Jesus, my head hurt.
I came crashing down from dreamland, straight back through the clouds to reality, landing with a bump that jarred my bones.
I knew what I had to do. Self-discipline be damned. I needed this.
I turned away from the window and headed for the guest bedroom, flipping on the light. I stared at the wardrobe door like it was the gateway to Narnia. In a way, I guess it was.
I opened the door slowly, watching as the shadows inside were chased away by the light, revealing its precious contents. Em’s backpack, slouching in the bottom of the wardrobe, brand new, never used.
Just do it. Do it and get it over with.
I always felt guilty. As if I were letting everyone down by looking back. As if I were letting myself down.
I lifted the backpack, reaching for the cardboard box underneath it. She deserved more. She deserved more than a shitty cardboard box, but it was all I had.
I hunkered down on my hands and knees, one hand on the box, afraid to lift it, afraid to commit myself. Her shoes were lined up neatly along the bottom of the wardrobe, her clothes hanging casually above, as if she might come back one day and need them. It was the only concession I could live with. I couldn’t get rid of them, but moving them out of the main wardrobe and in here seemed like progress, somehow. And it got everyone off my back. As if moving her belongings out of our house would remove her from my heart, somehow, and make it all hurt less. The idea was ridiculous.
I picked up the box and sat back on the floor with my back against the bed. Slowly, I opened it. Emily’s face stared back at me – not the widely-circulated photo that I saw at the police station every Tuesday, but the real Emily, the one I fell in love with. Her eyes shone out at me, open and welcoming. Loving. She was beaming at me, the dimples in her cheeks deep and precious. I ached to run my fingers over them once again, to make her giggle and squirm as my fingertips glided across her skin. What I wouldn’t give to walk into our bedroom right now and see her lying in our bed, waiting for me.
I was a black hole, a star frozen at the point of collapse. I couldn’t go back, yet I couldn’t seem to move on, either.
Beneath the photos lay two unused airline tickets and her passport. Tickets to another life, another adventure, but ultimately not the one destiny had chosen for us. How very different things would have been if we’d been given the chance to use them. Where would we be now, if she was still here?
“Happy birthday,” I whispered.
The words hung in the air around me, as if waiting for a response, before the silence finally gathered them up.
Guilt rose up from the depths of my soul. Too drunk and too weak to fight it off this time, I let it come.
I’ve failed her.
Somewhere along the line, I’d let her down. Somewhere out there, she was waiting for me to find her.
JUST BEFORE SUNRISE, we made our way together down the path at the end of the small cul-de-sac and down onto the grass above the beach.
This was Emily’s day, too.
We were all tucked away inside ourselves, together in body, but alone with our memories of her. The seagulls overhead filled the silence with white noise, seamlessly blending with the sound of the crashing waves. There, but not there.
That’s how I felt, too, especially after last night. My body was here, but in my head, I was with Em, wherever she was.
She was laughing, we were all singing happy birthday, and then she blew out candles, picking them out of the cake and sucking the icing off the bottom with a cheeky grin.
Probably just the hangover, messing with my head, but I found myself wondering how we came to all be here, at this point. How did it come to this? Celebrating another birthday without her. Another year with no card, no presents, no cake. I was another year older without her.
I was twenty-three when she disappeared. What did I know, about anything? Now I was twenty-eight and I felt like an old man. This wasn’t the plan. In our alternate universe, we had spent two years travelling in Europe, maybe gone back to London for a year, travelled through America on our way home and been back here in New Zealand for a year or so, contemplating our next move. Maybe we got married. Maybe I proposed to her in Italy, over candlelight, at sunset, both of us full of cheap local wine. Maybe we had a kid by now – kids, even. She would’ve been a great mother. Bridget would’ve been a grandmother, Henry a great-grandfather, Alex and Vinnie uncles. Maybe our kids and Vinnie and Jas’s would’ve grown up together, side by side. Maybe our little family would’ve been doubled.