She has never understood it. Why, having suddenly found myself all alone in the world for the first time in fifteen years, I would choose to compound that loneliness by moving to such a place. But what she couldn’t understand – because it wasn’t really something I could explain, only something I felt – was that I felt much more alone surrounded by people. All our friends, however much they were trying to help, and sympathise, reminded me of him. And the city we had lived in together. Around every corner was a café where we had eaten brunch, or a bookshop we had browsed, or even a branch of Sainsbury’s where we had picked up a ready meal curry and a bottle of wine. Our apartment was worst of all, of course. I could hardly bring myself to be inside it before it was sold. Here were all the memories of a life together, of growing up together: the place we had lived in practically since we left university. My whole adult life.
And being around people – people carrying on with their lives, busy and messy, settling down, having children, getting married – just emphasises how much my own has stalled, indefinitely. Perhaps for ever.
So yes, sometimes, I get lonely here. But at least this landscape has always seemed suited to loneliness, and I am not confronted, every day, by all that I have lost, by the echoes of my old life, whole and happy and filled with love. And yes, sometimes as I had in the city, I have found myself almost unable to get out of bed, and have had to force myself to get dressed, eat my breakfast, make the short walk to the office in the Lodge. But it is a lot easier to face the day when you know you won’t have to face other people and their happiness.
Here, I have been able to go and howl my misery and my anger – yes, there’s a lot of that – at the mountains and the loch, and feel the vast landscape soak up something of my grief. Here, loneliness is the natural state of things.
When it happened, part of me wondered if I had been simply waiting for it, that I had always known it would come. I had always felt, ever since Jamie and I got together, that it was too good, that we were too lucky. That happiness like this couldn’t possibly last: we were using up more than our allotted quota of the stuff, and at some point someone had to notice. Fate decided to prove me right. The expression that Jamie’s boss, Keith, wore when he came to tell me. I knew before he opened his mouth. Smoke inhalation. No one realised, in the chaos, that Jamie hadn’t reappeared. He’d been trapped, in the burning house. The other firemen had done everything they could. Had been hunkered down there with the paramedics.
Keith had done CPR on Jamie for a full forty-five minutes before they could get there. When he began to cry I had had to look away, because it was such a terrible, unexpected sight. Seeing a man like Keith cry. And because that, more than anything, made it all real.
Jamie was a fireman. He could have been many things, with that brain of his: a scientist, a lawyer, a professor. But he wanted to do something that he really felt mattered, he told me – like I did. The thing that made him one of the best was that he always went the extra mile. As Keith said, at the service, when others had given up on a lost cause, Jamie would try that little bit harder, risk that little bit more. He had seemed, at times, almost invincible. But he wasn’t. He was just a man. A big-hearted, brave, self-sacrificing man – but definitely mortal.
What they don’t tell you is that when someone you love dies you might be angry with him. And that was true, I was so angry with Jamie. Before, life had meaning. Everything about us was meant to be. The way we met – him deciding at the last minute to come to a house party thrown by a friend of a friend. The beautiful light-filled apartment we found in Edinburgh’s Old Town, which the owner decided to rent for a song to anyone who would also dog-sit for him when he went away travelling. Even just the way we fitted together, he and I – two pieces of a very simple jigsaw that, when combined, made the picture complete.
When he died, nothing made sense any more. A world in which he could be taken from me had to be a cruel, chaotic place. And I thought – briefly, but definitely – about ending it all. In the end it wasn’t any desire to survive that stopped me from doing it; it was the knowledge of what it would do to my family.
Coming here was the next best thing, you see. It was a way of escaping from life as I had known it, from everything that tied me to the past. Sometimes I think it’s a little like dying – a slightly more palatable option than the pills and the jump from the Forth Bridge that I had contemplated in the weeks after Jamie’s death. So in an odd way this landscape has been a sanctuary. But now, with this new horror and the falling snow trapping us in and keeping help out, it has become, in the space of twenty-four hours, a prison.
Two days earlier
New Year’s Eve 2018
EMMA
Last night, Mark and I had some pretty great sex. He threw me onto the bed. There was an intensity to his features, a dark cast to them. He looks quite similar when he is turned on to when he’s really angry.
I don’t know what got into him. It might have been the stuff we all took (which I shouldn’t have had, looking back, because I say stupid things – things I don’t mean to say aloud). But his intensity might also have had something to do with the thing he’s just told me, too – the thing he’s found out – that strange, almost erotic delight we sometimes take in someone else’s messing up.
I know people wonder about Mark and me. ‘How did you two meet?’ they ask. Or ‘What drew you to him?’ and ‘When did you know he was “the one”?’ Sometimes I’ll tell them it was his dance moves to Chesney Hawkes in the middle of Inferno’s dance floor that got me, and that will normally get a laugh. But that’s only a temporary measure to stall the questions that will undoubtedly follow, the deeper, more probing enquiries.
They’re looking for the romance, the chemistry, the vital spark that drew us together, that keeps us together. Normally, I think they probably end up disappointed in their search. Because, the truth is, there is no great romance between us. There was no grand passion. There wasn’t ever that – even in the first place. I don’t mind admitting it. It wasn’t the thing I was looking for.
There are people who hold out for love, capital letters LOVE, and don’t stop until they’ve found it. There are those who give up because they don’t find it. Boom or bust – all or nothing. And then, perhaps in the majority, there are those who settle. And I think we’re the sensible ones. Because love doesn’t always mean longevity.
I’m happy with what we’ve got. Mark too, I think. People seem to comment a lot on the fact that we’re not that similar. ‘Opposites attract,’ they say with a knowing look. ‘Isn’t that right?’ The important thing is for a couple to have certain interests or hobbies in common, that’s how I see it. A few areas – or even just one area – for which you share the same degree of interest. Which we do. There’s one thing in particular. And no, it’s not that, though we do have good, even great sex.
So no, we don’t have the huge chemistry of a couple like Miranda and Julien … though something, now I come to think of it, seems to be off between them – I wonder if I’m the only one to notice it. And yes, I do know Mark has a whopping crush on Miranda, in case you were wondering. I’m not an idiot. In fact, I see quite a bit more than most people give me credit for. I don’t mind. I really don’t. I can almost hear the incredulity. But I promise it’s the case. You’re just going to have to take my word for it, I’m afraid.
So no, when I saw Mark in that sweaty nightclub just off Clapham High Street, I didn’t necessarily think: Here is the man of my dreams, this must be the thing great literature and film is made of; true love, love at first sight. It wasn’t like that.