I kept a journal from ages six to twenty-five. I had a book project rejected and suddenly I was out of words, and that was three years ago and I haven't written anything longer than an email since. But I bought this planner because I need one and I thought I could use the margins. For notes. For whatever this is.
Phillip and I broke up. Or he broke up with me. Or I broke up with him. I don't know. I've gone over it enough times that the order doesn't stay fixed, it shifts depending on when I think about it, whether it's morning or three in the afternoon or the middle of the night when I've taken half a Clonazepam from the bottle I stole out of Fran's medicine cabinet. He said things. I said things. One of us said it first and the other one agreed and now it's almost January and I don't have a boyfriend. I also don't have a job or a flat, because I handed in my notice on both, which means this planner is currently the only thing I have.
I don't remember most of the last weeks. I changed my number. I deactivated everything, Instagram, Facebook, all of it. I went through my phone and deleted every photo, every text thread, every voicemail I'd saved, and I did it in one sitting.
I'm going to write that investigation I've been talking about for years. I'm going to dust off the manuscript. I'm going to do all of it. I'm writing this down so it has to be true.
I had time to reflect. Last week I was a little angry about this... whole situation. I took some very rash decisions, but maybe it was what I needed. They were never going to fund my investigation and never promote me to head archivist, that flat sucked, and I have to finish my doctorate. I just, I suppose. I don't know what I was going to write. The other day I read that you go through broken hearts in your teens because you won't survive it at 30, who would have thought that was an experience other people have?
Went to get my things. Patricia was there. She didn't ask much. She said he came looking for me, a few weeks after. She told him I'd quit. That was it. She handed me my box and asked if I wanted a reference letter and I said yes and left.
I keep running the scene in my head. Him walking through the door. The front desk, the corridor, my office that isn't my office anymore. Patricia just said "he came" and "I told him." She's not the type to elaborate and I'm not the type to ask.
I deactivated the Instagram in December, the coward's version of deleting, the one that lets you pretend you might come back. He'd followed me. I'd followed him. I used to check his grid for photos of the greenhouse, the garden, the backs of the twins' heads running through the house. That feels like information about a different person now.
This is so cliché but I'm constantly in a state of: Phillip would find this funny, sending him links, or just wanting to tell him I saw a very fat bee today. The other day I saw a toy, and I wanted to buy it for Amanda and… I read somewhere that apparently you get over someone in half the time you were with that person, but three months don't seem enough and then I think that we could not have possibly been together for just six months, it seems so little time. Then I think that he probably sees my absence as more room to breathe, more sleep, one less task, and I get so fired up and then I just hope he's resting well.
I'm fine. I want that on the record. I am fine. I went to Daphne's for lunch on Sunday and didn't mention him once and when Daphne said "you seem better" I said "I am better" and I meant it. I meant it for the whole afternoon and most of the evening and then I got home and Googled him. Just his university page. Just to see if the photo was still the same one. It was. I closed the tab. That's fine. That's normal. People Google people.
Hyacinth wants me to date again but what's the point? The cynic in me wants to say yes, there's lots of fish in the sea as the saying goes, but maybe I was looking for a rainbow fish, like the book? Maybe I just… I don't…
OK. I'm back. What I was trying to write is that maybe I'm just too much for a relationship. I can't imagine doing half the things I did with Phillip with someone else, and I also can't imagine someone putting up with me either.
Funny thing about how people change you. I used to hate olives and now I'm constantly craving them. Also… I'm still getting the hang of the diary thing. I was rereading some old ones and I literally put everything in there, I knew so much of the workings of my own mind. What I'm trying to say is that I bought a bigger toy... this is awful.
I stood in the empty flat for twenty minutes. The ceilings are high. The windows let in actual light. The balcony looks out over rooftops. Anthony is beside himself. He keeps walking through the rooms saying "the potential." He wants a breakfast bar. I don't know why.
I would have liked to have kept a diary of those months, because I feel like I missed a bunch of things. I would love to have one of those young adult novels where the male lead tells his side of the story because I feel I missed a lot of things.
Daphne took me to a garden centre. We walked through the greenhouse section, past the orchids, past the tropical plants. I didn't look at the orchids. She noticed me not looking and didn't say anything. I bought a rosemary because she told me it was hard to kill and when I cooked with it I'd think of her. I said I don't cook. She said then it'll just smell nice.
Hyacinth took me to a comedy show. It was terrible. The comedian wasn't funny, the drinks were overpriced, the venue smelled like stale beer. She laughed at everything. I told her it was awful and she said "I know. Isn't it great?" and somewhere in the second half I was laughing too, not at the comedian, at the situation, at the fact that I was here, alive, watching something terrible and not hating it. She said "you don't need advice or wisdom or any of that rubbish, sometimes you just need someone to sit next to you." She's twenty-two. When did she get wise?
Letters from a son to his mother, written from the trenches. Ledgers documenting a fortune slowly collapsing. A journal kept by a woman in the 1890s, her garden, her headaches, her quiet unspoken love for the governess who taught her children.
Other people's grief. Other people's loss.easier to hold than my own. always has been. It's easier to sit with than my own.
Weeks away from London. I know more about this woman than I know about most living people. I know her handwriting, her complaints about headaches, the way she described the light in the east rooms in November. I know she loved the garden. I know she stopped writing. I don't know what happened to her yet. But I will.
The steward's letter references the eastern parcels at a sum that contradicts everything else in the collection. Either there was a private arrangement the official records don't show, or someone was skimming. I need the estate maps. The trust solicitor wants a separate approval for the map room which is on the second floor fifteen feet from the attic I've been working in for six weeks. I need at least two more weeks.