I shake my head, but I don’t know if I mean it. Anyone in my situation, still needing answers, would respond. Wouldn’t they?
“You’re going to reply,” my sister says, drinking water from a mug.
“Maybe.” I sit down next to her on the bed and together we watch my words form on the screen.
Thank you, I write.I’m OK. Sort of.
To my surprise, Johan reads the message straight away. He starts typing.
This is not an average week for either of us, Carrie Cole. I’m with you.
I put the phone down. It’s too much, him caring about how I’m feeling. Calling me Carrie Cole.
Another message.
My summer house is free this weekend if you’d like to stay. For free, of course. If you’re anything like me you’ll be in need of some space. I’m on my own with Matteo, otherwise I’d be there myself. But he wants to go to soft play:-/
I take my jumper off and take Maya’s mug from her hand. I need water.
“I don’t think you should reply,” Maya says after a moment. “You need to nip this in the bud.”
I nod. I have a clear choice now: I can either close this down or open it right up. There isn’t a third way.
I love Robin. I truly love him, my dear husband, who, right now, islooking after our twins so that I can be here in Sweden on a clinical attachment that will have no formal bearing on my return to the NHS.
And Johan is not,cannotbe, the man I married twelve and a half years ago. Even if some of the old chemistry is still intact, we’ve both changed since then in a very fundamental way.
I get up and walk over to the window.I’ve been in theater all day,I type.And Dad had a health crisis, although it seems to have passed for now. It’s been full-on. As it is to be hearing from you. Everything is out of whack, and for that reason I wouldn’t feel comfortable taking your summer house. Thanks for checking in, though, and thanks for the offer. I apologize again for last night and I wish you a happy life.
I press send and show the message to Maya, who pats me gingerly on the back and tells me well done. I stand in the shower for twenty minutes. I make myself eat some of the potato hash left in a pan for me, and I drink plenty of water.
“I’m so sorry I dropped you in all of this,” my sister sighs when I’ve finished my food. It’s nearly 11 p.m. “This is why I went off to lead the life I lead nowadays, Carrie. I know you and half the world thought I was weird, going in so hard on the alternative thing. But I’m dangerous on my own. Eagle, Colorado—they grounded me.” She smiles ruefully. “At least, for a while.”
“What do you mean?”
Maya shakes her head. “Not now,” she says, which is the first indication she’s given that something really is up.
I reach for my sister’s hand and we sit together for a moment, united in our shared past, in our very different coping mechanisms. I have to trust she’ll tell me when she’s ready.
She goes off to brush her teeth just as I receive another message from Roof.
I miss you tonight,he’s written. It slides onto my screen in a push notification.
I stare at his words until the screen turns to black. I think back to the time, years ago, when he tried repeatedly to send that very same message from an oil rig in the North Sea.
Maya flushes the toilet in the next room.
After a long, long pause, I unlock my phone and return to my Roof messages, but by the time I get there, he’s deleted it.
I know what he wrote, though. And he can’t take it back.
Twenty-nine.
I miss you tonight.
Four a.m. I’m still awake. I’ve been distracting myself with study while Maya sleeps, but from time to time I’ve stopped to read the chain of messages between me and Johan.
Message deleted, it says, but I know. Unease clots inside me.
