During that summer, the only people who didn’t come out and play were Karen and Daniel. I barely saw them.
Karen spent most of her time in Daniel’s apartment. She stopped by at our place occasionally to pick up a change of clothes, just running in and out while Daniel waited in the car.
Daniel and I never saw each other on our own anymore. In fact we didn’t even call each other.
Which gave me a sense of regret, because that was the kind of sentimental, emotional fool I was. But I didn’t know what to do about it; there was no road back.
So I tried to focus on the good things in my life—namely Gus.
I realized just how serious Daniel and Karen had become when the news broke that they were going to Scotland together in September. From the gleam in Karen’s eye, she thought she was home free with Daniel. It was only a matter of time before she could start fighting with her mother about the inviting of fifth cousins four times removed and comparing the respective merits of lemon meringue pie and baked Alaska.
I wondered if she would ask me to be her bridesmaid. Somehow I thought not.
One Saturday night, all of us—me, Charlotte, Simon, Gus, Dennis, Jed, Megan, even Karen and Daniel—went to an open-air concert in the grounds of a stately home in north London.
Even though it was classical music, we had a wonderful time. Stretched out on the warm grass, listening to the rustle of the leaves in the still evening air, sipping champagne, eating sausage rolls and mini-eclairs.
After the concert was over, we decided we had had enough of behaving like adults and we hadn’t yet wrung enough debauched enjoyment out of the evening. It was only midnight and going to bed before the sun rose was regarded as a wasted night.
So we bought lots of wine from a twenty-four-hour shop that was happy to break the law and piled into several taxis and went back to our apartment.
Where there were no clean glasses, so Karen volunteered me to wash some.
While I was in the kitchen dashing cups under the running tap, resenting every moment that I was away from the fun in the front room, Daniel came in searching for the corkscrew.
“How are you?” I asked. Before I knew what had happened I’d smiled; old habits die hard.
“Fine,” he said, looking bleak. “And you?”
“Fine.”
An awkward pause.
“I haven’t seen you for ages,” I said.
“No,” he agreed.
Another pause. Talking to him was like trying to get blood out of a turnip.
“So you’re off to Scotland?” I said.
“Yes.”
“Looking forward to it?”
“Yes, I’ve never been to Scotland before,” he said tersely.
“And it’s not just that, is it?” I teased gently.
“What do you mean?” He stared coldly at me.
“Well, you know, meeting Karen’s family and all that.” I nodded eagerly. “So what’s next?”
“What are you talking about?” he said, tight-lipped.
“You know,” I said, smiling uncertainly.
“No, I don’t,” he snapped. “It’s just a bloody holiday, okay?”
“Christ,” I muttered. “I remember when you used to have a sense of humour.”
“Sorry, Lucy.” He tried to grab my arm, but I shook it off and walked out of the kitchen.
My eyes filled with tears, which was really scary because I never cried. Except when I had PMS, and that didn’t count.
Or whenever there was a program about Siamese twins who had been separated and one of them died. Or whenever I saw an old person hobbling down the road on their own. Or whenever I went into the living room and everyone yelled at me for coming back without the clean glasses. The bastards.
But despite the high-profile presence of Meredia, Jed, Megan, Dennis, Charlotte and Simon in my life, there was no denying that it was The Summer of Gus.
From the moment he returned from the three-week absence, we were hardly ever apart.
I made occasional perfunctory attempts to spend evenings on my own—not because I wanted to, but because I felt that it was expected of me.
I had to pretend that I was independent, that I had a life of my own, but the truth of it was that anything I enjoyed without Gus, I enjoyed even more with Gus. And he was just as bad.
“We won’t see each other tonight,” I said a few times. “I have to do my wash and take care of some errands.”
“But, Lucy,” he wailed, “I’ll miss you.”
“But I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said, pretending to be exasperated, but, of course, I was delighted. “Surely you can survive without me for one night.”
But each time, Gus arrived at my flat by nine o’clock, trying to look shamefaced, but not pulling it off.
“Sorry, Lucy.” He grinned. “I know you want to be alone. But I had to see you, just for five minutes. I’ll be off, now that I’ve had my fix.”
“No, don’t go,” I said every time, as he must have known I would. It was alarming to find that I considered any time away from Gus a waste.
Although I tried not to be obvious about it, I was crazy about him. And he seemed to be crazy about me, too, if the amount of time that he spent with me was any indication.
The only trouble—if trouble it was—was that he hadn’t told me that he loved me. He hadn’t actually said the words, “I love you, Lucy.” Not that I worried—well, not much anyway—because I knew that normal rules didn’t apply to Gus. He probably did love me but it might have slipped his mind to mention it. After all, that was the kind of man he was. But nevertheless, I thought it was best that I didn’t tell him that I loved him—even though I did—until he told me.
No point in any premature jumpings of guns.
Besides, there was always a small chance that he didn’t love me, and there is nothing more embarrassing. I would have liked to talk to him about our relationship, like where we were going and our future. But he never brought it up and I felt too awkward to.
I had to be patient, but it was hard to play the waiting game. The few times that I had any fears or doubts, I referred myself to Mrs. Nolan’s prediction, and remembered that I had seen the future and it was Gus. (Or that I had seen the future and it drank, as smug Daniel put it.)
I consoled myself that patience is a virtue, that all things come to he—or she—who waits. And ignored the adages that urged me to strike when the iron is hot, not to let the grass grow under my feet, and that to stand still is to die.
I don’t remember having great concern about my future with Gus throughout the magical, golden summer. At the time I thought I was happy, and that was good enough for me.
Chapter 51
The twelfth morning in August didn’t seem any different from all the other golden mornings that had preceded it.
Except for one important detail—Gus got up before me.
It was impossible to stress just how unusual that was. Every morning when I left for work, Gus was still sound asleep. And at some stage, much, much later in the day he let himself out, closing and locking the door behind him. (After first eating anything in the fridge that wasn’t actually moving, then making a couple of phone calls to Donegal.) This meant that the flat wasn’t actually dead-bolt locked and was thereby at the mercy of roving burglars, which caused several arguments between Karen and me, on the rare occasions when Karen came home.
But I couldn’t bring myself to give Gus a set of keys because I didn’t want to scare him with a “Let’s live together” message.
And I consoled Karen that the flat was so messy that if any burglars did break in, they’d think a rival gang had gone over the place just a few minutes previously. We might even come home to find a new TV and stereo in the front room, I suggested enthusiastically to a sceptical raise of Karen’s eyebrows.
That morning Gus got up before me, which started distant alarm bells ringing in my brain. He sat on the bed and, as he put on his shoes, he commented casually, “D
’you know, this is getting a bit heavy, Lucy.”
“Mmmm, I s’pose,” I said, still too sleepy to notice that I was alarmed.
But it took only a second for me to realize that he wasn’t just making idle conversation when he said, “I think we should slow down a bit.”
The “this is getting a bit heavy”—particularly his use of the word heavy—had started Alsatian dogs barking by the perimeter fence. But the “I think we should slow down a bit” had the sirens whining and the searchlights swooping back and forth over the grounds.
While I scrambled around in the bed, trying to sit up, a voice in my head announced, This is an emergency, boyfriend trying to escape, repeat, boyfriend trying to escape.
I had the sensation of being in an elevator that was dropping dangerously quickly, because every woman knows that talk of slowing down or seeing less of each other is actually guy-speak for, “Take a good, long look at me; you will never see me again.”
I hoped that I would be able to tell what was going on from the expression on his face. But he wouldn’t look at me, his black curly head was bent over his feet as he laced his shoes with unprecedented diligence.
“Gus, are you trying to tell me something?”
“Maybe we should take a little break from each other,” he muttered.
It sounded as if he’d been coached, as if he was clumsily reading from a teleprompter. In fact, it looked as if he was reading his lines from his shoe. But at the time I was so shocked by what he was saying that I couldn’t be bothered worrying that these weren’t the kind of things he normally said.
I should have noticed that the very fact that Gus had even bothered to tell me that he was ending things was wildly out of character.
“But why?” I asked, in horror. “What’s happened? What’s gone wrong? What’s changed?”
“Nothing.”
Finally and nervously he lifted his head. He must have laced and unlaced his shoes forty times.
When his sidelong glance found my face, he looked guilty for a split second, then burst out, “It’s your fault, Lucy, you shouldn’t have got so involved, you shouldn’t have let it get so serious.”
I hadn’t realized that Gus was from the attack-is-the-best-form-of-defence school of ending relationships. I had thought that hit-and-run was more his style.
I was too stunned to remind him that he hadn’t left me alone for a single night, that I hadn’t even been able to shave my legs without having him camped outside the bathroom door, roaring that he missed me, asking me to sing to him, demanding to know how much longer I was going to be.
But I couldn’t afford the luxury of being angry with him. That would have to wait until later.
As I stuttered and stumbled and tried to get out of bed, Gus backed toward the door and raised a hand in farewell.
“I’m going now, Lucy. Good luck! May the road rise with me.” He sounded upbeat and cheerful. And more so with every inch he moved away from me.
“No, Gus, wait, please. Let’s talk about this. Please, Gus.”
“No, I’ve got to go now.”
“Why, why in such a hurry?”
“I just do.”
“Well, could we meet later? I don’t understand this, please talk to me, Gus.”
He looked sulky and surly.
“Will you meet me after work?” I asked, trying to sound calm, striving to keep the edge of hysteria out of my voice.
Still he said nothing.
“Please, Gus,” I said again.
“Okay,” he muttered, sliding out of the room.
Then there was the bang of the front door. He was gone and I was still half asleep, wondering if it was all a nightmare.
It wasn’t even eight o’clock.
I had been too dazed to think of throwing myself in front of the door in an attempt to stop him from leaving. And when it occurred to me, instead of being grateful, I was furious.
Somehow I got to work, not that I was much use when I got there. I felt as if I were wading around under water—everything was muffled, fuzzy, happening in slow motion. Voices came from a long way away, stretched and distorted. I couldn’t really hear them and I couldn’t concentrate on what they wanted from me.
The day was a slow agony of inching toward five o’clock.
Now and then, like the sun breaking through the clouds, I could think clearly. When that happened, waves of panic swept over me. What if he didn’t come, I asked myself in appalled horror? What would I do?
But he had to come, I reasoned desperately. I had to talk to him, to find out what was wrong.
The worst part was that I couldn’t tell anyone at work what was wrong. Because Gus wasn’t leaving just me, he was leaving Jed, Meredia and Megan too, and I was afraid that they’d be hurt. I was also afraid that I’d get the blame.
I spent the day in a daze.
When I should have been calling customers and threatening to sue them if they didn’t pay us soon, I was in another world, where the only thing that meant anything was Gus.
Why did he think we were getting too serious, I wondered. Apart from the obvious fact that we were. But what was wrong with that? I struggled to do some work, but it mattered so little.
Who cared if Spare Tires had exceeded their ninety-day credit period by about two years? I didn’t give a damn. I had bigger, more important things to worry about. So what if Wheel Meet Again had gone out of business owing us thousands of pounds? What did any of it matter when my heart was aching?
The pointlessness of my job was always highlighted when my heart was broken. Being abandoned brought out the nihilist in me.
I miserably made phone calls, wishy-washily threatened to sue people and take them for every penny they had, and thought, In a hundred years, none of this will matter.
Several millennia later the day finally dragged itself to its sluggish close.
And when five o’clock came, Gus didn’t.
I hung on desperately until half past six, because I was at a complete loss about what I should do with me, my time, my life.
Waiting for Gus was all I was good for. But he didn’t come. Of course he didn’t come.
And as I wondered what my next move should be, something that had been shimmering ominously at the back of my mind crystallized into a conscious fear.
I didn’t know where Gus lived.
If he didn’t come to me, I couldn’t go to him. I had no phone number, no address for him.
He had never taken me to his house, everything we did together—from sleeping to sex to TV watching—happened at my apartment. I had known it wasn’t right, but whenever I suggested going home with him, he fobbed me off with a selection of surreal excuses. Which were so bizarre that I shuddered at the ease with which I had swallowed them.
I shouldn’t have been so pliant, I thought in despair. I should have insisted. If I had been more demanding, I wouldn’t be in such a mess. At least I’d know where to find him. I couldn’t believe how docile I had been—hadn’t I even been suspicious?
In fact, as I remembered it, I had been suspicious. But because it threatened to ruffle the calm surface of my happiness, I forced myself not to be. I had let Gus get away with an awful lot, with the vague, catch-all explanation that he was unusual and eccentric. And now that he had disappeared, I could hardly credit my naïveté.
If I had read about me in the newspaper—about a girl who had been going out with a guy for five months (nearly), (if you count the three weeks in May that he’d been missing), and that she didn’t even know where he lived—I would have dismissed her as a half-wit who deserved everything she got.
Or didn’t get.
But the reality had been so different. I had been afraid to force anything because I didn’t want to drive him away. And anyway, I had thought there was no need to force anything because he behaved as if he cared about me.
The frustration of not being able to contact him was unbearable. Especially because it was all my fault.
Ove
r the next few interminable, hellish days, Gus didn’t reappear, and I didn’t hold out any hope that he would.
Because I had realized something awful—I had been expecting him to leave me. All the time that I’d been with him, I had been waiting for it.
My idyllic summer had been nothing but a sham. Although it was only in retrospect that I could see tensions beneath the balmy, sunny surface.
I had never felt safe after his three-week disappearance. I pretended that I did, because it felt nicer that way. But things had never been the same. It had tipped the balance of power completely in Gus’s favour—he had treated me with a lack of respect and I had told him that it was perfectly all right to do so. I had given him carte blanche to treat me badly.
He had been quite gallant about it, never openly reminding me just how much of a hostage I was. But it was always there in the subtext—he had left me once and he could do it again, anytime he liked. He wielded his ability to disappear like a weapon.
A covert power struggle had gone on between Gus and me. He played brinkmanship, and I played stoicism. How long could he abandon me at a party before I got angry? How much money could he “borrow” from me before I refused to “loan” him any more? How flirtatious could he get with Megan, how many times did he have to touch her hair, before it wiped the fixed smile off my face?
All that fear had burned up so much of my energy I was continually nervy around him. Edgy. Every time he said he’d pick me up or meet me, my nerves were zinging until he turned up.
But I had stuffed all my questions beneath the surface, I couldn’t let them pop their heads up and ruin things. I had papered over cracks, suppressed fears and swallowed insults, because I thought it was worth it. And it had seemed to be, because—at least on the outside—Gus and I were happy.
But now that he had gone, I realized that anytime I had been with him there was a fear that it might be the last. There was a kind of desperation in me, a need to get my money’s worth. A need to cram as much Gus into my life as I possibly could, to store against the time when he would run away again.