‘If you like, I can work out his shower routine.’
‘He’s not my type.’
Yan laughs. ‘Honey, he’s a heart surgeon with great hair and rock-hard abs. He’severyone’s type.’
There’s a reason why someone becomes a therapist. Prod a little, and you’ll probably discover they suffered a trauma when they were growing up or were up close to someone else’s struggles – an alcoholic parent or one who was addicted to drugs or gambling. Often, they experienced loss at a young age.
It’s certainly true in my case.
Leo was my first boyfriend, but he died when we were both sixteen. He was born with a heart defect that meant he got tired quickly and picked up infections easily. Most of the time, you couldn’t tell he had anything wrong with him. He came to thesame school as the rest of us and did roughly what we all did, except got out of PE whenever he wanted, which I was always a bit jealous of.
He had frequent trips to hospital – usually on a Saturday morning – which got him out of Greek school. And again, I envied him because, good God, why did Greek have to have thirteen tenses and why did we have to learnallof them?
It wasn’t the hole in his heart that killed him, not technically, but it weakened his immune system, so he had to be careful. He got a lung infection – not uncommon for him – but this time, it went to his heart. He died within days of being admitted to hospital.
I didn’t visit because I’d broken up with him and he told his mum he didn’t want to see me. We’d argued because he’d gone to a Black Eyed Peas gig without me. I kicked up a fuss even though I didn’t particularly like the band, but it felt like a big deal at the time. I needed a break from him, and I thought he would understand. But he was devastated. I was going through some stuff and wasn’t being rational. Some girlfriend I was.
I felt so bad that I eventually decided to take him back. I planned what I would say on the tube to Hammersmith Hospital, how I’d ask him to forgive me, but when I walked through the doors of the cardiac ward, Mum was coming out.
She looked at me with red-rimmed eyes and shook her head.
Everything went still inside me.
No, no, no.
‘Oh, Nella,’ Mum had wailed. ‘There’s nothing worse for a parent than to lose a child. Nothing.’ She stopped as a sob overtook her. ‘Your dad’s in there with Anthi, but I had to leave. I’m no use to anyone like this.’
She tried to pull me out of the door I’d just come through, but I stood my ground.
‘But I need to talk to him. He can’t be gone. Maybe they made a mistake. Maybe if I go in there, he’ll hear me and wake up.’
‘You can’t go in there, darling. The only thing we can do is be strong for Anthi.’
She pulled me again, and this time, I let her take me through the exit.
I didn’t argue. I didn’t tell her that I was hurting too much to be strong for anyone. That I needed someone to be strong forme. But I said nothing because at that moment, I knew I didn’t deserve anyone’s sympathy.
I could have stopped it, but I’d left it too late.
Leo had died because of me.
His death – and the guilt I felt about breaking his heart right before – almost derailed me. I fucked up the first year of my A-levels, and school wouldn’t let me continue. I would have been happy to walk away from education altogether, but my parents wouldn’t hear of it, and to be honest, a few months working in a crummy shoe shop, knee-deep in other people’s smelly feet, convinced me to take seriously my parents’ suggestion I go to Richmond college and do different A-levels to the ones I’d been planning. So instead of English, History and French, I took English and Psychology, knowing I could get an easy pass in Modern Greek from Saturday school and have enough points to get into university.
A new start at a new college was exactly what I needed. I wasn’t the girl who broke Leo’s heart before he died; I didn’t come with any baggage. It was kinda cool having teachers you could call by their first names, so against all odds, I did okay. Mainly thanks to my psychology teacher, who was patient and kind and managed to set me on my journey to recovery. I learned to understand myself: that I found it difficult to set boundaries, both with Leo and with my family, and that I tended to put other people’s needs before my own. Why I’d developed these badhabits didn’t matter. The important thing was to recognise them and try to change them. I’m not there yet, not by a long shot, and I still struggle with residual guilt, but psychology changed my life. And I’ve never forgotten that.
Chapter 10
I walk back to my parents’, feeling shaky. The ghost of the person I hurt unforgivably is back to haunt me, along with his flesh-and-blood – and still angry – brother. Could the timing be any worse?
Ironically, Rich knows about my history with Leo. Apart from my therapist, he’s the only person I’ve told the full story to. Even Yan doesn’t know everything.
I’ve curated it, only sharing the parts that have been sanitised; the rest I had to compartmentalise and put away. It’s the only way I could cope. Leo’s death cut my life in two: before and after.
Back home, in need of some urgent distraction, I open my laptop and hover the mouse over a document I’ve been avoiding for months.
When I was doing my PhD on infidelity, my supervisor suggested adapting part of it into a self-help book. She had a friend who was a literary agent and when she’d run the idea past her, the agent had requested a meeting. During an informal chat over coffee in Soho, we’d come up with a title and logline:The Five Types of Cheaters and How to Avoid Them.
I came home so fired up because I’d often walked around the big Waterstones on Gower Street, scanning the popular psychology section and imagining how amazing it would be to have my own book sitting on the shelf beside them. Now, there was a chance it might actually happen.
