This content has been removed by Kate Vine

(This story features in Lunate vol. 2)

1

We lived apart for more than a year after the wedding. Aaron was sent to support the LA office after their director fell down an escalator. The accident wasn’t considered too serious at first, so neither was our separation. But weeks passed, then months, and though the director recovered from his injuries, he was yet to utter a word. It was unclear whether he was physically unable or if the accident had awakened a strange obstinacy.

Either way, they gave Aaron an office, moved him from his motel room to an air-conditioned apartment, and started recommending reef-friendly sunscreens and frozen yogurt spots. At one point, he considered buying rollerblades, though this he now denies.

2

Aaron and I first met when I lived in a shared house to the west of London. There was only one bathroom between seven inhabitants, and I kept bottled water in my room to make sure I could brush my teeth in the morning. The neighbour sometimes let us use his downstairs toilet, but I never felt safe, nor certain it was kindness that motivated this favour.

When Aaron moved in, he was like one of those flowers that grow from damp waste. He was always clean-shaven despite the lack of facilities and his movements were quietly confident. He rented the basement room and I’d linger in the kitchen above, satisfied by the fact I walked on his ceiling.

I was lonely then, but I didn’t know it. I drank cheap white wine in rammed pubs and bought bags of salad that festered forgotten in my corner of the shared fridge. I’d get teary riding the Tube, thinking of homeless people, famine and fights I’d had with my mother. One night I came home so drunk I could hardly find our house. I went down to the basement, crawled in beside Aaron and we fucked until it was light outside.

3

The LA director was called Patrick Seymour. I discovered this at 4am one morning, a few months after Aaron left. I hated waking up alone; each time I’d suddenly remember, and have to reprocess his absence. There’d be no sleep after that. I propped up my pillows and stroked my tablet screen, browsing kitchen accessories and Twitter. I drew pictures in my head of Aaron in LA, in a bar, at the beach, in his apartment. Though I’d never seen any of it, the images were sharp enough to slice through my reality; I could feel the sand between his toes. I wanted him but, more than that, I wanted reassurance that he, or perhaps we, still existed.

Eventually I landed on his company’s website and navigated toward the staff profiles. Other photos smiled, but Patrick Seymour wore a stern expression, like he expected much better from me in future. He was a Harvard graduate, I learned, who moved to England in the nineties. A wife and three kids later, he returned to the States to open the LA office. I suspected the photo was taken shortly after he arrived; his skin looked shell-shocked by sunlight after years of English rain.

The corporate bio offered no explanation for his new mutism. Sleep deprived, I dove deep down the Google well, finding photos of his kids (two boys and a girl), his graduation (summa cum laude no less), an op-ed he authored calling for more centrist tax reform. But nothing helped me understand why such a man would recover from a fall and no longer speak. His limbs worked, Aaron told me, and he understood those around him.

‘But we’re not given much information,’ Aaron said. ‘The big guys think he’s gone crazy, they’re terrified.’

‘It’s nice they’re concerned,’ I replied, filing the nail of my little finger that, for some reason, always grew longer than the others.

‘Indeed, they are,’ Aaron said. ‘For the stock prices.’

But something in me welcomed the absurdity. It became my new favourite thing, to gaze at Patrick Seymour in the early hours when the birds had just begun to bleat. There had also been a video of his descent down the escalator, but every link now led to the words: ‘This content has been removed’. It infuriated me that, of all the garbage online, I was barred from watching the moment my life had changed direction without my input or permission.

4

After the shared house, Aaron and I moved to a studio flat near London Bridge. It was on the fifteenth floor of a tower block and on our first night there, I felt the building sway in the wind.

‘They’re designed that way,’ Aaron said, as if it was nothing, the fact our new home moved with us inside it. He’d never been that sensitive to imbalance.

We both worked long hours, but spent the rest of our time together, floating round the capital, stopping for coffees and exhibits and benches by the river. Aaron would hold me to him at all times, his arm round my waist or my neck, in an almost consoling way, as if I’d asked for more than he could give. Women looked at him and he made a show of never looking back, of looking only at me – that’s what he’d say –

‘– only you.’

Though I had little passion for marketing, my job did provide relief, sometimes: that I could go to the office for something that Aaron couldn’t impact, before returning home to our one room where everything was shared, and I never felt steady on my feet.

5

Aaron called from LA on his lunch breaks – evenings in the UK. For the first few weeks, I looked forward to these calls, but the schedule soon proved too rigid. I wanted to call him when I truly had something to say; by the time we spoke, the thought was forgotten or irrelevant. But Aaron recoiled at any suggestion of spontaneity; planning, he said, was the only way he found time. His job was all consuming and yet it belonged to someone else – someone who could (or would) neither resume nor relinquish it. So much time was lost, he said, in misunderstanding.

‘We all speak the same language,’ he told me. ‘But it’s a different country here, a different culture.’

I understood his bewilderment. Though newly married, I felt single again. I tried to fill my time watching obscure movies and experimental theatre under bridges and defunct trainlines; I saw friends sometimes and wore clothes I knew Aaron didn’t like. But I felt stranded nonetheless; I made no impact, no echo. It was tiring, being at once with him and without. I missed the weight of him especially, beside me, on top of me, walking up the stairs or through the front door; the sensation of succumbing, of being held, even contained. I missed the sharp bristle on his cheeks the evening before a shave, a sight I alone ever witnessed.

It unsettled me, how quickly he forgot, or perhaps discarded, his former insistence on proximity. He told me not to visit: the tickets were so expensive – weren’t we saving for a house? – besides, he’d be home any day. I couldn’t tell if he was lying or deluded. His colleagues bought him houseplants and started inviting him for dinner. I wondered if they knew he had a wife. My own invitations dwindled; even seating held more value than my company.

Patrick Seymour continued his silence.

6

We eventually left the high-rise studio for a two-bedroom flat and, a few weeks later, got engaged. Unfortunately, it was my mother, not Aaron, who proposed. The three of us had dinner in Chinatown (Mum is partial to Peking duck with bottled beer). The conversation, as usual, was tired and taut; Mum alternating between sulking and sudden monologues that bore no relevance to the conversation. It was too hot in the restaurant, only paper-thin walls separating us from vats of bubbling oil and tough meat ripped from bone. My shirt clung to my spine. I went to the bathroom and threw water at my face, pressing a rough paper towel to the smudged mascara.

As I walked back to the table, I caught my mother’s drone.

‘What do you mean – you’d like to? If you wanted to, you’d do it, wouldn’t you? What is it about men, thinking they’re so very independent; they’re grotesque is what they are – needy, withering – just admit it, boy! Admit how much you need her!’

Aaron’s voice was less audible, an embarrassed mumble.

‘If you need her, then you marry her!’ Mum continued. ‘It’s the only way – she’s awkward, my daughter, she’ll find reasons to doubt you – she’ll draw them from thin air. You must marry her to keep her, that is all there is.’

Yet another empty beer bottle slammed down on the table.

‘Of course, I want to marry her.’

‘Of course? What is this, of course – as though it’s obvious – you have not asked her! That is a lie, boy, and those that lie to me do not meet kind ends, just ask her father.’

Less than a year ago, this scene would’ve amused me. But engagement had been spreading fast through our circle, and I’d found myself waiting, though in some ways it felt like waiting to fall.

‘Mum, leave him be,’ I said, sitting down between them.

‘Ah! She returns!’ My mother doesn’t shout but her voice carries nonetheless. ‘He says he wants to marry you if you’ll have him. What do you say?’

I did laugh then, more from tension than mirth. I looked at Aaron, expecting him to avoid my gaze. But instead he looked straight back with a shrug that said – ‘Well? What do you think?’

My stomach folded in two.

‘What?’ I croaked.

‘Will you have him?’ my mother barked.

Both of them waited, stared.

‘W-well –’ I stuttered. ‘Sure?’

That’s what I said. Sure. Like sure, I’d had a good day; sure, I’d like the last slice of pizza. It was a word for casual assent, not lifelong devotion. They both nodded at me as though we’d agreed to get the sharing platter, and the conversation moved on.

7

Aaron had been gone almost ten months when Patrick Seymour recovered his voice. By this point, I was buried deep in my nocturnal research; I knew his favourite restaurant, his wife’s LA facialist, his son’s soccer team. Eyes half closed, I dreamt I was part of the family; they seemed more vivid than Aaron and indeed more comforting.

I slowly gleaned the details of Patrick’s recovery, pieces pulled from articles scattered across the web. First, apparently, he made noises, like birds of prey, they said; but not sounds of pain – more like bewilderment. Then came small words: yes, no, why, and, after a few weeks, sentences, expanding length each day like a plant growing toward sunlight.

When Aaron called to tell me, he didn’t relay the news with excitement or optimism. I recognised the dullness in his voice: disappointment.

8

Our wedding took more than a year to plan, a year that that took what serenity I had and strangled it dead. The sheer volume of choices was ultimately my demise, from the dressing for the salad course to which hymns we would sing. Aaron thought he was helping by standing back, rolling up his sleeves to then only observe. I sometimes thought he blamed me for my mother. She was always there that year, giving opinions no one asked for, a faint red wine stain on the insides of her lips.

Aaron tucked me into his shoulder at night as though his armpit could soothe my stress. He smelled of talcum powder and it always made me think of babies; their round, soft heads and the nicks where they’ve scratched their own skin, not yet aware that the greatest danger they’ll ever face is themselves.

9

In the end, Patrick gave a television interview to discuss his bizarre case. I hadn’t slept in days. At work, I avoided meetings, hiding from my manager in the toilets or on the stairwell. I spoke only to Aaron and even then, it felt like we were performing a skit, reciting words chosen by others.

Patrick was different than I’d imagined. His California drawl was less precise, and his hands never stilled, tapping and flicking to a silent tune. Perhaps the photos I’d studied were the only place he was still. It made me sad that the man I’d conjured didn’t actually exist; I felt like I’d lost a friend.

I held my iPad close to my face, squinting at his lined face. The stream was blurred but the sound perfect.

‘Can you explain to us why you stopped speaking?’ the presenter asked. She was young and overdressed, clearly desperate for esteem.

‘Mhm,’ he said. I noticed he still favoured sounds over words. ‘Though I warn you, I can’t quite understand it myself. I think it might’ve been the video.’

A CCTV still appeared on the screen of a crumpled figure at the bottom of an escalator.

‘My company had it taken down, but my kid kept a copy,’ he said. ‘Showed it to me as soon as I came round. My tongue was swollen, see, I couldn’t tell him no. I saw it all, me tripping over my shoelace, pelting down that asshole escalator.’

‘That must have been distressing,’ said the presenter. Patrick raised an eyebrow as if to say, no shit.

‘There’s somethin’ not right about it, seeing yourself fall like that. You know my head split clean down the middle? I saw it and thought – that guy’s done for. I watched myself die.’

I took a sip of water I didn’t remember pouring and pushed my hair off my face. The stream froze for a second but then jerked back into action.

‘But you didn’t die,’ said the presenter.

‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s just it. I was in the video, dead. I was sat in hospital, alive. I don’t know. I couldn’t understand – both things seemed true.’

He paused and I sensed a little shame.

‘So that’s why you stopped talking?’

‘It wasn’t a choice. I couldn’t tell you the mechanics.’ He sighed. ‘Maybe I’d’ve struggled even without the video. I’m still trying to work it out.’

I stared out the window at a passing Overground train. Patrick went quiet again. I wondered if each time he stopped talking he feared the silence would reappear, a demon waiting to pounce. Or perhaps it had been a supportive presence, keeping him safe until he felt able to return. Perhaps, he even missed it.

I watched the interview at least twenty times. I wanted him to tell me why my confidence in Aaron had shattered along with Patrick’s skull. I wanted to know if Aaron had really saved me from the shared house and the sadness or if, given time, I’d have found my own way out.

But on these points, Patrick was once again mute.

10

I stopped answering Aaron’s calls. I took a week off work and walked up and down the city until my feet blistered. I sold my iPad and bought comfier shoes.

I came home one night to find Aaron in the kitchen, sipping Earl Grey as if he’d never been gone. His suntan had a yellow tinge and his stubble was thicker than I’d ever seen it. He said he wanted to talk, but I didn’t like talking anymore. There didn’t seem room for him in the flat; all that was ours now felt like mine.

That night he spoke again, this time into the darkness. Patrick wasn’t resuming his role, so they had offered it to Aaron. He wanted to take it, he said, he felt different there, people were positive and kind, they liked having him around. He felt able, for the first time, to make mistakes.

‘Take it then,’ I said, and my lips ached.

‘Would you come with me?’

We were lying back to back, facing opposite walls. I wanted to turn over, to touch my fingers to his skin, but it was not the same skin as when he left; that skin had been shed across LA, on its pavements and sand and ocean. I could go searching for it, of course, fly to LA and walk hand in hand with my husband again. Or I could stay here, my own warmth enough; I could meet my own silence.

Aaron reached across the sheet and pressed between my shoulder blades. I wondered if he could tell that though he lay here, his flesh on mine –

I was in fact still without him.

***

Kate Vine is an author and freelance copywriter. She recently moved to York after a decade in London and Norwich. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and her short fiction has won the Lunate 500 competition, been shortlisted for the Bath Short Story Award, longlisted for the V.S. Pritchett Short Story Prize and the Mslexia Short Story Competition, and published by Dear Damsels and Retreat West. She is represented by Charlotte Seymour at Johnson & Alcock.

Twitter: @Kate_ElizabethV