Page 37 of The Truth About You and Me
‘Luke? The guy who you think shoved you? He had a scar on his eyebrow, was wearing black that night, and he has blond hair. He was my boyfriend and I’d, well, I found out’ – she looks away then back to me – ‘that he was sleeping with someone else. Behind my back. I said something. But at the time I was so hurt, so angry that I wasn’t… I wasn’t at my best. Anyway, we were on the beach wall and we had this blazing row… and—’ She rubs the side of her face with both hands. ‘I told him to take it out on someone else. And… it seems… that someone else was… you.’ Tears have filled her eyes. ‘I’m so sorry, Jack. I shouldn’t have said it.’
There is an image, then. It’s fleeting, but it comes with a throb and I touch the back of my head to ease the pain. When I came out of the pub, I’d heard raised voices from across the street. I can remember shadows around him as he shouted, the etch of another figure in front of him, the sea at their backs, the moon a half-crescent hanging low in the sky. But then I’d looked at my phone. Vicky said that I’d messaged her but I couldn’t remember sending it, and when I tried to check my phone in the days after… I was too embarrassed to ask what I’d said. But now I remember holding the phone in my hand.
‘He was pretty riled up,’ Maggie says, scanning my face. ‘I think that’s why he might have shoved you.’ I look down at the label on the bottle of my water; the pain at the back of my head starts to ease.
I sit still, fleeting images that were so hard to picture starting to form. The way the wind was blowing against the right side of my face, how I squinted at my phone screen as I typed out a message to Vicky. How the last shot of Sambuca hit me as I started to walk.
‘You were there?’
‘No, I mean, I didn’t see you fall or anything. I walked one way; he walked the other. I was angry, upset…’
I nod while something feels like it’s worming its way into my brain.
‘I’m so sorry, Jack. If I hadn’t said the things I did, he would never have stormed off.’
Images are sharpening, pushing against each other like pieces of a jigsaw trying to fit in the spaces they don’t belong:watch where you’re going…My voice? Or was it his?
I look up. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes verging on tears. I blink, back in the room now.
‘I know sorry isn’t a big enough word, but I really am. I’m sorry that this happened to you and that I started the whole chain of events.’
I sit. Stunned. Unable to find the right words or thoughts to process what she’s saying.
‘Jack?’
‘I…’
‘I wish I could take it back.’ She clasps her hands together.
‘You don’t need to be sorry.’ I look up at her. ‘This isn’t your fault.’
19
FRIDAY 27TH SEPTEMBER
Jack
Over the past week, I’ve replayed our conversation over and over. My memory is becoming… not clear as such, but… it’s like when I’ve read a thriller, been blindsided by the twist, and realised that the answers were staring me in the face the whole time. It’s as though my brain is starting to work again, to connect in ways that it hasn’t over the past year. And maybe, if I keep piecing things together, I can do this… Launch this shop. Run it, even.
I don’t blame Maggie. Not even a little bit. She wasn’t the one who got pissed. And she wasn’t the one who knocked into me. I can see she feels responsible though, and I hate that.
My eyes scan the stack of unopened letters in my hand, and that glimmer of possibility, that I could make a success of the new shop evaporates, like the words on the envelopes.
I try to pinpoint the exact time I realised that I would never read again, as I riffle through the pile of letters.
When I first woke up in the hospital, I had put it down to the pain meds, the headache that made even the small crack through the hospital blinds feel like someone was piercing my retina with a red-hot needle. When they explained the real reason, I thought that there must be a mistake. I had grown up surrounded by literature, by books and stories; of course I would read again. The other option was too hard to contemplate.
My memories of that time come in pieces, tiny splinters. Vicky visiting me and unpacking a bag with pyjamas, energy drinks, grapes and a book. She wasn’t being unkind, or insensitive. I always had a book with me, or a Kindle… She had joked that there was no point buying me jewellery; books were always my accessory.
She had kissed me, arranged my hair to cover the bandage. ‘You’ll be OK. Nobody loves books more than you. You’ll find a way.’
And honestly? I believed her. After she’d gone, despite the pounding headache, I had reached for the hardback. It felt heavier in my hands than usual, and the picture on the cover swam before my eyes. Words that should have been familiar sneered back at me. I couldn’t read the chapter heading, couldn’t decode anything on the page. It was as if it needed a cipher. Nausea came over me like a wave, the kind of seasickness that takes over your body and leaves you gripping the sides of the hospital bed like a life raft. I’d reached for the bedpan and thrown up.
I remember the police coming, asking me questions, but I couldn’t remember anything back then other than leaving the pub and a vague impression of Luke’s face, but I couldn’t confirm that he’d attacked me. All I knew was that he was there. I told them I was drunk, my blood alcohol level confirming this. There were no unknown substances in my test results, no other injuries, and my wallet was still in my pocket. I was told to call them if I remembered anything else but it was assumed that the injury was caused by some drunken misdemeanour.
The weeks that followed are a tightly knit line of failures, and frustration, but I do remember reaching for a microwave meal and spending ten minutes trying to read the instructions. I’d cried with it in my hands. The doors shut. The curtains drawn. Alone.
That was the moment when I knew.
