I took a drawer full of important documents and files – his bank statements, tax records, letters pertaining to stocks and shares, even his birth certificate – and I emptied it into a massive cardboard box. On top of all these things he would absolutely need to find at some point, I poured the contents of our memory box and a bunch of funny-looking stuffed animals we’d collected from zoos around the world. I added his collection of 1977 mint-condition stormtrooper figurines for good measure. Then I picked it up, shook it really hard for about thirty seconds, put it down and sealed it. I called it ‘The Box of Doom’. Maya suggested I cover all his clothes in glitter too, but I felt that was a step too far.
By that evening, one half of my bedroom was stacked full of boxes and I had officially moved from sadness into anger, a far more productive phase of the grieving process.
I didn’t reply to the email Theo didn’t write. Nor did I contact him about the messages I shouldn’t have seen. I spent the following week working, seeing friends, and redecorating the apartment. Then, when I was ready, I called him to say I had boxed up his stuff and would appreciate if he could come collect it as soon as possible. He seemed thrown by my matter-of-fact tone. I enjoyed that. But much more than that, I enjoyed his suggestion that he ‘drop by in a cab’ to pick it all up; he seemed genuinely taken aback when I explained that he had actually been living with me for quite some time and during that time he had amassed a lot of belongings. When I told him to hire a removal van, he let out a long, unnecessarily loud sigh to indicate just how much of an inconvenience this was. I pictured him there, phone in one hand, rubbing his forehead with the other, eyes scrunched up, and in that moment I was glad to be rid of him and his stupid, stressed-out face.
He’s standing in the hallway now, looking into the bedroom, processing the new decor and the number of boxes I’ve stacked from floor to ceiling.
‘There’s so many.’
‘I did say,’ I call back from the kitchen. As I reach into the cupboard for some mugs, he speaks again, quieter this time.
‘Thanks for packing it all for me.’
He glances towards me, all doe eyes and guilt, and for a moment he is my Theo again.
‘You’re welcome,’ I say.
Theo goes into the bedroom and, as I pour water over a tea bag, I’m distracted. I look back at the spot where he stood and remember the night he left. Just before he walked out the door I stopped him and grabbed him, and we stood holding one another for what felt like far too long and not nearly long enough. I tried, right there on that very spot, to commit the feel of him to my memory: the weight of his arms, the exact pressure they exerted on my body, the concave dip of his chest where my head rested neatly, how my right hipbone pressed against his left, and how my shoulders folded, birdlike, as he pulled me into him. When he took a step back I remained motionless. He kissed me. Said he loved me. And with that he was gone.
There was a silence then. More than a silence: a vacuum. I felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room and I now stood inside a void so dense that my skull might implode from the pressure. The door seemed to bend impossibly towards me, then away, and I reeled, turning towards the kitchen and stepping onto nothing, as though my legs had disappeared. Before I could check if they were still there, a convulsion seized me, and I grabbed onto a door frame, leaned over and retched. Nothing came up. I hadn’t eaten that day. I lowered myself to the floor and lay face down, with my cheek against the wood, and somewhere in the distance I could hear a whistling sound.
I don’t know how long I stayed that way. Hours, maybe – or it might have just seemed like hours – but at some point I flashed on the pregnancy test I’d taken that morning; a blue cross forming in a tiny window. I saw it materialise, over and over, then pushed it away. I can’t think about that now, I thought, I’ll think about it tomorrow. Those weren’t my words, though. They were Scarlett O’Hara’s. And suddenly her voice was in my head and I was twelve years old again, lying in my mother’s bed watching Gone With the Wind. My mother. I should call my mother. I’d been recovering from a particularly horrendous bout of food poisoning. I’d had a fever for two days. And when she thought I was better she gave me apple juice and I vomited it back up, hot and thick. I haven’t drunk apple juice since. I should eat something. I need to eat. I need to call my mother. What will I tell her? What the hell is that whistling sound?
It was me. I was sucking air through what felt like a tiny hole in my throat, and my long, laboured breaths were producing a sound not unlike nails on a chalkboard. I probably would have passed out had my stomach not growled so loudly that the sound actually startled me. I told myself, out loud, to get off the floor, then I scrambled back up the door frame and eventually wobbled my way to the kitchen like a fawn on fresh legs. I ate a piece of dry toast and went to bed, where I lay howling till I fell asleep. I had never cried like that before. The sounds were guttural and animalistic, and I let them come.
The next morning, I went into the office to write – I didn’t need to be there, I just wanted to be around people – and several times that day I excused myself, vomited in the toilet, then got back to work. The day after that I got my hair cut, went to the bank and had a meeting with my publicist in a cat-themed café. I was in shock and I knew it. But I decided that as long as I was still functioning, I should get as much done as possible. It was like I’d been stabbed, and at any moment the knife might be pulled out, sending blood gushing everywhere and forcing me to deal with my injuries. Until then though, I would continue about my business – knife and all.
The third day was the charm. I actually felt myself go. People talk about hearts breaking all the time, but I don’t know how many of them have felt their brain break. It’s an interesting sensation.
I packed a bag and got a taxi to the airport, where I marched up to the check-in desk in a headscarf and sunglasses, and asked for a one-way ticket on the next flight to Ireland. I’d become a scarf-clad cliché.
By the time I landed in Dublin I was a jittery mess. I knew I couldn’t keep going for much longer, so the hour-long wait at passport control was a real fucking treat. When I got through the arrival gates and saw my mother waiting there for me, it took every shred of strength I had left not to collapse into her arms and allow myself to fall apart. As she approached me, I held one hand out in front of me and looked at her with a face that I hoped said, ‘I love you dearly, but please, do not show me affection right now.’ She took my suitcase and walked me to her car in complete silence.
I stayed in Dublin for a week, where I spent every day on the sofa, with her next to me in an armchair. We talked endlessly about my breakup, and what would happen next. I refused to simply wait and let things unfold, and I insisted on speculating incessantly about every single aspect of it: why he left, whether he’d come back, if he was seeing someone else, if maybe we could be friends. She nodded at me and cried with me and most importantly, she prevented me from calling him.
I couldn’t eat. I was hungry, but the physical act of swallowing food made me gag. My mother fed me tiny portions; segments of sausage on my niece’s pink plastic plate, sandwiches cut into four triangles – the deal was she’d eat two if I ate two. I was a child again. She even put sugar in my tea, something I gave up years ago. Anything to get calories into me.