The Trouble with Henry and Zoe (32 page)

It’s enough to make your head spin.

It’s enough to make you sick.

We walk through the exit marked
NOTHING TO DECLARE
, and I have to bite my lip to stop from snorting. The last thing I need is to be detained by customs.
Vicky is wearing dark glasses, and the smell of wine clings to her like a mouldy cape. I shouldn’t feel smug (
particularly when you jumped into bed with a Frenchman less than forty-eight
hours ago
), but I am rather pleased with myself for avoiding a hangover. I’ve attended maybe five or six weddings, but my memories of them are a jumbled haze of flowers, dancing and
painful mornings after. But, with the exception of a glass of champagne for the toast, I went through this one fuelled by nothing stronger than orange juice and coffee. It’s amazing how much
you see when your eyes retain the ability to focus. Prowling singles, jaded couples, loving partners. Despite everything, I missed Henry.

A part of me wondered if he would go for the grand romantic gesture, turning up unannounced like the hero from one of those old movies. But maybe he’s glad to be out of this mess, after
all. And I wouldn’t blame him. If I’m honest – and, new promise to myself, I plan on being nothing less – I was disappointed when he failed to clatter through the swing
doors, bellowing my name. I slept with my boyfriend’s best friend a week after he was killed. I slept with a random wedding guest a week after walking out on Henry – jilting him, now
that I think of it. So who am I to judge anyone? The ceremony and speeches moved me to tears; happy tears at the sincere and simple affection between Rachel and Steve. Maybe a little envy, too, but
if you can’t feel sorry for yourself at a wedding, then where the hell else? Christophe sidled up to me for the first dance, but after I removed his hand from my bottom he moved on to someone
else. And good for him. Vicky snogged someone from a completely separate function, and I was in bed before midnight.

This morning, while the rest of the guests slept off their hangovers, I walked and thought and was quiet. I contemplated the future and the past, travelling through time and alternate realities
in the hush of the French woodland. Thinking about choices, decisions, accidents and coincidences; about the past and the future. Thinking about thinking and about feeling and the difference
between the two. And I thought, not for the first time, that I think too much.

I focused on the pattern of light between the leaves overhead, listened to the warmth of all the surrounding green, and thought about nothing at all.

Vicky is tugging at my sleeve. ‘Is that Shitbag?’

Standing in amongst the huddle of waiting families and cab drivers is Henry. Like the drivers, he’s holding a makeshift sign – an A4 sheet of paper on which is written a single word:
SORRY.

When he smiles, all the defences are lifted from his eyes – and it changes him. The moody caution I first found so attractive is gone, replaced with simple, bright sincerity. And it works.
What I want to do is jump into his arms, just like they do in the movies. So that’s exactly what I do.

Zoe launches herself at me, throwing her arms around my neck and very nearly pulling my head off. It feels like my spine is about to snap, but this warm forgiving body pressed
close against my own is more than I could have hoped for – more than I deserve – so if ever there was a time to dig deep and man up, this is it.

‘Missed you,’ I say, hugging her tight and relieving some of the torque on my skeleton.

‘Yes,’ Zoe says, appearing to miss the strain in my voice. ‘I missed you, too.’

‘Get – a – room.’

Vicky is looking at me over the top of her sunglasses; her bloodshot eyes are hard to read, a combination of resentment and resignation perhaps.

‘Got one,’ I tell her, over Zoe’s shoulder.

‘Come again?’

‘Complicated story,’ I say.

Zoe relaxes her grip around my neck, and I lower her to her feet. ‘Wouldn’t expect anything less from you,’ she says, but she’s still smiling. I barely had time to
register the fact before she launched herself at me, but she’s had a haircut since I last saw her. And not a good one.

‘This is . . . interesting,’ I say, brushing my fingers through her hair.

‘Complicated story,’ she says.

‘So. How was the wedding?’

She’s only been out of the country for two nights, but Zoe answers with an authentic but endearing Gallic shrug.

‘Well, I’m never drinking again,’ says Vicky, ‘that’s for sure.’

‘I hear that,’ I tell her.

‘Been partying?’ says Vicky, a note of derision in her voice.

‘I’ve got the car,’ I say. ‘Let’s get your bags and I’ll tell you all about it.’

Zoe raises her eyebrows. ‘You have a car?’

‘It’s . . .’

‘Yeah, I get it,’ says Vicky. ‘Complicated.’

Henry moves his hands through my hair, and I refuse to think about Christophe doing the same thing forty-eight hours ago. I. Refuse.

On the drive back into London, Henry told us about his brilliant plan, his perforated passport and summary deportation from France. He slept the night in the airport hotel and spent the best
part of Sunday floating on his back in the pool. ‘Thinking,’ he said, after we dropped Vicky at her flat. She is more reluctant than me to forgive Henry – a non-inclusive goodbye,
aimed only at me, a pointed ignorance of Henry’s own farewell, an emphatic closing of his car door. The difference, I suppose, is that I can empathize. I can see how he let it go too far; how
he found himself in that castle bedroom, sleepless not with doubt but with certainty. Henry told me about April, getting together, breaking up, getting together again . . . sneaking out of the
castle as the sun came up. It was a long story and we drove back and forth over the Thames, zigzagging its bridges and taking random turns and roads and exits, just driving and talking. The car
itself has been vandalized; deeply and deliberately gouged along both sides – a gift from the disgruntled brother of Henry’s ex-fiancée. It’s been hard on him. April is now
overdue with Henry’s best man’s baby, which must be disconcerting on several levels. I received Henry’s story as if it were about someone other than the man sitting beside me. And
in a way, it was.

‘My place or mine?’ I asked him.

We stopped for groceries on the way, dropped into Henry’s for a change of clothes and his scissors. In my garden now, a mirror propped against the shed, I watch Henry in reflection as he
examines my hair. He lifts what’s left of my fringe and snips at it with his scissors.

‘Are you sure you should be taking any more off?’ I ask.

‘If I could add it on, I would. But’ – cutting again – ‘what’s done is done.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Is that a big question or,’ he tugs at a lock of my hair, ‘hah, a big question?’

‘Both, I guess.’

‘Try and make the best of a disaster,’ he says.

‘Will you stay in London?’

Henry shakes his head. ‘I haven’t really thought about it. Trying not to, anyway. It’s a shame you missed the party,’ he says. ‘My dad would have liked
you.’

‘Not your mum?’

‘She’d . . . she’d love you,’ he says. His expression flickers with something like embarrassment before he looks away. Henry moves to the back of my head, teases out the
short hacked hair between his fingers and snips millimetres from the tips. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,’ he says.

‘Why didn’t you?’

Henry shrugs, shakes his head.

It was late when I arrived home after my aborted trip to see his parents, and I inflicted all my vandalism – negatives, sugar bride and groom, my hair – indoors. The birdhouse Henry
made hangs from a nail on the side of the shed, unpopulated but still intact.

‘When I went up last week,’ Henry says, ‘my mum told me . . . she more or less admitted to having had an affair. Or a fling or a . . . whatever.’

‘Awkward.’

‘Uh huh. Her and Dad both, if I understood her. But . . . what I did was worse. I think it’s the worst thing anyone I know has ever done. So . . .’ He sighs heavily. ‘Not
something you share with someone you care about.’

‘I slept with someone,’ I say, before I’ve decided exactly what it is I’m confessing to. Henry’s expression collapses. His lips part but he says nothing.

I shake my head, take hold of his hand. ‘After Alex died,’ I say.

Henry relaxes incrementally, and squats down at my feet.

‘Maybe a week after he died,’ I go on. ‘I . . . we were celebrating – that’s not right, remembering him; a wake, I suppose you’d call it. And . . . he was one
of Alex’s best friends.’

Henry says nothing, merely smiles and nods. He appears entirely unfazed by this revelation, and I think – no, I feel – I
feel
a deep and keen and physical love for him. I feel
it in my scalp and my lungs and the palms of my hands.

‘What I’m trying to say is . . . I understand. I understand how we can do . . . things. Make mistakes.’

‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,’ he says again. ‘I was ashamed.’

‘What’s done is done,’ I say.

Henry smiles, kisses me, resumes fiddling with my hair.

‘Leave it,’ I tell him. ‘It’s got a year to grow out.’ Which kind of bursts whatever bubble we were inflating.

Henry cooks while I shower, and we eat off our laps in front of the TV, a horror movie where a petulant but inventive death refuses to be denied.

‘My dad’s always been big on tradition,’ I say.

‘What, like Christmas?’

‘Mostly, yes. Like flying kites on New Year’s Day . . .’ I drift off, realizing I won’t be around for that particular tradition this year.

‘We always have an argument at Christmas,’ Henry says. ‘Without fail. And New Year. And Easter.’

‘Do you know that film,
The Princess Bride
?’

‘Sounds a bit girly.’

‘You’d like it, I think. Pirates et cetera. We used to watch it every Boxing Day, for years. Ruining all the best lines by saying them out loud. I
nconceivable. As you wish. My
name is Inigo Montoya
, and so on. There’s this one:
Good night, Westley. Sleep well.
I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.
Or something like that.’

‘O
kay
?’

‘Westley is a cabin boy on the Dread Pirate Roberts’ ship. And Roberts says this to him every night.’

‘I’ll most likely kill you in the morning?’

‘Every night for three years. The point is, he never does. Kill him. They just continue on with their adventure. He . . . loves him, I suppose.’

Henry turns to look at me, a realization dawning in his eyes. ‘So he lives?’

I nod. ‘Happily ever after . . .’

‘Sounds nice.’

‘What I’m saying, Henry Smith . . . is I don’t want to leave you behind.’

Henry inspects his hands, first the palms, then the backs, as if looking for answers.

‘Bloody hell, Henry, do you want to come to Thailand, or what?’

Henry laughs, nods.

‘Is that a yes?’

‘Well,’ he says, ‘I’ll need to get a new passport.’

‘Zoe good?’ Gus says.

He’s rolling a cigarette as I apply foils to my client’s head.

‘She’s great,’ I tell him.

‘Gonna miss her, huh?’

I turn to face Gus. Wince.

He puts his tobacco down. ‘No?’

‘Sorry.’

‘When?’

I hold up four fingers.

Gus picks up his cigarette and continues rolling. ‘Better send postcards, man. Lots of postcardoes.’

Zoe has lightbulbs that were more difficult to replace than me.

Literally; one of them was so old the metal fitting had become fused to the Bakelite housing and I had to replace the whole thing. From start to finish, including a trip to B&Q and a mild
electrocution, the whole re-lightbulbing project spanned three days. Gus replaced me in a single three-minute phone call. The dental practice replaced me in an afternoon. Dorothy struggled, taking
a whole day and a half to find a replacement lodger for my room. April is a mother now, to a baby girl called Violet Sheila. Brian called personally (unsupervised while April spent the night in
hospital with her daughter), and gave me all the important statistics. Half-drunk and very emotional, he informed me that ‘Vi’ has her mother’s eyes – which is wonderful
news for the little one.