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FORTY-THREE

We get back to London on Monday morning.

I drop Martha back at St. Pancras to catch her train down to Enderford.

I’m delighted to see that she looks a little tearful as I wave to her through the passenger window, and I can’t help but watch her the entire way until she disappears from view.

Maybe I was hoping she’d look back one last time, or maybe I just like the way she moves.

Either way, I don’t move the car until a taxi behind me blares its horn at me, and then I drive slowly back to Tooting, park my car in the same quiet dead-end street, and walk back to Amanda’s apartment.

As I walk, I work on my posture, my demeanor.

I try to bring myself down from the high I’ve been on for the past three days and nights, try to look like a sick man who has spent those three days and nights attached to some kind of vague laser-y thing in some kind of vague northern city-center hospital.

By the time I put my key in the lock of Amanda’s door, I am probably an inch shorter, five years older.

She looks up at me from where she sits on the sofa and rests her phone on the coffee table in front of her.

She’s wearing a weird gray fleecy shawl over her clothes; it looks cheap, and I hate it.

“How are you?” she asks, getting to her feet. “I tried to call a couple of times, but it went straight to voicemail. Was it OK?”

I nod and sigh and sit heavily next to her. “It was OK,” I say in a feeble but stoic voice. “Kind of intense. Five hours at a time. No windows. No sunlight. No food or drink until after treatment. I’m kind of shattered, to be honest. I think, if it’s OK with you, I might just go straight to bed.”

“Oh my God, of course. Yes. I put fresh sheets on for you. It should all be lovely. I can bring you in a cup of tea, if you want?”

“No,” I say softly. “Thank you. And thank you, too, for being there for me, for getting the money, for doing all this. I am so incredibly grateful to you. I really am.”

She smiles tightly, clutches the ends of her horrible shawl inside her hands, and says, “You are welcome, Damian. Now go and get some rest.”

I smile wanly and head to her bedroom, where I lie down upon her crisp clean sheets, and I pull my phone out of my pocket.

I want to look at the photos of my time with Martha in the Cotswolds.

I should delete them, but I don’t want to.

They’re so beautiful, so full of love, and joy, and hope.

I zoom in onto Martha’s face, and then zoom in onto mine, and here I linger for a while and think how some men fade with age, some men rot like fruit, some men become florid, their features stop suiting them, their hair thins, their bodies shrink or bloat, but none of those things have happened to me. I have become better in every way.

I am about to delete the photos when I hear the doorbell ring and the slap-slap of Amanda shuffling to the hallway in her stockinged feet. And then I hear the sound of a voice at the door and it’s a voice that I have not heard for two weeks: it is the voice of my wife—Tara.