Who We Were Before (2 page)

2

EDWARD, SATURDAY, 12.15 P.M.

I
race through the crowd, my jaw unclenching more and more the further away I am from her. I don’t need euros – I have a fat wad in my pocket that I got out yesterday after work. I just want to get away for a few minutes to ring Fiona, to hear a friendly voice before spending the next two days with my wife, who barely even notices I’m in the room.

It’s obvious she doesn’t want to be here any more than I do – the way she pressed her lips together when she opened her parents’ gift was a dead giveaway. It’s a new expression for her, but one I’ve come to hate over the past couple of years.
Just say something
, I want to scream. Just tell me how much you hate me, how much you hate this, how awful life is.
Something
. Something that will end this terrible silence between us, one way or the other. But she never does.

Making up an excuse to get away from her probably wasn’t even necessary. Today, as always, Zoe has that vacant, I’m-not-here expression on her face. I could have had phone sex on the train and she wouldn’t notice. I feel my groin tighten at the thought. Even phone sex would be more than I’m getting now.

I shake my head and walk faster, trying to dodge the thoughts flying through my brain. I miss her. I miss how she used to do big donkey-style guffaws that made me laugh, how her eyes used to crinkle as she smiled, how she used to curl up against me, her cold feet pressing on my calves.

I didn’t just lose my son, I lost my wife.

I knew it would take us time to move on from Milo’s death, and that it would be a difficult period to get through. After all, isn’t that what everyone says:
time is the best healer
? I can’t count how many people told us that in the first few weeks, and I stupidly believed them. Now, I want to laugh in their faces. Time? Time has done nothing but solidify the silence between us, to freeze-frame every horrifying moment in technicolour. When it comes to death, nothing can numb the avalanche of grief, loss . . .
anger
. An avalanche that will bury you if you don’t keep moving.

I wish I could take back the first words I said to Zoe, there in the hospital room. I wish I had put my arms around her and held on to her. But I didn’t – I couldn’t. I was so disbelieving, so incredibly
not
wanting this battered boy to be our son. It was like, if only I could figure out how this happened, I could go back and make things better, change the end result.

I tried to explain that to my wife, but Zoe just checked out, closed up shop. On me, on anything to do with Milo, on her life. I made all the funeral arrangements, I chose the gravestone and the inscription, I packed up his room, thinking that shutting away all his things might help her – although I couldn’t have been more wrong. A muscle in my jaw jumps. Does she think that was easy for me: having to comb through each and every belonging of his short life? With every tear of the packing tape, I felt like my gut was tearing, too. My chest tightens when I picture that small pine coffin, dressing Milo in his beloved Spider Man outfit, placing the worn blue blankie into his fist . . .

I swipe a hand across my face, leaning back against the wall beside the cashpoint. Almost two years, for God’s sake, and sometimes I still walk into his room expecting to see him looking up at me with that cheeky grin. He would have been four this month – hell on wheels, I’m sure, sliding down banisters and jumping on the sofa. If I close my eyes, I can hear his laughter now.

God!
This
is why I’m barely home. I can’t stand the emptiness. Not just in the house, but in my wife. I know she blames herself. I’d blame myself, too, if I were in her shoes. But there’s no point going
down that road, is there? It’s not going to change things – not going to
make it better. Two years on and we need to live again.
I
need to live again, and if she doesn’t want to, well . . .

Get a grip
, I tell myself, conscious of the queue’s curious eyes. I dig in my pocket for my mobile. I just need to talk to Fiona. Whenever I feel like this – like the avalanche will engulf me – she always calms me down. I wish I could say that about Zoe, I really do, but there it is. No one can say I haven’t tried. And actually, trying makes me feel even worse. It’s like banging my head into a brick wall over and over, feeling the crunch of pain with every impact.

‘Hey, honey.’ Fiona’s warm tone comes on the line, and already I feel better. ‘Everything okay? How’s Paris?’

‘I wouldn’t know, actually. I’m still at the station. Just wanted to give you a quick call and say thanks for the drinks last night.’ Fiona and I both work at a computer software company outside London – me as a software engineer, and Fiona in marketing. I’ve been there for years, and although I scaled back my hours when Milo was born, lately I’m there from seven in the morning until nine at night. You can lose yourself in coding; it makes sense in a way my life doesn’t.

We’ve always been friends, but ever since Milo’s accident, we’ve become . . . I’m not sure what, exactly. She knows about my son’s death – she organised the huge bouquet of sympathy flowers from my work, someone told me – but she doesn’t look at me with eyes full of pity, offer meaningless hugs, ask how I’m doing . . . or how
Zoe
and I are doing. With her, I’m the same Edward I’ve always been, and I can laugh and joke without feeling awkward. She reminds me a bit of what Zoe used to be, actually: always laughing, full of energy, up for any adventure. Fiona and I haven’t kissed, we barely even touch. But the more time we spend together, the more I want to.

‘It’s my pleasure.’ Fiona’s voice sounds sleepy, and in an instant, my brain flashes to an image of her wrapped up in crumpled bedclothes, stretching out one long, white-as-snow leg. My groin tightens again at the thought of being there with her, and I push away the image before I really give this queue something to stare at. Forty-one years old, and I’ve become an erection machine.

We chat for a bit about her weekend plans, the workweek ahead and a thousand other inconsequential things that make me catch my breath, feel back in control of my thoughts. Finally, I look at my watch, noticing we’ve been talking for almost twenty minutes.

‘I’d better go find Zoe.’ Not that she’ll care I’ve been gone for so long. I’d wager she’s staring off into space, just where I left her. Tension filters through me again as Fiona says goodbye, and I hang up. I dial Zoe’s number to see where she’s got to, listening absentmindedly as the phone clicks through to voicemail. I let out an impatient puff – has she forgotten to turn the bloody thing on again? My wife has never been the best at answering her mobile. Before we had Milo, she’d even forget to bring the phone with her half the time, defeating the meaning of the word ‘mobile’. Lately, I’m lucky if she answers maybe ten per cent of the calls I make. Not that I call her much any more.

I ring again, but once more I only get voicemail. Now my impatience is turning to red-hot irritation, the kind that’s like heartburn, spreading through your chest and gripping your throat.

Pushing off the wall, I hurry through the crowd and over to where she was standing, but she’s not there. I ring again – still no answer. God! She knew I’d be calling. How hard can it be to make sure your phone is on? I stride up and down the station, craning my neck for a glimpse of her dark ringlets threaded with grey (I didn’t even know she
had
grey hair until she stopped dying it after Milo. Actually, I didn’t even know she dyed it). I peek into the few shops and cafés, stride back to the cashpoint in case she went to find me, ring her phone another ten times . . . nothing.

I head to the exit and look out, scanning the taxi queue in case she decided to grab us a cab, but there’s no sign of her. I glance at my watch. It’s almost an hour since I went to get cash, and if she were still here, surely we’d have found each other? It’s a busy station but not huge – not like St Pancras – and there aren’t many places to go. I walk up and down the concourse a dozen more times, annoyance growing with each step. Perhaps she’s gone off to the hotel? If she didn’t feel like waiting, the least she could do was call.

I suppose I would be more anxious, but Zoe’s pulled a few disappearing acts before. For some time after Milo’s death, I’d leave work early and head home to take her out for supper, but she was never there. I’d ring her mobile for hours, waiting as the house got darker, worry swirling inside when she didn’t answer. When the front door finally opened, she’d just say she’d been with Kate, didn’t hear the phone ring, and now she was going to bed.

And then there was that one night, a few months after the accident, she didn’t come home at all. I didn’t sleep, ringing up her friends, her parents, even the police – who made me feel like an idiot, calling with a wife ‘probably out on the razz, mate’. Zoe crept through the door around ten the next morning, her face pale and closed. As usual, she blanked all my questions, steadfastly ignoring me as she padded up to bed, disappearing under the covers. I still don’t know where she was.

Well, I’m not hanging around. I’ve wasted enough time in the past two years worrying about her, and right now, I’m done. I ring again, this time leaving a voicemail that I’m going to the hotel so I guess I’ll see her there. I don’t even try to hide the frustration in my voice.

‘Hotel Le Marais,’ I say to the taxi driver, ignoring his smirk at my mangled pronunciation. I lean back on the seat and close my eyes as the driver pulls away, counting down the hours until this trip is finished.

3

ZOE, SATURDAY, 1 P.M.

I
should be worried. I’m alone in a foreign city, with no money, no mobile and no idea where I’m going. But as I set out through the door of the Gare du Nord and stare at the cars whizzing by, I don’t feel scared. Instead, I feel free, as if by shedding all identification and ties to my former life, I can be an empty shell – empty in a
good
way, a skeleton wandering around with just skin and bones and no emotion.

I guess that’s what I try to do back home. I lie in bed each morning, pretending I’m asleep as Edward bangs around downstairs, the scent of his morning espresso tainting the air. My eyes still pop open right at six, the exact moment Milo would wake up and waddle into our bedroom, legs still encased in his sleep sack. It’s as if my internal clock is set permanently to ‘mother’, even if I’m not one any more.

I take a deep breath as grief slices through my heart, my eyes scanning the streets for a café. I could really do with a drink right now, a small glass of wine or three. I’m hardly an alcoholic, but I do have more than the paltry recommended intake. Just enough to blur the world for a while, to let my pain slide out of focus.

I know drinking that much isn’t great – isn’t me – but I don’t want to be me. I can’t stand our house, can’t stand the village with its cloyingly cute cobbled streets clogged with mothers and babies, can’t stand the way people’s eyes slide away from me, as if tragedy is catching. Or, even worse, those who are attracted to it, ghouls titillated by calamity.

So every day, as soon as the door thuds shut, I watch from the
window as Edward disappears down the lane. Then I hop in the shower
and pad back to the bedroom where I throw on my daily uniform of jeans and a T-shirt, ignoring all the crazily coloured clothes I’ve shoved in the back of my closet. The pinks, the neon greens, the strawberry reds . . . They hurt my eyes now, as if I’m staring into the sun. I bypass my favourite perfume, too, unable to bear the blast of memories that come with the scent. I jam my feet into an old pair of flats, throw on my light spring coat, and I’m off. I don’t glance in the mirror, because it’s like looking into glass at a funfair: my face is the same, but somehow all different, like a Picasso painting with jagged edges and pointy noses.

Then I hurry by the closed door of Milo’s empty room – the door where morning sun used to stream through, making the hallway gleam with gold – and past the detritus of Edward’s breakfast. Once upon a time, my nagging to tidy up was a part of our morning routine. He’d roll his eyes, but he’d always rinse his plate and glass then place them neatly in the dishwasher, saying he wouldn’t want to mess up my ‘pristine office environment’ – a real joke, given the kitchen table was always half-covered with invoices, project pitches and mock-ups. Fed up with the corporate nine-to-five, I started freelancing as a web designer just before Milo was born, and it’s safe to say I’m not the world’s most organised businesswoman. Not that there’s much to organise any more. I can’t concentrate on trivial details like shades of magenta or finding the right stock photo for an estate agent’s website. My clients have drifted away, and that’s fine.

It’s funny. Before Milo came along, I worried how I’d keep my business ticking over while tending a newborn. Turns out it wasn’t that difficult – or maybe I just stopped caring so much about work; web design was never my creative calling. And when you stare into the slumbering face of a tiny creature so new to the world, it’s amazing how everything else fades. Either way, my life was the perfect balance. I could stay home with my baby, with just enough work to keep my tired brain ticking and feel like something other than a human milk machine. Everyone said how lucky I was.

Lately, Edward’s started urging me to take on work again.
Something to keep me busy
, he says, but what he really means is something to get me back on track, to distract me from what happened. But I can’t go back to a job that once balanced my perfect life, because there’s nothing left to balance. Just the memory of sitting at the table with my computer while Milo cooed in his basket makes my throat close up, my body thrum with guilt. I wasted precious minutes on a job I didn’t even love . . . minutes I could have spent with my child.

Anyway, after ignoring Edward’s breakfast mess, I slam the front door. I keep my head low as I hurry down the lane towards
the train station, then push through the barrier and onto the platform
. Sometimes, I stand here for ages as the fast trains whoosh by, the diesel air slapping my face as the windows flash past like blinking eyes.
Then my legs propel me forward and onto a waiting train, into an empty seat where I stare out as villages, rivers and trees fill my eyes. When the train pulls in to London, I follow the trail of other commuters out, out, out through the bowels of the station and onto the busy concourse. This is my favourite place, where people push and twist around me; where no one knows who I am. I’m just a slightly dazed (
very
dazed, if you listen to Edward) woman in her mid-thirties, rushing off somewhere, like thousands of others.

Out on the street, I turn this way and that, my feet inevitably leading me to a pub. It’s not that I’m desperate to drink, but where else can you sit for hours whatever the weather without someone moving you on? Inside, they’re almost the same: the musty smell of old beer and dust, padded benches and wooden chairs, light slanting in through dirty panes. I take a seat in the corner, wait until noon (because you can’t start drinking before noon; that would really make you an alcoholic), then order my first glass. No one cares who I am. No one knows where I live. And no one knows what’s happened to me.

Just like here in Paris, I think, pivoting once more before realising that, café or not, I have no money. My mouth is dry and I feel a little faint, and although I should try to find a way out of this predicament, my legs start moving, carrying me down a street. The mist has cleared and the sky above is bright, light glaring off the white buildings. People push past me speaking quickly in French, and the chaos of the traffic washes over me in a wave of numbing, comforting white noise.

I want to stay lost forever.