‘Explain it for me. Like I’m an idiot.’
‘Well, I can’t, can I? It defies words. You just know when you’re in love. A bit like you know when you’re hungry or tired. It’s primal. It’s formless. But it’s very real.’
We return to his car because he offers to drive me home. ‘What made you want to become a nurse?’ I ask. ‘Let me guess. Was it your slavish devotion to cleanliness?’ I pick up a fetid white sports sock that’s hanging out of the pocket of the car door and dangle it at him.
The gears groan loudly as he shifts them. ‘Well, I could say I had the calling from an early age to help the dying or demented, but it’s really nothing as noble as that. I was going out with a girl who’d just become a nurse. She got a lot of job satisfaction, she was decently paid and she said British-trained nurses were in demand all over the world. So I saw an opportunity for money and travel.’ He throws up his left hand. ‘That’s why I now drive this great car and I’m still living in Newcastle.’
The car gives an unexpected spontaneous lurch, and I chuckle. ‘But you do get job satisfaction.’
‘Yeah. The old folks, you know . . .’ He switches on the radio, but the sound quality is deplorable. ‘They really only come to us when their families can no longer cope – when somebody’s given up on them ever being any better than they are. So the way I see it is, I might well be the only person in the world who carries any hope for them. I feel honoured, in a way. I get to be the last one to believe in them.’
‘That’s so touching.’ I look at his bulky hand resting on the gear stick. He says some of the sweetest things! ‘It’s lovely that you see it like that. Most men – well, their minds wouldn’t work that way.’
‘I’m not really a fully evolved man.’ He switches channels, and leaves it on a static-y Nina Simone singing ‘Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood’. ‘Remember, I grew up with four sisters. I have a large girly side, apparently.’
I feel so close to him. It’s like I’ve known him forever instead of just a few weeks. ‘So do you really think a person can forget everything, Michael? I mean, you must have thought about it quite a bit. Surely, if you’ve loved someone very much, some small memory of them must stay with you? Even if you can’t connect the person your eyes see to the person who is there dimly in your heart?’
I’d give anything for Eddy to remember Evelyn. Even if it was just for a minute. I shake my head, dismayed, already fearing the answer.
‘I don’t know, Alice.’ His kind eyes scan my face. ‘I gave you all that stuff to read . . . I wish I knew. I’ve read a lot of conflicting things. Some of it I want to believe, and other stuff I’m afraid to believe. So I’ve sort of made my own belief out of it. I’d like to think that our memories, where they concern love, anyway, are stored forever in a special vault that can never be touched by anything bad. Even if we can’t completely associate them with the person or thing we see before us. We know we are loved, and that we have loved, and we take that with us to our grave.’
Why do all these utterances always lead me to thoughts of Justin? And then I remember what Evelyn once said. About how we place ourselves in the context of meaningful things: the family we have loved, and the people we have loved, and without that we are nothing. We have no context. And that’s what I feel like now. Like I have no context.
I cannot push the feeling away. For the rest of the journey, I can’t drag conversation out of myself; I speak only when he wants directions.
Somehow, given that he now has a small window on to my life, I sense he knows why.
THIRTY-FOUR
I am either going to be brave, and do this, or I must put the entire idea out of my mind for good. But even with the exercise of giving myself these two options, I know which it’s going to be.
I park across the street, fifty metres back from the front gate – pretty much where I parked those other times. Twenty minutes, then I’m leaving. Knowing my luck, I’ll raise the suspicions of a zealot of the neighbourhood watch committee – they’ll be saying, There goes that weird woman who was asking the plumber and the man next door about who lives here . . . I pretend to mess about on my phone and look businesslike and purposeful. Behind my sunglasses, I manage to turn my head one way while looking the other, though it’s painful.
The thought that Lisa is probably inside that house with Justin’s child is something I can hardly comprehend; Justin’s baby, Justin’s future, right behind that red front door.
I stare at the house until my eyes burn. I am still not sure what I expect to see. Justin coming home? Lisa running out for groceries with the baby? Perhaps nothing. Justin might be working late. He could be at the gym. Or perhaps he doesn’t do that now that he has an ill son to hurry home for.
Am I going to knock on the door again? Now that I’m actually sitting here, I know that Evelyn was right. What would we even say? I am just readying myself to leave when I see movement at the window. My stomach lifts and drops. I can see the outline of a woman. She’s standing in profile. She appears to be chatting on the phone. I realise that if I can see her, she can possibly see me. Does she even know what I look like? Do I ever cross her mind? Is she capable of feeling pity or even a note of guilt toward me? Would she think, God, that’s poor, long-faced Alice! Justin’s actual wife of a few days. Then would she fly into a panic and ring him? Would Justin phone the police, worrying there was going to be some sort of standoff? I realise this is just my overactive imagination at work, but nonetheless, no, I’m definitely not going to knock on the door.