Now I see with aching clarity – my heart has filled in the gaps, even if my brain has not caught up.
‘Sam, I love you.’ It’s the first time I’ve said it, but as the words leave my mouth, I know it’s the truest thing I’ve ever said.
There is something different between us now, something beyond the physical. We make love slowly, quietly, and I try to seal it deep inside, this exquisite feeling of intimacy.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asks, holding me afterwards.
I mustn’t cry, I don’t want to ruin what could be our last night together.
God, I hope I end up here – please let me end up here, in this life, with this man. Then the thought takes hold that I should stay, that I shouldn’t risk this, that I would sacrifice sixteen years to have this. These are not the thoughts that are going to allow me to get back.
As we lie spent in the dark, I whisper, ‘Thank you.’
‘For what?’
‘For everything – for being you, for loving me through everything, for this life we’ve made.’
‘That sounds like a goodbye,’ Sam says, stroking his fingers gently down my arm. He starts humming softly beside me, murmuring words of a song I haven’t heard before.
‘You wrote something?’ I ask, my eyes welling with tears.
‘Just the start of something silly.’
‘What’s it called?’ I ask.
‘ “Stay for All the Pocket Days”. It’s not finished, I was just messing around.’
‘I like the sound of it. You should finish it.’
‘Okay,’ he says plainly.
‘Okay?’
‘Okay.’
And then he wraps his arms around me, as though he never wants to let me go, and softly sings me to sleep.
I must be in a deep sleep because I sleep through the alarm. When I wake, Sam is gone, and there’s a note on his pillow.
Doing the school run, then coming back to work on my new song : ) Don’t go anywhere, please.
I bite my lip, feeling myself grin. I love it when he leaves notes on the pillow, like that time on our honeymoon in Italy, where he left me notes in Italian that I couldn’t even read.
On our honeymoon. In Italy.
Our honeymoon. In Italy.
Shit. I remember our honeymoon.
Chapter 34
Am I too late? Have I missed my chance? This memory is clearer than any of the glimpses I have had before. I remember Italy, the hotel, the crazy couple in the room next door. I remember all of it. I have to get to London, now.
Throwing on my clothes, I run out of the door. It’s eight thirty, nobody is here. Dashing past Felix’s room, I see something that makes me jerk to a halt and retrace my steps. The remote for the lava lamp, for the heart we built – it’s on the floor by his desk. He’s got the project fair this morning, it won’t work without the remote. He’ll be so disappointed, like that time he made a spider out of Meccano. The Meccano spider, with only five legs, I can picture it perfectly.
Grabbing the remote, I run down the corridor, glancing at our wedding photo on the stairs. We had a fruit wedding cake, my mum made it and was offended when everyone was too full to eat it. The photo of Felix on the hall table, it was taken in Crete, after the boat trip where we didn’t see any sharks. I need to stop looking at things, I need to stop remembering – I have to get to London before it’s too late.
Jumping in the car, with nothing but my wallet and the remote for the lava lamp, I speed towards the school. Logic tells me that Felix’s project doesn’t matter, that if I’m going back, none of this matters. But I can’t help feeling that it does. It matters to Felix, right here, right now, in this reality, so it matters to me.
On the drive to school, I see the street where Felix learnt to ride a bike. There’s the tree he fell out of and broke his wrist. Memories, memories, too many memories. I drive faster. Stan sternly tells me to slow down.
At the school, I park right in front of the steps, leave the engine running, then sprint in.
‘Visitors need to scan in, Mrs Rutherford,’ the receptionist calls after me.
‘I’ll only be a minute!’ I call back, searching desperately for the main hall. Worryingly, I now know the way.
Bursting through the door, I see I’m just in time, because my son, my beautiful boy, is standing at the front of the room. A crowd of staff and pupils, including Molly Greenway and the headmistress, surrounds his display. He looks pale, as though he’s about to burst into tears, because he’s realised there is something missing.
‘I have it!’ I shout, running across the hall to him. ‘I have it!’ His head whips up, the tears vanishing.
Mrs Barclay, the headmistress, gives me a strange look as I catch my breath, taking in my wild hair and mismatched clothes. If coming here ends up costing me sixteen years, the smile on Felix’s face is worth every single day. He presses the button on the remote and the heart beats into life. Pupils ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ in delight and Mrs Barclay says, ‘Felix, how on earth did you do that?’ as she moves closer to inspect the pulsing sculpture.
I need to go. I wave to Felix as I back out of the classroom, but he runs around the desk to throw his arms around my waist.
‘Thank you. I love you,’ he says, eliciting titters from his classmates, but he doesn’t care.
‘I love you too, and I’m so proud of you, sweet boy. Goodbye, Felix,’ I say, and for a moment he won’t let go.
Then he looks up at me with tear-stained cheeks. ‘Good luck, Mummy. Don’t worry, I’ll see you next time around.’
In the car, I find myself asking Stan for help. ‘Stanley, please help me, I don’t think I’m going to make it in time.’
‘Lucy, I am here to support you in any way that I can. Would you like some words of affirmation?’
‘Yes, yes please.’
‘Your goals come to fruition at the right time,’ says Stanley. ‘Taking time to rest fuels your creativity and stamina.’
Not hugely helpful, but it’s enough to distract me from all the new memories vying to push their way in. The tyres screech as I pull into the train car park, my vision blurred with tears.
‘Goodbye, Stanley, I’m going to miss you,’ I tell the car, hugging the steering wheel. ‘Look after everyone for me.’
‘Have a productive day, Lucy!’ says Stan.
Sprinting for the nine-fifteen train, I make it by less than a minute. Once, coming back on the last train, I picked Sam up a takeaway from his favourite Mexican in Covent Garden, bringing it all the way back home, then dropping it down the gap between the platform and the carriage. On the train, I hold my head in my hands, trying to distract myself from thinking, to block out the memories that keep coming, unbidden. Stop. Stop. I need this to stop. In the next carriage, a tiny baby cries, and with the high-pitched sound a new heaviness envelops me, like metal filings filling my blood, the ground morphing into a giant magnet. A tiny hand curled around my little finger. Cannulas and oxygen tubes, the endless beeping of an incubator. A part of my heart sheared off, forever. Loss. Such overwhelming loss, but steeped in another feeling – love, too big to fathom. Chloe.