The Third Person

I told her that I loved her after a few months; I don’t remember exactly when that was, but – if you really want to know – she told me first. In fact, she was very definite about it: she loved me from about the fifth week, and then, at three months, she was in love with me. It took me just that little bit longer to come out with it, but I tried it on for size eventually and found that I liked it. I love you . You should have seen her face light up when I told her that. She always looked happy, but when I told her that I loved her she looked like she was going to explode with joy.

I mean, have you ever seen joy in someone? Not just happiness, but actual joy? That was one of the only times I ever have, and it was like the sun came out inside her. Like everything just flipped right-side up. Suddenly, I couldn’t hold her tightly enough, and she held me back just as hard, with the back of my shirt bunched up in her small hands and her knuckles digging into my shoulder blades. Have you ever had somebody grip you with a passion you never thought existed outside the fucking movies? As though they found you the most precious thing in the world? I felt it then, and couldn’t believe that somebody would actually want me that much. I don’t believe in Heaven as a place, but I sometimes think that if a person could write down how I felt at just that moment – if they could describe it perfectly – then that sentence would be something like Heaven to me. And as a final resting place, I’d be happy to have my name shrunk down and rested, invisibly, on the collar of the full stop at the end. That would be fine for me.

‘What are you going to do?’ Charlie said.

‘You miss making me coffee?’ I did my best to smile, but I could still feel the ice cold water rushing over my hands as I drowned Kareem. My bones hadn’t quite thawed out yet.

She smiled back, playing with the neck of her bottle but then looked away.

‘Yeah. I miss making you coffee.’

The way she said it made me realise I’d come off as sounding too playful.

‘I kind of miss it, too,’ I said. ‘But that’s all I miss, and most of the time I don’t even miss that. It’s moments like those that cloud everything over.’

‘Cloud what over?’

I shrugged.

‘The fact that we work for something intrinsically evil. In a benign way, if that makes any sense. We spend our days fucking good people out of their money. That’s the reality. The appearance is that you make me coffee in the morning, and we have a laugh, and we take the piss out of Williams behind his back. We’re okay people. I mean, we are okay people.’

‘Well, yeah.’

‘We take our cheques at the end of the month, and that’s the only important thing.’

‘Everybody’s got to eat, Jason.’

‘Yeah, everyone’s got to eat. Exactly.’ I sat back, listening to the cars shoot past outside. ‘Everybody has to eat. So it’s all okay.’

‘Is that why you’re not coming back? Because of this.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Well, not really. Maybe a bit. If Amy was here then I’d still be in work; still carrying on like before. But she isn’t, and it’s put things in perspective for me. It’s a waste of our fucking time to be doing something so worthless.’

That was an understatement, but I couldn’t describe it any better. The thing is, a working life is one of those things you’re taught to respect and admire. Because a man pays his way. A man supports his family. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. And so on. In reality, what you have are thousands of people doing the same thing, day after day, and it’s not admirable: it’s tragic. It’s just a convincing fiction. So for a while after she disappeared, I shuffled back to work, all the time knowing deep down that the most important thing was Amy and the fact that she wasn’t with me. It got harder and harder, as though I was tied by elastic to something in the past, and each day was one miserable footstep forwards. So I stopped going in – just made the decision one day – and it felt like an enormous weight had been lifted off me.

I felt like I had a purpose again.

I felt like I was looking at the scenery, for once, rather than just speeding past.

What I didn’t feel was guilty, worthless, small, tragic or pitiful. For the first time in years, it felt like I’d taken hold of my life by the scruff of its neck, like a spitting, scratching cat, and turned its angry face around to have a good, honest look into its eyes. If I ever let go I’d have myself slashed to shit, but that didn’t feel important: whenever you grab a tiger by the tail, you know you’re going to get scratched eventually. You don’t take it as a career path. It’s not a long-term thing. It’s just an awesome thing.

‘Are you looking for her?’ Charlie said.

‘As much as I can. I have a friend who helps me. We’ve made some ground.’

‘What about the police?’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘They won’t help.’ I sipped my drink. ‘She left a note.’