One Day in December

by Josie Silver

I’m not a bitch though; or maybe I’m just a quiet one inside my own head. Isn’t everyone?

I don’t even have the energy to act annoyed at that comment. I can’t deny it. I’m bone-tired. I don’t think I’ve even registered how low I’ve been because you have to keep on keeping on, don’t you? But right here, sitting in this pub feeling insulated from it all, it hits me like a shovel to the face. I’m so exhausted I feel like I’m disintegrating inside my clothes.

there comes a point where you have to make the choice to be happy, because being sad for too long is exhausting. And that one day, you’ll look back, and you’ll not be able to remember exactly what it was you loved about that person.’

‘But I also said that sometimes, rarely, people can come back into your life. And if that happens, you should keep those people close to you for ever.’

There are no rings to give back, no possessions to tussle over, no kids to hand over in blustery car parks. Just two people, about to part ways.

One of us has to be the one to do it – be the one who gets up and leaves – and I know it needs to be me. She’s been the strong one for too long; I have to leave her here under Laurie’s protection. For a second I hug her to me, feeling the absolute impossibility of it. Every part of my body wants to stay here. Then I kiss her hair, and I get up and walk away.

she shoots me this tiny, barely there trace of a smile and I nod, fierce in my wish to convey my feelings. I try to say all the things I want to say with my eyes. Go and marry the man waiting at the altar for you, Laurie, and then live the glorious life that’s waiting for you. Be happy. You deserve it. And as she walks past me, her eyes on Oscar, I feel something in me break.

We were each other’s chrysalis love, we grew together until we couldn’t grow together any more.

‘Where’s yours?’ she says. ‘Because I’ll tell you what I think. Your place isn’t somewhere. It’s someone. I’m here because it’s where Luke is. You’d have gone to Brussels if Oscar was your place.’

‘Sometimes you just meet the right person at the wrong time,’ I say softly. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘And then you spend every day afterwards wishing that time could be rearranged.’

I hold him, and he holds me, and for the first time in years, there’s nothing missing at all.