The Midnight Train (The Midnight World, #2)(67)

There were whole years where the balance was right. You know, it wasn’t perfect. But I worked hard at the Crucible and you worked hard at the shop and we both supported each other. I felt like you were still there for me, as though the point of work wasn’t the work, but a shared future. We were still young enough to imagine the time ahead of us was for ever.

But things went off course and I saw less and less of you – it was always because of work. And all the time in those days you told me, and maybe told yourself, that by expanding the business you were setting up a life of less work. That we would have more time together. When we were young we both loved Around the World in Eighty Days. A silly book, full of all sorts of outdated things, but also just a wonderful idea of adventure. I thought we could both be Phileas Fogg in our lives. But I increasingly felt like your valet. And no one wants to be the valet.

I care about you. I will always love the man I married. But now I miss him. I want to sit on a bench with him and just pass the time away like we used to.

We used to face the same direction. Whether looking at a pond or a movie or a painting in a church in Venice. So it was easy to imagine we were facing the same future.

You wanted success but you were kind and cared about people. My dad. Strangers, even. That past tense seems harsh as I write. I think you still care about people. I think you are still a good person, but you have forgotten how to act like one because you are detached from our world. I don’t know what happened and I’ve tried to find you but you are lost to me.

I can’t just be that corporate wife any more, sitting at tables at business functions and being ignored by everyone, including my husband. I chose to leave many things of my life before you to have a life for us. And now I am essentially alone at fifty years old. And so, while I still have life and health inside me, I am going to return to Sheffield. I miss my best friend and I miss myself.

I think, in the end, I just want to travel the world and see some paintings and do a bit of good where I can. I would have rather done that with you, but I realise that is never going to happen.

There are plenty of worse husbands out there. You have never been unfaithful. And you have never been violent or awful. But you are not the man I fell in love with and this breaks my heart.

It needs to be clearly understood that I am not leaving to get away from you. I’m leaving because staying with you makes me miss that man more.

It feels wrong that I am the one making the choice, because that isn’t what it feels like to me. It feels like I chose you, and kept choosing you, but over the decades you stopped choosing me.

You are forever somewhere else, even when you are right next to me.

It is important for me not to succumb to fantasy. I doubt I will even travel the world. I imagine I will be consumed with looking after my dad’s increasing needs back in Sheffield.

Anyway, this is not easy.

I know you think of me as strong, but I am not.

I feel as fragile as a leaf in the wind right now.

It seems like I have been holding my breath through this whole letter.

I feel if I exhale I will cry and never stop crying.

I know you went through a lot when you were younger, as did I. But we can’t be trapped by that for ever. I can’t fix you. I can’t even fix myself.

This is heartbreaking. But sometimes you have to let your heart break in order to stay alive.

I want you to understand that.

I want you to understand too that our love is always still there. Can you remember my silly theory of art? That people grow old around art but the art stays fresh? Well, I think in a way that is true for memory. I don’t know how to explain it but I like to believe we are still, somehow, at the theatre when you walked over to me. Or on our wedding day. Or on our honeymoon. Or looking up at the stars one drunken evening. Or happy, pasting up wallpaper at Broomhill.

I love you, Wilbur.

But I am also leaving you.

I don’t know where the past hides, but I will meet you there.

Maggie

x





The Light in the Window


The Ghost stared at the Dreamer as the train rode on. ‘Since I met you I have acted like I was in charge, like I have the answers … when really there is only ever one question after another. It’s a paradox.’

The Dreamer looked uncertain. ‘What are you saying?’

‘I suppose I wanted you to see what lies ahead so that you had the chance to embrace the questions more.’ He stared out at Wilbur staring at a whiteboard full of projections for the next quarter. ‘Always numbers. I was always looking at numbers …’

Maybe the whole of business is one big coping strategy, thought the Ghost to himself. If you can turn money into meaning, it takes all the mess and fear away. But it’s not living. ‘Just try and live life like—’

The Dreamer smiled sadly. ‘Like it can’t be measured?’

‘Exactly!’

They arrived on another London street in the dark. Not quite as fancy as the last one, but still lovely and tree-lined. A red-brick terrace in Clapham. They watched Wilbur, drunk, in a slightly dishevelled suit, standing on a doorstep.

Eventually, the door opened and a confused fifty-year-old Claudette stood there. She was tying her dressing gown and stifling a yawn and looking at him with wide eyes. She hadn’t seen Wilbur for over a decade.

‘Hi, Claudette.’