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Thank God for going home to someone who was home.
spending a trying evening surrounded by strangers, feeling homesick and out of place. Not belonging.
Laurie was an empathetic person. When she was small she once told her mum she thought she might be telepathic, and her amused mother had explained that she was just very intuitive about emotions.
But the done thing in a couple was to pretend to be sure about the imponderable things, whenever the other person needed comfort.
“I’ve realized. I don’t want kids. At all. Ever.”
“It’s not just having kids. I don’t want anything that you want. I don’t want . . . this.”
“Laurie,” Dan said, interrupting her. “I’m trying to tell you that we don’t want the same things and so we can’t be together.”
“I don’t know how else I can say this. I’m not happy, Laurie.”
You didn’t lose someone you loved over hypothetical love for someone who didn’t yet exist. Who might never exist.
this is not where I want to be anymore.”
He wanted to split up. She finally understood. Understood that he meant it, that this was it. Absolutely everything else was completely beyond her comprehension.
No commitment needed checking or second thinking, it was just: of course. You are mine and I am yours.
“We’re like we’ve always been.”
“I think that’s part of th...
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Laurie’s mind was occupying two time zones at once: this surreal nightmare where her partner of eighteen years—her first and only love,...
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She’d always had a special power over Dan, and vice versa, that’s why they fell for each other.
crap days in a long-term relationship were a given.
Like we always said. No cheating, ever.”
“You know what we agreed. I’d tell you.”
“We’ve been together all our lives, Laurie, you’re my only serious girlfriend. It’s not like I’m walking away lightly, or that I never cared.”
. I felt trapped. I’d built this box I didn’t want to live inside anymore, but I wasn’t allowed to leave it. I didn’t want to leave it, as I knew how much I’d hurt you.
I kept thinking I had to stay to be kind to you but I wasn’t being kind, so what was the point?”
maybe now, at thirty-six, it’s caught up with me. I don’t feel I’ve lived enough.”
Now I know this isn’t right for me anymore. I’ve lost myself.”
“Is it me, I’m not enough? Or too much?
the pain hit her stomach again with a physical force. She would never be able to forget how easily you could lose someone’s love. She hadn’t felt it slipping away.
The idea Dan would no longer be on the “people to contact in an emergency”
“I love you. I don’t love our relationship anymore.”
“And I want you to be happy. You deserve more than someone who . . .” “OK. Spare me that stuff, Dan,”
Do what you need to do but don’t pretend it’s about anything other than your survival.”
“I don’t know who or what I’m meant to trust
“There isn’t a lesson for you; you haven’t done anything wrong.”
She could feel it now, the grief and enormity of what had been abruptly taken from her. A future. The rest of their lives. A promise, broken.
“Then how am I going to ever believe this won’...
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It’s my mess and confusion, but there was no way of it not ending up all over you.”
who he was going to find that he wanted more with. Who didn’t make life feel like a tunnel.
The fact you’re going doesn’t mean everything before it didn’t matter. Not wanting to be with someone anymore, and admitting it, isn’t doing anything wrong.”
then come back to me saying it was some massive midlife crisis . . . you know you can’t, right? This damage you’re doing, it’s permanent. If you go, that’s it.”
“Yes. I wouldn’t presume to think I could ever ask that of you.”
“Working out how to tell everyone” was a part of her and Dan’s separation that was going to be almost as grueling a prospect as being left in the first place.
you didn’t just have to go through the thing, you had to have a dozen conversations with people of varying closeness about
famous people parted: “leading different lives,” “grown apart,” and Laurie’s favorite, “conflicting schedules.”
Dan once said that “mutual” only ever meant “one person has given up, and the other person concedes they can’t persuade them not to,” and
“Dan and I have split up. It’s his decision.”
She couldn’t bear to say “left me,” with all its sense of passive victimhood, but she had to make it clear she wasn’t going to have answers. She
“I know you will be very hurt, but sometimes paths diverge. He obviously has to do this next part of his journey on his own.
she didn’t want this stuff about how nothing was good or bad, it was just a different choice.
Her mother and father were opposite poles, Laurie realized: her dad said the right things and didn’t mean them, and her mum might feel them, but she never said so.
At some point, you have to give up wishing for your parents to be who you wanted them to be and accept them as they are, Dan once said.
It had always seemed a case of when, not if.
