Theo’s half of the wardrobe was empty save for the clothes hangers, which jangled together noisily when I opened the door; his underwear and sock drawers had been emptied too, and in the bathroom, my shelf remained untouched – full of jauntily coloured nail varnishes, shampoos and face creams – while beneath it, his shelf was completely bare save for a few rings of dust around vacant circular spots, which at least confirmed that I hadn’t just imagined him.
I pictured Theo stuffing his belongings into a suitcase, frantically and unceremoniously, and now – the counterpoint to his frenzied evacuation – I moved through each room as though through tar, tentatively opening doors and pulling out drawers, conducting my morbid inventory. Maya stayed a step behind me. She said nothing. Sometimes our eyes met and we shook our heads, incredulous.
I had moments of panic about random missing items.
‘Where’s the iron? Did he take the iron? Check that cupboard.’
Maya did so, dutifully.
‘It’s not in here.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Okay. I can get a new iron.’
‘You can get a new iron,’ she echoed.
‘I don’t really iron things anyway. I suppose it was more his iron.’
‘Yeah. It’s fine,’ she agreed. ‘It’s just an iron.’
I was nodding constantly and involuntarily.
‘It’s just an iron.’
It’s just an iron. It’s just stuff. I’m just heartbroken. It’s just my heart.
I sat down on the bed and called my mother. Maya sat next to me and heard only my side of the conversation:
‘Hey. I got back okay … Fine. Bit of turbulence, but fine … Listen, I think he’s gone for good … Well, he took his stuff … No, not all of it, but, more than “a few fucking things” anyway … Clothes and toiletries … And the iron … Yeah, I can get a new one … I know I don’t, that’s what I said … No, Maya’s here … My mam says hi, Maya … She’s gonna stay the night, Mam … Yeah, I’m okay … No, of course I’m not … He took his shirts …’
I will never know why, but it was the shirts that broke me. It’s the shirts that have become an in-joke among my friends, one of whom even suggested that I write a novel about him and call it He Took His Shirts. It’s a good title, but I feel it somewhat undersells the depth of the subject matter.
Tears came then and my voice failed me. I held out the phone to Maya and she took it, rubbing my back as she talked to my mother, reiterating what I’d already said and adding her own opinion of Theo to the mix. Maya is a soft soul who hates no one, and while she’s prone to a good rant, I have never seen her as angry as she was that night. It was a muted, determined sort of anger, far more conservative than the one I knew would soon consume me.
Maya assured my mother she’d stay with me, and, yes, she’d be sure to make me eat something. Straight after the call, she ordered pizza and watched me eat two slices of it. Then she called her husband, Darren, to let him know she wouldn’t be home and to say goodnight to their daughter. Maya and Darren had been our friends for years and had seen us at our best, before things started to fall apart. I could tell they were genuinely upset that Theo and I were breaking up, and I knew it would change the dynamic between us all for ever. Yet another casualty of this shitty situation, I thought.
I heard Maya tell Darren what Theo had done, and I heard the long silence on the other end of the line before he finally said, ‘Fuck’s sake, Theo.’ That was all he said. That was all he needed to say.
Finally, Maya put me to bed and crawled in beside me. I asked her to tell me stories, silly ones, fairy tales, like Goldilocks. I knew it sounded childish but I was desperate for simple, familiar things. She happily obliged and even stroked my hair until I fell asleep.
So this is how I knew, when I met Theo for dinner, that it was already over. Not only had he taken enough essentials for a new life without me, he hadn’t even prepared me for it. My mother had flown to London to be there for me when I got home from seeing him that evening, because – although she wouldn’t say it – she knew it was over too.
While I was getting ready, she asked what I would do if Theo wanted to work things out, and I told her I’d be open to it, because there was a part of me that hoped we could. But the thought of getting back together also created a quiet unease within me, which I realise now is why she asked; it forced me to imagine both possible outcomes instead of feeling – as I did – that I had no choice in the matter. I began to hope and fear in equal amounts that he would officially end it; I didn’t want to have to make a decision and I was terrified that, given the chance, I’d make the wrong one out of fear. So I went in accepting my fate, but still I agonised over what to wear and what to say. I almost didn’t go. I almost called to cancel. I almost wish I had.
When I arrived too early to the restaurant, in the pretty orange dress and navy coat I’d eventually picked out, I sat outside and waited. It was a mild October evening. Leaves the colour of my dress swirled idly around my feet and on the street in front of me, a foot-wide shaft of light thinned to a sliver as the sun moved behind a building. The air cooled and I breathed, conscious of each breath. My anxiety had flared up since Theo left – I’d been having full-blown panic attacks almost every day – but on that night, I remember feeling oddly calm. Truth be told, I was excited to see him; the prospect of a few hours with Theo after weeks of forced separation seemed appealing. Maybe, I told myself, it wouldn’t be so bad after all.
He turned up in his gym gear.
I tell people that and they need to pause to process the information. Then I repeat myself and, as their faces change from shock to pity, I become intensely embarrassed. I feel as foolish now, telling it, as I did then. In fact, of all the things that happened that night and in the weeks and months surrounding it, of all the unimaginably low moments, the thing I’m most ashamed of is that I sat in a fancy restaurant opposite a man who until recently I thought might one day father my children, while he ended our relationship in a pair of trainers and some grass-stained shorts. He said he hadn’t had time to shower or change because he’d come straight from training, but I’d spent three weeks waiting for this. I had lived those weeks. I had sat inside each minute and felt the weight of it pressing in on me. And he didn’t bother to wash himself, or put some fucking trousers on.
Theo told me it was over before the food even arrived; two servings of some sort of chicken in some sort of sauce. He devoured his meal, then asked if I was going to eat mine. I said no, I felt a bit sick, so he ate mine too.
A lot was said and all of it seemed of the utmost significance then, but I struggle to remember it now. Bits stand out. At one point he cried into a napkin. This was after I told him that I’d taken a pregnancy test on the morning he broke up with me and that it was positive. I had wanted to tell him that day, but things were already shaky between us and I sensed he wouldn’t handle it well. So I said nothing. And he just happened to break up with me. And leave. And the next day I took another two tests and they were both negative.
‘Maybe the test was broken,’ I offered.
I only wanted to explain why I was acting so odd that day, and I suppose I wanted him to know what I’d been through in those twenty-four hours – the kind of emotional anguish I’d spared him from – but instead, he thought I was accusing him of somehow causing a miscarriage by leaving me. He actually used the phrase ‘lost the baby’. It was upon saying these words out loud that he pushed back his chair, dropped his head into a napkin and cried heavy, globular tears.