Losing You Read Free Page A

cheeks.
    ‘Not just yet,’ said Karen. ‘I need him for something else.’
    I sensed that I should escape before a really serious row broke out.
    ‘I’m going to collect Jackson and finish the packing. ’Bye, Karen.’ I kissed her too, missing her cheek and landing on her nose. ‘Thanks for the coffee. Take care, Eamonn.’
    I got into the car, pulled the door shut and wound down the window.
    ‘Happy Christmas,’ I called, as I reversed down the drive.
    I waved, then swung into the narrow lane. ‘And new year.’
    I put it into first gear and drew away, free. The car rattled happily as I went.
    As soon as I had turned inland and was out of sight, I pulled over, tugged my mobile out of my back pocket and phoned Christian. The engine was still running, and the heating system blew warm air on to my hands while my feet remained cold. Outside, gusts of wind rattled in the bare branches of the trees and blew twigs and tin cans along the road. He didn’t answer his landline, so I tried his mobile but only got his voicemail.
    ‘It’s just me,’ I said into it. ‘And I don’t really know why I’m calling.’
    I had first met Christian when I was in the third year of my degree in maths. He was a graduate in marine biology. I was going out with Rory by then and I used to spend every weekend in London with him. We were planning our future together, and university already felt like part of my past. I liked Christian and his circle of friends. But because he was of the world I was preparing to leave, I didn’t remember him very well. I’ve tried, but he’s a blur, a half-remembered face. We had a drink together a few times. I think I once went to his house and had a meal with lots of other people there. He says we danced together more than once; he swears he once put his arm round me when we were in a pub by the river. A few weeks ago, he showed me a photograph of himself as a student, his thin face, the tumble of dark hair, the cigarette in the corner of his mouth. I studied it and felt desire stir in me for the youth he was then, but at the time I had felt nothing like that. He was a figure I passed on the road and, though we promised to keep in touch, we hadn’t really. He sent me a postcard from a conference he was at in Mexico several years ago, and it took me a few seconds to work out who ‘Christian’, signed with an inky flourish under a couple of lines I could hardly decipher, actually was. Two years ago I heard from a mutual acquaintance that the relationship he’d been in had broken up and I thought then of getting in touch, but I never did. I sent him a change-of-address card when we moved to Sandling Island, but assumed it would never reach him. I wasn’t even sure where he lived any more.
    Six months ago, he called me up out of the blue to say he was going to be in East Anglia for a conference, and maybe we could meet. I almost made an excuse. Rory had left in a maelstrom of tears, unpaid bills, smashed dreams, and I feltlonely, bewildered, reclusive and sad. By that time, I had already had a forlorn, short-lived fling, and I knew it wasn’t the answer to anything. Certainly not to loneliness, certainly not to sadness. All I really wanted was to spend time with the children, and when I wasn’t doing that, to work on the house and the small, nettle-filled garden. I was trying to create a tiny haven for us, filled with the smell of fresh paint and baking, and I didn’t really want to make an effort for a man I used to know but who was now a half-remembered stranger.
    In the end, I arranged to meet him because I couldn’t think of a reason not to quickly enough. I told him as much at the end of that first meeting, because even by then – two and a half hours in – I wanted to be honest with him. I felt I could trust him. He didn’t seem to be trying to impress me or pretend in any way to be someone he wasn’t. Had he always been like that, I wondered – and why hadn’t I noticed?
    He was still