I remember wondering even then if I was mad. All those months of torment, when I believed I was losing my mind, when every waking hour was spent thinking about him, when missing him became my whole existence. Perhaps that’s the good and bad thing about love, the way you have no control over how you feel. Elation and desperation come hand in hand. In truth, even when I look back, I never had any doubt that I loved him. Or as near as anyone can feel for someone who is not their flesh and blood.
Our time apart was supposed to be temporary. It was his idea to take it ‘easy’. Over the seven months, he had thought about making contact but had held back, thinking that the more time we were apart, the easier it would be for him, for us both, to forget and move on.
He had thrown himself completely into work, painting with more zeal than he’d painted his whole life. But what he saw staring back at him from the canvas told him everything he needed to know. And the more he painted, the more he knew he would see me again.
That morning when I left Andrew and went back to our caravan, I was happier than I had been in months. I had no idea where the rekindling of our relationship would lead us, but one thing I knew for certain: I wanted to be with Andrew more than anything else I could imagine.
But that was then.
I realise now that people think differently when real suffering visits their door. In my head, I suppose I thought that I had suffered over the previous six months, that those black days before we got back together were the worst thing possible. I had so much still to learn about suffering.
If I had the energy now, I’d laugh out loud at the person I used to be. Blind ignorance allows such flights of fancy. On that walk back to the caravan, when others, including Joe, were still fast asleep, I thought about how I would have done almost anything to keep Andrew in my life. I would have told any number of lies to be with him. Although I wasn’t altogether sure how I was going to make that happen, I was resolute in my thinking that we would never be apart again.
Like the light touch of rain, cold, sharp and pure against my skin, I felt our love alive. How was I to know that within moments those thoughts would be gone, replaced by something completely different.
Ludicrous when I think about it now, how I once believed the world spun around me. Maybe the emotions I felt for Andrew fooled me into thinking they would be strong enough, deep enough, to withstand so much. But afterwards, when I found Amy, my love for him drifted to a place kept for history, of little or no relevance any more.
When Andrew arrived after the fire, I wasn’t surprised by his anger. Joe told him how withdrawn I’d been, how dependent I had become on antidepressants, how he should have seen this coming. Andrew had never witnessed any of these things about me, but he knew enough about his brother to know he was not a man to lie. I hadn’t helped matters. When he looked for an explanation, I gave him little in return.
Maybe Dr Ebbs was right and it had been shock. But all of them, Andrew, Joe, the rest of the world, meant little when the sheer horror of real loss hit me. I know I could have tried more, but there was so little of me left to fight, and what little there was didn’t want to. When I think about the person I was that day, the day I found my Amy, I see a woman lost, a woman who was not only beyond saving but who held no desire for it either.
I have no idea what I will say to Dr Ebbs the next time I meet him. As I sit here with my arms wrapped around my knees, my future feels emptier than before, a gaping abyss, a vast nothingness.
I don’t want to cry. I fight hard against it. The copybook and pens are down by the side of my bed, waiting for me to revisit them. I listen to the rain as it sweeps across the landscape and I wonder if it could carry me. If I could abandon this earthly body and be no more. When I was a child, I used to listen to the howl of the banshees in the night. I used to think I had something to fear from things I didn’t understand, that the unknown was the scariest thing. Now I’ve learned differently, it is the things I know that I am scared of most. And again I ask myself the question I’ve asked so many times before: What form of man or woman would seek to live, when the world they live in is no longer a world they either care about or want?
Slattery’s public house
Saturday, 8 October 2011, 9.00 p.m.
‘WE’RE STARTING TO MAKE A HABIT OF MEETING IN dark pubs.’ O’Connor stood up for Kate to take a seat.
‘Yeah, well, rumour has it they need the business,’ Kate responded, with a smile. O’Connor looked tired and crumpled, but he still managed to smile warmly at her. She reckoned he was happy to be away from the focal point of the investigation, even if only for a short while.
‘You want a drink, Kate?’
‘Water is fine, thanks.’
‘That’s not going to do a lot for their trade figures.’