“That guy I heard swearing at you through the phone at Brianny’s wedding?” I interrupt.
He snorts and smiles. “Yeah, Andrew. He’s…highly strung. But anyway. So Andrew screams at Hector on the phone, and Hector freaks out and just prices the deal and hits send. Goes to bed. Wakes up to hundreds of missed calls and emails. Turns out they’d put an extra zero in the figures. Greg and the other guys on the desk put it in to slow down the deal. They thought Hector would look it over before sending and get them to redo it next week once we were all back in the office, but Hector didn’t check it. He signed off on it and sent it. And that is a legally binding contract.”
“Oh my God, Mark. Can’t they just say it was an error?”
“Not really, honey. So Hector rings me and he’s trying to explain that he just assumed it would be right and he always, always, usually checks…but Andrew said send it and…and then he just starts crying. Erin, I just…I feel like I’m surrounded by absolute—” Mark stops himself and shakes his head ruefully. “So, I’m going to put feelers out for somewhere else. I’m one hundred percent happy to take a bonus drop, or a salary cut; the market’s not going back to the way it was anyway. Who are we kidding? I just don’t need this stress anymore. I want my life back. I want you and babies, and our evenings again.”
I like the sound of that. Very much. I hug him. Bury my head in his shoulder. “I want that too.”
“Good.” He kisses my hair lightly.
“I’ll find a good place, hand in my notice after this Hector stuff settles, take my garden leave for the wedding and honeymoon stretch, and start back hopefully around November. Just in time for Christmas.”
He’s done “garden leave” before—everyone who works in the financial sector has to take a mandatory leave between jobs; it’s supposed to stop insider trading but it’s essentially a two-month paid vacation. This does sound like a pretty good plan. Good for him. But I could definitely take a few weeks away from my work too. We could make a thing of it, get some serious honeymooning done. I’m working on my first feature-length documentary right now but I’ll have completed the first stage of filming by the wedding, and then I should have a good three-to four-week gap before I start on the second stage. That three to four weeks could definitely work in our favor.
A warm feeling spreads through my chest. This is good. This will be better for us.
“Where shall we go?” he asks.
“Honeymoon?”
This is the first time we’ve really talked about it. It’s two months away now, the wedding. We’ve covered all of that but this we’ve left fresh. Untouched, like an unopened gift. But I guess now is as good a time as any to broach the subject. I’m excited by the possibility of it all. Having him all to myself for weeks.
“Let’s go crazy. It might be the last time we have the time or the money.” I throw it out there.
“Yes!” he shouts, matching my energy.
“Two weeks—no, three weeks?” I offer. I squint, thinking through the filming schedule and interviews I have to do. I can manage three.
“Now we’re talking. Caribbean? Maldives? Bora Bora?” he asks.
“Bora Bora. That sounds perfect. I have no idea where it is but it sounds glorious. Fuck it. First class? Can we do first class?”
He grins at me. “We can do first class. I’ll book it.”
“Great!” I’ve never flown first class before.
And then I say something I’ll probably live to regret.
“I’m going to scuba dive with you. When we go. I’ll try it again. Then we can go down together.” I say it because it seems like all I can give Mark to show him how much I love him. Like a cat with a dead mouse in its mouth. Whether he wants it or not, I drop it at his feet.
“Seriously?” He stares at me, concerned, the sunlight creasing his eyes, the breeze ruffling his dark hair. He wasn’t expecting that.
Mark’s a qualified diver. He’s been trying to get me to go with him on every trip we’ve ever been on together, but I’ve always chickened out. I had a bad experience once, before we met. I panicked. Nothing serious, but the whole idea really scares the shit out of me. I don’t like the idea of feeling trapped. The thought of the pressure and the slow underwater ascents fills me with dread. But I want to do this thing for him. New life together, new challenges.
I grin. “Yes, definitely!” I can do it. How hard can it be? Kids do it. I’ll be fine.
He looks at me. “I fucking love you, Erin Locke,” he says. Just like that.
“I fucking love you too, Mark Roberts.”
He leans in, tilts my head, and kisses me.
“Are you real?” he asks, fixing my gaze.
We’ve played this game before, except it’s not really a game at all. Or is it? A mind game perhaps.
What he’s actually asking is, “Is this real?” It’s so good it must be a trick, a mistake. I must be lying. Am I lying?
I give it a second. I let the muscles of my face fall as he studies me. I let my pupils contract like the universe imploding and calmly reply, “No.” No, I’m not real. It’s scary. I’ve only done it a few times. Absented myself from my own face. Made myself disappear. Like a phone reverting to factory settings.
“No, I’m not real,” I say simply, my face blank and open.
It has to look like I mean it.
It works best when it looks real.
His eyes flicker and jump across my face, searching for a hook, a crack to hang understanding on. There’s nothing there. I’ve disappeared.
I know he worries. He worries deep down that one day I will actually just vanish. Leave. That this isn’t real. That he’ll wake up and everything will be the same in the house but I won’t be there. I know that fear; I see it fluttering across his face at random moments when we’re out with friends or standing on opposite sides of a busy room. I see it, that look, and then I know that he is real. I see it on his face now. And that’s enough for me.
I let the smile creep out of me and his face bursts with joy. He laughs. Flushing with emotion. I laugh and then he takes my face in his hands again and puts his lips to mine. Like I’ve won a race. Like I’m back from war. Well done, me. God, I love you, Mark. He pulls me into the salt marsh reeds and we fuck, desperately, hands full of woolen sweater and wet skin. As he comes I whisper in his ear, “I’m real.”
Last year I finally got co-funding from a prison charity to finance my first solo project. It’s now coming together after years of research and planning: my very own feature-length documentary. I’ve managed to get all the research and preproduction done while taking freelance projects along the way, and I’m due to start filming the face-to-face interviews in nine days. I’ve put so much of myself into this production and I hope, more than anything, that it all comes together. There’s only so far planning can take you, then you just have to wait and see what happens. It’s a big year. For me. For us. The film, the wedding—everything seems to be happening all at once. But I honestly think I’m at that magical point in my life where all the plans I set in motion in my twenties are finally coming together, all in unison, as if somehow I’d deliberately orchestrated it that way, though I don’t remember consciously doing that. I guess that’s the way life works, isn’t it—nothing, and then everything at once.