I can picture him so vividly now, colourful in every sense of the word, dressed up like he’s about to present a show for children’s TV yet listening to Slipknot in his headphones, which he would never go anywhere without. I love to remember him like that, seeing him from the window of my flat, walking home from classes absorbed in his music, a beacon of individuality, completely and unapologetically him.
‘I was so shy when I moved there. I knew absolutely everyone back home and they all knew me, so to suddenly be in a flat with a bunch of kids with the sorts of generational wealth I thought only existed on TV shows, I was bloody terrified. I had no idea who I was. I was just Rog and Hilary’s babby, I was just whatever everyone back home had told me I was, and all of a sudden, I was given a rare chance to become whoever I wanted to be. And it was Tommy who helped me do that.’
Arthur says nothing, only watches me closely as he listens to my story. This here is more intimate than sex could ever be. I am naked before him right now, baring all. Never before have I felt so vulnerable, so on display for a man to see me in my whole entirety, and yet, his eyes caress me with such tenderness that I don’t shy away.
‘We did everything together. He pushed me so far out of my comfort zone and we did things together that I never could imagine just weeks before meeting him; we’d sneak into these huge corporate fairs, just to see what freebies we could find. We’d go to gigs in the basements of buildings that looked abandoned from the outside. He saw adventure in everything, and adventure we did. He showed me films I had never even heard of. We’d spend days and nights in the cinema and I could always guarantee that if I liked the movie, he’d hate it and vice versa. Then we’d spend the early hours debating who was right. I was finally alive. But Tommy, he …’ I pause to swallow down a sob ‘… he had his struggles. He spent most evenings in my flat, playingTrivial Pursuit, and it was only when he didn’t come down to meet me to walk together to class that I went into his flat.
‘The place was knee-deep in plastic bottles, bin bags, all sorts. His hair that he used to brag that he could head-bang better than anyone else with started to get matted. He took so many pains to show me how to live, but he couldn’t even give himself the basics to survive. Every time I saw him, he seemed so happy, so alive, but there were just the odd things that kept slipping in that finally showed me that he wasn’t a happy man. I tried to help him. I offered to clean for him, to write his essays for uni, to give him the best bowl cut that London had ever seen, but I couldn’t stop the downward spiral.’
Tears drip from my chin freely, and still I persist. Arthur leans forward and snares my pinkie finger in his, a tiny moment of contact that keeps me going, keeps me strong enough to carry on.
‘We ended up living together in our second year of uni but that’s when things got really bad. The writing, the films, that was our dream, together. We would have good days; we’d write and write. Every idea he had was like gold dust. But I couldn’t stop him from spiralling. I knew things were bad, but I don’t think I ever knew how bad. I put too much pressure on him; I know that now. I asked too much of him. I had my own aspirations. I wanted nothing more than to be the next big thing in film. I wanted a title to take home to New York, and be respected like your dad. He had the burden of both of our dreams on his shoulders when he was trying to just get through the day.
‘It all sounds so silly now, but me and Tommy would fall out about stupid things like an old married couple and it just got to a point where I felt I had to put myself first, focus on my career, because I didn’t think that being around each other was helping either of us. I had convinced myself that it was him holding me back. I was right, in part. I found my success in leaving him behind, but it wasn’t worth it anymore. And leaving that day, that is the thing I’d change in my life if I had one wish. Because if I hadn’t left, if I had been that light, the colour, that he had been for me, for him, maybe he’d still be here.’
‘Oh, Beatrice.’ Arthur’s voice cuts through the memories for the first time as he clutches my fingers tighter.
‘I didn’t see him for a year, except through the posts of friends. He looked happy, healthy. He’d cut his hair; he kept smiling. I thought I’d done the right thing, that I was a darkness in his life and he could thrive without me bringing him down. And then one day, I was driving home from set, and I got the call. The worst thing of all? I knew exactly what the person on the end of the phone was going to say to me; I knew before I even answered that call that they’d tell me he was dead. I never got to say goodbye. He died thinking I hated him, when he will always be my best friend. I never got the chance to apologise, and I never got the chance to tell him how much I love him.
‘I tried to stick it out in London, but it didn’t feel right anymore. I couldn’t even bring myself to go to his funeral. How could I stand there and cry over a man I had abandoned a year before when he needed me? How could I look his mother in the eye and tell her how much hemeant to me if I’d left him? Almost half of the time I knew him, we never even spoke, and yet he has ripped such a hole in my life that the city, my dreams, the idea of being happy just didn’t appeal to me anymore. It’s strange to say that your soulmate was a friend who was only in your life for such a small, inconsequential amount of time. But he was my soulmate, and I lost him.’
With my closing breath, Arthur pulls me close to him. He threads his fingers through my hair and presses my head to his chest in an embrace so desperate, so heavy that all I can do is sob into his shirt as he massages my scalp with his tender touch. ‘You’re okay,’ he whispers into my ear. ‘It’s not your fault.’ He rocks us both back and forth. My senses are wrapped up in him and the smell of his musk mixes with the hay of the loft and soothes me to silence. I’m not quite sure how long we stay like this, pressed together in embrace, needing each other, but the time slips away.
‘No one in New York knows about Tommy. He is one secret that I never intended to keep and yet he’s the only one they haven’t sniffed out instantly. And that secret right there is the whole reason I am back here, artistically spent, emotionally scarred, and a miserable bastard.’ I try and laugh but there’s no amusement in the expression, just neat numbness.
Arthur holds me for a little moment longer, his attention fixed upon nothing in particular across the other side of the barn, his expression absent as though he’s thinking of being anywhere but here. Has my honesty been too much for him? Does he think less of me now that I’ve confessed?What if I’ve scared him with my candour, with my neglect of a friend who needed me? Have I finally unveiled the depth of my sadness and he doesn’t wish to bother with me?
A rush of cold air hits me as he drops his arms from their embrace around me. Getting to his feet, Arthur brushes down his clothes and little flakes of hay fall into my lap. With his eyes still vacant, distant, his expression is serious as he gathers his wallet and phone. He presses the buttons on it a few times and then shoves them into his pockets with urgency. ‘I’ve got a few things to take care of, a few enquiries to make. You’re welcome to stay here, or I can drive you home. It’s up to you.’ He makes for the stairs and pauses at the top for my reply.
‘Oh …’ The U-turn on emotion renders me bewildered and I struggle to form a sentence. ‘I-I’ve got some work to do on the farm.’
‘You sure?’ He rushes as though his mind has run off ahead and he’s annoyed with his body for holding him back. With my nod, he shoots down the stairs with one last glance back to see me sat cross-legged in a nest of hay and linens, tears hardly even dry on my face. I don’t move, even long after the barn door creaks open and slams shut behind him. All I can do is stare in the direction in which he left and wonder why the hell I opened up. Why would Arthur Cavendish care about my feelings? He’s worlds apart from me, and I need to start remembering that. He’s here because he’s been told to be, not because he wants to, and certainly not for me. He only wants me when he needs me, only interested when he can get something out of it. Just because he’s shown me glimmers of a different side, he is, and always will be, a selfish nepo baby who thinks about himself first.
But why is it when I finally open up, when I release the floodgates with no chance of ever backtracking, no one is there for me? My life is fetching and carrying for other people, listening to their woes. I belong to this village; I look after them all. But who looks after me?
This pain is exactly why I’ve kept my grief so tightly bound up inside me for so long.
I couldn’t cry more if I tried. The pressure in my head had grown so tight I can almost feel my skull cracking with the ache. Why didn’t I just keep my mouth closed? Waking up in his arms was enough intimacy, was it not? Fuck it, I should have just shagged him. It would be less revealing; it would have hurt less to have him leave without a word as if it meant nothing. I’m a fool.
As much as I would love to crawl into my own bed and rot in my own stink of depression, I abandoned the farm yesterday, and it needs me. Or perhaps it’s me who needs the distraction. New York has been the place I’ve hidden away from Tommy for two years. That doesn’t need to change now.
Chapter 26
Arthur
‘It’s strange to say that your soulmate was a friend who was only in your life for such a small, inconsequential amount of time. But he was my soulmate, and I lost him.’ I hang on her every word, feeling each syllable as it punches me in the gut. Every vowel, every consonant breaks my heart a little more. What am I supposed to say? How can a few of my pathetic words compare to such a sharp precipice of pain? All I can think about is taking her agony away from her, volunteering to take the load so she doesn’t have to bear its weight, just do anything to make sure I never have to see her cry again.
But all I can do is hold her. I pull her as close as I can and it still isn’t enough. I want to absorb her, protect her, soothe her for a lifetime until that parasitic sadness finally moves on. I’m powerless. All I can do is whisper words that will never be enough, and cradle her tight enoughto soak up some of her tears and hope that it lightens the burden just a little. Losing track of time, I hold her and hold her, until my arms are numb, praying that I can do something, anything, to help.
‘No one in New York knows about Tommy.’ Her voice is quiet, scratchy and muffled as she lacks the energy to raise her head from the crease of my shirt. ‘He is one secret that I never intended to keep and yet he’s the only one they haven’t sniffed out instantly. And that secret right there is the whole reason I am back here, artistically spent, emotionally scarred, and a miserable bastard.’
Though my sister is still very much alive, I can’t help but feel her grief. I lost Lizzie years ago, and nothing I could do could stop that. And yet I still lie awake each night wondering what I could have done differently that might have changed the outcome. Should I have noticed sooner? Should I have taken her to the doctors earlier? Should I have stayed with her every waking moment to hold on to every last strand of her so she didn’t fall apart? She’s my unintentional secret, my biggest regret. My grief in losing the woman, the girl, I knew, made me lose so much of myself that I still haven’t managed to reclaim. All motivation to better myself, to be my own person, to achieve, vapourised when she got her diagnosis. Living whilst she loses her life just doesn’t feel right.
Coming to New York changed that though. And I know a little something has changed for Beatrice too. She put her soul into that script. She’s had to push through her grief to find those words, and I’ll be damned if I let anyone turn down that script and make her feel like it wasn’t worth it.
What can I do? Yesterday only served to prove that I am nothing without my parents;my contactsare simply people clinging closely to me hoping to get a sneak peek of them. We need a new direction, a new approach. But what? I know I have to think of something; I have to be proactive in making both our lives happier than they are in this moment. But I’ve never been more aware of my own uselessness, never more irritated at the buffering in my brain when I’m clawing through its folds to find an answer. Though, in my defence, it is extra slow whenever a part of my body comes into contact with Beatrice and since there is hardly a patch of flesh unaffected by her touch right now, there’s no surprise that all of those electrical pulses have shifted from my mind to my body.
I am nothing without my parents.
