Going Home Read online

  ‘Of course I do,’ I said, clutching the package to my chest. He kissed me suddenly, turned and walked through. He didn’t look back.

  When I got to my flat, I threw myself on the sofa and cried as if my heart would break because it physically hurt, him having gone. Then I made myself a strong gin and tonic. I reread the letters David had sent me, looked at some photos of our holiday in France the previous year, and cried some more. I moped, drank more gin, put a scarf round my neck, which made me feel like a tragic film heroine or Edith Piaf, and sang ‘I Know Him So Well’ drunkenly into my remote control. Then I remembered the package. I tore it open, and found his copy of the Rough Guide to New York. Stupid man, I thought. He’s given me the wrong present. He’d been annotating it for weeks, putting sticky markers on pages of restaurants, bars, shops, museums – anything people had recommended to him. Now he was half-way across the Atlantic and without this book, which had maps, and information on where to buy milk, headache pills and sheets – I started to cry again, huge racking sobs for him on his own and me on my own and him without his Rough Guide. He’d wrapped an elastic band round the spine as a marker and the book fell open at the title page, where David had written, ‘Lizzy, I need you and I need this book. Bring it over soon. D. PS I tried to give you this ring last night. Wear it, I love you.’ It was threaded on to the elastic band, thin yellow gold, battered and beaten, with a cluster of tiny diamonds that formed a flower.

  But it turned out that the old chestnut ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder’ isn’t true. Perhaps our relationship wasn’t strong enough to survive our separation; still that doesn’t explain why we split up, and every time I force myself to think about it, none of it makes sense.

  When David had been away for a fortnight, I flew out to see him. I’d been to New York a couple of times before, for work, but I love it so much that flying there and seeing David again meant I was almost sick with excitement. While the dreary suburbs and endless grey roads into London must be a shock for your average tourist coming from Heathrow who’s expecting castles and thatched cottages, New York doesn’t disappoint. There, you arrive and the following things happen, as if you were in an episode of a super-merged programme called Cagney and Lacey and Sex and the City:

  1. Woman with enormous hair and nails shouts at you to move on in queue for Passport Control. ‘Hey, you! Yeah…you, lady! Move it!’

  2. Get into yellow cab. Hurrah!

  3. During drive past graveyards and factories, you look up and there in front of you is the river, with Manhattan, including real-life Chrysler Building and the Empire State, gleaming in the sunshine!

  4. Three doors down from your scabby hotel there will always be a bar like an old hairdressing salon that stays open till two a.m., where Cosmopolitans are three dollars each, and an old guy plays brilliant jazz piano!

  I love it. But now the thing I loved most was David’s being there. The city would be ours, the wide streets, the park, the tiny bar I’d told him about opposite his apartment. We’d live in black and white and Gershwin would play in the background, like in Manhattan. We’d ride through Central Park in a horse-drawn carriage. We’d laugh in slow-motion and wear Gap scarves and David would push tendrils of hair off my face.

  But it wasn’t like that, quite. And that was where it all started to go wrong.

  The night I arrived one of David’s colleagues was having a party in a downtown bar. I wasn’t tired. I wanted to go out and see the city, and I wanted David to cement his friendships with his new work pals. David wanted to stay in, watch a movie and have sex, basically. I pointed out we’d just spent three hours doing that. He said we could happily spend another three hours doing it, and came up with some suggestions that I’ve been wishing ever since that I’d taken up. We had a bit of a row and went to the party in a slight atmosphere, neither of us understanding why when we were so pleased to see each other.

  And how life laughs at you when you don’t realise it’s about to. For as we walked into the bar, a trendy, dim-lit place off Spring Street where the seats were cubes in primary colours and everyone wore black, I saw Lisa Garratt. The frienemy to end all frienemies. Lisa, an old acquaintance of mine from university, Lisa, who by coincidence worked on David’s paper too. Tall, tanned, muscular. She had thighs like tree-trunks, I remembered – she was captain of the ladies’ rugby team. She was always louder, more confident, more energetic than everyone else around her at university – an irritating mix of sporty and horsy with a bad slutty-party-girl edge. She was the one who’d say, ‘Hey, I know! Let’s stay up late and play Scrabble all night doing tequila shots and strip poker at the same time!’

  ‘Oh, God,’ I murmured to David as we walked in. ‘It’s Lisa.’

  He was checking in our coats. I smoothed his hair and kissed him, relishing the luxury of being able to touch him. ‘Lizzy,’ he said, pulling something out of my coat, ‘Why did you bring gloves with you to New York? It’s June.’

  ‘I’m aware of that, thank you,’ I said. I’m never quite sure what temperatures to expect around the world and I believe in being prepared. Gloves don’t take up much room.

  ‘Is this like the time you took that bobble hat to Prague because you thought it always snowed there?’

  ‘No,’ I said, affronted. ‘I’m using the gloves to store things in.’

  ‘It was thirty degrees in the shade and you packed a woolly hat because you thought Prague was snowy all year round, didn’t you?’

  ‘You patronizing ratbag,’ I said, hitting him. ‘Don’t forget that you thought Adrian Mole was a real person writing real diaries until you were sixteen.’

  ‘I wish I’d never told you that.’ He kissed me. ‘Hmm…’ he said, a moment later. ‘What were you saying before the glove debate, bobble-hat girl? Who’s here?’

  I remembered. ‘Urgh, yes, Lisa Garratt. Does she work with you?’

  ‘You know her?’ David said. ‘Don’t you like her?’

  ‘She’s the original frienemy,’ I said.

  ‘The what?’ David said, kissing my neck. ‘Let’s go in. Lisa’s OK. I’ll fetch you your gloves if you get cold. How’s that for a deal?’

  ‘I’m sure she is. It’s just I’ll have to pretend we’re really friendly and I don’t like her much. Hey,’ I pressed closer to him, feeling his hard chest and strong arms round me, ‘I’ve changed my mind, let’s go home and have sex all night. I want to try the thing with the ice cube and the needle now.’

  But David broke away from me and took my hand. As we pushed through the crowd he said, slightly brusquely, ‘Come on, Lizzy, we’re here now. She’s nice, honestly. A real laugh. Hi, Garratt. How are you?’

  Lisa was still the original boys’ girl. She was a massive flirt, the biggest drinker, likely to start a fight, and to wear slaggy clothes. Because she was a real lad the blokes loved her company, and because she was a real sex bomb they all wanted to shag her, but thought it was OK because they could explain her away as ‘one of the lads’. I’d never liked her at university and I didn’t now. I saw her appraising me as she smiled a sharky smile and slapped David on the back. I saw her deliberately exclude me in the subtlest of ways as she drew David and the other men into her group. Jokes about the office, about the subway ride into work that day, about what was on TV last week. I couldn’t make a fuss about it because I wanted David to be happy and have friends.

  The rest of the weekend was fine, but it wasn’t as wonderful as I’d assumed it would be. We didn’t mention the future, although I was wearing the ring. I didn’t know what it stood for, and I couldn’t bring it up without sounding either ungrateful or hysterical. The thin end of the wedge was already there. It wasn’t Lisa. I don’t blame her. Well, I do, the evil whore: she was a woman on a mission. But it was other things too. We were separated, leading different lives. And neither of us noticed until it was too late.

  A month after I got back from New York I had a bad row with David. It started when he told me he wasn’t coming over for
a friend’s wedding, and escalated into all sorts of things. I missed him; I was miserable. He told me he missed me too. But while I was still living the same life, if without him, I’d heard enough to know that he was having a great time, try as he might to deny it. And, of course, I wanted him to – I wanted him to be happy. So I felt guilty about being jealous of him, and he – well, I don’t think he missed me that much. I think he got along just fine without me.

  He had this thing about how us being together was a big step – ‘It’s a big step’, ‘We’re taking a big step’, ‘Our relationship is a big step’ – which made the word step lose all meaning for me. I found it vaguely amusing, but now, in the cold, Davidless light of day, I realized he was trying to tell me that he wasn’t in serious-long-term-relationship mode. So while I think he bought the ring meaning to propose, he must have bottled out at the last minute. And that says all there is to say, really, so the row ended with us both half-heartedly saying sorry and ringing off. What I should have done was call him back; I should have been the bigger person. But I didn’t. I was afraid, and so I bottled it.

  Then, three days of silence later, Miles rang up and took me out to dinner. Miles and I had been friends when we were teenagers; he’d lived in Spain with his and David’s father till he was fourteen, then come back to Wareham, which was when Tom and I became his pals. David was at university then, in Edinburgh.

  In addition to having a variety of jobs to pay his way up there, he volunteered to visit an old couple twice a week, did their shopping, and was on the committee for rag week, stuff like that. He rarely came back for the holidays, and when he had we’d never met him. I remember saying to Miles that he sounded like a Goody Two Shoes, and Miles offering me a Mayfair cigarette and saying, in a bored tone, that he was, and it was annoying to have such a girl for a brother.

  Miles, Tom and I thought we were a right cool teenage gang. On my eighteenth birthday I went to the Neptune in Wareham with them and some friends from school, and got royally drunk. Miles and I even snogged. In fact, in the summer of our first year at university we nearly slept together, but Miles got stage fright and his enthusiasm, as it were, wilted. He was mortified, but I told him I took it as a sign that we were meant to be friends and that was what we became. Of course, it was a bit different after I’d met David and fallen in love with him, but old friends stay old friends whatever happens. They’re there for you when things go wrong. They’ll tell you what no one else will because they love you.

  So, over dinner, with anguish on his face and in his voice, Miles told me that David was sleeping with Lisa, that she was virtually living in the apartment, that – and even now I think he could have spared me this bit – they had been caught in the photocopying room together. My David cautioned for fucking a colleague at the office, with his trousers round his ankles.

  I called David, and he was out. I left him a message. I couldn’t bring myself to mention her name. I just said that because of what had happened it was over and I never wanted to see him again. So, theoretically, I dumped him by leaving a message on his answering-machine, which is something you do to someone you barely know, not someone you’d wanted to spend the rest of your life with.

  I had an email from him in reply, just as I was leaving work.

  Lizzy

  If you say it’s over, then it’s over. I think it’s for the best and you obviously do too. I’m sorry for what’s happened. Anything else sounds trite.

  For what it’s worth, I never thought this would happen. I’ve missed you.

  D

  And then another, thirty-two seconds later:

  PS Keep the ring. I don’t want it.

  Lisa emailed Emma, a mutual friend from university, and told her (really – what a total cow): Emma rang and asked Georgy was it true about Lizzy and her boyfriend? Georgy happened to be at my flat trying to cheer me up. I could hear Emma’s braying, strident tones from my end of the sofa, the first of what would be too many calls and questions about what had happened. Georgy looked at me – what should she say?

  I leaned forward. ‘Tell her it’s not true. Tell her it was Lizzy’s ex-boyfriend. Because he’s not my boyfriend any more.’ The Rough Guide was lying on the floor. I picked it up and put it on my bookshelf, the spine facing away from me and since then I’ve tried not to think about David and anything to do with him at all. I try not to. But, occasionally, I dream about him again and it all comes flooding back.

  This time I dreamed we’d just split up because we’d both received anonymous letters saying we hated each other, and then David’s father had died and he had to scatter the ashes in my flat, and I kept saying I needed to Hoover them up and he kept yelling that I was insensitive and horrible for not understanding those were his father’s ashes.

  I woke up as David was coming towards me in my flat, smiling at me with his dark eyes and kind, stern face and banging the anonymous letters together incredibly loudly. (It turned out Jaden had sent them out of jealousy. I know, I know.) I could feel myself swimming back into consciousness, as you do when you wake from a deep sleep, and I rolled over and looked at my watch. It was ten thirty a.m. already and after a few seconds I realized that Tom had woken me by banging my hairbrush on my dressing-table.

  ‘Tea! Wake up, young laydee, wake up,’ he screeched, as I rubbed my eyes and tried to focus on him. ‘Mum’s bouncing off the walls. She wants to go for a walk. So’s your mum. Rosalie’s wearing a fantastically humorous outfit – kind of Burberry meets the baroness in The Sound of Music, and I’ve already found her counting the pewter bowls in the dining room. Mike’s about to make scrambled eggs for late risers, so get a move on.’

  I stared at him in frank astonishment. ‘Who are you?’ I asked.

  ‘Whadyou mean?’

  ‘I mean,’ I said, pulling my knees up under my chin, ‘last night you were so drunk you passed out for three hours. How can you be so chirpy this morning?’

  Tom handed me a mug of tea and strode to the window. He pulled back the curtains to reveal a grey, overcast day. ‘I’m right as rain. Must have slept it off. And I feel fantastic. Everyone knows. No more secrets. No more lies. Layers stripped away. Family reunited. Ho, yes.’

  I took a gulp of tea and, amazingly, felt better too. ‘I’m so glad, Tommytom.’

  Tom gazed out of the window, musing and stroking his chin. Then he stopped and picked up Flossie, my first doll, who had a tremendously exciting tulle skirt and light blue top and used to be the centre of my world but now led a nice quiet life, sitting on my windowsill next to Manfred, a boy doll with a willy it could wee through (it was French). Tom looked challengingly at Flossie, as if he expected her to give him some backchat. Her flecked-blue marble eyes rocked open as he picked her up and she gazed blankly at him. ‘I want everyone to know what it feels like to be totally honest.’ He put Flossie back on the windowsill. ‘To free yourself from the tyranny of repression.’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  Tom sighed. ‘Never mind. No more secrets and lies in this family, is all I’m saying. Come on.’ He threw me an ancient baggy jumper that my grandmother had knitted for me. I pulled it on and rolled out of bed, yawning. I felt incredibly tired.

  ‘You look knackered,’ he said.

  ‘Tom,’ I said, as I freed my hair. ‘Can I ask you something?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Have you…’ I stopped. ‘Have you…Sorry, this is embarrassing. But you’re right, let’s be honest. Are you seeing anyone at the moment, then? Like…a…a boy?’

  Tom shut the door again. ‘Er…no, I’m not. Thanks for asking, though.’

  ‘But,’ I persisted, ‘when did you last…So how did you…’ I trailed off. ‘Sorry, I’ll be honest again. Right. When was your last relationship? And how did you meet?’

  Tom avoided my gaze. ‘Mind your own business.’

  ‘But you just said—’

  ‘I know, but I don’t ask about your sex life so don’t you ask about mine, OK? I’m not
seeing anyone, I don’t particularly want to. But if you must know, I’m not going without.’ He turned in a mini-flounce and opened the door again. ‘Come on, let’s go downstairs.’

  I opened and shut my mouth. ‘Righty-ho,’ I said. ‘Great. I’m pleased for you.’

  ‘Thanks. I’m pleased for me too.’

  ‘So now we don’t have any more secrets, do we?’

  We headed downstairs and I smelt something nice coming from the kitchen. Oh, it was lovely to be home. Even when it was more of a lunatic asylum than usual. In the light of a new day, I remembered how much I missed it when I was in London.

  Tom stopped so suddenly that I nearly bumped into him. ‘You’re so blind sometimes, Lizzy.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Nothing. Don’t worry about it. The truth is out there,’ he added. ‘It’s important to catch it while you can.’

  I scratched my head. ‘I don’t suppose you could give me an example?’

  ‘I’m going to, just you wait and see.’ He stared at me. ‘You know, you do look exhausted. Didn’t you sleep?’

  ‘No…I did,’ I said, brushing my hair out of my eyes. ‘I just had a bad dream, that’s all.’

  ‘God, that bastard David,’ said Tom. ‘I still can’t believe what he did to you.’

  I was impressed by this display of emotional intelligence, but as always when a member of my family brought up le sujet de Davide, I found myself fighting the urge to climb into the wardrobe and hide. They all loved him, damn them, and I suspected that in some obscure way they held me responsible for the end of our relationship. I gritted my teeth. ‘Thanks,’ I said, and changed the subject. ‘So you’re really feeling all right this morning, then?’

  ‘Tom’s eyes lit up for the first time in ages. He looked about fifteen again. ‘Ah sure am, Lizzy,’ he said, in a southern drawl. ‘Ah suuure am.’