Both Sides Now (2)

You leave your family wedding ring in my jewellery box. I find it when I find the courage to return to our flat. Not straight away. Why would I look in the jewellery box? I can barely choose clothes never mind trinkets. The ring is tucked deep into the green velvet slot with my other rings. I tell your father. Your father asks for it back.

I don’t protest.

I see you for the last time in the Indian restaurant. You are shade and blur and long woollen sleeves curling your fingers. Your knuckles are tight on the pen. You sign a cheque for the meal and leave. There has been an argument. About what? Kristine follows you out. Let me do it, she says. Later she says you walked directly into traffic, in front of a bus. She says she pulled you back onto the pavement. You head home. We finish our meal and go home to find you.

It is too late.

You smash the flat windows from the inside and call a glazier. Is that so that I don’t find you? That he will instead? We tell ourselves that. Over and over. But we don’t know. Perhaps you smash them in anger and call the glazier to clean up the mess and then. And then. And then you make a decision. Nobody knows but you.

I want to ask Kristine about this again but Kristine is dead. She survives you by twenty-nine years.

Such different deaths.

The glazier calls the police when no one answers the door. He boards up the windows from the outside. To secure the property, he says later. I don’t remember paying the bill.

I wear the ring until I have to hand it back. I don’t recall for how many days or weeks. Twisting and wheeling. Coruscation cold in the lean October sun.

I let myself into the stair. Kristine and Simon are behind me. We are puzzled by the broken windows. We think we’ve been burgled. Our flat is the first on the left on the ground floor. The windows open directly onto the pavement. It is around nine, ten in the evening. In the stairwell, there is a policeman guarding the door. The policeman asks me who I am. Then he tells me you are dead. Not you specifically. Not your name. Rather he says ‘the bloke in there’. And he tells me how you’ve died.

Just like that. With no ceremony. I am twenty years old. Nine days away from my twenty-first. You are dead. We were in a restaurant. You were signing a cheque. There is no other way of writing this. You are dead.

It is true what they say about knees giving way.

You wear the ring and you take it off and you put it in my jewellery box.

To be continued – maybe.

If you are struggling to cope or worried about someone with suicidal thoughts, please contact the Samaritans.