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Cinders

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Marylebone Platform 5: Departure

It was Jane that they called. He had listed her as the emergency contact; she wasn’t sure whether it was out of habit, some muscle memory from when they were married, or because there wasn’t anyone else. Nobody that had stuck around at least. 

She’d known that he was having the surgery. He’d asked to meet up and she’d agreed to a coffee at 31 Below, listened as he’d talked about things she didn’t really understand; enlarged prostate, strictures, bladder neck incisions. He’d made light of it at first – pretty sexy, right? – but she knew him well enough, behind the bullish bluster and bravado, to see that he was scared. And alone. That part was also unsaid but she sensed it and realised that he was trying to draw her into this, trying to lean on what they were before to help him get through it. 

They had argued. Paul had told her that the surgery meant that he wouldn’t be able to have children. Some more medial jargon she didn’t understand. At first she thought that he was expressing some remorse about the thing he’d always denied her – or, at the very least, the thing they’d never been able to agree on. It’s not the right time. I’m not sure if I’m ready. It’ll change our lives so much. Then he said it. I always thought I’d be a dad and now I won’t. It wasn’t remorse for what they might have lost, just regret for something denied to him alone, something he could have had with her but had always pushed away. 

She had wanted to scream at him. She sat stirring a spoon in her coffee, watching frothed milk spin around the cup until the urge to yell incoherently at him subsided, her anger dissipating in the swirling foam. “Why are you telling me this, Paul?”, she said finally.

“I thought you should know. I thought I owed you that,” he said.

“You owed me that?” Jane was incredulous. “Of all the things you might owe me, Paul, this is really the least of them.” He started to try to speak but Jane continued, cutting across him. “You owed me not fucking some old college friend at The Landmark on a regular basis. The fucking Landmark. Was she really that classy? Couldn’t you have taken her to the King’s Cross Premier Inn and saved some money on your infidelity? It might have been better for her. They have a good night guarantee and I can’t believe you would be as reliable as them in that promise.” Her voice was raised slightly now but controlled. A couple on the next table had paused their conversation, listening but pretending not to listen.

“Jane, just let me…”

“No, Paul, I won’t just let you. You owed me ten years of marriage and a series of broken promises about having a child. You owed me missed appointments at the IVF clinic. You owed me not being too proud to wank into a pot so they could test whether it was you or me that was ‘the problem’. So you don’t get to call me out of the blue and start acting all ‘poor me’ because you’ve got to have an op that’s going to stop your juices flowing.”

“It’s retrograde…”

“You’re not listening. I don’t care what it is. I’m sorry you have to have whatever it is that you have to have but I don’t really care. I’m done caring about you – for you – Paul and I want no part of this, whatever this is supposed to be.” Jane had left him sitting there, leaving the cafe in a rush, seat scraped back across the floor, coat flung on as she walked out. The chill of the outside air had felt like a slap around her face as she pulled open the door and her anger cooled as quickly as it had risen, leaving her feeling numb, suddenly exposed. She paused in the doorway. What did he want from her? She left without looking back.

The hospital was off Wellbeck Street. Jane thought about hailing a cab but it would be jammed at this time of day and she wasn’t far from Picadilly Circus so she jostled her way through the tourist throng to the tube station. As she came up the escalators at Marylebone she was briefly overwhelmed with a flood of memories, a sudden sense of anxiety which surprised her. She passed the flower stall which had been their meeting place in the early days, when everything was blooming, and slowed slightly, thought about stopping to pick up some tulips. Those were the ones he’d always picked out for her. It’s urgent, Mrs Roberts, your husband is in the high dependancy unit and we’d strongly advise you to come. She quickened her pace and left the station.

The hospital reception was calm and quiet, a smiling woman, glassed pushed back onto her forehead, looked up from a computer as Jane approached. She listened as Jane explained why she was there, gradually allowing the smile to soften on her face to something more neutral. She picked up a phone and spoke quickly, reassured Jane that someone would be right down to take care of her. After a few minutes a nurse arrived and took Jane up to a different floor, briskly escorting her down a corridor until they reached a set of signs for high dependency and intensive care.She ushered Jane into a small waiting room, pale pastel shades, a box of tissues discretely placed on a side table, and said that someone would come soon. They would keep her updated. Please wait.

Jane closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on her breathing, forced her focus to the steady rise and fall of her chest and the sensation of air entering and leaving her body. She curled her toes in her shoes as if she was forcing them into the floor, felt the shape of the chair support her body, tried to notice all the places where it came into contact with her. Each time she took her attention away from the simple physicality of the chair her mind raced away.

It raced back through a series of memories of their time together; a slide show of moments set on fast forward, images tripping over themselves, just snap shots suggesting the essence of them. Running for the last train, him bounding on to it and wedging the door open so she could duck under his arm. Drinking cocktails in Soho, watching a hen party dance on the tables, Paul eventually joining them, laughing as they draped a feather boa around his neck. Walking through Regent’s Park in the Spring, late afternoon, arm in arm, listening to him talk about cricket. Walking the steps at the Town Hall on their wedding day, pretending not to notice a group of her friends scuttling in just before her having misjudged how long they’d stayed in the pub. Walking the aisle, the ridiculous wicket themed aisle, and seeing him standing at the other end, his eyes never leaving her as she walked down towards him. The flat in Willesden. Later, the house in a village, the one with the good schools they’d never need.

She gripped the arms of the chair, dug her nails into the fabric, stilled her thoughts again. If her mind raced she tried to keep it on the good stuff but each thread, when pulled, unravelled just as they had unravelled in the end. The thread she pulled the most ran back to the night she had realised, the night her stupidity had been revealed. He’d been away and, unusually, had picked up when she’d called him. They’d been rowing a lot recently so maybe he felt bad or maybe he was worried that she’d start to suspect. She could hear a noise in the background on the call, almost like static. I’m just running a shower. Just freshening up before meal with the team. When she thought about it later she figured that maybe he’d answered because he’d assumed that he was safe, his secret stashed in the shower, out of danger. But his secret, unknowingly, disclosed herself. Are you coming in to join me? Female voice. Flirtatious. Some laughter. Called loud enough to be heard over the falling water and called loud enough to be heard down the receiver of a phone.  

It was the consultant that came, flanked by the nurse that had brought her up before, holding a glass of water. He was in pale blue scrubs but had pulled the cap off his head and was holding it in one hand, playing it between his fingers and thumb. He introduced himself but Jane didn’t register the name, she was fixated on the glass of water and the restless motion of his fingers. Why would they bring a glass of water? He was speaking quietly but firmly, precisely. She caught him say “as his wife” and only then looked up.

“We split up,” she said, sadly. “We’re separated. Paul’s not my husband anymore, doctor. I don’t know… I don’t really understand why I’m here.”

“I’m so sorry, Mrs Roberts,” he said. “He has listed you as his wife in all his documentation. Including,” he paused. “Including as his next of kin.”

Jane looked at him again. “What are you saying?”

“I’m sorry but there was a complication in the surgery. Your husband, your ex-husband, is dead.”

Part five of the Marylebone set of stories. One to go. Obviously no happy ending for Paul but let’s see what awaits Jane.

This was another piece in my 26,000 words for Great Ormond Street Hospital (not the hospital referenced in this story) during July ’23. Fundraising details here.

Old flame

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Marylebone Platform 4: Connection

“I’m staying over. I have a room, here, tonight.” She said it casually, holding eye contact throughout. 

“I’m just here for the day,” said Paul. “There wasn’t much on the agenda for tomorrow that I wanted to see.”

“Are you rushing off? Do you have time for a drink at the end?”

Paul hesitated. He’d promised Jane he wouldn’t be late. The appointment was tomorrow and she was quite nervous about it. Originally he’d suggested that it’d be easier for him to stay over at the conference, save him coming back into Marylebone in the morning; the clinic was close by and he could meet her there. She’d been upset and he’d acquiesced.

“Sure, that’d be great. It’d be nice to catch up,” he said. “Meet back here?”

She smiled, touched the back of her head. “Sounds like a plan.”

The morning sessions had passed by slowly. Paul hadn’t really taken them in as he was concentrating on his own presentation, re-reading his cue cards and silently practising his opening couple of lines in his head. He hadn’t really wanted to do it but he’d seen the last couple of promotions come and go, passed over for other people who were doing all the extra-curricular stuff that he’d never had the inclination for. It kept Jane happy as well. She seemed to have the next phase of their life mapped out and mid career free wheeling wasn’t part of her plan. She kept sending him links to job adverts for things that she thought looked suitable. Head of Logistics. Supply Chain Director. He insisted things were fine where he was and she’d give him the speech about how they’d take a hit when she was on maternity, how he would regret it if he didn’t try and challenge himself. He knew he was comfortable and coasting but it suited him.

His session had gone well. It was a pan European conference and his opening joke about Brexit had pulled everyone on side from the start. Whilst the audience were laughing he noticed her. Third row. She was looking directly at him and gave a small nod as she saw him recognise her. She looked essentially the same as she had at college; her hair was cut a little shorter but still tied up and back in ponytail; her suit was sharply tailored, skirt sat just above her knees, one leg crossed over the other; her face didn’t seem to carry many traces of the passing of the last fifteen years. It was her eyes that he remembered and the way she looked at him, a sense of wry appraisal and amusement, as if she was always judging him and finding it funny. Catherine Adams. Maybe not Adams now but that had been her name when they had danced round each other all those years ago.

It had never been serious. There’d been one night when they’d kissed at the end of a party, a couple of years after they’d left college. He’d invited her back but she’d rebuffed the offer and they’d settled into a brief exchange of phone calls, talking about anything but the kiss, and never really seeming to go anywhere. Paul had felt like she liked being chased but had no intention of being caught and so it had fizzled out, his enthusiasm ebbing away like the retreating tide. They’d only seen each other once since then, at a mutual friend’s wedding, shortly after he’d met Jane. She’d been with a plus one, some tall, dark haired guy he couldn’t remember the name of now, and he was in the first flush of falling in love and so they’d just had a pleasant conversation, no teasing lines, no sparring. There was a small moment as they’d stood at the side of the dance floor, watching the new bride and groom take their first dance, when she’d leant in and asked him how people knew, how do they know this is the one, this is what I will settle for? He remembered the ‘settle for’, remembered thinking at the time that she was wrong, that it wasn’t about settling but about certainty. It wasn’t about stopping because you were tired of searching, it was about starting because you knew you were found. He said something like that back to her and she’d patted his arm and said that she envied his perspective. She walked away before he could respond.

After almost ten minutes of waiting Paul was about to leave when Catherine appeared, detaching herself from a group of delegates and walking across the lobby to join him. He stood a little straighter as she approached.

“Well hello again,” she said. “Come on, let’s get that drink before I get dragged back into another discussion about border control implications on freight through Dover.”

“Not a conversation I suspect we’d have thought we’d be having back in the day,” said Paul.

“God, no. I expect our younger selves would be extremely disappointed in how boring and sensible we’ve become.”

“I’m sure you’re not always sensible.”

“Let’s find out,” said Catherine with the briefest flash of a smile.

They sat at the bar and ordered drinks. She’d caught the attention of the barman with a quick wave of her left hand, Paul noting the lack of rings. She seemed to clock his thought process and held her fingers up between them. “Unattached and very happy about it. No strings.” She was holding his gaze.

“I’m glad you’re happy,” said Paul.

“I didn’t say I was happy,” replied Catherine. “I said I’m happy to not be attached. Everything else is complicated. You can’t just drunkenly kiss someone at the end of a party and make it all go away now. Things were a bit simpler then.”

“Any you miss that? The simplicity of it?”

“Simple fun? Who wouldn’t miss that? Don’t you think about those times?”

“I guess,” said Paul. “They didn’t always feel so simple to me. I felt like I was chasing you for a while there. Especially after that party.”

“I did like the chase.” Catherine sipped her drink, placed it back on the bar. “These days I’m easier to catch.”

Paul was about to reply when they were interrupted by a group of people, one of them calling Catherine’s name as they came to stand alongside them at the bar. It was the delegate group she’d been with before. They started to order drinks and were continuing what seemed to be an ongoing conversation about the absurdity of some bureaucracy relating to food imports between Britain and Ireland. Paul’s phone vibrated in his pocket, a couple of missed calls from Jane and a message asking what time he would be back. He stood up and said that he probably needed to get away. Catherine motioned for him to wait a moment and pulled a business card from her bag, flipping it over to quickly write something on the back. “If you want to keep in touch,” she said, handing it to him face up to the side she’d written on, eyes never leaving his. He took it, slipped it into his pocket along with his phone. As he took it he saw that she’d written ‘room 316’, the number underlined.

Halfway up the platform at Marylebone he stopped as his phone rang again. The train home was just ahead, bumped up against some out of service carriages. He pulled out his phone, the business card coming out of his pocket at the same time. It was Jane again. He waited for it to divert to voicemail. He tapped a brief message about an incident on the line, delays, would be late, nothing to worry about, and then turned his phone off. He turned the card over. Her name on one side. A room number on the other.

Back at The Landmark he waited a moment outside room 316, closed his eyes, exhaled. Then he knocked on the door.

Part 4 of the Marylebone set of stories. I wasn’t quite sure how I wanted to do this and decided to leave the misdeed itself unwritten.

Halfway through the month and I am roughly half way to my word target of 26,000 for July in aid of Great Ormond Street Hospital. Fundraising page here.