Chapter 6

This was the question I'd been waiting for, in a way — but not the form I'd imagined. I hadn't been waiting for him to tell me he didn't love me. I'd been waiting for him to be afraid that I might not love him.

For ten years, I'd asked variations of this question. Do you still care about me? Am I important to you? Can you just let me know you're there? And his answer, every time, was some version of stop making a scene.

Now he was standing in my kitchen with red-rimmed eyes asking if I still loved him.

I turned off the heat.

I poured the milk into the flask.

Then I turned around and looked at him properly.

"I asked you that question for ten years," I said, keeping my voice level. "Now you know what it feels like not to get an answer."

His jaw tightened. His throat moved.

He opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

I picked up the flask and walked back through the flat to check on Daisy.

Behind me, from the direction of the kitchen, there was a dull, muffled sound.

Like a fist on a worktop.

I didn't go back.

The next day, Nathan woke up at six and went to the kitchen.

He came back the following morning too. And the one after that.

Day one: porridge that was still raw in the middle.

Day two: fried eggs, one of them burned black on the bottom.

Day three: toast — she'd asked for toast — that came out the colour of coal. He stood there scraping at it over the bin for a while and eventually gave up.

"Dad," Daisy said, peering at the charred bread with great seriousness, "maybe just stop."

He didn't stop.

Day four: plain white rice porridge. Two soft-boiled eggs, shelled and placed in front of Daisy. He hadn't got it right yet but he was getting less wrong.

He stood to the side and watched us eat. He didn't sit down himself.

"Aren't you eating?" Daisy asked.

"Not hungry. You two go ahead."

Those used to be my words. Every morning for six years — I'd make breakfast, serve it, stand and watch to make sure Daisy finished, and eat my own later, if at all. He'd always assumed it just appeared. Now he knew what it took to get it there.

That weekend, he suggested the three of us go to the park.

I said yes, not because I wanted to go with him, but because Daisy did.

It was a mild afternoon. Daisy ran ahead to chase pigeons. Nathan walked beside me.

He walked slowly. This was not how Nathan moved — he'd always been half a metre ahead of me, and I'd always had to lengthen my stride to stay near him. Today he'd adjusted his pace to match mine.

We sat on a bench by the lake. Two ducks moved across the water, one trailing the other.

"I've been thinking," he said.

"Okay."

"I haven't — I know I didn't do well. By you."

"Okay."

"I went back and read your texts. All of them. Every one from the last seven years. I'd never deleted any of them."

I turned to look at him.

"Four hundred and thirty-seven," he said quietly. "I went through every single one. From the first year right up to the last one you sent, a couple of months ago."

I breathed in slowly.

Four hundred and thirty-seven messages. Every long text I'd typed at midnight, revised three times, sent with my hands shaking. Every message I'd convinced myself he'd seen and dismissed. He'd kept every one.

"You kept them," I said. "But you never replied."

"No," he said. "I didn't."

He looked at his hands.

"Reading them back — I could see that you weren't making a fuss. You were asking for help. Every message was you telling me you were struggling, and I saw it and I chose to pretend I hadn't. Because if I acknowledged it, I'd have to do something about it. And I didn't want to deal with it. So I told myself you were just being dramatic."

His voice had gone rough at the edges.

"I'm sorry," he said.

Somewhere behind us, a child was shouting about a kite. Daisy was crouching in the grass a little way off, watching something closely — ants, probably.

I looked at the lake.

"If you'd said this five years ago, we wouldn't be here," I said. "Even a year ago — things might have been different."

He went very quiet.

"But you chose now. You chose to face this after I stopped. You're only scared because I've gone quiet. That's not love, Nathan. That's just what happens when someone who's been following you around for a decade suddenly disappears. You miss the feeling of being chased. That's not the same thing."

He gripped his knees. He didn't argue. He knew I was right.

I stood up.

"Daisy'll be hungry," I said.

I walked toward her without waiting for him.

I'd waited for him so many times. So many times, at so many doors, at the end of so many silences.

I was done waiting.