Where Love Lies (16 page)

Someone stood there, her hand poised in the air to knock. Her mouth widened into an O, and though she was the last person on his mind, her eyes were the exact shade of green that he remembered.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he demanded of Felicity Bloom.

‘I—’ SHE BEGAN
, and even in that one word her voice sounded the same, as if they’d been interrupted mid-conversation ten years before and they were picking it up again.

‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘No, never mind. Don’t tell me, I don’t want to know. Just go away. Get out of here.’ He backed into the flat. ‘Now,’ he added, and slammed the door so hard the floor shook.

Even with the
door closed, he could feel her out there. She wasn’t leaving. How long had she been standing outside, while he was talking to himself and trying to screw up the courage to do himself in?

‘Fuck,’ he said.

Felicity Bloom. Appearing like a ghost from the past, a reminder of another possible life that he had thrown away.

She knocked on the door. By itself, Ewan’s hand reached for the knob, but
he pulled it back sharply. He didn’t need any more distractions. If he started thinking about why Felicity had appeared, he’d start thinking about other things. He’d get interested and he’d get sidetracked and he’d get caught up in the complicated dreary business of living again, of carrying on exactly as flawed as he was now.

But there was still the letter in his hand, without a stamp. He had
to post it, and he couldn’t leave the flat if Felicity was standing there.

He could give her the letter to post. No, that was a bad idea. She’d try to talk to him. She’d draw him in.

What was she doing here?

Ewan leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. He had not thought of her in years, but now he remembered the first time he’d seen her, in that drawing class when she’d come in late,
dropping everything on the floor.

There had been no shortage of girls in London that summer. Tight clothes, short skirts, high heels, offering him fags after the gig, their eyes on his hands and his crotch. Plenty of the type he’d liked then, with big boobs and long legs, pierced tongues, eyeliner, the ones who looked like Alana did when he’d met her. It was only a matter of time before he broke
his promise to Alana; they’d both known it when he left, they both knew him too well. But he promised to be faithful anyway and Alana pretended to believe him.

It was supposed to be with one of those girls, in the dressing room after a gig or back in his bedroom in the flat he shared with Gavin and Dougie. He’d held out for weeks but it was going to happen, awaiting only the combination of too
much booze and a new girl with the best kind of smart mouth.

It wasn’t supposed to be with someone like Felicity Bloom.

She was nervous and wore mismatched clothes that were too big for her and she had dreams in her face and he’d wanted to touch her. It wasn’t even a sexual thing at first. He just wanted to draw his fingertips across her cheek or put his hand on her narrow shoulder. He’d been
young and stupid and he wanted to connect himself to her because she seemed to be made of pure feeling.

Outside, Felicity stopped knocking on the door.

‘Why do you want to see me?’ he muttered. ‘What would be the point?’

The silence was very loud and very long.

He’d been young and stupid but Felicity Bloom, if only for a few weeks, was possibly one of the only good decisions he’d ever made.

Ewan swore again and yanked the door open. She was gone.

He went down the stairs two at a time, the sound of his boot heels echoing in the stairwell. He emerged into the sunlight and had to blink several times before he could see properly. She was thirty metres or so away, walking down the pavement. She wore a blue spotted dress and a red cardigan and there was some sort of silk flower in her
hair. He ran up to her and seized her by her shoulder.

She turned around.

‘What?’ he demanded, his voice gruff in his own ears. ‘What do you want? Why did you find me? Make it quick, I’ve got something to do.’

Felicity smiled widely, delightedly, as if they’d met by fortunate chance at a party. This was a very, very bad idea. He should turn around before it got any worse.

‘I just wanted to
see you,’ she said.

‘Well, you’ve seen me now. Is that all?’

She looked him up and down: his unwashed clothes, his unshaven chin, his battered jacket, his dirty hair. He was certain that he looked exactly like what he was: a man who had spent the last couple of weeks hardly leaving his flat, not sleeping or eating, planning his own death and throwing guitars out of the window.

‘Do I look older
to you?’ she asked.

Fucking hell. He’d forgotten how she spoke in non sequiturs. ‘You came and found me because you wanted me to be your mirror?’

‘I saw the picture that Mum painted of you,’ she said. ‘You look exactly the same.’

‘Of course I don’t. That was ten years ago, and I wasn’t—’ He swallowed, to contain his fury with her, with himself, with time.

‘You’ve changed, but you look exactly
the same.’ She tapped her chest above her heart. ‘In here.’

It was an incredibly cheesy thing to say, the sort of thing he would snort at and deride if he saw it on television or in a film. It pierced through him like a twisting knife.

‘Hunky dory,’ he said. ‘Lovely to know. Eternal youth on canvas and also in your heart. How sweet, and also reassuring that the painting of me, wherever it is,
isn’t doing a Dorian Gray.’

‘The painting’s in New York.’

‘Great. Thrilling. Now if you don’t mind—’

‘You came after me just now. You must have wanted to say something yourself.’

‘I didn’t come after you, I …’ He sighed, sharply, to cover up the lie. ‘I needed a stamp.’

‘Then let’s walk to the post office together.’

What was she trying to do? Annoy him? Stalk him? Rekindle their relationship
somehow? Every possibility was so ridiculous he had no idea how to counter it.

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘But only because I have to go there anyway. I don’t need the distraction and I’m done with reminiscing. I’ve got something to do.’

He started walking down the street, quickly, swearing under his breath. Felicity trotted beside him.

‘So,’ she said. ‘What’s this important stuff that you have to do?’

He grunted and walked faster.

‘What have you been up to for the past ten years?’

He didn’t answer. The post office was close by. Stamp. Post box. Home alone. Whisky and tablets. Done.

‘Ten years is a long time,’ she continued. ‘We haven’t been in touch at all. Aren’t you curious about what I’ve been doing?’

I assumed you were happier without me so I stopped thinking about you
. ‘No,’ he said.

‘I’m curious about what’s happened to you.’

He swerved abruptly and pulled open the door of the post office, letting it swing shut behind him. Felicity stood outside. He could feel her through the glass door, watching him.

The post office was empty. He stormed over to the counter. ‘Second-class stamp,’ he growled at the woman behind it. ‘Make it quick.’

‘Do you want a book of them, or—’

‘I
said one stamp, for fuck’s sake!’

She pushed over the stamp, took his money and gave him his change without a single additional word, which was exactly the way he wanted it.

When he got back outside, Felicity was standing with her fists clenched. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘I can understand why you might not want to see me. You’re probably happily married and you have a bunch of kids and you don’t need
your ex-girlfriend coming back into your life even for a few minutes. That’s fair enough. But you could say that, you know, instead of being so rude.’

He stared at her. Was this a joke?

It wasn’t.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Rudeness is definitely the worst of my problems. Thanks for clearing that up for me.’ He stuck the stamp on the envelope, which was pretty crumpled now. ‘I need a post box.’

‘You
and I haven’t seen each other for ten years, Ewan. Surely after all this time you can at least be civil to me.’ She put her fists on her hips. ‘Besides, you were the one who broke my heart.’

He’d stepped towards the red pillar box, but at this, he stopped. ‘I broke
your
heart? Do you have memory issues or something? You’re the one who sent me away.’

‘Because you were going to have a child with
your girlfriend.’

‘And who in the world except you thinks that just because a woman’s going to have a man’s baby, that the two of them have to be together?’

‘You didn’t marry her?’

What was that emotion on her face? He used to be able to tell them all. Confusion, or panic, or disappointment?

‘Oh, I married Alana all right.’

‘And you had a baby together?’

‘We have a daughter.’ He continued
his path to the pillar box and shoved the letter towards it. His hands were shaking. The letter hit the side of the slot and fell to the ground. ‘Dammit.’ When he bent to pick it up, he bumped into Felicity, who had followed close behind him.

‘So I was right,’ she said. Before he could recover himself, she swooped down and picked up the letter. ‘I was right. You were meant to be with her, it
was the right thing to do.’

‘Give me that letter.’

‘I’ll give it back to you when you admit that we didn’t make the wrong decision. Also, you have to go and apologize to that lady in the post office. She didn’t deserve for you to be rude to her, either.’

He grabbed for the letter, but she skipped back out of reach. His reflexes were slowed from not eating or sleeping, from everything that had
happened before. But he didn’t really want to wrestle the letter from Felicity anyway in the middle of a London street. Though it made no difference, he’d just as soon not make himself even more of an arse.

‘Fine,’ he said, and stormed back into the post office. The woman at the counter flinched when he approached. Her hand went under the counter where he assumed they had a panic button or something
in case of aggressive nutters like him.

‘I’m sorry for being so rude to you,’ he told her. ‘Your customer service was exemplary and I was a cock.’

‘Er—’

‘Have a nice day.’

He rejoined Felicity on the pavement. ‘Satisfied?’

‘Now tell me that we didn’t make the wrong decision when we split up.’

‘Every single decision I have made in my life has been the wrong one, Flick.’

She blinked, and
he nearly glanced over his shoulder to see what had startled her, when he realized what it was. Flick. Her old nickname had come back to him without his even thinking.

‘Okay,’ she said.

She turned and posted his letter. His suicide note. One moment it was there, the next gone, into the bowels of the post box. The first step of its second-class way to Ginge, who would open it on Tuesday, or possibly
Wednesday, and call the police to find Ewan dead.

It was done. The last thing. All that was left now was the whisky and the tablets. To fill up this emptiness for the last time with a cure.
’Tis a consummation devoutly to be wish’d
.

He fucking hated Hamlet. Indecisive moody bastard.

‘Thanks,’ he said dully to her and he began walking back to his flat.

She walked beside him, not saying anything.
He didn’t look at her, in case she started up a conversation again. In case he saw that he’d caused her pain. He didn’t want to have to carry that too, even for the short time he had left.

He paused at the door to his building to take his keys out of his jacket. ‘Well,’ he said, looking somewhere in the vicinity of her left ear rather than at her face, ‘goodbye.’

‘Goodbye,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry
this was all for nothing.’

She sounded defeated. He looked into her face. This was probably a mistake.

But from the minute he’d found her on his doorstep he had felt more emotion – more true, raw emotion – than he’d felt for what seemed like a very long time.

This was definitely a mistake.

‘Do you want to go for a drink?’ he asked.

‘A DRINK?’ I
ask. ‘Right now?’

‘Yes,’ says Ewan. ‘Right now.’

‘Don’t you have this urgent thing to do?’

‘Twenty minutes isn’t going to make much difference. Come on.’

Once again he launches himself onto the pavement and I have to hurry to keep up with him. He’s heading in the opposite direction than last time, though.

He looks so real, so much more three-dimensional than
in my memories. It’s as if the smell and the feeling I’ve been having have been embodied in this man who should be a stranger to me but isn’t. Everything about Ewan, even the things that have changed, seem familiar to me.

Strange to think he’s been living his own life for the past ten years as I’ve been living mine. He hasn’t been frozen in time, frozen in memory. He’s carried on, turned into
more of himself.

His hair’s thick and rumpled. He has lines around his eyes from smiling or squinting. His leather jacket might be the same one he wore ten years ago, more battered and soft and faded at the elbows and collar. He looks as if he’s slept in his clothes. His accent has softened. His hands are exactly the same.

When he opened his door my heart made a great leap and I couldn’t help
but gulp the air, expecting it to taste of frangipani. In that moment, I didn’t feel guilty. I didn’t think about Quinn at all. The thoughts of Quinn came after, when Ewan had slammed the door, when I was walking back to the underground station and thinking that it was maybe for the best that Ewan didn’t want to see me. Thinking that I’d had a strange feeling about my first love, that I had tried
to find him again, and that nothing had happened. I’d appeased whatever my mind, or the universe, was trying to tell me, and I now could move on. I could work out what I wanted to do about my marriage without these thoughts of another man.

Then he came after me and I’d been simply, totally glad. Then I’d been furious. And then … lost. Without any feeling to guide me any more.

And now we’re going
for a drink together.