you eaten?”
“Yes,” I lied. “How’s your shoulder?”
He smiled. “Painful.”
“I’m sorry about all this. How did you know?”
“I heard you crying.”
“You should have left me to it.”
Stuart shook his head. “Couldn’t do it.” He drank some of his tea. “Are they getting worse, the panic attacks? More frequent?”
“I think so.”
He nodded. “Was that a bad one?”
I shrugged. “I’ve had worse.”
He was watching me steadily, appraisingly, like a fucking doctor. That was exactly the way they used to look at me in the hospital, as though they were waiting for me to do something, say something, demonstrate some symptom or other so they could finally agree what was wrong.
“I’m sorry, I thought you’d be okay. Sanj—he’s all right really. He can be a bit casual sometimes. What did he say?”
“It was okay. He was fine. He’s going to refer me for an assessment, or something. What did he mean when he said with you out of action they’ve got a chance of winning on Sunday?”
He laughed. “Cheeky bugger. I’m in the NHS Trust’s rugby team. Sanj seems to think I’m some kind of handicap.”
I finished my tea at the same time he did.
“Anyway, you did it,” he said, looking at me. “You took that first step.”
“Yes,” I said. I’d caught the eye contact and now I couldn’t look away.
“Will you tell me about it?” he said it so quietly I almost didn’t hear.
“About what?”
“About what started it all?”
I didn’t answer.
After a while he said, “Do you want me to stay here while you sleep?”
I shook my head. “Really, I’ll be all right now. Thanks.”
He left, a bit after that. I felt more awake and I wanted him to hold me again, if I’m honest, I wanted him to hold me tightly and stay with me, but it wasn’t fair to ask him to do that. So he left, and I locked the door behind him, and went to bed.
Now I need to think about carrying on with all this. Facing the rest of my life. One day at a time, one foot in front of the other. I can’t do this for much longer. I can’t keep doing this.
Wednesday 24 December 2003
Until Christmas, everything was fine.
Well, not entirely fine. Going out with someone who was away working for days at a time wasn’t fine at all, really, but when he was around, everything was good. When he was going to be working on a job for several days, he warned me first. And when he reappeared, I was always so ridiculously relieved to see him back in one piece that any reproach I had just melted away.
When he was around, he practically lived with me in my house. When I was at work, he would tidy up, fix things that needed mending, cook dinner for when I got home.
When he was away, I missed him more than I thought possible. Every night I wondered if he was safe, and whether I would ever get to find out if anything bad happened to him. Although he usually turned up exhausted, starving and in need of a shower, he didn’t appear again at my front door with any injuries. Whatever happened that first time, I wanted to believe that he was more careful now, because of me.
Not for the first time in my life, I was alone on Christmas Eve. Lee was working somewhere—it was his turn, he said. He’d tried to get out of it so that he could spend time with me. He said he was going to try to leave early, but by ten o’clock on Christmas Eve there was no sign of him.
Fuck it, I thought.
Getting ready to go out didn’t take that long. My favorite dress, heels, a quick bit of makeup, hair up, bits of it falling down just moments later, and I was ready.
By ten-thirty I was in the Cheshire, and Sam and Claire were there too. I was several shots behind them and had some serious catching up to do. Claire had already found a likely candidate for a festive night in; he looked rather young, though, and a wee bit too pissed to be able to put up much of a performance.
“Don’t fancy hers much,” I yelled into Sam’s ear, above the noise of Wizzard singing “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day” for the millionth time since October.
“Yeah, but you should see his friend,” Sam shouted back, pointing with the top of her beer bottle over to the corner, where someone dark and