The sun was shining down on all of Europe that day, and I looked out over Spain and the Mediterranean and then France’s great green centre. England rolled around to meet us; the white cliffs, the motorways, the orderly fields of corn and wheat and oilseed rape, the dull English towns with their ring roads and superstores, their high streets and roundabouts. At Heathrow we were greeted by Fran, who was full of jokes and uncharacteristic concern, and we were driven home to our door. ‘You okay getting out of the car?’ ‘You okay getting up the stairs?’ ‘You allowed a cup of coffee?’ This attentiveness soon became quite maddening, the guiding hand on the elbow, the tilt of the head and caring tone of voice, like a terrible glimpse of a geriatric life that I’d assumed was thirty or more years away, and I resolved to do everything within my power to get well. No, more than well, to become healthier and stronger than I’d been before, something that I have gone some way to achieving in the year that has passed since then. The doctors are very pleased with me now. I ride my bicycle down country lanes. I play a kind of badminton with friends, always doubles, though with less of the ferocity of old. I jog sporadically and self-consciously, unsure of what to do with my hands. The prognosis is good.
But I’m leaping ahead. I made a fuss of Mr Jones and submitted to having my face licked. I watched uselessly as Connie carried the cases upstairs. I helped unpack, restoring everything to its usual place — the toothbrush to its holder, the passport to its drawer. Fran left at last and we were alone in the house once more, experiencing that mixture of sadness and pleasure that accompanies return after a long time away; the pile of unopened mail, toast and tea, the sound of a radio, motes of dust in the air. On the hall table, a great pile of unread newspapers described events that we never knew had taken place.
‘You forgot to cancel the papers,’ I said, filling the recycling bin in one go.
‘I had other things on my mind!’ said Connie, with some irritation. ‘I thought you were dying. Remember?’
We took Mr Jones out for a walk, the usual route, up the hill and back. It was cooler than August had any right to be. There was a suggestion of autumn in the air, that hint of a change in season acting as a tap upon my shoulder. ‘I wish I’d brought a coat,’ I said as we walked slowly, arm in arm along the lane.
‘Do you want me to go back for it?’
‘Connie, I don’t want you to—’
‘I’ll run back. Won’t take me a minute …’
‘I don’t think you should leave me.’
I spoke for some time about all we had been through. I had been thinking a great deal about where things had gone wrong, and how they might change in the future. Perhaps we might move back to London, or at least find a little place there, and spend the weekends in the city. Move to a smaller house, in the proper countryside. Go out more. Travel further afield. We talked about fresh starts and we talked about our shared past, nearly twenty-five years of it, about our daughter and our son, how we had got through all of that together and how close it had made us. Inseparable, I said, because I found the idea of life without her quite unthinkable, unthinkable in the truest sense; I could not picture a future without her by my side, and I passionately believed that we could and would be happier together than apart. I wanted us to grow old together. The idea of doing so alone, and of dying alone, it was — well, that word again — it was unthinkable, and not just unthinkable, monstrous, frightening. I’d had a glimpse of it and had felt such terror. ‘So I don’t think you should leave. Things will be better. There are only good things ahead of us from now on, and I will make you happy again, I swear.’
Despite the chill of the evening, we lay down in the long grass on the side of the hill. Connie kissed me, and laid her head on my shoulder and we stayed like this for quite some time, the sound of the M40 a little way off. ‘We’ll see,’ she said after a while. ‘There’s no rush. We’ll see. Let’s wait and see how things turn out.’
When we’d set out on our journey I had vowed that I would win her back. But it seemed that I could not fulfil my vow and despite, or perhaps because of my best efforts, I could not make her happy again, or as happy as she wanted to be. The following January, two weeks shy of twenty-five years together, we embraced and said goodbye and began our lives apart.
