the pub or to his sister’s, or just somewhere he could forget about his miserable sick partner.
When he did that, I was relieved, because it meant I could make noise then – I could cry and moan and swear about the fucking pain and my fucking back and he wouldn’t have to listen.
And of course it wasn’t just the misery and the extra effort of fetching and carrying, of helping me dress and getting a takeaway every other night or getting the shopping in. We had no intimacy any more. Even on good days, when the pain subsided to a dull ache, the most we could do was hold each other and kiss. He needed more, of course, and didn’t like to ask or push me, because he was afraid of making it worse. And even when I felt alright and could have tried, I was afraid to start anything that I might not be able to finish.
He lasted five months after the accident. I don’t know if it was a gradual build-up or if I said or did something that triggered it, but one morning I woke up and he wasn’t there. He’d left a note on the downstairs table.
His sister came round at the weekend and together we packed up his things as best we could.
I thought about killing myself a lot, even before Graham left. There were times when I wanted nothing more than death, because afterwards it would be pain-free, but I couldn’t do it when Graham was still with me. What if he found me? And he would hate me for giving up, when he had put so much hard work into keeping me going.
Once he had gone, though, I had no reason to carry on living, no one who cared about me enough to bother whether I lived or died, but I was afraid to do anything about it. I was afraid of getting it wrong, and ending up in even more pain than I was now. And, despite the copious amounts of medication I was prescribed, it was hard for me to save up enough tablets to be able to do the job properly. But I thought about it, I fantasised about it, I dreamed of death the way previously I’d dreamed of the pain leaving me, and the way before that I’d dreamed of gardens and children and weekends away. Death was my elusive lover, treasured and longed for and jealously guarded, and always distant. Always out of reach.
And my life, such a waste. Such a ruin of everything that was good, everything ripped from me, leaving this void, this chasm of pain and grief.
Who knew that it could all be so simple? I just needed someone to talk to, after all. Someone who understood how close I was to that point, and who told me it was OK to think of things like that. Everyone should have the right to decide when they’ve had enough. Why should I have spent years and years going through this hell, when leaving it was so beautifully straightforward?
Colin
I was at Vaughn’s house at exactly half-past seven this evening, grasping a tissue-paper-wrapped bottle of white wine. It had been half-price in the supermarket, reduced from an amount that I would consider to be extravagant to one that was acceptable; the likelihood was that Vaughn would think I’d spent more on it than I had.
‘Colin!’ he said, opening the door to me. He shook me warmly by the hand, which I found very strange. I’m not used to physical contact from Vaughn Bradstock. I’ve known him for nearly four years and I can’t remember the last time I actually had to touch him. If, indeed, I ever have.
He stood aside to let me in, and I took my coat off in the hallway and handed over the bottle. His house is surprisingly large, and decorated very much according to the current trend for laminate flooring and neutral coloured walls. What do you call that colour? Mushroom? Taupe? It’s hideous, anyway, like the colour of the water once you’ve finished rinsing your watercolour paintbrush a hundred times. And he has one of those dreadful vases full of twigs in the corner of the room – twigs, sticking out of a perfectly functional ceramic umbrella stand. Why people wish to follow fashions in this way I shall never fully comprehend.
‘Come through,’ Vaughn was saying cheerfully. ‘Come and meet Audrey.’
I was also surprised to see he was wearing jeans, and