“I’m sorry,” I said, “for… you know for… all the stuff…”
The apology wasn’t well expressed, but I sincerely meant it. I felt horrible.
Hutton shrugged.
“’S’okay,” he said quietly.
I shook my head. “No, it isn’t, it’s shit. And I’m sorry.”
We stood in silence for a moment. The wind picked up around us, brown leaves blowing down the alley, over our smart shoes.
“What’s your name anyway?” I asked. “I mean, your real name.”
“Michael,” he said, with a shiver.
“I’m Jay.”
“I know.”
“Oh right,” I said, feeling stupid. “I hate this dumb system of calling everyone by their surname.”
“I hate everything about this place.”
I nodded. I could see why he would hate it. I suddenly realised that I did, too.
“I’ve got to get to French,” I sighed, ambling away.
After a few steps, I stopped and turned around.
“You coming or what?”
Michael eyed me warily for a moment, and then slowly moved to catch up with me.
“I’m really sorry,” I mumbled again as we walked along, as if saying it enough times would wash away my involvement.
“Okay,” said Michael, looking straight ahead of him, “you can stop apologising now.”
I remember staring out at the still water.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
My breath clouded against the grey November sky. I imagined jumping into the canal, the shock of the freezing water whisking this horrible moment away. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Libby wrap her arms around herself and shiver against the cold.
“I honestly thought we were done,” I told her again.
It was a quiet, early Sunday morning. From our place on the bridge, we watched smoke rising from the chimneys of the narrowboats lined up neatly along the water’s edge, the scent of burning wood carrying through the air. A few of the boats betrayed evidence of last night’s festivities: a burned-out barbecue in a bow, two empty wine glasses on a roof. Scraps of fireworks littered the towpath, along with the odd blackened sparkler. The morning felt dead and bleak, a hangover from the celebrations. The odd dog walker trudged along the towpath, bundled up against the cold, but other than that there was no one else out.
“It didn’t take you long,” said Libby, bitterly.
I shook my head sadly. “I didn’t mean for it to happen. Like I said, I just… I was in a bad place. I’d had a bit to drink, so had she… I thought you and I were over, otherwise I never would have—”
“Was it because we hadn’t… you know. Because I kept saying we should wait—”
“No!” My voice sounded louder than I had expected, amplified in the stillness of the air. I pushed my cold fingers through my hair. “I honestly thought… you said we were done.”
“I said I was done with the way you were behaving.”
“You said you couldn’t handle our relationship anymore.”
“You. I said I couldn’t handle you anymore! And the way you were acting. I just… I needed a break.”
“But I didn’t know it was a break! Of course I didn’t know that, otherwise I never would have gone with her! I thought you were finished with me. I mean, why wouldn’t you want to finish with me? Look what I did to you!”
I gestured to her face and then quickly looked away, unable to bear what I had done.
“It was nothing to do with that,” said Libby adamantly, touching the scar. “I told you I forgave you for that. It was all the other stuff I couldn’t handle. The drinking and getting suspended and behaving so closed off. It was so totally unlike you. Every time I thought it was getting better, it seemed to get worse again. I didn’t know what you were going to be like from one moment to the next.”
“I know I was being a pain in the arse, but I just didn’t know how to deal with what happened that night after the fairground. I could see I was going to drive you away but I couldn’t stop, and then when you said you’d had enough… What was I meant to think?”
“You were meant to think I’d had enough and that I was taking time out!”
“But all you told me was you’d had enough! It would have been handy to have added the bit about taking time out!”
“I thought… like I said, I just assumed…” Her voice trailed off and she tucked her chin inside her thick knitted scarf.
That was the worst thing of all: that she’d just assumed. That she’d had that much faith in us that it never occurred to her we were over. Whereas me, the moment I thought we were finished, I’d been overwhelmed by hurt and regret and anger and gone and put the final nail in the coffin. How could we have been on such different pages? Perhaps when you had a dad who came and went with the seasons it seemed normal to separate and then come back together. Her parents had been doing that for years, over and over. But that wasn’t how I was raised. In my world, you were either together or you weren’t. And I had honestly believed we weren’t.
Then, last night, Libby had come round to see me, said she’d had time to clear her head and wanted to move forwards, that she hoped the time out had done us both good but she didn’t want to be apart any longer.
And all I could think was what have I done? There she was, sitting on my bed talking to me, just like
