I shifted my position, crossing my legs in front of me then reaching for another bit of pizza. I wasn’t against telling him about my life, I just hadn’t been prepared to do so right then. He knew some small things about me from previous conversations, but I guessed he was probably curious about what my situation was, or had been.
“You don’t have to,” he said quickly, backtracking. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be too nosy.”
“You aren’t,” I told him. “I just… it’s been a while since I talked about it.”
That didn’t mean it wasn’t on my mind a lot though. It was always on my mind.
After a few moments, I said, “I met my husband when I was seventeen. We met at college.” I felt a small smile cross my face as I remembered seeing him in the college café, getting some water, dressed in his football kit. “He had this gorgeous smile and I knew right away that he was someone I wanted in my life. Luckily for me, he felt the same way.” I laughed lightly, pulling off a piece of my pizza. “We had this amazing friendship that… it made me fe
el like he was the one for me, forever. We got married when we were twenty-two.”
“Wow, that’s young. I can’t imagine getting married at that age.”
I laughed. “Yeah, looking back, it seems crazy. It works for some people, but I wouldn’t recommend it.” I put a bit of pizza in my mouth and ate it slowly. “We had a great marriage for a few years. We decided we wanted to have children before we were thirty, and so we started trying when we were twenty-four. I found out I was pregnant on my twenty-fifth birthday and it was the best day of my life.”
I smiled again, remembering how excited I’d been to tell Jay the news. He’d held me so tight, and kissed me like he was the happiest man in the world. “Everything was going really well. Or at least, it seemed to be.” A lump formed in my throat as I thought about what I was going to say next. About that awful, awful day.
I dropped my piece of pizza back down into the box and wiped my fingers on one of the napkins that had come with the meal. “There were some… complications,” I said, not wanting to go into all the details. I’d fought hard to stop re-living them, so I wanted to make this as brief as I could. It didn’t stop the pain though. I could feel it burning in my stomach, crawling upwards and gripping at my lungs, stealing my breath. I swallowed, trying to keep hold of my emotions. “I hadn’t been well, and I hadn’t felt the baby moving around inside me, so I made an appointment with my doctor. At thirty weeks, I was told that my… my baby boy had died.”
The first tear rolled down my cheek and I brushed it away quickly. I couldn’t look up at Ash. I needed to get through the story. “There are no words to describe the way it felt. Losing a part of myself. A part of us. I went into a deep, deep depression, and as much as I tried not to shut Jay out, I know I did. We did talk about it a little, but, for the most part, I became withdrawn. I didn’t want to go over what had happened over and over again. I wanted to pretend it didn’t happen. Some might say I was selfish because I didn’t want to do anything. I cried a lot.” I wiped away another few tears. “Jay was great. He really tried, but after a while, it was like… both of us just gave up. We both ended up staying in work later and later. Hardly ever socialised. Then, about two years ago, he told me he’d met someone else.” I threw my head back for a moment, trying hard not to re-live the second most painful moment of my life. “I knew it was over. It had been for a while, but it still hurt to know I’d been replaced. He said nothing had happened with this other woman, and to this day, I don’t know if it was true. But I think he cheated.” I shrugged. “I knew there was no point fighting for him. For us. And in a weird way, him leaving was just… I don’t know… inevitable, I guess. There was no animosity between us. It was so friendly, it was almost funny. But since then… I’ve had to work hard to get my life back.”
Very slowly, I lifted my head and Ash’s eyes were fixed on me. He reached over and squeezed my hand. “I’m sorry, Evie. I’m sorry you went through all that.”
“Thank you.”
“You seem to have done well at getting your life together though. You have a place to live, your own business.”
“Yeah, that’s the impression I like to give. Reality is a bit more like the me you met in Exeter. Running away from things that terrify me and hoping that happiness will somehow find me.”
“You’re not happy?” He sounded both surprised and saddened by the idea.
“Well, I’m… okay.” I gave him a small smile. “I’m not sad. But life has been better.”
He nodded slowly. “Yeah, I get that.” He watched me again for a moment, as if weighing something up.
“What is it?” I asked gently.
“I was just thinking that… it’s weird how we met. That night we were both in need of someone, and we both found someone.”
He was right. If I hadn’t run out of the club and bumped into him, I would have calmed myself down eventually, but Ash talking to me had sped that process up by a long way. And he would have been okay too, probably, but somehow, in me, he’d found someone he could talk to.
“The night you ran out onto the bridge,” Ash said, his voice dropping. “The night we met. I was sitting up on that ledge thinking that, if it had been higher, I’d have jumped. Ended it all. Nobody would have found me for ages. Natalie’s first thought wouldn’t have been that something was wrong. It would have been that I’d run away. Met someone else. Decided not to come back. Eventually, my body would have shown up somewhere. And she probably wouldn’t have even felt anything.”
My heart that, moments ago had been aching for all I’d lost, suddenly hurt for him.
“Ash,” I whispered.
He shook his head. “It’s okay. I probably wouldn’t have done it. Not really.”
“But I hate that you were in a place that it crossed your mind.”
“Have you ever felt that way?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I… I tried. But I was very lucky, and I’ve never tried or felt that low again.”
That was one thing I never talked about. I remembered. My mum remembered. Keely definitely remembered, because she was the one who had found me, almost dead from a combination of pills and alcohol. It was the biggest wake-up call I’d ever had. The driving force in getting my life back on track. But it was the only event in my life I never mentioned. Not even to the people who were around at the time.
Ash let out a long breath. “Well, Merry fucking Christmas to us.” He raised a piece of pizza in a toast, and I chuckled.