She didn’t give the slightest hint anything was wrong in their relationship although … I look from Liam to the clock on the mantelpiece, distracted by the tick-tick-tick filling the room … and time slips away.
It’s three weeks before Charlotte’s accident – a Saturday afternoon – and she’s just returned from a shopping trip in town. I’m in the living room, reading, when I hear the door to the porch open. I call out, asking her if she’s bought anything nice but I’m ignored. I don’t ask again but I do keep an eye on the open living room door. Seconds later Charlotte slams up the stairs looking white as a ghost. I call after her, asking if she’s okay but the only reply I receive is the sound of a bedroom door slamming. I half-rise from the sofa, unsure what to do. Charlotte’s not one for mollycoddling, especially when she’s upset. She won’t let me hug her and flinches if I so much as stroke her arm. She’s stressed, all the kids are. You just have to stand at the school gates for a couple of minutes to work that out. Their GCSEs are fast approaching and coursework is mounting up. Charlotte even had to go into school in the holidays so her teacher could help her complete it on time. I sink back into the sofa. I haven’t been sleeping well recently. My nightmares have returned and the last thing I need is a screaming match with a fifteen-year-old. She knows where I am, I think as I pick my book back up again.
‘Did you split up on a Saturday?’ I ask Liam. ‘About nine weeks ago?’
He runs a hand over his face. ‘No, it was …’ he pauses and I sense that he’s struggling to suppress his emotions, ‘… she ended it the day before her accident.’
‘Why?’ I lean forward in my seat, my hands gripping my knees. Why didn’t I contact him sooner? It’s as though I’ve been sleepwalking since Charlotte’s accident – longer than that – and I’m only just waking up. Splitting up with her boyfriend has to be the reason she stepped in front of the bus. You never feel heartache as keenly as you do when you’re young. You think it’ll destroy you and that you will never love, or be loved, again. She didn’t write about it in her diary though.
Liam stands up, crosses the room and picks up his guitar from the stand next to the bookcase. He sits back down and strums a few chords.
‘Liam?’ It’s as though he’s forgotten I’m in the room. ‘Why did Charlotte end your relationship? How was she?’
He looks at me blankly.
‘When she ended your relationship, how was she?’
He shakes his head. ‘I don’t know, I wasn’t there.’
‘Sorry?’
He looks back at his guitar, strums a few more chords then slaps the strings with the palm of his hand, silencing the sound, then looks across at me. ‘She dumped me by text.’
I can sense that he doesn’t want to talk about it. That he wants me to leave. But I can’t. ‘What did she say? In her text? If you don’t mind me asking.’
‘Not much.’ He reaches into the side of the sofa and Milly starts to her feet as a small, black, plastic object whizzes through the air and lands on the sofa beside me. Liam’s phone. I look at him, to check it’s okay for me to go through it. He nods then looks back at his guitar.
Charlotte the open message is titled. I read it then look at Liam in surprise.
‘That’s it?’
He nods.
I look back at the text message:
It’s over between us Liam. If you love me you’ll never contact me again.
‘Did you ask why?’
Liam doesn’t answer. He’s staring at the carpet, tapping his foot repeatedly.
‘Liam?’
‘What?’ He doesn’t look up.
‘Did you contact her?’
‘Of course I did.’ He moves as though he’s about to put his guitar on the ground then changes his mind. He hugs it to his chest instead, the side of his cheek pressed against the fret board. ‘You don’t get a text message dumping you out of the blue like that and not ring up to ask what the fuck’s going on, do you? Not if you still love the person.’
Milly snuffles at my feet.
‘What did Charlotte say?’
‘She didn’t.’ Liam looks at me blankly, like the fight has gone out of him. ‘She wouldn’t answer her phone. I texted her loads, but she didn’t text back. Not once.’ He shakes his head. ‘I know she’s your daughter but I didn’t deserve that, Mrs Jackson. I didn’t deserve to get dumped by text with no explanation and then get ignored like I didn’t even fucking exist.’
I’m torn. Part of me wants to cross the divide between us and wrap Liam in my arms and take away the hurt. The other part wants to ask if they argued, if he did anything to warrant Charlotte ending the relationship in such a brutal way. I decide to do neither. He looks close to tears and I don’t want to upset him more than I already have. Not if I want him to talk to me again. I stand up and pull on Milly’s lead so she rises too.
‘I’m sorry, Liam,’ I say. ‘I had no idea about any of that. Charlotte didn’t breathe a word.’
He sighs heavily, then crosses his arms and looks away. Conversation over.
It’s only when I’m halfway home that I realize I didn’t bring up the one subject I’d traipsed all the way over to White Street to discuss. Sex. There’s no way I can turn back and knock on the door again, not with Liam the way he was when I left. I don’t know what drove Charlotte to do what she did but I can’t help but feel that it was cruel, even for a teenager. But maybe Liam had done something to deserve it? Sometimes you have to escape from a relationship as stealthily and quietly as you can.
‘Here we are, Milly,’ I say as I fit the key in the lock, turn it and twist the handle of the porch door. ‘Home again. Home ag—’
My voice catches in my throat. There’s a postcard, picture side up, on the mat. I start to shake as I reach down to pick it up.
‘Stop it, Sue,’ I tell myself. ‘Stop overreacting, it’s just a postcard,’ but as I turn it over in my hands and look at the other side my ears start to ring. My vision clouds and I grab the doorframe, blinking hard to try and dispel the white spots that have appeared before my eyes but I know it’s too late. I’m going to faint.
Nearly two weeks since James told me he loved me and I still haven’t been to his place. All I know is that he lives in a three-bedroom terraced house near Wood Green. Hels is worried. According to her, you don’t date a man for six weeks without seeing his place unless he’s got something to hide. I told her that I wasn’t bothered – that going to hotels was exciting and staying at mine was convenient, but she knew I was bullshitting. You can’t be friends with someone since you were ten and lie to their face and get away with it.
