style="font-size:15px;"> Though I had realised I wanted my marriage to end I never thought about actually ending it. For a long time I spent my nights worrying how I was going to live with my unhappiness, until eventually it occurred to me that I didn’t have to; the advice I gave to friends could actually apply to me. After that, I spent countless nights fantasising about a life with somebody else, somebody I truly loved, someone who truly loved me; we’d be one of those couples who seemed to have electricity sparking between them with every look and touch. Then I fantasised about me and just about every man I was attracted to, which became most men that were in any way kind to me. Including Leo Arnold – a client whose appointments I particularly enjoyed. Leo had become the subject of many of my fantasies, which caused me to become rosy-cheeked every time he stepped into my office.
Beneath it all, I recognise now, there was an underlying panic; panic that it was all too much for me to deal with, but now that I’d acknowledged it there was no making it go away. Each little problem between us was magnified till it became one more sign that we were doomed. Like when he finished before me in bed, again; when he slept with his socks on because his feet were always cold; and when he left his toenail clippings in a small bowl in the bathroom and never remembered to empty it in the bin. The way we barely kissed any more; those once-full kisses had been reduced to familiar pecks on the cheek. How bored I’d become with his stories, fed up with listening to him retell the same old rugby tales. If I were to judge my life in colours, which I’d learned to do from a book, our relationship had gone from a vibrant hue – at least, that’s how it was for a while, when we were dating – to a dull, monotonous grey. I wasn’t stupid enough to think that the flame would for ever burn brightly in a marriage, but I did think there should be at least a flicker remaining after less than a year of married life. Looking back, I think I fell in love with being in love. And now my love affair with the dream was over.
That night as I lay awake in the penthouse of the Gresham Hotel, all my worries started to pile up. The worry of having left Barry; the money woes that followed; what people thought of me; the fear of never meeting anyone ever again and being lonely for the rest of my life; Simon Conway … and now Adam, whose surname I didn’t know, who twenty-four hours ago had attempted to take his own life and was lying in the room next to mine on the couch beside a balcony with an impressive drop, beside a full mini-bar, and who was waiting for me to deliver on my promise of fixing his life before his thirty-fifth birthday in two weeks’ time or else he’d attempt to kill himself again.
Feeling nauseous at the prospect, I got out of bed and checked on him again. The TV was muted and the colours flickered and changed and danced through the room. I could see his chest lifting up and down. There were a number of options available to me, according to 42 Tips, to quiet my mind and get some sleep, but all I could manage while listening out for Adam was to drink camomile tea. I flicked the switch on the kettle for the fourth time.
‘Jesus, do you never sleep?’ he called.
‘Sorry, am I disturbing you?’
‘No, but the steam engine in there with you is.’
I pushed the door open. ‘You want a cuppa? Oh. I see you have enough to drink.’ Three small empty bottles of Jack Daniel’s sat on the coffee table.
‘I wouldn’t say enough,’ he said. ‘You can’t watch me twenty-four hours a day. Sooner or later you’re going to have to sleep.’ He finally opened his eyes and looked up at me. He didn’t look remotely tired. Or drunk. Merely beautiful. Perfect.
I didn’t want to tell him the real reason, or reasons, for my insomnia.
‘I’d prefer it if I could sleep in here with you,’ I said.
‘Cosy. But it’s a bit too soon after my break-up, so if you don’t mind, I’ll pass.’
I sat down on the couch anyway.
‘I’m not going to jump off the balcony,’ he said.
‘But you’ve thought about it?’
‘Of course. I’ve thought about the plethora of ways I could kill myself in this room. It’s what I do. I could have set myself on fire.’
‘There’s a fire extinguisher, I’d have put you out.’
‘I could have used my razor in the bathroom.’
‘I hid it.’
‘Drowned in the bath, or taken a bath with the hairdryer.’
‘I’d watch you in the bath, and nobody can find hairdryers in hotels.’
‘I’d have used the kettle.’
‘It can barely heat water, it couldn’t electrocute a mouse. It’s all noise and no action.’
He laughed lightly.
‘And that cutlery can barely cut through an apple, never mind a vein,’ I said.
He looked at the cutlery beside the fruit bowl. ‘Thought I’d keep that one to myself.’
‘You think about killing yourself a lot?’ I tucked my legs up under me and snuggled into the corner of the couch.
He dropped the act. ‘I can’t seem to stop myself. You were right, what you said on the bridge: it’s become like a really sick hobby.’
‘I didn’t quite say that. But you know there’s probably nothing wrong with you thinking about it, as long as you don’t act on it.’
‘Thank you. At least you won’t take my thoughts away from me.’
‘Thinking about it comforts you, it’s your crutch. I’m not going to take your crutch away, but it shouldn’t be your only way of coping. Did you ever talk to anyone about it?’
‘Yeah, sure, it’s the number one topic for speed-dating. What do you think?’
‘Have you thought about therapy?’
‘I’ve just had a night and day of it.’
‘I think you could do with more than a night and day.’
‘Therapy’s not for me.’
‘It’s probably the way to go at the moment.’
‘I thought you were the way to go.’ He looked at me. ‘Isn’t that what you said? Stick with me and I’ll show you how wonderful life can be?’
Again panic rose that he was placing all this trust in me.
‘And I’ll do that. I just wondered …’ I swallowed. ‘Did your girlfriend know how you were feeling?’
‘Maria? I don’t know. She kept saying I’d changed. I was distracted. Withdrawn. I wasn’t the same. But no, I never told her what I was thinking.’
‘You’ve been depressed.’
‘If that’s what you call it. It doesn’t help when you’re trying your best to be jolly and someone keeps saying you’re not the same, you’re down, you’re not exciting, you’re not spontaneous. Jesus, I mean, what else could I do? I was trying to keep my own bloody head above water.’
