dream since the age of six when I’d self-published a slightly derivative story on coloured paper, which my mother had immediately ruined by correcting the mistakes in black felt-tip.
We had one final kiss before I hurriedly left the flat, but at the door something made me turn back. I told him reassuringly, ‘It’s not as if you’ll be away for long.’
He nodded.
It turned out to be a clear example of dramatic irony.
I’d forgotten what it was like, being alone. After living with Mark, the solitude was more empty than I remembered and I missed him more than I’d imagined. It wasn’t just physical; I missed his presence too, and without his energy I felt lethargic and aimless, as if I was ill. To begin with, we spoke to each other most days but when I went to Penrith to do workshops for the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s conference, we messaged instead. I used my time productively and wrote drafts of short stories, planned the outline of my next novel, updated my blog and received humorous tweets from my followers on how to keep busy while Mark was away.
I counted down the days until finally it was time to get my legs waxed, my eyebrows threaded and my hair blow-dried and, feeling good, I took the train to Heathrow to welcome him back. The idea was to surprise him.
His flight was due to land at 11 am and I got there earlier than I’d expected so I bought a sandwich and a coffee. As I ate my sandwich I studied the people around me on my side of the barrier; the drivers holding up names, the girls checking their phones, the family groups distracting bored children, the parents watching hopefully. I watched the passengers coming into the arrivals hall. Some looked tanned and energised, others were tired, doggedly pushing trolleys, but happiest of all were the eager travellers who came through knowing somebody was there to greet them.
And as I watched, each reunion almost brought tears to my eyes. I imagined what it must be like to get off a long flight and see someone who loved you waiting to welcome you home.
For Mark, that someone was me.
Glancing at the indicator board, I saw that his flight had landed and I felt the thrill of excitement. I threw away my cup and sandwich wrapper, wiped my hands with a lemon wipe and edged nearer to the barrier until I found myself standing next to an elderly man in a navy blazer who was holding a bouquet of lilies. Their heavy sweet scent was so strong that I turned to look at him.
He smiled back at me. I had a warm feeling of connection; we were two different generations there for the same loving purpose.
I could see the faint shape of people beyond the sliding doors and suddenly the travellers were coming through in a rush with their Virgin Atlantic tags. The old man and I pressed ourselves against the barriers, scanning faces. My heart was beating hard as I searched for Mark and the people came through in wave after wave and then the cabin crew came through with their wheelie bags and the crush around us gradually eased as the drivers met up with their passengers and the divided families became whole again and after a while, out of the original welcoming committee, it was just the old man and me.
We gave each other a wry, philosophical shrug. Well – it hadn’t gone the way I’d imagined but I thought about it logically. The airline could have lost Mark’s bags and he could be still in baggage claim. Or maybe he’d left his passport on the plane and then had to be accompanied back to look for it. Or I’d missed him in the crowd. Of three possible options, I considered that was the worst scenario, the one that ruined everything.
With a beep-beep-beep, an airport golf cart came through the automatic doors carrying an old lady with fierce red hair and my elderly companion knocked his flowers on the barrier as he ducked under it, showering me with pollen, and greeted her with a kiss.
That just left me.
My mood had changed completely by this time; I was dulled by the anticlimax. Even if Mark had just at that moment come through the doors I could only have managed to express relief. The thrill of the surprise element had gone. So I phoned him.
When he answered, he sounded groggy. ‘Hello?’
‘Mark, where are you? Are you okay?’ I asked urgently.
There was silence. It seemed to go on forever. I recognised it as the silence of a storyteller wondering where to start.
‘Yeah,’ he said finally. ‘I was going to call you.’
I didn’t like the sound of that at all. ‘I’m at Heathrow,’ I said indignantly, as if it would make a difference.
‘Okay,’ he said warily. ‘What’s the time?’
I looked up at the indicator board. ‘Ten past twelve.’ A new crowd of meeters and greeters was gathering and I edged my way through them towards the relative quietness of a bureau de change. ‘Ten past seven, your time,’ I added, because at that point I knew without a doubt that he was still in the Bahamas and that he hadn’t caught the flight after all. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’m staying on here a bit longer.’
I felt so instantly bad, so painfully crushed by unhappiness that I just wanted to know the worst so that I could stop feeling this utter dread about what he was going to say. But at the same time, I was terribly scared to hear it.
‘Mark, just tell me, is this it?’
Again, the long pause.
I waited helplessly for the judgement.
‘Look, I’ll call you later,’ he said finally, and he cut me off.
Back home, waiting for the call, I obsessively went through his texts and checked his Instagram and Facebook pages and studied the pictures he’d posted of the free-diver, Helga. I rang his parents, Judy and Stephen, hoping that they could tell me what was going on, but although Judy greeted me warmly she was vague and said she believed he was working. I left messages pleading with him to phone me.
He finally did get in touch, jolting me awake from a restless sleep a couple of weeks later. From the background noise it sounded as if he was in a bar. He was remorseful, but he told me he was staying in Long Island a bit longer because this was a good assignment, and it might turn out to be one of his best.
If he’d left it there, it would have been easier to live with. But he went on to say that there had been too much pressure on us being the perfect couple and he didn’t like the way people assumed they knew him because of Marco in Love Crazy. He said I’d written things that were meant to be private. He needed some space because we’d rushed into living together, he said, forgetting it was his idea in the first place.
I listened to his familiar voice against the drunken tumult of the background noise and stared at the shadows on the ceiling.
‘So it’s my fault?’ I didn’t say it indignantly but more out of self-knowledge. I couldn’t make people like me, and the fact that he’d left me didn’t come as a surprise. My pillow was damp. I hadn’t realised I was crying.
‘I’ll call you when I get back,’ he said.
But as the time went by, every buzz and ping of my phone ignited hope and then plunged me back into a depression which drained the colour from my life. When I first wrote in my blog about his non-appearance at the airport the supportive messages helped a lot, but people don’t have a great tolerance for relentless
