Patrick asked me if I minded. He was joking but I felt exposed and said no. ‘Why would I mind? That would be weird.’ I picked up one of the counters and turned it over. ‘When are you leaving?’
He said in three weeks. ‘The tenth. Back at Christmas. I think, the day before.’
‘That is five months.’
Patrick said, ‘Five and a half’ and finished setting up the board. I tried to focus on his explanation of the rules but I was preoccupied with the idea of him being away for so long and said, when he kept reminding me whose turn it was, ‘You just roll for me and I’ll watch.’
17
HOW LONG THE man had been standing there I don’t know but when I raised my head because I had heard somebody say, ‘Hello there,’ it sounded like it wasn’t the first time he had said it. It was October and cold. I was at Hampstead Heath sitting in an area of tall dead grass between the gravel path and a narrow stream with my arms around my shins and my forehead on my knees. I had cried enough that the skin on my cheeks felt sore and tight like it had been soaped and over-scrubbed.
The man, in his oilskin jacket and tweed hat, was smiling cautiously. He had a dog on a leash, a large Labrador that was standing obediently beside him, beating its tail against his leg. I smiled back, involuntarily, like someone who has just been tapped on the shoulder at a party and is turning around in happy anticipation of seeing who it is and hearing whatever wonderful thing it is they’ve come over to say.
He said, ‘I couldn’t help but notice you here.’ His tone was very fatherly. ‘I didn’t want to invade your privacy but I said to myself, if she is still there on my way back –’ he did a single nod to indicate that I was, indeed, still there and asked me if I was alright.
I was sorry and wanted to apologise for becoming a factor in his afternoon, for complicating his walk and demanding to be thought about. The dog put its nose down and sniffed towards me, as near as it could get on the leash. I reached out and the man gave out more so it could put its nose in my hand. He said, ‘Ah there, she likes you. She’s rather old and doesn’t like many people.’
I squinted up at him. I wanted to tell him that my mother had just died to justify why I had been crying so hard in public. But it would be a burden beyond this nice man’s solving. I went to say that I had dropped my phone in the stream but I did not want him to think I was stupid or offer to retrieve it.
I said, ‘I’m lonely.’ It was the truth. Followed by some lies, told to absolve him of concern. ‘I’m just lonely today. Not in general. Generally I’m completely fine.’
‘Well, they say London is a city of eight million lonely people, don’t they.’ The man gently tugged the dog back to his side. ‘But this too shall pass. They also say that.’
He nodded goodbye and moved off along the path.
*
As a child, watching the news or listening to it on the radio with my father I thought, when they said ‘the body was discovered by a man walking his dog’， that it was always the same man. I still imagine him, putting his walking shoes on at the door, finding the leash, the familiar dread as he clips it onto the dog’s collar, but still setting out, regardless, in the hope that, today, there won’t be a body. But twenty minutes later, God, there it is.
*
I stayed sitting by the stream after he walked on, but kept my head up so as not to attract any more concerned persons. I hadn’t been alright from the time Patrick went away. Sitting there, I thought about other times that I had felt like this – the months I was with Jonathan, on and off in Paris, the past few weeks – the lowest points of my adult life were related by the factor of his absence. It was so clear. And there had been that day in the summer – I stood up and brushed the back of my jeans. That is when I began to think of Patrick as the cure. By the end of our marriage, I saw him as the cause.
18
I WENT TO the airport to meet Patrick, early in the morning, the day before Christmas. We hugged each other like two people who had no practical experience of embracing, had only taught themselves the theory from a poorly worded manual.
He did not smell amazing. He had a very saddening beard. But, I said, aside from that I was so happy to see him. I did not say, beyond description, beyond what I had imagined.
Patrick said you too. And my name. ‘You too Martha.’
In front of the ticket machine, he asked if I wanted to come home with him. It felt like a stone dropping – the disappointment – when he said ‘not in that sense obviously’ and laughed. I told him I did, not in that sense either.