there will be light again, and if we just keep moving forward in one brave straight line, however slowly, we’ll find our way back one day. But I didn’t do that. I stumbled in every which direction, blindfolded, two steps forward, three steps back. The pills have been my comfort, my crutch and my escape, but they’ve also been the blindfold sending me in the wrong direction. For every version of me that exists, I need to remove my blindfold now. I need to say goodbye.
Tuesday 1 October
I knew Freddie wouldn’t be here, of course. I could have waited a couple of weeks in the hope that he’d be back from Rio, but there are no guarantees when that would be and, now my decision is made, I need to see it through.
The bedside lamp is on, a low night-light glow, and the clock tells me it’s just after five in the morning. My iPad is where I hoped it would be, on Freddie’s pillow. I’m a night-time reader, sometimes a middle-of-the-night reader when I can’t sleep, which is often the case when I’m alone. I reach for it now and check the battery level. Eighty-seven per cent. That’s okay. So I’m here, in our beautiful Savoy bed, and I have my iPad ready. FaceTime isn’t the way I’d ever have imagined or wished to say goodbye, but it’s all I have. Coming back here again after tonight isn’t an option I can allow myself.
I put the iPad down and lie back against the pillows. I can afford a few minutes to myself before I make the call. I’m warm and comfortable, and for a few minutes I soak in the stillness, try to slow down my breathing, to be calm in these last moments because they matter so much.
And then, when I’m sure I’m ready, I prop myself up on the pillows and reach for the iPad.
He’s not going to pick up. I feel my calmness start to ebb as the ringtone beams out somewhere in the darkness on the other side of the world. He’s not going to pick up. The beginnings of panic tighten my throat; I can feel my heartbeat racing too fast as I gaze at my pale reflection on the screen. I brace myself for the message to flash up telling me Freddie Hunter is unavailable. Of course he is; it’s the middle of the night in Rio.
Come on, Freddie, I whisper. Please hear me one last time. Of all the times I’ve ever needed you, this is the time I need you most of all.
And then, miraculously, as if he heard my plea, he does. The screen flickers as it connects, and then he’s there and I could cry with sheer relief.
‘Lyds? Hang on.’ He reaches across to switch his bedside lamp on. It washes him in an intimate glow, the kind of welcome you might see through a pub window on a winter’s night. ‘Is everything okay?’
He’s bleary-eyed, concerned.
I nod, already choking back tears. ‘I just wanted to see your face again.’
I spent most of yesterday trying to think of the right things to say to him, but now he’s looking at me all I want to do is fill my eyes with him. Eighty-seven per cent could never be enough.
He flops back against his pillow. ‘It’s one in the morning here, babes,’ he says.
‘I know, I know. I’m sorry,’ I whisper. ‘I just miss you so much, Freddie. I hate it when we argue.’
‘Me too,’ he says. ‘Especially when we can’t have make-up sex.’
I shake my head and laugh softly. ‘Promise me you’ll never change, Freddie Hunter.’
‘Hey,’ he says, low and familiar now. ‘It’s felt like for ever for me too, you know.’
‘Has it?’ I say, a sob catching hot in my throat because I never truly realized how long for ever is until the day I saw Freddie’s name etched in gold on his headstone.
‘Of course it has,’ he says, like it’s obvious. ‘I won’t stay away this long again, Lyds, promise. It’s driving me nuts.’
It’s been a million times harder for me, I think, but I don’t say it.
‘I haven’t been sleeping so well,’ I tell him instead. ‘The bed’s too big without you.’
‘Don’t knock it. This thing’s like a plank of wood.’ His arm is flung behind his head and he raps his knuckles on the cheap pine headboard. ‘Make the best of it while you can, Lyds. Starfish all you like.’
Make the best of it while you