one altogether. The only record of my time in America was in photo form, tiny digital squares of memories saved on my laptop and not nearly as affecting.
A handful of photographs fell into my lap, blurry, overexposed candids, a million miles away from the pictures we took on our phones. Every photograph I took now was ruthlessly cropped, filtered and edited, and anything less than deeply flattering was immediately discarded into the digital wasteland. These were different. I leafed through them, smiling. It wasn’t that long ago but we all looked so much younger, sharper angles but softer edges. We took disposable cameras everywhere that summer, me, Sumi and Lucy, determined to break free of our phones, an ahead-of-the-curve digital detox. It lasted exactly one month until Sumi balked at the price of film development and I ran the camera we’d taken to Lucy’s hen do through the wash.
There was a rush in these photos you couldn’t get in phone pics, I realized, tracing the curve of my arm in another photo: it was slung carelessly around Patrick’s neck, my head thrown back, him holding a hand out towards the camera to wave the photographer away but still laughing. So much genuine emotion packed into one frame that I suddenly had to wonder if our ancestors had been right all along. Did the flash steal your soul? Did we give a piece of ourselves away with every selfie?
There was one photo in particular, curled at the edges and sticky on the back from a time it had taken pride of place on my wall, one photo that hit me right in the heart. It was me and Patrick at Lucy’s wedding. Lucy had given it to me, rather than keeping it for the album, it felt too personal, too intimate, to share with strangers. The sun was behind us, a bright white light sharply lining our features, and we were holding hands, eyes on each other, as though we were the only two people on earth. Our faces were inches apart, either pre- or post-kiss, I couldn’t recall, but we looked so happy. So, so happy. And three weeks after it was taken, we broke up.
Slipping the photos back in the diary, I threw it as far as I could. About four feet. The shed really wasn’t very big. I pulled the sheets up to my chin and let out a loud huff. Probably not the best idea right before bed, I thought as I threw my hot and bothered body around, my legs tangling themselves up in the bed clothes as I went.
Grunting, I reached for my phone and opened my messages.
There it was, bold as brass, clear as day.
Hello stranger.
I placed the phone back on the nightstand and draped one arm over my face, covering my eyes. Maybe if I lay there long enough, stayed still enough, I would forget about the text and fall asleep.
I lasted ten seconds.
With a loud sigh, I reached for my phone again.
Hello stranger.
It was going to be a long night.
‘Tell me you didn’t text him back.’
‘I did not text him back.’
It was the truth. I had not replied to Patrick’s text. I’d slept for what felt like fifteen minutes, taken two cold showers, listened to the foxes living and loving in my parents’ back garden, eaten half a tub of Nutella straight out the jar, read several chapters of Starting Over, chosen my least-worst New Job outfit from my limited wardrobe and hunted for my ex up and down the internet to no avail but I had not replied to Patrick’s text.
Striding down the street, on my way to my first morning at work, I lifted my chin to feel the sun on my face.
‘I didn’t text him,’ I said. ‘But I really want to.’
A short, exasperated sigh whistled down the line.
‘I know you do,’ Sumi said kindly after collecting herself. ‘But you can’t, Ros. Honestly, I don’t know why you even still have his number in your phone.’
‘I didn’t have his number in my phone, it was in the cloud!’ I protested. ‘When the girl in the shop downloaded all my information to the new one, she used a back-up from the cloud. She said it would be quicker than doing a phone-to-phone transfer.’
‘You never save anything to the cloud!’ Sumi admonished me. ‘You don’t really want all your personal information flying around out there in cyberspace, do you?’
I shrugged. If it meant I didn’t have to remember my passwords or credit card numbers when I wanted to order a pizza, I was happy to be part of the problem.
‘Please don’t text him, Ros,’ she pleaded. ‘It’s such a bad idea.’
‘Is it?’ I wondered out loud. ‘Because I was thinking about it last night and I think closure might be a good idea.’
‘I’ll give you closure, we’ll role-play.’ She cleared her throat and deepened her voice. ‘Hello, Ros, I’m Patrick. I think I’m really clever because I’ve read a lot of books and written one or two but I’ve actually got the emotional maturity of a shoe and not a very nice one.’
I shook my head and smiled as I walked past a coffee shop, remembering the coffees and pastries he’d brought back to his flat the first morning after the first night before.
‘Do you think he misses me?’ I asked. ‘Do you think that’s why he sent the text?’
‘I don’t know what he’s thinking,’ Sumi admitted. ‘But I do know he broke your heart and I’m not down for you to give him a chance to do it again.’
‘Probably just being nice,’ I reasoned. ‘Replying out of politeness. I did send him the first text, after all.’
Sumi burst out laughing. ‘Ros. When was Patrick ever nice? Or polite?’
It was a fair point. He was a lot of things but nice wasn’t one of them. But who wanted nice? Nice was just a polite word for boring. Patrick was adventurous and passionate and bold and even though I tried so hard not to, now he was back in my head, I missed him so much I could taste it.
‘It has been a while, what if he’s changed?’
‘He could have been turned into a unicorn that’s been tasked with protecting the Holy Grail and I still wouldn’t think it was a good idea to text him,’ she replied, blunt as ever. ‘You were together six months and it’s taken you three years to get over him. Don’t do this to yourself.’
‘It was nine months,’ I corrected. ‘Almost ten.’
Nine months, twenty-two days and twenty-three hours if we were being precise. Accuracy was important to me.
‘You were together nine months, almost ten,’ Sumi repeated. ‘Then you were offered an amazing job opportunity that didn’t mean you had to break up but he knocked the whole thing on the head without giving it a second thought.’
‘I know,’ I said softly. ‘I was there, I remember.’
‘I just don’t want you to get hurt again,’ Sumi groaned. ‘This is so like him, so casual, so vague. What if you reply, get your hopes up, and then he tells you he’s married with kids?’
The
