I sit back and look at the final line. I change one word, then sit back again. That’s it.
It’s done. One hundred thousand words. I would never have thought I was capable of it. But I’ve done one thousand words per day, every day, after work. No matter the time. No matter my plans (which aren’t many). It was never easy, exactly. But I didn’t give up. I just kept building the bricks, one by one.
I wrote a book called Deep Down in the Dennys when I was eight. Wilf proofread it, and then we ‘published’ it, running ten copies off on our new home laser printer and selling them at the school for five pence each. I wonder if he remembers.
On impulse, I navigate to Facebook and type his name in. It was a name as familiar to me as my own, one I have surely seen written almost as often. Wilfred. He used to hate it.
He’s changed his profile picture. I open that and stare at it. His long nose. He’s wearing Aviators, and in them I can see his arm reflected. It’s a selfie. All of his other pictures are just him, too. At the top of mountains. Running marathons. On a boat on the high seas. All selfies.
He hasn’t met anybody, then. I wouldn’t expect him to. He’s too cagey, remote.
There’s nothing else to see, so I click off the page, feeling alone, suddenly, in my bedroom. It feels like a past life.
The novel’s stored safely on my laptop. I’ll give it a read over, then send it off soon. I have a list of agents Blutacked to the wall and I take it off, now. Now that I’m ready.
A small suitcase is packed, and the laptop goes in first. I’m thankful, in a funny sort of way, for these two years of freedom. It’s been a completely pure, undiluted form of freedom. I’ve been able to do absolutely whatever I wanted. I’ve got the book down. I’ve watched whatever I’ve wanted. I’ve worked where I wanted to, in mobile libraries, of course, surrounded by books and their musty scents and the gentle rocking of the bus when there are too many people on board. It might not be what I want to do with my life, but it has been good.
And now it’s time.
Before I leave, I get the shoebox out. I allowed myself one box.
I sort through it, pulling out the items like they are relics. And I suppose they are: artefacts of my previous life. They’re preserved, not even dusty, as I hold them in my hands. The wedding bracelet. The list I wrote the day I got here. It contains everything I could ever remember Reuben and I saying we loved about the other. There are only twenty or so items on it. It was the best I could do, after the accident. I wrote it before they faded even further from my memory. Reading it now produces a warm feeling in the depths of my stomach, like having a hot chocolate with brandy in, at Christmastime.
I close my eyes, trying to taste the tang of Before. That lovely life with that lovely man. That carefree life. It never felt carefree. But, of course, it was.
There are other things in the box, too. A newspaper clipping about a protest against the closure of the library, with Reuben front and centre holding a placard saying Knowledge is power. I loved him for that protest. That protest meant he understood my job, as well as the wider politics. But it frustrated me, too. I didn’t want to go. Usually he’d leave it, but he just couldn’t understand why it wasn’t top of my list, standing in the cold with a placard. That clipping – it stands for all of it. That belligerent side of him. The one I loved, too. His flaws. I loved both sides of him like a mother should love her children: equally.
Absent from the box are the things that are impossible to capture. The way he looked at me across rooms. The dirty texts he’d occasionally send, which shocked and titillated me. The way he’d organize himself around me, tolerating my chaos, amused by it, even.
There’s a skylight, in my loft room, and I open it and peer out, looking at the tops of the buildings, taking in some summer air. There’s been a heatwave for the last few weeks, and it’s sticky and airless up here. I like to look at the rooftops in Birmingham. I never could in London. I was isolated, tucked away into a flat right in the bowels of the city. Reuben would hate it here. Would hate the things I like: the proper recycling bins. The driveway. That my neighbour occasionally invites me to her barbecues, even though she knows I am a recluse. That I can hang my washing outside. Reuben would be appalled by this banal suburbia, away from the city lights and twenty-four-hour shops. I almost smile to think about it.
As I look out at the darkening air above the rooftops, I wonder if he’s still in Zone Two. Still living in rented accommodation, still within walking distance of a hundred pubs, a thousand exhibitions, the river. Our river. No. Let’s not think of him.
My hand is on a clutch of papers from the box. It aches less today, my bad hand.
The name of my lawyer – Weston Michaels – is franked across the back of the letter. It was painless. I thought it would be. Not that I had ever given divorcing Reuben any thought, of course, but it was. He was his reasonable, dispassionate self. As consistent as a stick of fairground rock with his traits running evenly all the way through him.
I enclose your decree absolute, the letter says. No mention of ‘I am pleased to’. I liked that about my lawyer. He knew there was nothing pleasing about any of it.
I separate out the pieces of paper, and there it is. I haven’t looked at it for months, but there it is. Stamped with a County Court logo, in blood red.
I trace a fingertip over the names. Joanna Oliva, the Petitioner. Reuben Oliva, the Respondent.
I could change my name now. Meet someone new. I try to imagine Reuben’s antithesis. What kind of man would that be? He wouldn’t vote. Wouldn’t read books. He’d like the simple things in life. Two weeks in the Costa del Sol every August. He’d not worry about the treatment the cheap beef in his McDonald’s had been subjected to. He’d be sunny, warm. He’d like Saturday morning sex and football matches. Maybe he’d gamble, or download movies, or do something else mildly illegal, such as putting in a whiplash claim when he didn’t have any injuries. I shudder. He’s not for me, that man.
I wonder if Reuben received exactly the same document. Probably. He never said. Not a word of contact after I said I wanted a divorce. Classic, dignified Reuben.
I trace his name. That beautiful name. Reuben Oliva. It tripped off my tongue. I was so happy to take it.
I can’t help but wonder what he’s doing now. Worst of all, maybe, I wonder what might’ve been. If he knew. If he might have accepted it. Protected me. Forgiven me.
No. The reasons I love him are the reasons I could never have told him.
Loved.
Love.
I dream of Reuben, and, in the middle of the night, I get up and go into my tiny garden and look up at the sky and the stars and the moon. They’re so clear here. It would be nice, relaxing in the warm night air, if I wasn’t breathless and tired. My body slows down more at night than it used to. It takes me an age to wake properly in the mornings.
What’s he doing? I wonder. How is he? I wonder if he dreams of me, if he’s thinking of me right now, wherever he is, whatever he’s doing. Maybe he’s reading something heavy. Something meaningful. Something good. Watching BBC News, unable to sleep in the heat. Playing the piano. Slagging off politicians on the Internet. Something like that. Something good.
38
Reveal
Laura and Jonty are having a party on their boat. A farewell party, she called it in the text. As Reuben and I arrive, the side is strung with fairy lights. The boxes have gone. The random items from the top have gone, too. It’s a shell. A husk. It has lost its smell, I realize, as we step inside. Everyone is gathered at the other end, and Reuben and I are alone in the last of the sunlight for a moment. He pours a plastic cup of red wine for himself, then looks at me, his eyebrows raised.