34 :

We still lived a life. I still took her to the cinema. We still dined out. She sold her car, bought another one, so that it couldn’t be traced. Eventually she changed her mobile number. But this peace didn’t last.

Peace never does. Love must have hate. Day must have night. Romeo, his Juliet. And Peace must have War.

We were at war, and we didn’t know who or where the enemy was. We were a state, in a state of constant fear of being terrorised.

The phone rang. Her looked at her mobile, which brought just the called ID “Private Number”. A business call, as these always were - no doubt from a call centre, a herd of equi-distant desks and rows. Of headsets, and idle time. Of time toilet breaks and minimum wages for struggling actors living with their parents and just-out-of-Uni McJobbing twenty somethings.

She picked it up, said “Hello?”

I wasn’t really paying attention. We were cuddled on the sofa - I was at one end, my feet tucked under her bottom, her feet tucked under mine, leaning against the headrests talking and discussing the television - a documentary about the 100 Greatest Action Films of all time. I couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen Aliens.

Her face went white as if she had seen a ghost. It took me a second to notice. It was only when the phone dropped into her lap with a dull thump that I even noticed something was wrong. I turned my gaze from the television and it was as if someone had died.

“Darling?” I said, questioningly. I had no choice. For richer, for poorer. In sickness and in health. In shit and in joy. That was love.

I knew something was wrong. Wrong in the way things can only be when a phone call brings instant, unexpected doom. When the sun suddenly disappears from your life, and when what you thought could never happen, happens.

I remember coming back home from work just before my ex-wife left me, and her expression said it all. Her brother had cancer, and I’d had a bad day at work. That was the first of many nails hammered into a coffin.

She tried to mouth words, but nothing came out. Her bottom lip trembled in fear.
I picked up the phone. Society teaches us to be brave. To take problems and face them head-on. I had to do something. Be strong. Behave like someone I wasn’t - someone brave. A hero.

“Hello?” I said. I tried to assert myself, but I just came out as if I was scared. My voice went up slightly at the end of the sentence. I hated it when it did that and I couldn’t control it.

There was a voice at the other end. A man’s voice. And whoever it was he was angry.

“Who the fuck’s this?”

He sounded agitated. Bored. Almost as if I was the signal that indicated he’d reached the end of his patience. Whatever he wanted to talk about, it was something or someone that I wasn’t.

It was Him. I had no idea how I knew, I just knew. I had no idea how much of what she told me was true. I had a mental image built up of him. It wasn’t a good one. A man, tall, dark, greying, strong, unafraid. Cold. Surely someone so removed from humankind, absent from feeling, couldn’t get angry.

“Who do you think this is?”

Reflex. Bravado. A stupid thing really, but often we act without thinking and I wasn’t thinking. Despite the fact that wherever he was, it was probably miles away. But I felt as if - almost - he could reach out, down the network, and touch me. Hurt us. Hurt my girl.

Immediately I became possessive. Even though the concept of ownership of a girl was absurd, she was my girlfriend, that was the role she wanted in my life, and the role I wanted her to have in mine.

It had been a while since we’d heard anything from him. But never quite long enough.

“Are you enjoying her?”

He asked as if she was merely on loan. As if he could take her back anytime he wanted. As if he could separate us in the blink of an eye. Over my dead body.
“Listen to me,” I said.

And I was off. My veins flooded with adrenalin and fear. With pride and yet also with something more animal. Something I couldn’t even describe. Indignant anger.

How fucking dare he think he can just waltz back into a life, when he’s plainly unwanted. How fucking dare he continue to live in the past. Though that’s where he belonged, as an ancient, extinct dinosaur running out of time.

“You’re history. Your life with her is over. You will never see her again. “

He snorted. I wanted to hang up.

Helen was watching me. She was trying not to, but she was trembling slightly. I could see her fingers jumping in tiny vibrations against her legs. Her body language was tense, like a coiled, frightened, trapped snake. Maybe she knew what happened when you spoke to him in that tone of voice.

The thing she had thought for so long but never said.

But I hadn’t thought about what I was going to say, my mouth did the thinking and then it happened. Maybe because I didn’t know him I said what felt right, not what what was the right thing to say.

“No, fucko. You’re history. Your life with her is over. You -”

I hung the phone up. I looked at her. The corners of her eyes were wet with two small, nervous tears.

Just when you try to break free, just when you think you could get out, they pull you back, and you can’t get out.

What the fuck could I do? What the fuck situation was this? Why had this happened? Why us?

After all the bullshit I’ve been through, why this?

Sometimes there are no answers. Only more questions. Sometimes though, I sought not answers. But just to understand the question. Why is the smallest question there is. It has the biggest answer.

Underneath those tears lay a valley of pain. The water was the river. I looked at her, I could barely keep my eyes to look at hers. I switched the phone off. And tomorrow we were getting her a new mobile number.

“Come on Helen, we’re going away.”

I held her for what seemed like an age, what seemed like years, before the soft, silent sobs retreated to managable convulsions. Despite myself, her warmth gave me an erection.

Oh Jesus, not now, not now of all times.

As I said, I’ve spent all my life shackled to an idiot. Thinking with the little head and not the big one. Now it seems the biggest idiot in my life is not in my trousers.

I lost track of time. I didn’t know how long it was. Every second felt like an eternity. The older you get, the less precious time is : the old are in no urry to go anywhere, because they know there is one place they never want to go to. After about twenty minutes, we did what we had to. I picked up my wallet, Helen following me, went upstairs and we packed our bags. It was dark outside.

Like fugitives, we crept out in the dark, in fear, scared of what might happen. Scared that men would seize us and take us away. Frightened, scared children. That’s what we are. Despite everything else, at heart, all of us are frightened children.

We crept into her new car. Quietly, as if we were fearful of waking anyone at 9.20 on a Wednesday evening, she drove with trembling hands, and we vanished into the night, into our first evening at a hotel. Any hotel. The first one that would take us, and in cash. Now.