We lay on her bed when we got home and she swam into a sharp new focus. She tied her hair back and I realised I had never seen her ears. They seemed enormous. She was suddenly a completely different person; her voice sounded more clipped than I remembered and I could imagine her playing hockey; she was a middle-class girl from the home counties, with a mother, a father, a brother and a sister; she owned and wore pyjamas; she thought her knees looked funny, her gorgeous knees pressed up against my jeans. It was fascinating to see her awkward, wondering if I should stay; she wanted me to, but she was a nice girl, a nice girl who shoplifted, and we decided we should take it slow.
I already had everything I thought I could ever need from her. She liked me, and I was lost.
Before I got up to go back to the sofa, I said something clichéd and untrue. ‘From the start, it was always meant to be you and me.’
We lay there looking at each other, our bodies at right angles, our faces side-on, curious.
‘I didn’t know you felt like that,’ she said.
‘Really?’
‘No, I knew!’ She laughed and we looked at each other some more.
‘You’re not making any move to kiss me,’ she said.
‘I’m keeping still. I’m scared I might startle you.’
‘Just approach slowly. No sudden movements.’
I stayed where I was and carried on looking.
Her prominent ears. Her funny knees. Her hungry smile.
My life together with Sarah finally ended with a long Tube ride to Heathrow that afternoon. We hugged each other through a pole in the packed carriage. We couldn’t get the right angle to kiss. She still wouldn’t meet my eyes. The day before I had borrowed a shopping trolley from a supermarket to haul boxes of my books to the nearest charity shop. I didn’t even approve of giving books to charity – the publishing industry seemed in need of enough charity itself. But what was I supposed to do, bin them? I didn’t have such a strong stomach. The ones I couldn’t bear to give away I had placed, three boxes full, with my aunt. My friends had enough trouble finding space for their own books in their tiny London flats. Sarah’s parents were coming round the next day to collect her stuff and she was going to live with them for a couple of weeks while she decided what to do.
We arrived at Heathrow and as we queued on the concourse to check in Sarah told me once again how much fun I was going to have. I put my hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes. For once, she looked back at me. ‘Please, Sarah, I don’t want to go without you.’
‘I’m moving home tomorrow,’ she said, looking away. ‘I’m twenty-nine and I’m moving home. I’ve got you to thank for that. If you don’t get on this plane, what are you going to do? Where will you go? My parents certainly don’t want to see you.’
We didn’t talk about her confession to her mother that I had lied to her, or about her father’s reluctant proposition then to beat me up. Her father and I had always enjoyed talking to each other. I wanted to ring him up and offer to help him kick the crap out of me.
‘Sarah, I love you. We’re supposed to be together.’
‘It’s just words, Liam. You’re just words. And not even very original ones. I can’t believe in them any more.’
‘I’m not a liar, I told you the –’
‘If you begin that again I promise that I will scream.’
‘Oh, please. We’re not simple people. We don’t have to obey a soap-opera’s sense of justice.’
‘I will scream and I will walk away and any slender chance we have of staying together will be gone.’
I was crying by now. Unless I specifically tell you otherwise, assume I’m always crying.
‘And stop pronouncing those tears.’
‘Is it that slender?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ she said.
I turned back after I had my ticket and passport checked on my way to the departure gate. She was still there watching me. We reflected each other across five years. There aren’t many looks in a lifetime like the one she gave me. You couldn’t survive more than a few. She waved. I waved. She mouthed three words to me. ‘I love you.’ Or, ‘Bye bye, Liam.’ I could not be sure and mouthed three words back and she turned and walked away. She turned back once, she turned back twice and I waited for her to turn back again but that was all. Bye bye, Sarah.
Chapter 2
I had never been on a flight like the one I took to Buenos Aires. There was a stop-over in Madrid for eight hours and I used it to leave the airport, go to a bar in the city, drink ten small but powerful beers and compose a frantic letter to Sarah that during the time I was writing it convinced me I could make everything all right again. I posted the letter, got on the wrong Metro line back to the airport and nearly missed the plane. When I made it just in time I was drunk, but I was not alone. For the duration of the twelve-hour flight it seemed that nearly every passenger remained standing with a beer in their hand, wandering between other groups of upright and talkative Argentines. It was like a giant pub in the sky. I can’t remember if we sat down even for take-off; it wouldn’t surprise me if we hadn’t, or if there had been barbecues sizzling in the aisles. The first half of the trip was a blur. I woke up, four hours in, sprawled across three seats, and immediately had to be sick. No one seemed surprised as I ran to the toilet with my hand over my mouth. Afterwards, I lay back down and hugged myself, crying freely but quietly, until an air hostess from the 1970s shook me and encouraged me into an upright position. We were about to land.
The taxi driver didn’t understand my painstakingly prepared phrase-book instructions. I was asking for the Avenida de Mayo, which I pronounced like –ayonnaise.
‘Que? Que?’
‘De Mayo!’
‘Que? Que?’
I pulled my piece of paper out and showed it to him. He read it and slapped me on the shoulder, spraying spit across the windscreen: ‘Avenida de Mazcho!’ And then he was off.
It was a bright sunny morning I did not belong in. The driver carried on a conversation with the radio as we sped through wide cracked roads lined with grand municipal buildings. It looked like Paris then Madrid then Milan; I couldn’t keep track but I felt like I had been here before. I began to cheer up but when I arrived at my hostel at 7 a.m. they had no idea who I was and explained to me, thankfully in English, that they were full up. That was that, then. I had done my best. I asked them to order me a taxi to the airport because I was going back to England. On hearing this, they rang around and found me a place at a sister hostel and so, another taxi ride later, I arrived at the Tango backpackers hostel in Palermo. I’m not sure how the driver knew it was the right one because I learned later that every hostel in Buenos Aires is called the Tango backpackers hostel. In the foyer was a small young man behind a reception desk. He looked up eagerly as I came through the door then looked disappointed, a look I thought was caused by my not being a woman. I felt sad for him too. Behind him was a wide bar, with fridges full of enormous bottles of lager labelled in the national blue and white. There was a music playing I had never heard before: chilled-out ambient beats and accordion solos. Electronic tango. At the time I found it quite beautiful, but I had been travelling