I didn’t use the same words when he was describing it, my eyes didn’t light up to a pure icy blue as if I was seeing the gates of heaven, but yes I understood those feelings.
‘Lucy, you don’t understand, believe me you do not understand.’
‘What do you mean, “you” do not understand? What’s so different about me to other people that I couldn’t possibly understand what it’s like to have a moment of fucking contentment? You don’t have to go to Kathmandu to find inner peace, you know, some of us have it right here in the city. In a bubble bath. With a book. And a glass of wine.’
And then followed the chat. Not immediately after, it may have been a few days, it may have been a few weeks. But whatever it was, it was afterwards. It had given me enough time to digest that he felt I was a different type of person from him, one who didn’t understand the depths of him. I had never felt that before. I had always known we were different, but I didn’t know that he knew that. It sounds like a small detail but actually when really thought about, it became everything. When I travelled, I travelled to see new places; when he travelled, he travelled to find new parts of himself. I guess when you’re trying to find all the parts of yourself, it’s difficult to be with someone who’s already fully intact.
Then here’s where we did a stupid thing, and he walked me into a scenario that I wish I could change every day of my life. Obviously, I was upset. I was very upset, I was so upset I turned to religion – the Silchester religion of worrying about what People would think. He told me that if it made me feel any better we could tell people that I left him. Now, in my current reasonable-ish state I don’t know why I would have agreed to that. But I did. It helped me after the break-up, it gave me a strength that I needed while having those conversations with friends and family so I could say, ‘It just wasn’t working, I had to leave him.’ Because when I said that, there were fewer questions. If I’d told them he left me, there would be endless amounts of pity, of trying to figure it all out on my behalf, what I did wrong, how was it my fault, then them being afraid to talk about it when they met him or saw him with a new girlfriend. My dumping him was to make everything easier. Only it wasn’t easier because he had left me and I had to listen to every little thing about him and pretend it didn’t hurt, and then see him on his TV show and pretend it didn’t hurt and whenever I got angry at him I had to listen to how I had no reason to be angry and how hurt he might be, the poor thing, and I was trapped in this big fat lie.
Because I ended up carrying around this big secret that nobody knew about, this big ball of hurt that had turned to anger, which often turned to pity, then loneliness because I never had those necessary conversations to help me get over it properly, I felt alone in my secret reality. So in the initial stages I carried that hurt and anger and pity around with me and due to circumstances I may reveal at a later date, got fired from my respectable job that paid well, but to be able to tell people why I got fired I’d have to tell them why I got fired and I couldn’t do that because after so much time it would just frankly be weird to admit a lie of that magnitude, so I told everyone I quit and then the rest of my life fell into its own new place following a bunch of big fat lies. And they were big fat lies no matter how much the outcome was still the same.
That is all that I will admit to because, as it turned out, I felt happy with how my life had settled. If Life had tried to meet with me two years ago, I would have understood, because I felt like I was falling but not now, not any more. I’d fallen from a great height and was wedged into what some may assume was a rather precarious place that could easily snap and break and send me falling again, but I was very happy, cosy even, and everything was fine, absolutely fine.
When I reached the lobby of the depressing Lego building, American Pie was gone. I left the chocolate bar I’d brought for her on the counter, the one she said she liked when we spoke on the phone, and exited the building and tried to forget about the frustrating little man who wasted a few hours of my Sunday. But I couldn’t. That frustrating little man represented my life and for once I just couldn’t forget it. Right in that moment I had no distractions to take my mind off it – no car to fix, no email to send, no paperwork to fax, no family member to call, no friend’s problem to delve into – and I was experiencing a mild feeling of anxiety. My life had just told me that I was going to be alone and miserable. I don’t know what you’re supposed to do with that information, I really don’t. He didn’t tell me how I could not be alone and miserable and all I wanted to do was fight the reality, like patients who have received news of an illness and feel in denial about it, because you might be diagnosed but you still don’t feel the symptoms. I saw a café at the next corner and found the solution. I like coffee, it makes me happy in the small way that things you like can lift you, so I figured a café would mean I was in company, and the coffee would mean I was with something that made me happy. No more alone and miserable. Inside was full, with the exception of one small table. I squeezed by the tables, chatter loud in the air. I was happy about that, other voices would take my mind off my own. I ordered a coffee and sat back, satisfied that I could eavesdrop on other people’s conversations. I needed to stop thinking about it. My life was fine, absolutely fine. I was a single woman with a job who was happy, I needed a distraction. Any kind of distraction. The café door opened, the bell rang and half the café automatically looked up. Then the straight males went back to their conversations and the remainder continued gawking because in walked the most beautiful man I had ever seen in the flesh. He scanned the café and then headed in my direction.
‘Hi,’ gorgeous man smiled, resting his hands on the chair opposite me. ‘Are you alone?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Is anybody sitting here? The café’s full, do you mind if I join you?’
There was actually a free seat behind me but I wasn’t going to point that out. The man had a beautiful face, perfectly proportioned nose and lips and eyes and a jawline you could grate cheese on. I thought about my family signing off on Life’s intervention, I just couldn’t figure it out; why on earth Life had come to me, there were plenty of people who were unhappy after relationships ended, surely this wasn’t an emergency case. I had moved on, I was living my life. I wasn’t afraid to meet new people. I wasn’t stuck in the past. What did they think was wrong with me?
‘No problem,’ I said, then drained my cup as he sat down. ‘In fact, you can have the table to yourself, I’m just leaving to see my boyfriend.’
He looked disappointed but nodded his thanks.
Okay, I lied.
But in only a few hours from then, the outcome would be the same.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘We were up at four thirty this morning,’ he panted, beads of sweat trickling down the sides of his face and getting lost in his suntanned stubble-lined jaw. ‘The trail from the hostel to Machu Picchu has taken about one and a half hours. We were told to wake up that early so that we could leave Wiñay Wayna by five thirty to get to Machu Picchu before sunrise.’ He was wearing a navy blue T-shirt, the sleeves were tight around his biceps, sweat marks were on his chest, on his back, under his arms. He wore beige combat shorts and walking boots, his legs were tanned and muscular like the rest of his body. There was a long shot of him walking the trail and I paused the TV.
Mr Pan jumped onto the couch beside me. ‘Hi, Mary.’
He purred.
‘He’s doing the Inca Trail today. We were supposed to do that one together. Let’s see who else he’s doing
