Love Always

‘Yeah!’ Jay says, almost angrily. ‘What’s up with you?’

‘It’s not me,’ I say. I laugh. ‘Wel , perhaps it is. He – he slept with someone else.’

It sounds so weird when you speak those words. They’re such a cliche but you never expect to be saying them out loud, and in relation to your own life.

‘He what?’ Jay looks blank, as though he doesn’t understand the words.

I swing my legs off the side of the bed. ‘She’s a client. It was after a conference.’ I am looking for my shoes. I can say it out loud if I just disassociate myself from it, completely pretend it’s not happening.

‘But . . .’ Jay is frowning. ‘But it’s you two. You’re like my perfect couple. You can’t split up.’

‘We’re not a perfect couple.’ I want to cry. He looks bewildered. I say gently, as though it’s him I’m breaking up with, ‘Things . . . things have changed. I don’t know him any more.’

‘But – you’ve known him for ever, Nat. He hasn’t changed.’ I met Oli at col ege. He was the first person – the only person – to tel me my green eyes in my sal ow skin were beautiful. We were already friends by then. It was in the student union bar; we were both in Dramsoc, celebrating the end of our successful run of HMS Pinafore with a themed nautical party Oli had organised. I think I fel in love with him a little bit then, though we didn’t get together for years after that. Six years, in fact. I hugged him, when he said it. He looked so pleased, he was easily pleased back then.

I have to remind myself of this now, but Oli wasn’t a cool kid when I met him. Over the years, he transformed himself from an earnest young man from a smal Yorkshire vil age with a spluttering manner of speech and a terrible habit of blushing. Now his enthusiasm is much more high-octane.

He likes doing the deals, meeting the clients, pressing the flesh; he wants people to like him, I guess. He always did. I used to find that intensely endearing. Until the way he got them to like him turned into shagging them. That I don’t find endearing.

‘But that’s just it,’ I say. ‘I don’t think I do know him any more. Even before he told me about . . . about it. Things haven’t been right. With either of us.’

Jay stares at me. He looks as if he’s about to say something, and then stops. We’re both silent, listening to the rumble of conversation from downstairs.

It seems such a long way away from here, that London life we have, ful of expensive meals and hospitality suites, the cool flat with its seventies film posters on the wal s and the bright red Gaggia espresso machine. From our disinte-grating marriage and secrets that we – both of us – have been keeping from each other. Smal secrets, biting the lip here and there, not talking, not tel ing the truth, the kind of secrets that grow and grow until they fester within you, and you can’t go back and make them right. We started lying to each other too long ago for that. I see that now I’m here, far away from it al .

I draw my legs up and hug my knees. ‘Open the curtains,’ I say.

‘It’s getting dark, you know.’

‘I know.’

The light is fading and the moon is just appearing, ful and yel ow. The sky is gun-metal grey, the sea an oily lavender-black. It feels too soon for it to be dark; we’ve only just got here. Suddenly I wish with al my heart I could stay, that I didn’t have to go back to any of it, to tomorrow. We are silent for a moment, Jay sitting next to me, and above the voices downstairs I can hear the faint roar of the sea outside, like a shel against my ear.

‘We should go down,’ I say. ‘Sure, in a minute.’ Jay wrinkles his nose, and takes his watch off his wrist, holding it in his hand, an old habit of his.

‘What you going to do, then? Are you going to kick him out?’

‘He’s gone already, that was the night he told me.’ Two weeks ago.

‘Seriously? And you didn’t tel anyone?’

‘He wants to come back, he didn’t want to leave. He keeps saying how sorry he is, what a mistake it is.’ I drum my fingers on my forehead, and wince as they touch my bruised flesh. ‘I didn’t . . . know what to do.’

‘You could have talked to someone about it. So – no one knows?’ He looks incredulous. I take a breath.

‘Cathy knows. And – wel , Ben.’

‘Ben?’ Jay makes a loud clicking sound with his tongue. ‘You told Ben but you didn’t tel me? Or your mum?’

Ben has the studio next to me. He’s a photographer, an old friend of Jay’s from col ege, that’s how I heard about the studio in the first place.

We have tea most days. Ben wears wool y jumpers and loves Jaffa Cakes, like me; he’s a very comforting person to be working next to al day, like a shaggy dog, or a nice old lady who runs a sweet shop. I cried al over him the day after Oli left.

‘You should have told us about this, not Ben,’ Jay says. ‘Should have kept it in the family.’

Jay does have a tendency to talk like a Corleone. ‘Oh, Jay, honestly.’ He is frowning. ‘I couldn’t! And then Granny died, like, a week later. I’m hardly going to email everyone and go, “See you at the funeral, and by the way? I’m separated from my husband, fil you in then!”’

Jay shakes his head. ‘You’re mental.’ He gets up and stares out of the window, then turns to me. ‘Nat, it’s me. OK? It’s me. Of course you should have told me. I – I’m here for you, you know that?’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I know you are. I just couldn’t.’ My eyes are fil ing with tears. Jay squeezes his watch in his hands; I hear the links of the metal strap clinking together.

‘Sometimes . . . I just feel like I don’t know you any more,’ he says, after a pause. ‘You’re a different person these days, Nat. Quiet, subdued.