stretches his arms above his head in a yawn, unknowing, oblivious.
When Tom steps off the train, meets colleagues and shakes their hands then heads off to work, I leave him to it. I can’t follow further or loiter on the edge of their small group. But it has been enough. Just observing him. Gathering information for what might come next. Being in his company.
Before I get the train home, I swerve left and take another trip: it’s down to the beach, takes me down memory lane, too.
What peace, I think, as I stare out to sea. The sand has that miles-to-the-water Britishness. You want to swim? Fine, but you’ll have to earn it with a long trudge.
I look around. Beach huts the shade of party balloons have found fame since the social media bloggers turned up, desperate to tick off their daily dose of beauty. Hunstanton’s beach huts didn’t feel so ubiquitous when Luke and I were here. It made them quainter.
I walk on. Perfect tableaus are everywhere I look. A shaggy dog, braving the sea when all humans goosebump at the thought. Parents hugging hot coffee. Families taking out optimistic picnics. Later, their pictures will say they were happy eating the ham sandwiches; the reality was that they were happiest when they started speeding up the motorway towards their central heating and duvets.
I am watching all of them, nosy and cold with my nostrils the only body part I will allow out of my scarf. Things get hazy. I don’t know which of these people are here now and which of them were here then, when he did it.
It is four years almost to the day since Luke rooted one knee into the sand, wobbled slightly then sniped under his breath at the man who walked past and said with a grin, ‘I’d do it quickly mate, it’s freezing.’
‘Will you marry me?’ he asked, the familiar phrase sounding faintly amusing to me although I knew I couldn’t laugh: that wouldn’t be right for this scene. Luke was still snarling slightly at the guy who had ruined our moment.
His hand was ice as I held it and my eyes squinted into bright January sunshine. I felt my whole body shiver despite it because it was still winter and I hate the cold.
A boy was crying for ice cream nearby and I knew Luke’s teeth would hurt at the idea. Gulls squawked and waves crashed and everything smelled of sea air.
‘Yes,’ I said quickly before he said a word. I felt victorious. I felt validated that I had taken a gamble on him and moved away from my family and done all of this work to be better. And I felt, finally, like Luke must love me. That the charming, engaging man I had seen at the beginning was the real Luke. That he had just been under pressure lately, taking it out on me because I was closest. But he was still smart, still funny, still beautiful. The knowledge was as physical as the bracing wind.
Luke was on his phone twenty minutes after he proposed, looking at sports results, trying to buy some gig tickets from a friend, but mine stayed in my pocket: I didn’t need any distraction. I just stood there in the biting wind, smelling the vinegar from the chip shop, feeling it all.
‘What if we invite David over?’ I had blurted out, my confidence peaking. ‘Tell him in person?’
I missed David to the point that I felt it in my stomach, in my bones. He still hadn’t visited. This would be the perfect excuse.
Luke looked up from his phone.
‘Are you serious?’
I regretted my words already. This perfect tableau, ruined by my idiocy. I felt my body temperature shoot up like I’d just stepped off an air-conditioned plane into summer in the Mediterranean.
‘After the way your brother’s been to me the whole time we’ve been together. You don’t think that would be hard for me? To have him stay in our home? Turning you against me?’
I wished desperately that I could go back in time, take the words back.
But still, I had no idea what he was on about. My mom and dad might have been wary of Luke, sure, but David? David saw the charm that a lot of people saw in Luke; David had idolised him.
‘You’d probably break up with me by the time he went home.’
I gave in easily, desperately. I was horrified that I had started this conversation and wanted only for it to be over. I didn’t mention David again and after that, I stopped contacting my brother so often, too. What if he was trying to split Luke and I up? Things were getting confusing. I couldn’t really be trusted to know.
On the train journey home, Luke didn’t speak one word to me, despite my stroking his arm the whole way and making unending, desperate small talk.
Later, I messaged my parents to tell them our news but ignored their calls in response. I knew that hearing what they had to say about us being engaged would bring me down.
But the voicemail did it anyway.
‘Just checking though, Harriet – you are sure, aren’t you? You are really sure?’ said my mom after the obligatory congratulations and a pause. I ignored and deleted her message and after that, the distance that had manifested itself since I emigrated stretched even wider.
I didn’t tell Luke what my mom had said. He would blame me for painting the wrong picture of him, for somehow making them feel that way, and he was being frosty enough with me anyway after our row about David. Until, suddenly, there was a surprise trip to Copenhagen booked and the dial pinged to the other side: I was forgiven.
‘Let’s celebrate our engagement!’ said Luke, euphoric, high.
See, I thought, see – there’s the charming version. There’s the man who sparkles.
I nodded, grinned, kept quiet about the inconvenience to my work schedule and to everybody I was going to have to let down, since I hadn’t been consulted on dates. I just felt relieved that he had thawed.
In Denmark, we left the hotel to the shocked faces of reception staff, who believed we should stay indoors. It was minus thirteen, while the hotel had fluffy cushions and a sauna.
‘It’s so cold, though,’ said a concerned manager, shaking his bald head and shivering at the thought. ‘It’s so cold. Even for Copenhagen.’
‘We’ll survive,’ said Luke sharply.
I winced. But I kept quiet: the one time I had brought up his rudeness to strangers, we had had a huge row.
‘Because I stand up to people when they don’t do their jobs, Harriet?’ he had said. ‘That’s not rudeness. That’s just not being pathetic.’
At the Little Mermaid, a bronze statue coated in white snow, we paused for twenty seconds, ticked it off, walked on.
‘It’s so cold,’ said a passing tourist to us amiably. ‘Even for Copenhagen.’
The man held his partner’s hand. I reached for Luke’s but he shook me off, told me it was too awkward to hold hands in gloves.
We waded back through wedges of snow to the café that served hot chocolate as real chocolate on a stick, melting into your milk, making the powder we stirred into water at home look like an abomination.
I took
