SUMMER'S END

28

NICKI HELPED Robyn haul her huge backpack into the boot of the taxi and then she watched her leave. She stood on the curb for a long time, gazing at the empty spot the car had left. Can five days change
your life? Once, a split second had changed her life, so yes, five days could definitely do the trick.The real task at hand, though, was to figure out her true feelings for Robyn. She didn’t want to rush into booking a flight to London without assessing the consequences of the mind-blowing sex they’d had. They’d had conversations as well, but mostly sex. Or maybe intimacy was a better word. Either way, Nicki’s world had been thoroughly rocked. Her life shaken upside down. And now what? Was she in love? They’d both danced around the word carefully,making sure to not even come close to pronouncing it—the utter foolishness of it, really.
But was she? Only time could tell.She went about her business the way she had done before Robyn
had turned up. And then time told her. Through a longing so acute it kept her awake at night in her empty bed. She didn’t know which picture to stare at most. The one of her and Ingrid on the mantle, or
the one Robyn had snapped of the pair of them on the deserted beach before things had gotten too intense. The past or the future? What did she choose? She’d chosen the past long enough. Three weeks after Robyn had left, she booked a return flight from Bangkok to London, but she didn’t tell Robyn just yet. She needed to know what it would be like to arrive in London again, if it would be different this time. If the air around her would be lighter or if everything would still remind her of that one night.
She booked herself into a hotel like she always did, not wanting to impose on estranged—by choice more than anything—friends and family. Being away from the self-created safe haven that her house on Samui represented was challenging enough, and not having any privacy to speak of only made it more so.In the beginning, when she returned the first few times—more frequently because there were still loose ends to tie up—she had to explain herself over and over again to vexed family members who seemed endlessly offended by the fact that she chose an impersonal hotel room over their hospitality. But they were used to it by now.Everyone can get used to almost anything. The first thing she did—she always did—after settling in, was to visit Ingrid’s grave. It had become a ritual now, more than a need begging to be met, more than penance, but it had to be done. She had to stand in front of it and say the words.She took a ridiculously expensive cab, paying—quite literally—ten times more than in any Thai city, to the cemetery, pulled up the collar of her coat against the cold wind and made her way onto the grey stone path that led to the spot where the love of her life lay buried. “I’m sorry,” she said, to the marble headstone, “I’m so sorry.” As if it could change anything at all. As if the words were not the most over and falsely used ones in the history of human kind. But she said them anyway because there really was nothing else she could say—or do. She’d run, she’d hidden herself away, she’d taken the blame and torn herself away from anyone else that mattered—anyone who could even remotely make her feel better. It would never be enough, because it would never give Ingrid her life back, but,  in the aftermath, after it had happened and Nicki had watched the ambulance drive off while Ingrid was still alive—barely, but still—only to find she had passed when she reached the hospital, it was all she could do. Nicki waited for the tears that always overtook her at this point. She waited for the year’s guilt that had amassed in her soul to find its way out, not to relieve her, but to remind her. But her cheeks stayed dry, and that was how she knew. In the taxi back to the hotel, she scrolled through the dozens of pictures Robyn had sent her since she’d returned home. She’d documented her entire life over the phone. Shots of her in bed just after she woke to show Nicki that she was the first thing on her mind in the morning. Photos of Robyn before bed without any clothes on. A picture of Robyn and the kitten she’d adopted days after her arrival because she didn’t want to be so alone.“Turning into a crazy lesbian cat lady already?” Nicki had texted.Robyn had responded by sending her a pouting selfie with the caption: “Without you here I just might.”
While she took a shower, Nicki pondered her next move. Robyn had sent her address in case she wanted to send her something via snail mail. A smile broke on her face when she decided what to do next. A smile that would never have made its way through the gloom on previous visits to London.