I stopped myself thinking anymore. It was too painful.
I tried to see something in the clouds again, but I couldn’t. They were just clouds.
Disappointed, I took my phone from my pocket and held it in my hands, the black screen reflecting the sky above me. I needed to talk with Paul, but what I needed to say wasn’t something I could say over a text message. I didn’t want it to be misread or misinterpreted. He needed to hear my voice.
I dialled and held my breath. It rang and rang and just as it clicked into voicemail I hung up. Selfishly I was disappointed he was busy and didn’t answer. Then I realised, I didn’t even know the time. Looking at the clock on my phone I saw it was before six. He wasn’t busy; he was asleep. Putting my phone beside me I looked back to the sky and could feel the tension of making the call slowly travel from my chest into my stomach before leaving my body through my feet. I focused on the sound of the breeze and birdsong, the combination transporting me to a different time.
I let myself drift to where my mind wanted me to go, if only to keep me from thinking of Paul. The long summers in Ireland before my life changed. I used to wake at a reasonable time in those days, but still early enough to need to tiptoe out of the bedroom so as not to disturb Owen who was a light sleeper. I would get my running gear on and head out. The deserted lane where we lived near Newmarket was a perfect place to run. No traffic, no noise, besides the pigeons calling to one another. It was so quiet I would sometimes see a fox crossing the road or deer in the meadows who watched me run by. I used to run miles every day and if I thought about it, it was the thing I missed the most about my life before. Other than Owen.
Losing myself in the past, I didn’t notice my phone vibrating on the bench beside me until I scooped it up to see a missed call from Paul. Calling back, he picked up before the first ring finished.
‘Hey,’ he said quietly.
‘Hey.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Hi, Paul, yes I’m fine, sorry, I didn’t realise it was so early.’
‘No, it’s OK, as long as you’re OK.’
‘I’m feeling much better.’
‘Pleased to hear it.’
The line went quiet and I could feel the nervous energy between us building. The silence awoke tiny white butterflies in my stomach. I knew he wasn’t speaking because he was waiting for me to lead.
‘Listen, Paul—’
‘You don’t have to say sorry for anything, Claire.’
‘But I feel like…’
‘I’m not upset or annoyed.’
‘But this thing…’
‘… is whatever it will be.’
‘Will you let me finish?’ I said, more forcefully than I intended, the butterflies in my stomach growing bigger by the second.
‘Yes. Sorry, I’m talking over you. Carry on.’
I curled my toes on my left foot in the grass and took a breath. ‘I don’t like that I mess you around. My life is… complicated, and although I manage better, I still have my days. It’s not fair to subject you to it.’
I knew what I should have said next, but I couldn’t form the words in my mouth, and that was selfish of me, weak of me. But then again, that’s what I was, wasn’t it? A weak woman.
‘Can I speak now?’ Paul whispered, snapping me back into breathing, though I was unaware I was holding it to begin with. ‘I know you think you should call it quits on us spending time together, thinking it would do me a favour, but it won’t. I know you have a complicated past, and because of that I know you have your off days… Christ, if anyone alive is allowed to have problems it’s…’
‘You think I have problems?’
‘No, problem is the wrong word.’
‘What, the right word is baggage?’
‘No.’
‘What is it then?’
‘I mean your anxiety issues.’
‘So, I have mental health problems?’
‘Yes, but that’s not a bad thing.’
‘It’s a good thing?’ I said, my voice raising, ready for an argument I didn’t want to have, but my attachment disorder would ensure I did have, anyway.
‘No, Claire, it’s just a thing. We all have something, and it’s OK to call it what it is.’
‘You have something too?’ I asked, wishing I could take it back instantly.
‘Yes, no, right now I don’t. But I used to. And I still carry it with me. Everyone has something. A trauma, a grief. A mistake,’ he said, after a beat. I could hear something heavy in his voice.
I wanted to know which one of those three was connected to him. Was he grieving too? Had he suffered something traumatic as well? Had he made a mistake, or done something wrong in his past, like me. It made sense that I felt a connection to him. We both had a shadow.
‘Claire?’
‘I’m not mental,’ I said, trying and failing to stop myself causing a fight and making it easier to walk away.
‘Of course you’re not. Claire, we both know, the entire world knows who you are. And how brave and strong you have been. You are so strong, even with all of the struggles you have had to face.’
Somehow his words floored me and the fight in me dissolved. No one except Dr Porter had ever said out loud it was OK to have mental health struggles. It was refreshing to hear it called what it was. And unusual. My mum referred to my health as my ‘quirks’. It was anything but quirky.
‘Paul, this isn’t fair.’
‘What isn’t?’
‘Us, you know, getting close.’
‘Not fair on who?’
‘You.’
‘Maybe I should decide what is fair on me and what’s not. Yes, if I’m honest, it’s hard when you disappear…’
‘Then maybe—’
He cut me off, but this time it was OK. ‘But it’s only hard because I care about you. Claire, I’m old enough to know life is hard, and for you, harder than most, and that sometimes, you need to take a step back. I understand. It’s OK. I think you’re brilliant as you are.’
I felt tears begin press against the backs of my eyes and I let them out, forming a glaze over my vision, turning the bushes I was looking at in my garden into an underwater reef. As I blinked, a tear dropped onto my right foot, and with clear vision I looked at the matted pink scar tissue that ran from the place my toes used to be up my calf. As if knowing I needed comfort, Baloo had wandered out of the kitchen and rubbed his back against my leg. Reaching down I gently stroked the back of his neck.
‘Paul, I will never be uncomplicated.’
‘It doesn’t matter, you be who you need to be. We are all complicated, that’s just how it is.’
Another tear fell, and I had to move the phone away from my face, worried he would hear my jagged breathing as I fought to hold on. Baloo jumped onto my lap and stroking him calmed me. After a moment, I felt like I could speak again.
‘Paul, I don’t want to hurt you.’
‘Then don’t. Don’t run away. Not yet. I know you don’t want to.’
‘I don’t,’ I replied honestly. ‘But