log. ‘No, that one there! Get that one over it, fella’ll burn for hours. No, no! Give it to me!’
‘Get off!’ said Dad, brandishing a poker, as if he and Mike were little boys again. Mike scowled and flopped into the armchair next to him, then picked up an old Eagle annual and popped a chocolate into his mouth.
Rosalie sat in one of the battered old chintz armchairs to their left, with Chin perched on the arm. They were both laughing – I could hear Gibbo reaching the end of a convoluted story.
Suddenly Mike caught sight of us. ‘Hello, you two,’ he said, leaping up and striding towards us. He slapped Tom on the back. Come and get a drink – get one for Lizzy too. Here, have one of my chocolates!’
I sat down on the one empty sofa and felt the old springs sag. Mike handed me a glass of whisky, and Rosalie winked at him.
‘All right, darling?’ hissed Kate across the room, under cover of Gibbo’s story.
‘Yes, thanks.’ Tom grinned.
‘And then,’ Gibbo continued, ‘they said, “Get out of Bangkok, and if you show your face in here again, we’re going to put you in prison.” And I said, “Well, that’s not fair,” and the bloke cuffed me and I woke up on a boat with all my stuff gone.’
‘Right,’ Jess said. ‘Have you ever been to the street where they film Neighbours, Gibbo?’
Several more stories from Gibbo, a lot more alcohol and three Frank Sinatra albums later, our Christmas Day party broke up and, one by one, we trickled off to bed. Mum went first, followed by Kate, then Chin and Gibbo, till only the hardcore were left. Tendrils of ivy clattered against the panes as we talked. Each of us was eager to reassure Tom. Mike, with the grace of the seasoned conversationalist, picked up the baton and referred affectionately to Tom’s ‘break-out’. Tom, the lawyer, laughed in bashful but genuine amusement and threw it back, with a comment on Mike’s new comb-over. My father, the erstwhile captain of his university debating team, rolled the thinning-hair and outed-nephew gags into one with an anecdote about Oscar Wilde that gracefully touched on each but undermined neither. Jess, whose grey matter I sometimes worry might be composed of dead skin cells, sat up suddenly and said she didn’t get it, so we took the piss out of her until she dozed off on the sofa.
By the time I got into bed the wind was howling. I pulled the duvet tightly round me as rain lashed against the windows. A gate was slamming and creaking in the gale, and as I wondered when it would stop I heard Mike pad downstairs and venture out into the storm.
I peered outside and saw him, in a battered old woollen dressing-gown and stripy pyjamas, twisting a piece of wire round the catch. As Confucius so rightly said, ‘There is nothing more pleasurable than to watch an old friend fall from a rooftop.’ The wind wailed louder. Wait! It was a human wail. I got up, unfastened the window and looked out. Rosalie was hanging out of hers. ‘…eee…areful…ike…’ she yelled. ‘Ohmigod…don’t sli…Wet path!’
‘Aaargh!’ Mike shouted, and slipped. He got up, looking furious, knees and hands covered with mud. ‘…ucking…couldn’t…simple thing…a gate?’ he growled, his normally unruffled nature clearly very ruffled.
‘Are you OK, honey?’ I heard Rosalie say as the wind dipped momentarily.
Mike brushed himself off, spread his arms wide and beamed up at her, rain streaming down his face. ‘I am coming back up to you, my sweet,’ he bellowed. ‘Wet, dirty, covered with mud and rust, I shall bring you this token from my garden.’
He picked up a handful of streaming wet gravel. ‘I’m putting this down your nightie. Now lie still, I’ll be up in a minute, to give you a—’
I shut the window hurriedly.
And that was Christmas. As I lay down, the events of the day rushed through my mind in reverse order, a bizarre kaleidoscope of images: Mike yelling up to his wife in the pouring rain; Mum washing up in the kitchen; Tom’s redwine smile; the clinking of glasses as we sat down to lunch; Rosalie flicking through the papers in the study; the hollows beneath Kate’s cheekbones as she laid the wreath on Tony’s grave; David at the church, looking at me with those dark eyes…and all the way back to this morning, when I ran downstairs, excited as a little girl by the prospect of what the day would bring. And then I must have fallen asleep. Perhaps it was inevitable that I’d dream about David. I hadn’t for a while, those dreams where he still loved me and I could see him, hear him, so clearly that I was sure I wasn’t dreaming and that we were back together again until I woke up. Six months ago I had them every night. And it was still the same feeling then, as now – it was still the most bittersweet torture of all.
In the year and a bit that David and I were together, I was sure of three things: one, that I loved him; two, that he loved me; three, that this was the way it was always going to be. I didn’t worry about whether we’d get married or look at cots and sigh longingly. I never thought about the future because all that mattered was that I’d found him and he loved me.
I’ll never make that mistake again. I learned a lot from David, but the most important thing is that loving someone so much your heart turns over with happiness every time you draw breath isn’t enough. It can’t save you; the only thing you can do is to try and get over it.
When we’d been going out for nearly a year, he was offered a job in New York. It was a good one – with a highly respected newspaper – and it meant more money as well as a step up the career ladder. In every way, it was the most simple decision to make – except one. I didn’t want him to go, and he didn’t want to leave me.
Of course, we were terribly adult about it. I never said, ‘Oh, God, please don’t go. I’ll miss you so much. I’m glad you’ve got this job and I’m so proud of you but don’t go.’ Sometimes now I wish I had, just so he knew how much I loved him. How much I really loved him.
It was strange helping him pack up his flat, having endless farewell parties and dinners, where the same conversations were rehashed over and over again. ‘You’ll miss him, won’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you going out to see him?’
‘In a fortnight’s time.’
‘Well, you’ve got email and the flight’s really not that long, is it?’
‘No.’
Sometimes, when I was having these conversations, I’d look up and see David watching me, as if he wasn’t sure about something. As if he couldn’t decide whether he wanted me to be weeping and devastated, or calm and businesslike about his going.
I loved him so much it hurt. When I closed my eyes and thought about him, my heart would clench – even if he was standing next to me. And I was almost as happy when he wasn’t there, because having him in my life, loving him, knowing he lived in the same place as me, that I had held him and made love to him, made me feel gorgeously lucky, young, happy and in love. Until I knew I had to say goodbye to him.
On one of the first days of late spring, a beautiful English day when the trees, the grass and hedges are at their most green, we went together to the airport. We checked in his bags, then sat at a café in near
