to find herself, to be independent, afraid and challenged and reliant upon no one but Zoe
Goldman. I understood, envied and admired her. And although I try to ignore the question, the question is insistent:
What has changed?

Call it a whim. Or call it procrastination. But I still have Jenny’s number in my phone, and I called her this morning. She was a little surprised by my offer of a home visit, but at the
same time she sounded excited at the prospect of company. I’ve had a guided tour of her small, cluttered home, been shown many artefacts and pictures and albums and souvenirs. And though I
could happily hang out for the rest of the day, I have a plane to catch.

‘So, how are your teeth?’

‘Friends again,’ says Jenny, smiling widely. ‘Everybody very happy.’

Her flat is drawn in sepia; nets at the windows, plants and books and shelves absorbing the dusty light. Not ideal conditions for checking her implants, but that’s not why I’m here.
Nevertheless, I take a quick look at her teeth and confirm that nothing is obviously wrong.

‘I have a confession,’ I say to Jenny.

‘What you do?’

By way of an answer, I open my backpack and remove a small leather pouch from which I remove my scissors. ‘When’s the last time you had a haircut?’ I ask.

Time is ticking, and it takes longer than I’d planned to convince Jenny, first, that I am not here to murder her, and secondly, that I cut a very good graduated bob.

‘Is expensive?’ says Jenny. ‘Like teeth?’

‘A going away present,’ I tell her. ‘When do you fly?’

‘Three weeks.’

‘Excited?’

‘Scare, really. Long way fly on my own.’

‘What about your children? Don’t they want to go?’

‘Children angry, actually. Want coffin, haha.’

‘Is that him?’ I say, pointing to the urn on the mantle.

‘Like to walk,’ Jenny says. ‘Hour and hour. Space, he say. Not much space in coffin.’

‘Right.’

‘So scatter, innit. Anyway, different with children. Good for just me, I think.’

‘Yes,’ I tell her. ‘I suppose it is. Now, sit still for me.’

Jenny gasps when the first lock of hair drops to the ground.

‘Lot,’ she says.

‘No turning back now,’ I tell her.

While we wait for my taxi, Jenny makes tea and shows me black and white photographs of her and her husband from maybe forty or fifty years ago.

‘Pretty, innit?’ she says, indicating her younger self.

‘Very, Jenny.’

‘Husban’ like, I think?’ she says, touching a hand to her hair. ‘New lady.’

‘The men will be fighting over you,’ I say.

Jenny laughs. ‘Very cheek,’ she says, and she puts her hand to my face.

I check the time on my phone and see that I have just under an hour until check-in. I also have a message from Zoe:

I love you.

It’s the first time either one of us has said this. And I whisper the answer inside my head:
I love you too
.

‘Happy?’ says Jenny.

‘Yes,’ I tell her.

‘Nice smile,’ says Jenny. ‘Shame ‘bout nose. But nice smile, innit.’

A car pulls up outside; sounds its horn.

‘Time,’ says Jenny.

‘Time.’

The girls offered to come with me to the airport, Rachel volunteering to drive, but I wanted to make this short trip alone. They say they have forgiven Henry, but this is the
start of our adventure and I want to keep it between the two of us. My mind is bubbling with immiscible emotions: happiness, fear, excitement, sadness, confusion. I have tears in my eyes, but I
honestly couldn’t tell you what flavour they are.

The cab driver glances at my reflection in the rear-view mirror. ‘Alright back there?’

‘Fine,’ I tell him, ‘just got a little . . . eyelash. Got it now.’

‘Going somewhere nice?’

‘I hope so,’ I tell him, laughing to cover what might be received as rudeness.

The driver laughs politely, but he takes the hint.

I check my phone again, but Henry still hasn’t replied to my message.

I love you.

He loves me too, I think.

Maybe he’s waiting to tell me in person at the check-in. Like they would in one of those movies he likes. Over the last two weeks we have watched them all –
The Apartment, Gone
With the Wind, It’s a Wonderful Life
and all the rest – Henry posting them through the letterbox of a charity shop on the way to work the following morning. The collection
diminishing at the same rate as the uncrossed boxes on my calendar. And then there were none.

Last night, Rachel ordered pizzas and we ate them in front of Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves. Steve was staying with a friend, so we had the house to ourselves, reminiscing, laughing, trying to
predict the future. I slept in Rachel’s spare room, and Vicky took the sofa. Before we turned in for the night, I whispered Rachel into my room, sat her beside me on the bed and showed her
the ring Alex never got to give me. We sobbed together, quietly, holding our hands to our mouths so we wouldn’t wake Vicky. Not to exclude her, but to spare me. I wouldn’t have told
Rachel, but I need someone to sell the ring or donate it to a charity. Something for widows ideally. It’s been in my pocket since Henry found it, and I cried all over again when I closed
Rachel’s hand around the box. But now that it’s gone, I don’t feel the loss I had anticipated.

Maybe because, in a small way, Alex is still with me.

What is the right thing to do?

It’s the question that’s been keeping me awake for at least a week.

When I left April it was the wrong thing to do, but for the right reason. I didn’t love her. Or was it the right thing, done in entirely the wrong way?

Zoe says she loves me, and I at least believe that she believes herself. What I don’t doubt is my own love for her. I know because it is something I have never felt before. She will be
standing beneath the departure boards now, checking her ticket and passport for perhaps the tenth time today. Waiting for me to arrive so we can both depart.

‘Which terminal?’ asks the cabbie.

‘Five, please.’

‘Anywhere nice?’

‘Thailand.’

‘Very exotic,’ he says. ‘Have you there in five minutes.’

The sky is noisy with low and looming aircraft. Our check-in is open and the ground crew will be preparing our own impassive jumbo jet. But isn’t boarding this plane another act of
selfishness? Good for me, no doubt; but is it good for Zoe? Is it best for Zoe?

Over the last ten days we have worked our way through my small library of old movies. We watched everything but
Casablanca
. Zoe has never seen it, but I have and I know only too well how
it ends. I slipped that particular classic into my bag and smuggled it out of the house like a piece of bad news.

‘Here we go, pal. What time’s your flight?’

The driver pulls up outside the airport and punches up my fare.

‘Little under two hours,’ I tell him.

‘Perfect timing.’

‘First time for everything,’ I say, handing over the money and climbing out onto the pavement.

On the cover of
Casablanca
, Rick Blaine stands with his hands in the pockets of his raincoat, behind him is the twin-engine plane ready to fly him and his love to freedom. But Rick
won’t be getting on the plane. Because Rick knows the answer; he knows the right thing to do. Heathrow Airport lacks the dusty romance of Casablanca. The planes are too big, numerous and
impersonal. And I have neither raincoat nor fedora, but I do have the chance to do something right for once.

Zoe said she needs to find herself.

I’ve already found her. And I love her; not simply as a romantic idea, but as a deep and physical conviction. I found her, now it’s her turn.

The automatic doors open to the noise and motion of ten thousand travellers. There is a jolt of something like panic – a temptation to turn around, flag down the next cab
and head . . . where, I don’t know. But the urge is as fleeting as it is visceral.

I have to face Zoe.

I have to tell her I love her, and then I have to walk away.

Standing on a small shelf of rock halfway up a sheer cliff, she gazes out at the impossible geological formations, pushing into the preposterous sky from the unfeasible sea.
After only two weeks in Bangkok, she took a ten-hour bus ride south to Krabi and then a short but terrifying crossing on a longtail boat to Rai Leh, wading through the last fifty metres of water,
holding her backpack overhead. Her shoulders still ache, and she rotates her neck to ease the stiffness. Staring through the distance, Zoe allows thoughts of all she has left behind to pass through
her mind, but she examines none of these, instead feeling the close heat that is turning her skin slowly brown. Slowly changing her.

Fellow travellers have been friendly, but so far Zoe is happy to keep her own company; reading, walking . . . finding herself. If she becomes lonely, and she seldom does, Zoe closes her eyes and
imagines her bright place – Albert Bridge at dusk, with a thousand lightbulbs reflected on the dark water of the Thames. It’s mid-afternoon now, early morning in London, and she wonders
if Henry is awake yet. If he is thinking of her. She hopes so.

Zoe reaches into her shoulder bag and removes a small fold of paper.

Holding the cold urn while Alex’s mother made tea in the next room, she had been seized by an idea. Without a suitable receptacle, Zoe had improvised with the lid of a lipstick and removed
a small scoop of ash. It wasn’t until she was removing her belt and passing through the metal detector at Heathrow Airport, however, that it occurred to her how foolish this whole idea was.
But no alarms sounded, no dogs barked, no one looked inside the small pocket at the hip of her jeans.

And now she has brought him here. To the beach he never got to see.

She opens the square of paper, offering up the ash to the warm breeze. As the wind catches and disperses the fine dust, Zoe blows a kiss out towards the sea.

‘Thank you for loving me,’ she says.

The small wisp of grey lifts, fades and vanishes.

Then Zoe turns and continues her way up the cliff.

Many thanks to the team at Simon & Schuster for making this book happen: Clare Hey, Sara-Jade Virtue, Ally Grant, Rumana Haider, Hayley McMullan, Dominic Brendon, Laura
Hough, Sally Wilks, Emma Capron and Jamie Criswell.

And to my friends, family and a whole bunch of experts who gave freely of their time, experience and knowledge: Chris Forder, Mark Rolfe, Louise Cuming, Jane Griffiths, Jessica Walker, Sunjay
Soni, Keith Juden and Nicola Kennedy.