I hoped that this was some sort of stunt – but the conviction that it was real was winning.
‘Luke, please, I’m begging you.’ Frantically, I placed my hands on his chest, trying to get him to hold still. ‘I love you so much.’ My laboured breaths were humiliatingly loud. ‘We can fix this, we’ll go for counselling, whatever you want.’
Eyes as cold as slate, he peeled my hands off him and held me at bay.
I was reduced to a state of desperation, a ball of terror. But he slung on his jacket, picked up his bag and swung out of the door. Fuelled by panic, I grabbed the keys he’d just abandoned, shoved my feet into a pair of Uggs and followed him down three flights of stairs, out into the sleety street. In my leggings and fleece, I tried to keep up as he strode to a van.
When he opened the van door to vault up beside Joey, I flung myself at him. ‘Don’t,’ he said, cold and unknowable. ‘Please.’
Shocked, I stepped back, hearing the grind of metal as the door slid closed. The engine fired up and the van jerked out into the thin flow of traffic and moved away.
I stayed in the street for a long time. I still thought – hoped – they’d come back. It was the cold which drove me back inside, where the first thing I did was call him – but my number had been blocked.
Fumbling with terror, I called Joey, who said, ‘You can’t talk to him, Rachel. Any bills, official stuff, come through me and I’ll pass them on. I’m turning my phone off now. And listen, mind yourself, would you? Sort yourself out.’
Stunned, I’d sat on the floor, wondering if this was actually real. Then I swallowed a sleeping tablet and waited for merciful oblivion to take me.
In the lamplight at my front door, I realized that Luke was watching me. ‘What?’ He sounded wary. ‘What have I done now?’
Overwhelmed by memories, fresh rage flooded me. ‘Just remembering the day you left me.’
‘Oh God, that was –’
‘You cruel, cold-hearted monster,’ I spluttered. ‘You mean, heartless …’ I could hardly find the words. ‘You ice-cold –’
‘I hated having to do it.’
‘You hated it?’
‘Rachel, please. Listen to me. Please. My baby died – she was my baby too. And my wife, the woman I adored, had relapsed –’
‘– I hadn’t –’
‘– I was broken, the loneliness was killing me and you were gone, Rachel. You might as well have been dead too.’
‘However bad it was for you, it was worse for me.’
He pulled in a deep suck of a breath. ‘I believe you. But you’d always told me that I should leave if you relapsed.’
‘But I hadn’t relapsed. That’s not the word –’
Ignoring me, he continued speaking. ‘For the longest time I couldn’t imagine it – you were so committed to staying clean. Then it happened and it was a fucking nightmare. How often did I beg you to quit? And you just lied.’ His face spasmed. ‘All your girls – Claire, Anna, Nola, Brigit and Olga Mae, I rang them so often, they stopped taking my calls. I kept doing sweeps of the apartment and finding more stashes of the pills. I was wondering about cancelling your cards –’
I’d have found the money somewhere.
‘– but forcing you to stop wouldn’t have gotten you clean. You had to be the one who decided. It took me nearly six months to face it, you didn’t love me enough –’
‘Of course I loved you!’
‘You loved the pills more. That’s a fact, Rachel. I couldn’t cure you. Just by being there, I was allowing it. If nothing in an addict’s life changes, they won’t change – how often had I heard you say that? If I left, I hoped it might shock you into getting clean.’
‘Wait, now –’ This was so confusing.
‘But I couldn’t move just eight blocks uptown. I wouldn’t be able to stay away from you.’
‘You really wanted to get far, far away from me.’
‘I didn’t want to leave you at all. But, you know, Rachel, I wasn’t exactly sane around then.’
He looked so distraught that suddenly that was easy to believe.
‘In the years since, it’s obvious I overreacted … But at the time it seemed like the only choice left to me. I’d run out of road.’
For the first time I had a sense of how he might have felt.
‘To do it right, you had to be out of reach. And I was terrified, Rachel. My life was in Brooklyn with you. At the best of times, I hate change. I picked Denver because I knew two people there – two more than any other place. I had to start a new job, find a place to live and get up every morning and go through the motions like a dead man walking. No one wanted to hang out with me, not even Johnno and Elaine after a while, I must have been too … depressed, whatever the word is. I couldn’t connect with other people, their lives seemed so stupidly light-hearted …’ He looked at me, a shiny-eyed glare. ‘That morning I left, I’ll never forget it, the way you pleaded, it tore me to shreds. I nearly gave in.’ He clapped a hand over his mouth. ‘I didn’t want to go, but I felt I had to.’ The words were muffled. ‘Because –’