Stuart. I’ve never bothered registering with one since I moved down here.”
I stood, the chair scraping noisily on the tiled floor.
“Thanks for the soup. I’ve got to go. You know how it is, I’ve got important things I need to be getting on with.” I pulled my coat off the hook and headed down the corridor toward the front door, feeling a little bit like the walls were getting narrower the farther I went.
“Wait a sec. Cathy, wait.”
I thought he was going to go on about it some more, doctors, therapy, talking about it, getting better, all of that shit, but instead he just gave me a shopping bag with something heavy inside it. “What is it?”
“More soup. Two portions, frozen. Just keep eating, okay?”
“Thanks.”
I practically ran down the stairs and back into my flat. I stood for a moment on the other side of the door, breathing fast. The bag in my hand was heavy. I took it through to the kitchen and put the two solid blocks of soup into the freezer. There wasn’t much in the fridge, I noticed. He was right, I should really start paying more attention to eating. After all, I didn’t want to faint again—it might happen at work.
I checked the flat, but my heart wasn’t in it. I kept thinking about Stuart. I’d been very rude, walking out on him like that. It wasn’t something I could really help. I can’t take pressure.
I don’t trust doctors anymore, not after what happened in the hospital. If I start giving in to them, if I start looking for help, it might just happen all over again, just when I’ve started to make progress, just when I’ve got a job and a flat and a life, of a sort. Stuart sees me as I am now: someone who spends so much time fiddling with the front door that she forgets to eat, someone who faints in the library, someone who can’t take any sort of confrontation or advice.
He didn’t see me as I was then. He doesn’t know how far I’ve come with this already.
Sunday 7 December 2003
On Sunday morning we went for a walk on the beach at Morecambe. It was bitterly cold, the wind blowing the sand up into our faces, stinging and making my eyes water. My hair blew around in crazy shapes.
I faced into the wind and forced it back behind my head, twisting it around and tying it in a knot. It wouldn’t hold for long, but it would do for now.
He took hold of my hand again, “Beautiful.” He had to shout above the noise of the wind. We walked down to where the waves were crashing against the sand, our feet leaving wet trails. I picked up a shell, translucent and glistening with saltwater. My hair was working its way loose again. The clouds overhead were racing across the sky, getting darker, threatening rain. I unwound my thin cotton scarf from around my neck and disentangled it from my coat, the wind whipping it away as I tried to stretch it out. I wound it around my hair, trying to tie it, all the while the wind fighting me for it, laughing at my efforts.
“Lee,” I shouted. He was throwing pebbles into the surf.
He heard me and came back to where I stood, but didn’t wait for me to speak. He cupped my face in his hands and kissed me, his mouth warm and salty-tasting. I gave up on my hair and it flew around us, just at the same moment as my scarf, which I’d even forgotten I was holding, took flight and soared into the air like a skinny bird.
Lee let go of me and chased after it while I stood laughing, the sound snatched from my lips before I could even hear it. The scarf fell and rose and twisted in different directions, the fronds at either end flapping crazily.
It landed in the wet and foamy sand, as I knew it would, and he brought it back to me, draped over one finger, cold and forlorn and dripping.
We gave up on the wind and walked hand in hand back toward the town. The smells of the seaside were too tempting and we went into a chip shop, the quiet when the door shut behind us almost deafening. We bought some chips to share and sat with flushed cheeks at the Formica table by the window, watching through the condensation as people walked along the front