LIZ JONES: I keep going to text him, then realise he’s not there
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He’s no longer thinking about me. He has simply disappeared. The person who has been there since 1983, through thick and thin. He often said he wished we had re-met in 1999, when he still had his health and I had my super-glamorous job as a glossy magazine editor and a gorgeous house in London. When we did re-meet in 2014 and started dating, I drove him past my old house, the one I abandoned, crazily, misguidedly, for Somerset.
‘I would never have let you leave,’ he said wisely.
I keep going to text him, then realise he’s not there.
On the day he died without me (I reassure myself by thinking he would have texted to tell me to get on a train, to please hurry, if only he’d been able), I had sent him the most inane message in the world: ‘I’ve learned how to make risotto! I could make yours with cheese.’
There had been no reply, but that wasn’t unusual with David. He died that day at 6.30pm. His name has slipped further and further down my message inbox, so it is no longer on my home screen, stuck well below missives from the Kennington Tandoori and Wood Finishes Direct. It’s odd, though. That Saturday, I had a strange feeling in my stomach. I impulsively ordered a warm black coat and big scarf from Zara using Klarna, something I’ve never done before. Did I realise I would soon be going to a funeral?
I hadn’t been frightened of him dying, as he never took anything seriously; while I always believe I can fix things if I spend enough money, try harder. I’ve been feeling like Carrie Bradshaw when she lost Big: why did I marry someone else, why did we waste so much time apart or arguing? When I started ‘dating’ Neil, I warned David, so he didn’t get to hear the news by reading the papers. ‘You have broken my heart,’ he said. ‘You had someone who is intelligent, who loves you. You should have stuck with me.’ I suppose I was punishing him for not choosing me back in the 1980s. For leaving me holding his squash racket, asking me to take it home for him as he was haring off for dinner with the woman he would go on to marry.
I keep watching films that make me cry; I figure at some point I will run dry. The English Patient. Not long ago, I took David to the Royal Albert Hall to a special screening accompanied by a full orchestra and a singer: the film’s score is my favourite. I couldn’t help but remind him of the last time we had been inside the Albert Hall, in October 1983: I had dragged him to see Siouxsie and the Banshees.
I thought it was a proper date, that we’d go for dinner after – until he made me stop my Mini, ran into a shop, and came back with a pie which he proceeded to eat (in my car!) before asking to be dropped off.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he whispered while Ralph Fiennes caressed Kristin Scott Thomas’s throat. ‘Why didn’t you just drag me upstairs?’
I told him I’d been a 20-something virgin with acne; he was a 31-year-old god. ‘No, you weren’t really my type,’ he said.
But that was me all over, always arranging special outings – and now he’s gone. When I see a review of a bar with Formula 1 memorabilia, or that Stevie Wonder is playing the O2, I automatically think, ‘I wonder if David will go with me?’ I’ve just been invited to spend New Year’s Eve in St Mawes in Cornwall. I look up the hotel my friends have chosen, The Idle Rocks, and I browse the rooms and menus, thinking, ‘Ooh, I wonder…’
And then I stop myself.
I have a new box on my iCalendar, to go with Gracie died, Benji died, Mini died. David died.
JONES MOANS… WHAT LIZ LOATHES THIS WEEK
- The brakes have gone on my classic Range Rover. I rang the dealer and told them, ‘It won’t stop!’ The reply: ‘Are you on a hill?’ No! Honestly, men! I called the AA, who sent a tow truck. It took a week for them to get it to the dealer. Then, when it finally arrived, I was told the recovery driver had gone under a low bridge and ripped off my roof. David would have been the first person I’d have texted in despair.
