I STILL LOVE YOU, BUT...

CHAPTER 26

COLIN

Dearest Amanda,

I dreamt of you again last night.

You must know by now that I have ended it with Iris. You must know that I am living with my parents now. I am jobless, I am lost, I am in limbo.

I woke up this morning, and I was seized by a compulsion to write to you. To put on ink what I feel for you.

I shall not post this letter. I will slip it into an envelope and write, To be opened on the event of my death.

My feet traispe the three steps up to the veranda, the sound of each tread ringing with an old familiarity, how often we had climbed up those steps hand in hand, the wood smooth, how the top step is never quite as high as expected. How your right hand reached out to the square pillar and beside it the railing; even in the dark your fingers knowing the heart-shaped chip in the paint; you always touched it for luck, it was one of the things I loved about you, the dreams you weaved to make your life richer, brighter. You believed in dreams. Dreams buoyed you, they gave you wings, they made you fly while others plodded. You were the believer of dreams and possibilities and I was the plodder, the heartless destroyer of your dreams. You flew high, I clipped your wings. I dragged you down to cold, harsh, unrelenting reality. I will never forgive myself for that.

Two paces take you to the front door. You fumbled inside your handbag for your keys. You put the key in the lock. You turned the handle and the door opened. You turned and smiled at me. Your eyes were luminous in the half-light, shining with adoration. You loved me then. How much you loved me.

In the present, you no longer love me. You are no longer here. I am alone.

Inside, the house smells the same as always: old books, damp in the bathroom, fried eggs; my parents' home is the colour of the toasted fennel seeds of my boyhood, a warm, speckled brown.

Amanda,

If I could, I would turn our love on its head: we would get the anger, the guilt, the blame, the disappointment, the fuck-ups, the bitterness, the harsh words over and done with first. We would go back to the beginning, to where we were first. The present would be erased, and the past --- the happy past --- would replay itself, and the bitterness would recede into the shadows, become a dim and distant memory.

We would grow old together, you and me. When many parts of me don't work like they used to and other bits have fallen off, you will return one day. You, so much wiser, will make me wait a long time. Years, perhaps, or maybe when I am on my death bed.

"I forgive you," you will say.

After that you will leave. My friends will not be surprised. In public I will be vitriolic; I will get drunk, vomit on the front of my suit, and fall over in the street, but in the privacy of my bed I will let the tears fall down my moth-eaten face.

Sometimes, you will stay, a night, maybe more.

But you too, Amanda, will be old: your raven hair blanching to silver, the backs of your hands livered, your skin looser yet more beautiful. In the decade after you leave me, you will insist we switch off the bedroom light before we undress, and when, accidentally, you see me naked, you will sigh and wonder why you hadn't taken a younger man; one who still had flesh on his backside.

A year after that, you will move out for a week to your mother's. You will complain that I drink too much and don't write enough. I would be writing my memoirs then, you see. Your mother will agree about what a shit I am and that you deserve better. Neither of you will speak to me for months. (Your mother hates me, by the way, but, of course, you know that, don't you?)