Authors: Jon Rance
We were at the departures gate at Heathrow: the final goodbye hurdle. People walked past, apprehensive-looking parents with children who clung tightly to their teddy bears, oblivious solo travellers playing with their iPhones, businessmen and flight crew, while Ed and I stood motionless, caught somewhere between the past and the future. It was why I loved airports, because they were neither a part of where you’d been or where you were going. They were a separate entity. A sort of purgatory between states of being that held the promise of adventure and freedom.
‘I just . . .’
‘What, Ed?’
‘I just wish you weren’t going, that’s all.’
The past week had been the Olympic Games of emotional blackmail. Ed had been quiet, depressed, loud, obnoxious, loving and every other possible state in the hope something would break me down and stop me from leaving. Now he was being morose. His whole being was dripping with sullenness.
Ever since that blustery November evening when I’d sat him down and explained I had to go travelling otherwise I’d regret it for the rest of my life, he’d had the same strained expressions of annoyance and incredulity. He couldn’t understand why I had to do it and, like a lot of men when placed in an uncomfortable emotional situation, he made it all about him.
‘Is it something I’ve done?’ were his first words.
‘Is this about me?’ were his second.
‘How can I change your mind?’ were his third.
I tried to explain it had nothing to do with him: I needed this for me. I conceived the idea after Nan died and left me some money; it wasn’t much, but sufficient for a year away and just enough left over for my half of the mortgage. I’d realised that, at twenty-nine, if I didn’t do something a bit impetuous right away, that would be it. My life would tumble headlong into middle-age and the usual suspects of marriage, kids and a fridge door full of mundane lists that would run my life forever. I needed time to breathe. When I was young I thought I was special and would do something amazing with my life, and then I grew up. I wanted that feeling back. I wanted to be amazing again.
The simple truth was I wasn’t completely happy. It wasn’t one thing in particular, but the combination of every aspect of my life not equating to a big, happy whole. My job in public relations was stressful and the initial excitement I’d felt when I started the job after university had been replaced with a depressing feeling of inevitability. I looked at the people higher up the corporate ladder and I didn’t want to become them: crushed by the weight of a career that sustained a life I wasn’t even sure I wanted. Every tiny facet of our lives seemed so depressingly settled in a way I hadn’t ever intended. I needed to get away. I needed a break. And, of course, there was the tiny fact that I’d really thought Ed would come with me.
‘I’ll be back before you know it. It will fly by,’ I said, trying my best to keep our last few moments together as civil and upbeat as possible. I wanted Ed to be happy for me. I wanted to see a spark of something in his eyes other than the lingering disappointment and bitterness that had kept me awake for the past week.
‘It will for you. You’re off travelling the world, while I’m going to be stuck here in depressing, miserable London, working like a dog for twelve hours a day just waiting for you to come back.’
‘You could have come too,’ I said, finally losing my patience as he made the same cloyingly annoying face he’d been making for the previous two months.
‘You know why I can’t come,’ said Ed in that oh-so-patronising voice of his.
I hated it when I felt like I was talking to city banker Ed. I imagined him at work in his giant phallic office, shouting at other miserable-looking suits and telling people to buy this and sell that, while nervous-looking secretaries served up coffee and biscuits, terrified of being scolded because the FTSE was down against the Yen. It wasn’t the Ed I knew and the Ed I loved.
‘But don’t you see. All the reasons why you’re saying no are the same reasons why I have to leave. I know you love me – I love you too – but it isn’t about that. I can’t keep going along pretending everything’s fine when it isn’t. I don’t want to wake up at forty and blame you for me not doing this. I want to be happy and this is going to make me happy.’
‘So what you’re saying is I don’t make you happy anymore,’ said Ed glibly.
‘Don’t be like that, Ed, please. I know this isn’t what you had planned for us and you think it’s a giant waste of time, but I don’t. Look, I don’t want to leave on an argument; can you please just be happy for me?’
‘Promise me one thing,’ he said, a sudden cloud of vulnerability descending upon his face. He reminded me of one of those children of the war, fleeing London during the blitz for the safety of the countryside. A sad little schoolboy standing by a steam engine while his parents cried and handed him a jam sandwich for the journey. All he needed was a raggedy old teddy bear under his arm and a pair of short grey trousers. ‘Promise me you won’t change.’
I suppose what he meant was, don’t cheat on me and not come back. I had no intention of cheating on Ed though and even if I was I wouldn’t have needed to go to such extreme measures. Plenty of men at work had shown enough interest in me and hinted that if I ever wanted to turn public relations into private relations, they would happily oblige. My trip wasn’t about men. It wasn’t about sex, Ed or having a quarter-life crisis, it was about me. It was something I had to do. For me. ‘Of course I’m not going to change. It’s just a six-month holiday, Ed, not six years in a kibbutz.’
‘Good, you’d better not. I want to marry the girl you are right now,’ said Ed, forcing a smile.
‘Come here you two,’ I said, turning to Jack and Emma, who had been standing dutifully behind Ed, waiting for their moment to say goodbye. We’d done everything with them over the last five years. They were our couple of choice: the two additional sides who made us a perfect square. They waded in and we had a group hug. Four late-twenty-somethings at Heathrow airport; it could have been a Richard Curtis film – except for the distinctly un-romantic-comedy air wafting towards me from Ed.
Emma had been my best friend since primary school and the one person who when I said I wanted to go travelling didn’t scoff or look disappointed, but supported it wholeheartedly. She encouraged me from day one because she knew what it meant. I would miss her and our chats terribly, Saturday mornings at Starbucks catching up on the week, bitching about the boys and gossiping about everything and nothing.
‘I love you all,’ I said, trying to stem the rising mass of tears that were forming a less-than-orderly queue behind my eyes.
‘Just make sure you’re back in time for my wedding,’ said Emma, tears welling up in her eyes. ‘You’re a bridesmaid, remember?’
‘I’ll be back by then. Promise. And fingers crossed for the film.’
I gave Jack a quick peck on the cheek and Emma a long tearful hug before I took one last look at Ed. I was afraid I’d forget what he looked like, which was crazy because I’d seen him every day for the past eight years. But it felt like once I stepped onto the plane his face would be wiped from my memory forever. The thick, dark hair with the schoolboy haircut I publicly mocked, but secretly quite liked. The steely blue-grey eyes, the long, thin nose, the high cheek bones, the slightly narrow mouth and the chin dimple; the sort of face that would look good on a coin. His weekend-casual outfit, which wasn’t actually that casual, as though he could never quite let go of his weekday self: navy blue V-neck jumper over white work shirt, khaki chinos, boat shoes and a long wool coat. Ed didn’t really do casual. At weekends, while I would slouch around the house in pyjama bottoms and old T-shirts, Ed wouldn’t go less than a pair of dark jeans and a freshly ironed polo shirt.
I filed a mental snapshot and gave Ed one last kiss before I turned around and walked away, too afraid to look back. Too afraid the life I was leaving behind was not only better than the one I was heading towards, but also that it wouldn’t be there when I got home.
As the plane turned to begin its take-off, I looked out of the window. It was a typical drab winter’s day at Heathrow. Sullen clouds drifted across the runway, making everything seem like a dream. England’s green and pleasant land was hiding behind a smokescreen of cheerlessness. I kept thinking back to what Ed said in the airport about not changing. I promised I wouldn’t, but I knew it was a promise I wouldn’t be able to keep. As the plane took off, slowly gaining altitude above London, fighting through the dark, leaden clouds to the bluer skies above, I began to cry. For months all I had wanted was to be on that plane. I had been so excited to leave and begin my adventure, but finally, sitting alone, all I felt was a terrible sickness and a craving for what I was leaving behind. I had wanted the change. I had wanted to feel the ripple of its excitement touch me again and move me the way it used to. I had wanted to travel, but now I was terrified it was a decision I might regret for the rest of my life.
Ed
‘Look on the bright side,’ said Emma from the front seat of her Mini Cooper. ‘It’s only six months and in the big scheme of things that’s nothing.’
I was crammed in the back like a piece of luggage: the price of having trendy friends with tiny cars. My legs were bent at a funny angle and my back twisted so I looked like I was skiing, but not in a cool way. Still, it was better than the journey there with Kate and her backpack squashing me against the window. Outside, the sun finally lost its battle with the gloomy, grey clouds and rain began to pelt against the window.
‘She’s right, mate,’ joined in Jack in his diluted Australian accent. ‘She’ll be back before you know it.’
‘Right,’ I muttered back.
I was trying to work out why I felt so shit about Kate leaving. I mean, obviously, just her leaving was enough, but it was more than that. I was hurt and angry. Really fucking angry, actually. Why did she need to travel the world? I’d promised her on more than one occasion we’d eventually go to Thailand, Australia and Timbuktu, if that’s what she wanted. I really thought she’d come to her senses and realise everything she needed was right here. I think that was why I was hurting. It wasn’t that she was leaving, but that she was leaving me. I was rejected in favour of a needless holiday and it didn’t make any sense.
‘So,’ said Emma, carrying on as though my girlfriend of nearly eight years, the girl I loved, lived with and hoped to one day marry, hadn’t just hopped on a plane to Thailand. ‘I have this meeting tonight, Ed, with the director for this new film – the next
Four Weddings
type of thing. Rhys Connelly’s already signed on. The script’s amazing.’ She looked at me in the mirror and then crunched a gear into place. The Mini suddenly lurched forward as the engine roared and then we wobbled momentarily into the next lane. I hung on for dear life.
‘Ed probably doesn’t want to hear about the film, love,’ interjected Jack, as always the thoughtful one, the mediator. Emma and Jack, the thespian and the wordsmith, our bohemian mates from west London and my support system in Kate’s absence.
‘Oh, shit, sorry, I . . .’
‘No, no its fine, Em, really,’ I said, smiling back. ‘Honestly.’
It wasn’t fine though, was it? My life felt like it had been torn into little pieces and then put back together with some crappy Sellotape in all the wrong places.
We were soon outside my house in Wandsworth. The rain had briefly let up and I was leaning on the open window next to Jack.
‘Seriously, Ed, are you going to be OK? We can come in for a bit if you want,’ said Emma. ‘Have a cup of tea?’
‘Of course he’s going to be all right,’ said Jack, with a brisk, manly grin. ‘Aren’t you, mate?’
‘Yeah, course,’ I said and smiled. ‘Now you two bugger off. I’ll see you soon.’ I tapped the door and they drove off, the Union Jack on the roof disappearing through the leafy streets of my salubrious pocket of London.
I stood outside my house and sighed. The two-bedroom Victorian terrace with sash windows and a little blue door had cost us a fortune. It was minutes from the Thames and had stripped hardwood floors, original iron fireplaces and a little garden – it was the house we’d made our perfect little home. The final piece of the jigsaw, or so I’d thought.
I took out my front door key and let myself in, popped the keys in the little tray on the sideboard and stood for a moment. It was terrifyingly quiet. The noise I was going to have to get used to for the next six months. I looked along the hallway and saw the flowers Kate bought last week. They hung down, limply grazing the top of the vase, pathetically drooping as if in a yoga pose. But they weren’t, they were slowly dying and in a couple of days would be tossed in the bin and forgotten.
Waking up alone was strange. The bed had never felt so big and in a moment of fitful sleep, just before I properly woke up, I forgot she was gone. It came back to me in a horrifying flash when I reached across to cuddle her, but all I felt was a cold sheet. I looked across and there was her pillow, puffed up and untouched like something straight out of the Habitat catalogue. Kate was an active sleeper and usually by morning most of the sheet and duvet was pulled and stretched to her side of the bed and her pillow was often on the floor. Now, in its current state, it looked out of place. A sad reminder she was gone, and even though it annoyed me how she routinely turned our bed into a jumble sale pile, without it I felt empty.
Despite it being only six o’clock, I decided to head into work early. The tube was quieter than usual. I even got a seat to read my copy of the
Metro
, instead of having to try and grasp the headlines while being jostled and pushed against the rubbery rolls of a fellow commuter. By the time I got off at Bank station, I actually felt quite relaxed and a bit Zen. I grabbed a large cappuccino and a bacon roll – the breakfast of champions – and headed into work. Even my office floor was bereft of workers; a tired-looking cleaner was emptying the last few bins and then my immediate manager and the Director of Investments, Hugh Whitman, a balding man in his late fifties, strode past me towards his corner office.