But now? I just don’t know. Ironically, although lockdown has given Ryan ‘time to reconsider how he feels’ as he puts it, it has given me time too. I’m not sure what to think. Things are so different now. I don’t think I’m even the same person.
‘I’ve realised I just can’t be without you, Soph,’ Ryan told me, after the preliminary pleasantries about how I am and how he is and how terrible the whole pandemic thing is. I hadn’t known what to say. ‘I won’t go as far as saying I get why you changed your job,’ he had explained, ‘but I’m happy to go with it. As long as you don’t give me lines for not finishing my homework on time.’
I know he was joking, but somehow there’s a sting in the tail of his sentence and I can’t help but feel resentful about his choice of words. I don’t know why, but just speaking to him has opened up the same old nagging wounds and yet, paradoxically, it was good to hear his voice. You simply can’t be with someone for five years and not feel anything for them. It would be great if you could just switch it all off and forget everything with copious amounts of chocolate and large doses of vodka but their effects are only a transient numbing.
Still, I decide nevertheless to drag myself off the sofa and grab a bar of chocolate. I take a bite and contemplate phoning Jess, but immediately dismiss the idea. She will just go crazy with excitement and have both of us married off by Christmas. She adores Ryan and seems totally impervious to his imperfections. She just doesn’t understand that I was never able to discuss my meds or their side effects with Ryan; to him they were an inconvenience, an irritation. Yet Jack seemed to understand well before I’d even started trying to explain.
‘How’s Ryan supposed to understand what it’s like to have epilepsy?’ she had said when we first split. ‘I know he’s been insensitive, but it’s a big shock to those around you.’
‘But, Jess, you’ve been able to accept how it’s changed me. Mum has too, albeit with a bit of a discussion around things,’ I had protested.
‘Oh come on, Soph, Mum went nuts initially; you know she did.’
‘Yeah okay, she did,’ I had admitted reluctantly. ‘But I can understand that. To be fair she’d helped fund law school, so it’s hardly surprising it was a shock that I suddenly wanted to throw it all away and train to be a teacher.’
‘Bottom line is, she’s your mum and she pretty much forgives you anything. It’s a mum thing. Totally different with guys – look how Zach didn’t get it that time I wanted to go to Spain rather than the trip he planned to Holland.’
‘That’s hardly the same thing,’ I point out wearily.
‘Yeah but they just don’t get it at first.’
‘I’m sure some do,’ I had said.
‘Not many,’ she’d replied.
Jack does, my heart points out now. But you don’t even really know him, you’ve never met, the voice of reason chimes in. I know he’s nice, my heart insists, you can just tell these things. Reason gives voice to my worst fear, the one I’ve been burying for weeks now: What if it’s just that part of him you’ve seen? You don’t know the whole Jack. If you actually met him, you might find that this whole relationship doesn’t even exist. It’s all in your head. Besides, the reasonable voice continues, the guy’s still married, he’s made mistakes before and he probably doesn’t feel the same way about you, even if he thinks he might. Look at what happened with Laura. And worse, look at Elsie and Bertie – she kept a huge secret from him and they’d been married for sixty years. Maybe he didn’t know her at all.
The doubts rumble on, feeding into my insecurities and loss of trust. How do I know if whatever I have with Jack is real? I haven’t even met him. Our relationship could be like a holiday romance, intense and wonderful at the time, but fizzles out under the glare of reality.
It’s no good, I can’t think about it any more now. Ryan’s going to have to wait. I have to collect Tilly to take her to Bertie’s, and Jack and I still haven’t decided what we’re going to do about the letter. It sits in my wardrobe drawer, waves of guilt crashing over my