Page 78 of Glitterland
Cambridge drenched in a bloody dawn. My world without Darian.
Sleep, of course, had proven elusive. Somehow, I had grown too accustomed to his body and the murmur of his breath.
I thought about going back to the room, but it was too late, and he would not have waited.
He would not have waited.
***
Later
Darian had gone. There was nothing left in the room but my suitcase and the heavy perfume of the wisteria.
I sat down on the edge of the bed, which was still rumpled from our exertions yesterday. Suddenly I couldn’t breathe.
But it was better this way.
His last gift would not be his reproach.
I could remember him laughing, sparkling, my dear, precious glitter pirate. And I could keep deluding myself that, for a little while at least, I’d been the man he’d believed I was, instead of the man I am.
Dizzy, a little sick, I staggered to the window. Yanked up the sash. I still couldn’t catch my breath. Oh God, fuck, I was going to die and, for once, I didn’t want to. I was choking on fucking wisteria. I braced myself against the casement and just about managed not to have a panic attack. I kept thinking I’d get used to them someday, but no. They thundered over me like a train, like a fucking train, every fucking time.
In the quadrangle below, the wedding guests wandered aimlessly back and forth. I should have been with them.
From a nearby window, open like mine, drifted the opening bars of “F**kin’ Perfect.”
I put my head in my hands and felt like crying.
20
After
When Niall left, the silence of my flat felt like a funeral. I went into the kitchen to water the sole surviving plant, my attention drifting untethered between the grey-misted, grey-gravelled street below and the grey stream falling from my grey tap.
I closed my eyes. I was going to crash, wasn’t I? And now I was drowning the sole surviving plant.
I stuck it on the rack to dry out. The water droplets clinging to the leaves glittered like tears. They thudded onto the draining board, heavy as a heartbeat.
It was barely evening, but I crawled into bed. Depression-stupefied, weary and hopeless, I should have slept.
But I was strangely restless. Slightly tearful. And troubled by wayward thoughts.
Depression was thoughtless, tearless, an animal’s uncomprehending pain.
Some hours later, I realised.
I wasn’t depressed. I was sad.
This little piece of hurt was all my own.
I lay there, in the dark, rolling the idea across my mind like a pearl.
***
Sometimes
I would wake in the middle of the night, or pause arrested in my day, because my skin would shiver with the memory of a touch.
