I’m confused, but women do tend to have that effect on me. I can’t quite interpret the look on her face, but I fear it might be pity. I feel foolish and old and delusional all of a sudden, and perhaps I am: Why would someone so young, intelligent, and attractive be interested in a man like me?
Priya gets up and for the first time I notice what pretty little feet she has, with soft-looking brown skin, and red-painted toenails. She crosses the room, grabs two glasses and a bottle of whiskey—one I used to drink with Anna—then sits back down next to me. A bit closer than before.
“I would like to propose a toast,” she says, pouring two rather large measures. “Here’s to a long and happy strictly professional and platonic relationship. Cheers.”
“Cheers,” I reply, clinking my glass with hers.
She downs her drink—bit of a waste really, it’s good-quality stuff—but I drain my glass too.
And then I kiss her.
Her
Wednesday 21:00
Christ, I need a drink. I can’t remember the last time I went this long without one.
After a nonstop day of broadcasting—seemingly endless two-ways outside the school, then at the police station, as well as filming and packaging for various outlets—I am longing for my bed. I call to find out what time early bulletins want us on-air tomorrow, then scribble the requests down with a black felt-tip pen I found in my handbag. I don’t remember where I got it from, but it’s come in handy more than once today.
I’m cold, and my feet are killing me from standing for so long. I think I’ve gotten a little too used to presenting the lunchtime bulletin, sitting behind a desk in a nice warm studio. I don’t really understand where the day has gone—one hour rolling into the next, like a series of mini reruns stitched together. Life sometimes seems like a hamster wheel we can only step off if we know to stop running.
Time has changed too, and turned into something I can no longer tell. It started the night my daughter died. As soon as I left Charlotte—asleep in her travel crib at my mother’s house—it felt as though I had been separated from her for hours, not minutes. I didn’t want to leave her there at all, but Jack insisted we should go out for my birthday. He didn’t understand that after what happened on my sixteenth, celebrating a birthday was something I’d never really wanted to do again.
He kept insisting that I needed to get out of the house, something I hadn’t been doing too often since Charlotte was born. Motherhood doesn’t come with a manual, and it was a shock when we first brought our daughter home from the hospital. I’d read all the books they tell you to read, been to all the classes, but the reality of being responsible for another human being was a heavy burden, and something I wasn’t prepared for. The person I thought I was disappeared overnight, and I became this new woman I didn’t recognize. One who rarely slept, never looked in the mirror, and who worried constantly about her child. My life became only about hers. I was terrified that something bad would happen if I ever left her alone, even for a minute. I was right.
Since she died, time stretches and contracts in ways I can’t fathom. It feels like I have less of it somehow, as though the world is spinning too fast, the days falling into one another in an exhausting blur. I was not a natural mother, but I tried to be the best I could. Really tried. My own mum said that the first few months were always the hardest with a baby, but those were all I had.
People use the expression “heartbroken” so often it has lost its meaning. For me, it was as though my heart actually broke into a thousand pieces when I lost my daughter, and I haven’t been able to feel or really care about anything else ever since. It didn’t just break my heart, it broke me, and I am no longer the same person. I’m someone else now. I don’t know how to feel anything anymore, or how to return affection. It is far easier to borrow love than it is to pay it back.
Richard has had to drive me everywhere today, as a result of the police holding on to my car. Although it’s completely normal for a correspondent and cameraman to spend this much time together, I don’t like it. Something feels strange between us. A little off. I don’t know whether it is because Jack told me about his criminal record, or something else.
I had some free time in the afternoon, when the engineers insisted on having yet another proper meal break—there was talk of the union as soon as I raised an eyebrow—but the truth was, I didn’t mind skipping a slot. There had been no new developments in the story since early that morning. I knew that the news channel could easily rerun my live from the previous hour, giving me almost two to myself.