“I don't know that love changes. People change. Circumstances change.” – Nicholas Sparks
Eden:
“George! Honey, no, you can’t climb in the boxes, we need them for packing – Eden!”
I rolled my eyes and turned to scoop George out of the cardboard box he’d somehow found his way into behind my back, “He won’t bite you if you just take him out of the box, Em”
She looked anxious, “Well...I thought he might cry”
I laughed, loudly, “Oh, you’d better get used to that. And see, look, he’s not crying. Are you, baby?” I bounced George on my hip, and he beamed at me.
“You nearly done?” Emma queried, taping one of my boxes of books shut. I’d had to be selective about which ones to take, which meant leaving some behind...a task I wasn’t exactly enjoying. Even just taking the ones I felt it was imperative for me to have, I still had eight boxes.
“Yep, that’s all the books, I guess...” I looked forlornly at the ones that I was leaving behind, all of which somehow looked incredibly lonely on the bookcases, “I don’t even know where we’re going to put the ones I am taking, I just can’t leave them behind...”
“You really do come with a lot of baggage” Emma teased, and I threw one of George’s teddies at her.
“I did warn you”
“I know you did. I’m only joking. Truth be told, I’m kind of excited”
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We weren’t allowed to repaint the walls or anything, seeing as the property was rented – so everything was magnolia. But we were still determined to make this place our own. George’s room was the tiniest of box rooms, but I reflected that he was so small it probably didn’t make much difference for the time being. We slapped on wall stickers – planes, trains, cars with wide grinning mouths, and posters of Thomas the Tank and Fireman Sam. Emma, who had always been good at art, bought a massive canvas and did a whole animal-themed painting – lions, tigers, elephants, giraffes, pandas, parrots...George would stare at the bright image in amazement, eyes round as saucers, and Emma and I made the noises of each animal for him before collapsing into fits of giggles at my imitation of an elephant.
I filled a whole wall of my fair-sized room with bookcases, though I still didn’t have enough room to accommodate all the ones I’d bought with me. I stacked them under the bed, on the top shelf of the built-in wardrobe, on the very top of the bookcases. Emma rolled her eyes when she saw that ‘Anna Karenina’ had been given pride of place, standing up on the top shelf so that every could see it.
It took us a while to settle in, and Mum and Dad spent more time at our flat than they did at home, for a while. By the time of George’s second birthday, things were only just starting to feel normal – I’d got used to movies and wine with Emma once George was in bed, wheeling George around in the pushchair every day as I handed out my CV, the sound of the group of students who shared the flat above us and played music well into the night. I was starting to feel...happier.
Two months before George’s birthday, I finally got a job. I was going to be a waitress in the coffee shop where Ollie and I had met; seven days a week (because I needed the money), strictly afternoons only. I couldn’t bear the thought of George not seeing me when he woke in the morning, even though working afternoons meant that I wouldn’t get much chance to take him out. But it was, I told myself, for his own good, and it was nice to be able to put more towards mine and Emma’s rent.
George spent the entire day of his second birthday driving round in the plastic replica of Fireman Sam’s fire engine that I had bought him, and this only served to make me happier than I had been in a long time.
Ollie:
It took Kieran almost a year to persuade me to go and see the psychiatrist who, he assured me, was on site to deal with more than just PTSD. He’d been to ask her himself, by all accounts, and promised me that she seemed nice. So I went – I didn’t have much choice. Even I had to confess that my moods were blacker than ever now that I was also struggling to sleep, and I figured that just going and talking to her myself might help, even just a little bit.
The therapist’s name was Anna Benson. She looked like a 1950s housewife; pale, well-dressed, brunette. Completely unsuited to the environment we were in. Every time a gun went off outside, she flinched. I wondered if she’d been sent here, with us, against her will.
“I understand that you are suffering from depression”
I shrugged, a jerky, defensive movement, “I don’t know. Kieran – my best friend – he thinks I am”
“And would you say that Kieran knows you well?”
“Exceptionally so”
“Then perhaps you ought to trust his judgement”
I shrugged again, my face inscrutable. I’d seen therapists before, after Mum and Dad died, and I’d acted in exactly the same indifferent way with them. I’m not the sort of guy that enjoys talking things through, least of all with strangers.
“I understand that your parents died suddenly when you were a teenager?”
I wondered if she was going to keep saying ‘I understand’, even though it was annoying the Hell out of me, because she didn’t understand, not at all. I had also wondered how long it would take her to bring that up. I cracked my knuckles; Anna Benson winced.
“Yes, they did. And yes, it was sudden. Terrorists don’t tend to give much warning”
She didn’t laugh, “Do you think that may be why you’ve been finding it so difficult to recover from your break-up with...” she glanced down at her notes, “Eden Copley?”
I tried to laugh off the question, “How much did Kieran tell you?!”
She, undeterred, continued in the same vein, “Because it seems to me that the loss of your parents has made you more likely to develop close attachments to people – taking Kieran and Eden as examples, of course. Which then makes you more vulnerable to suffering a repeat of the emotions of abandonment you felt when your parents died”
I couldn’t help looking slightly taken aback, “You’re very good at your job”
This time, her face did crack into the merest, briefest hint of a smile, “You can’t avoid everything with humour, Oliver. It isn’t a normal pattern of behaviour, being this depressed this long after the breakdown of a relationship”
“Our relationship wasn’t a normal pattern of behaviour” I retorted, slightly offended. She leaned back in her chair, eyebrows raised.
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean...I mean she was the one” I blurted out, “I know she was, I won’t ever find anyone like her again. She was perfect for me. And I screwed up”
“Kieran seemed to suggest that the breakup was mutual”
I hesitated, “Well...well, yeah, I guess it kind of was, but I still blame myself. For not being honest with her from the start”
“And the two of you now have no contact, is that correct?”
“Yes. We agreed on that”
“I see” she drummed the pen on the clipboard resting on her knee, “Do you miss her?”
I felt my jaw sag a little, “Well...yes. Obviously. Otherwise I wouldn’t be depressed, would I?”
I was irked by the question, and she could see it, but she didn’t look phased. Clearly she was better suited to the job than I had first suspected.
“Why was Eden so perfect for you?”
Once again, I was a little taken aback, “Um...there were loads of reasons. She just...she just is. Was”
She noted down my correction from present to past, I was sure of it; I mentally cursed the slip-up.
“Tell me the reasons”
“Um...what?”
“I want you to tell me ten reasons why Eden was so perfect. Ten things you loved most about her”
I grinned, and she looked a little surprised to see it, “Ah, now that...that I can do”
She shifted in her seat, getting comfortable; I prepared to count the reasons on my fingers.
“Her smile”
“How typical” she said – I had a sudden vague realisation that she was amused by my first answer – “Why?”
“Because when she smiled, she just...she lit up. She was at her most beautiful when she smiled, and it was infectious. When Eden smiled, everyone around her smiled. She made everyone around her happy”
“I see. And the next?”
“Her mind”
“Oh. Hm. What do you mean by that?”
“She was incredibly intelligent, only she didn’t realise it. The books she’d read by the time she was sixteen, honestly, you wouldn’t believe...she made me think about things in a new way, we could discuss things...it was like her mind was made to fit mine, it was....fascinating”
“Good. Next?”
My cheeks reddened a little, just as hers would have done, but it was definitely one of the reasons I loved her most, “She was amazing in bed”
Anna Benson’s lips twitched, “I wondered how long it would take that one to come up. I won’t make you explain that one, for both our sakes. Next”
“She had this...I don’t know how to describe it...this amazing capacity, for hope. No matter how bad things were, she always had hope. She’s an optimist”
“And that made you believe that things would be alright?”
“Yes, of course it did. She made me believe that things would be better, that I could have the nice, normal life I’d always wanted”
“Next”
“She...look, I don’t cry a lot, okay, I’m a soldier, so don’t read too much into what I’m about to say -“
“Everything you tell me is strictly confidential, Oliver. You need not be ashamed of anything you say”
I still didn’t really want to say it, but it was undoubtedly another of things I loved most about Eden.
“She...it never bothered her when I cried. I only cried in front of her once, mind you, just once...we went to my parents’ graves, and I was telling her what happened and I just...I lost it. But the thing I loved most about her then was that she didn’t judge me. She understood. She held me while I cried and she didn’t even need to say anything, just having her there...it made everything feel better”
“She sounds very supportive”
“She was”
“Next”
“What am I on? Six, now, right? Um...” I smiled a little, remembering, “The fact that we could say anything we wanted without speaking”
“In what sense?”
“We just...she always knew what she needed to say and when she needed to say it, and I was the same with her. It was completely instinctive. I think...sorry for saying this, but I think that’s what made the sex so great, to be honest, we just always...we knew each other”
“Next”
“Her singing”
She raised her eyebrows a little, “Eden was a good singer?”
I snorted, loudly, “No! She was dreadful. But she didn’t care. We’d be driving along and if a song came on that she liked she’d sing along as loud as she pleased, and get me to sing with her, we just...we had fun in that sense”
“You liked the same sort of music aswell?”
I grimaced, “Er...sort of. Sometimes. She had some iffy preferences, at times”
“Number eight?”
“Her family. I don’t know if that counts, exactly...?”
“It does” Anna Benson’s eyes twinkled; I still didn’t understand why she was so amused.
“They welcomed me in. They cared about me – not as much as she did, of course, but they always tried to make me comfortable, to make me feel like I was...one of them. No-one’s cared about me in that sense for a long time”
“I expect they haven’t” I heard a trace of sympathy in her voice, “Next?”
I laughed, almost to myself, “I loved all of her ridiculous insecurities! She had this stupid, weird frame of mind, she didn’t think she was anything special or clever or beautiful, she just thought she was...ordinary. And she was the most extraordinary person I’ve ever known. I mean, her insecurities made me love her because they made her vulnerable, and I was vulnerable, and we....we kind of addressed each other’s issues. Does that make sense?”
“Yes. Why do you think she was so insecure?”
“I really don’t know. If you’d have seen her, seen her grades, seen her smile...you’d realise she had absolutely nothing to worry about”
“And your last reason?”
I considered that one for a long time. There were a million tiny things I loved about Eden – the mole shaped like a heart on her inner thigh, the way she pinched the skin on the back of her hand when she was nervous, the way she kissed me, her scent, her hair...but I needed one big thing. And then I smiled.
“Her laugh”
“Her laugh?”
“It may not sound like this big amazing thing, not a reason to fall in love with someone, but you’ve got to understand...her laugh, like her smile, was infectious. She found so many things funny, and even if they weren’t all that funny no-one could resist laughing along with her”
Anna Benson wrote for some time after that. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, not sure what to do, where to look. She jumped when I cracked my knuckles again.
“You still love her very deeply, don’t you?”
“Yes”
She regarded me for some time after I had said this; then she nodded, just once, brisk, brief.
“Come and see me again, Oliver. We have lots more to discuss”