‘But …’
‘I didn’t want you to know my real name, so I said I was called Gretel.’
There isn’t one single part of Joshua’s face that isn’t utterly horrified. I can’t stand that I’ve made someone hurt this much. The guilt arrives like a wrecking ball. I caused this. I made this person feel this awful. Me. April.
‘Why?’ he asks, shaking his head.
‘I told you it was Gretel and then, once I’d done it, I didn’t know how to undo it. And I got to know you and we kept seeing each other, and then it all got out of hand.’
‘But why the hell would you lie about something like that to begin with? I mean …’ He shakes his head faster, unable to complete the sentence. ‘You know what. No. I don’t care.’ His chair is scraped back. His body is leaving it. ‘Excuse me,’ Joshua says to the table. ‘I need a moment.’ He rushes off so quickly that the decorative basil leaf wafts off his plate and onto the floor.
He crashes into a waiter collecting empty plates. I watch the back of his head weave through the tables and feel white-hot pain pulsate throughout my body at the sight of him leaving. Can I follow? Do I follow? How do I make this better? Will he come back? But the entire table is watching so, despite my inner unravelling, I smile at everyone around me like he’s just popped out.
Janet gives me a thumbs-up. ‘He seems nice,’ she says, the ball of cherry tomato in her cheek like a hamster. ‘How long have you been going out?’
‘Only officially for a few weeks,’ I reply, thinking it’s funny how capable you can be of behaving normally when your life is so not in a normal place.
Jonathan leans over, teeth already stained with red wine. He waggles his finger at me drunkenly. ‘Ooo, very new. Don’t freak him out by trying to catch the bouquet later.’ He laughs and winks, like he’s just given me the best piece of life advice in the universe.
Don’t do this. Don’t do that. Don’t be too much. Don’t be too little. Don’t scare him off. Don’t make him feel like you don’t care. Don’t be too slutty. Don’t be too prudish. Don’t be too insecure. Don’t be too self-contained. Don’t be too fat. Don’t be too thin. Don’t be you. Never be you. You don’t want to die alone so don’t be fucking you.
I look around at the sea of circular tables, dotted with couples. All holding membership cards to the club I long to inhabit. The Belonging Club. The antidote to loneliness. The safety net of someone essentially nodding at me and saying, ‘Yeah, you’ll do.’ That’s all I’ve ever wanted. To be sitting alongside someone at a table covered with white linen, feeling slightly bored by the story they’re telling the person on their right because I’ve heard it a thousand times before. All my life, I’ve wanted to be loved. I wanted to have someone pick me as their specialist. I wanted to feel safe in my being-lovedness. For someone to not be put off by the parts of me that were hard but that I couldn’t help. But I never got the chance.
And so I wanted to be powerful, instead; to finally have the ball in my court. I wanted others to hurt the way I’ve been hurt. I wanted to have just one moment of feeling like I’ve won.
But it turns out I don’t have it in me. I could’ve destroyed Joshua today. I could’ve laughed at him and his hope and his misguided faith. I could’ve revelled in the crackle of power that comes with holding someone’s heart in your palm. I could’ve hurt him and humiliated him like so many have hurt and humiliated me. But, even with everything I’ve been through, I don’t have it in me.
I’ve hurt too much to hurt others.
I like that I’m not Gretel.
I like that I’m me.
And I like that, despite everything, no matter how hard I’ve tried these last few months, I’ve found it impossible to run away from myself.
In fact, I love that.
‘Excuse me,’ I say, to the table full of couples who think I belong now. I get up from my tastefully-decorated chair. ‘I need the bathroom.’
I dash in the direction Josh went, grinning like nothing is wrong when everything is. I don’t know what I’m going to say when I find him, but I need to find him. I dart around waiting staff who are refilling glasses and scooping up empty plates ready for the pork or chicken or goats-cheese tartlet main course. Chrissy’s laughing at the top table, her meal untouched, sharing a joke with her mum. I know I should stay and eat and pretend life is great for her, but the urge to find Joshua is too much. I feel ill at what I’ve done, the look on his face, at what I need to explain.
He’s not in the hallway. He’s not in the conservatory. He’s not in the entrance hall where we left our wet umbrellas. My heart feels like it’s rehearsing for a full-on attack and I’m shivering even though it’s not that cold as I pace the stately home, dodging the glances of stressed staff. I wait outside the toilets for a while, listening to more well-mannered laughter from the dining room, but he doesn’t come out.
He’s left, I realise. He has gone. And I can’t even blame him.
The loss is more intolerable than I imagined. I head back into the empty conservatory and wilt into a chair, feeling tears itch my eyes, as the echoes of wedding thud down the hallway. I sniff and wipe my nose with the back of my hand. I sniff again. The rain beats against the glass in pitter-patters. I remember Josh coming to my house in the rain. I remember him saying sorry. I remember feeling in my guts that he meant it. I don’t remember ever feeling like that when a man has apologised to me before. I close my eyes. They’re wet when I open them. I look up at the glass ceiling, the dollops of grey rain hitting it. I wonder whether or not I should try to call him; if there’s any point. Another shriek of laughter ripples from the wedding and I turn my face out towards the rain-smudged view. The stately grounds are hiding in the deep-grey mist of the storm. I can just about make out a patio, a gravel walkway lined with topiary hedges and sodden benches. And, on one of them, I see the huddled figure of Joshua.
Without forethought, I’m outside, soaked instantly. It’s so much quieter out here, just the steady pounding of raindrops in puddles. I run over the gravel, arms crossed, and come to a stop at the bench he’s sitting on, head in his hands. My heartbeat cranks up the amp. He looks broken, his body physically bent over on himself, hands shaking. I feel a twist of pain in my ribs as I examine what I’ve caused. The privilege of guilt …
‘Joshua?’ I say. His wet and sad body doesn’t answer me. ‘I thought you’d gone …’
He straightens, and pulls the sopping lapels of his jacket across his chest. He doesn’t reply.
‘What are you doing out here?’ I ask. Every part of me wants to touch him but I know I’ll be swatted off. I’ve lost the right to brush his skin. It’s been left on the table, alongside the packets of sugared almonds. ‘You’re soaking.’
More silence. I think he may stand and stalk off. He didn’t ask to be followed. I don’t dare sit. I don’t dare break the silence again. And, finally, through gritted teeth, he talks. ‘I’ve been sitting here,’ Joshua tells me, his voice hardly a murmur, ‘in the fucking rain, trying to work out why I keep getting myself into these situations.’