The One Day You Were My Husband (62)

He looked up at the greasy brown sky behind me, emptying rain, the odd thunderous rumble rolling through.

At that point, I cracked. “Could you at least have the fucking courtesy to look at me?” I snapped. “Even for half a minute?”

Johan actually jumped in his chair.

“You still haven’t told me anything, Johan. Not a fucking thing about what you’ve done or why. I’m a doctor. My entire adult life has been about helping people to live. And yet here you are, smuggling some shitty, miserable drug over the border for a bunch of thugs you refuse to talk about. My job is in jeopardy, my life is in shreds, I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I don’t know what to do. Will you please just fucking well talk to me?”

He stared at me.

“Not least about the many lies you must have told me? How long they’ve been going on? Perhaps you could tell me if anything that happened between us was real! And, indeed, who the fuck you actually are?”

I was shouting now. People were looking. I didn’t care.

Still, he didn’t speak. Sedimented anger moved in my abdomen, but there was fear, too. I realized I didn’t actually want to hear what he had to say.

After a long pause, he switched the handset to his other ear. “I am going to say this one more time, Carrie. I cannot talk to you. No amount of shouting can change that.” He sighed. “Look. We’ve been seeing each other three months. And it’s been good. Very good, at times. But it’s over now. There is no other outcome, with me in here and you out there.”

“I…What?”

There was a large dent in the grille in front of me, as if someone had thrown a stool against it. I felt some sympathy for whoever had done this.

“Listen to me, Carrie.” He spoke slowly. “I don’t want you to visit me. And I’m not just trying to save your skin—I’m done with this. Us. It was fun, and I did love you, but I’ve got bigger fish to fry now. You need to go home.”

I tried to speak, but he carried on.

“If you visit again, I’ll refuse to come out. I know you’re stubborn but, Christ, will you just wake up? I’m truly sorry all this happened, but it’s over.”

Beside me, a young girl in pink shorts jumped down from her mother’s lap and started skipping around the cracked concrete of the yard, under the cover of the overhanging roof. Beyond her, the rain drummed down. Her father, sitting behind the barred window next to Johan, watched her, smiling, before suddenly covering his face with his hands. His shoulders shook.

I felt a sob rising in my own chest. Johan had smuggled drugs; there was no longer any point in me trying to convince myself otherwise. But I was damned if I was going to be packed off out of the country—out of this relationship—without any explanation.

“No,” I said. “You don’t get to buy me off by just ditching me like I’m a holiday fling.”

“I’m sorry it’s come to this,” Johan said. “Truly sorry. Like I said—I did love you. I wasn’t making that up, you’re right. But we’re done.”

Then, unbelievably: “I’m going to go now,” he said. “Look after yourself, Carrie. Have a good life.”

And he meant it. He got up and walked away.

The last I ever saw of him, he was waiting with his back to me while a guard handcuffed him and unlocked a barred door. He disappeared into a dark space behind and, with that, my brief time in the sun was done.





Twenty-four.


London, September 2010



There were a great many fights between Maya and my mother in those surreal first days back in London. Maya, who had flown over to look after me for a couple of weeks, felt I needed deep rest and relaxation. Mum insisted I needed to save my job first.

“I know it’s hard,” she told me the morning after we landed. “But you need to get your work situation under control. Then you can rest.”

She and Maya were drinking bottles of Johan’s Pucko from the fridge. I couldn’t eat a thing.

“Carrie’s job situation is out of her hands,” Maya said irritably. “She can’t just blast in there and ‘sort it out,’ Mum. This is medicine. Those decisions are made way above her pay grade.”

“You’re right,” I told her. “But showing willing and being visible go a long way in my world. A very long way.”

“Exactly,” Mum said triumphantly, which sent Maya into a silent rage. Thankfully, Dad called at that moment. I walked out on my mother and sister and went to meet him in Aldgate for a cup of Earl Grey.

“Don’t give up on your instinct,” he said. It was unimaginably comforting to see him, dressed in the same gray suit and yellow tie combination he’d been wearing for as long as I could remember.

“None of us could have seen it coming with Johan, Carrie. None of us—your instinct is still good. And if your instinct is to go back to work, then you go back to work. Ignore your sister and ignore your mother. Ignore me, even. But don’t ever give up on your gut.”



* * *



—

The hospital trust was reassured by my return to the UK. I had to attend three further meetings in the first week, during which various officials asked essentially the same questions, but Mum sat with me through each one. Yanika encouraged me to put together a presentation in which I laid out my exam scores, excellent portfolio, and some thirty references from consultants, junior doctors, nurses, and other hospital staff to show the trust “what an asset” I was.