This is the penultimate chapter tangofic lovelies, thank you so much for following this fiction and giving me all the lovely feedback and reviews. Thank you so much to Shaloved for letting me borrow the "unthrowable" bouquet, and thanks so much to my beta for catching some of the typos :) .

CHAPTER 10 : Good Morning Heartache

Harrogate, December 8, 2013

My love,

I don't know how not to do this. I have tried. Tried not to let these pages become a way to prevent the grains of sand from being swept away. But I can't. I find that it's impossible, it costs too much. I want to keep a few of them tucked right there, in the hollow of my hand, and that scares me, Caroline. I cannot release the grip, let them fall. Accept that these tiny little details about the beginning of this child's life , each one of them like a grain of sand, should just be swept away. That no one is there beside me counting them. Looking at them. Marveling upon them. Worrying about them. Cherishing them. Not like I am. Of course mum loves hearing about them, and so does Sadie, but it's not the same. They are not about to parent this child. They are not part of the equation. This formula that results in a child. A wanted child, a desired child. They didn't will it into conception at the end of a sunny afternoon stroll outside a playing field. I should let them go of course. The tiny little details that only mean anything to me. And you, maybe. And whoever will parent this child in the future. Be swept away, be gone. Just like I should throw your bouquet. It's embarrassing really how many times I've retrieved it in the bin, how many times I patiently picked out the damp tea leaves, or pieces of fruit out of the faded petals and sat it again in the vase of my study, under Monsoon's acquiescent stare.

So I guess, this is what this letter is. Telling you about the details, the grains of sands. Things even I will forget along the way. I have no idea why I find myself needing to write this. Why I find myself needing to keep this record for you when I know that my resolve, although shaped differently now, after all these months, the one about not wanting us to be together again, is untouched. Just like the reasons for it are. If I needed any proof of this, driving Lawrence over to yours, and being met with John was a stark reminder. Things haven't changed. He'd still be there raining on our parade. I'd still be a loose fixture roaming around in your life. And so would this child. It was written all over your words to me on that day. We'd still be « something nice that's happening », you'd want to, surely. I know that. I could see it in your eyes when you came. But you really couldn't put me first. Put us first. And even if you could, in time, it wouldn't be fair really. Imposing this child in your life when you haven't even been able to choose how to conceive it.

Maybe this letter is also an attempt at finding a way to talk to myself again. I haven't written in this journal since I was in your office and I told you about us, me and this child, going past the mark, the 12 weeks one, for the first time in five pregnancies, being able to allow myself to dream this child into life, to relax, to dare thinking that my body might not turn on me this time.

I thought it would be hard to tell you, to be there again, like puppets on a string. A sad reenactment of the way we sat in front of each other many months ago, when you dumped me, in your office. You were already avoiding my eyes back then. I was expecting to feel the tugs of the invisible puppeteer on our stings, keeping us impossibly far from each other once again, maneuvering our stiff limbs, hearts, words, in the mechanical motions of absurdly wasted love mixed with protocol .

But as soon as I walked in, I found myself grateful that the familiar dotted lines were there for us to go by, lean on, to safeguard us from hurting each other any further. It felt different from the usual agony of running into you in corridors. Each time it happens, always when I least expect it, when i have actually managed some kind of oblivious state, I think that the most painful part is having to pretend I'm not crashing inside.

I know it is crazy, but I wonder, I truly wonder if those were tears i heard in your voice when you congratulated me. I know it couldn't have been, that if anything you are probably relieved that this isn't your life now. Having to welcome a newborn in a few more weeks and contemplate chronic sleep deprivation well into your early fifties.

I'm suddenly aware of how oblivious I have been to the seasons since my birthday. Reading the last few entries of my journal, it's almost like summer never happened and fall was swallowed in silence. The urge took over everything like a giant riptide. It's interesting how I didn't even bother to date the last two entries. I wrote them in such a state, it almost feels like it was an other person writing, it feels like I went on some kind of uninterrupted fall into the urge. A fall with no season. There is no trace of the summer in my words.

I dove into the silence after that. Just like I did when i could tell I was falling in love with you. There were no words in those beginnings. No words when I started letting myself dream about this child. None for conceiving the premise of our love. No written words from myself to myself. No analysis, no distance. I just let the space grow inside of me, in silence, as leaves reddened and fell. Left the pages blank. There was only feeling the wave expand, take root, take over. Both times. Until, come December, reaching the point where words had to come out, be written, be consigned there.

Or maybe the words could only be spoken, could only be told, formed in my mouth to be heard; i could not commit anything on paper just yet, it was too fragile, much to fragile. I had to keep everything for the cessions with Phillis. Going to London every fortnight. Letting my words come out, while tucked, wrapped in the safety of the armchair waiting for me, Phillis unchanged, after all these years, just a few more wrinkles about her hazel eyes, her inward smile the only prompt i needed to let them flow out of me.

I drew us for her, Caroline. I let her see the shape our love took and discovered it myself while doing so. I had to do it again several times. Erase everything and start over. Anger led me to draw a caricature at first. But by October, I think I was able to see even fleetingly what we were. What we are. Trying to make sense out of this. Out of the whirlwind of this life-kissed-summer-less year. It took a few sessions to get there, the better part of this summer I was completely blind to. Several hour long chunks of time of letting my voice resonate in the familiar four walls of her office. Many occasions of slipping into that dimension, clay in hand, giving shape and form to what happened. Hours of her not buying what I had to sell, digging deeper, asking me to ask more out of myself without words.

Little by little I started to see it, started to see that as much as there is agony when I see you, as much as my day can be a variation between the almost pleasurable pain of Dinah's «Good morning heartache» to the sickening sorrow of Carmen 's «Round Midnight», I am grateful for the anger that had me press «pause», more efficiently than my useless prayers for pride ever did. That had me recognize the much needed solace available there, in this distance between us. That although I am sorry for hurting you, for not knowing how to do it in other ways, I am grateful for the distance I claimed for myself, for us. For recognizing that you simply weren't ready. For allowing myself to keep all of my words, all of my forces into conceiving this child. For letting myself delve into this, oblivious to the seasons, looking only inside, keeping the demons at bay, and making, crafting, inside my body, my mind, my heart.

I want to tell you about so many things but the first thing that comes to mind is the quality of my sorrow, of my ache for you. It informs my whole experience of conceiving this child. I worry about that . But i have decided that there is joy too in this gigantic resounding echo.

I want to tell you of how surprising it is to me that we refer to the "moment of conception". As if conception wasn't there, taking place for nine months; day after day, this fabricating of a being. Inside of me. The push and pull of my body morphing, my skin, stretching a bit more every day. My entire life force sucked into it, my thoughts rambling between daring to imagine, to whirling questions about the being about to grace my life and paralyzing scenarios of redness and pain being the first messengers of the curse still being there, active.

I'm exhausted from this constant work, but i have made this pregnancy an all consuming practice. I am ready for bed at 6 o'clock on most days but it is not the fatigue of depression, the dull numbing of my senses. It is the tiredness that comes with making. Creating. Like my days at the Royal Academy. The beautiful sleep I had then. There is beauty in this tiredness. I strip down to the basics. I have recovered the athlete ways I had then. Monitoring the intake of food, of emotions, of thoughts. The changes in my body. Gathering a team around me, around this massive desire of mine, gynecologist, physiotherapist, homeopath, Phillis, mum, Sadie, my cousin whom you've never met either. I'm both grateful and alarmed at my strength, at my self-sufficiency. I see mum and Sadie, but I'm mostly grateful to be alone. Just like I was back then. I avoid anyone too consuming naturally, it's not an effort. I dive into playing my piano, breathing. There are a lot of highs and lows and I feel such dramatic energy from this child already. That's another surprise, Caroline, the personality I can already sense with such clarity. This is not a Rose, not a David. This is much more a Nina, an Antoine. Someone with lots of passion. This child chose its first moment to kick when I was playing La Traviatta, vacuuming, Caroline. Not a peaceful moment where i was reclining on a couch reading, humming a song.

I want to tell you that it's not the lonely nights, not the absence of your lips on mine, your warmth, your touch, your laughter that has been the hardest. The sting of this is painful, sharp but bearable. Maybe because I expected it. Had it in mind when I broke up with you. Went through it in the aftermath of the Sarah devastation. It's familiar. It's expected. But there is no word for how I miss knowing what you'd say. Not knowing what you'd have said looking at the first ultrasound. Seeing the changes in my body occur without your words curving around them. That pain is not sharp, its mute, stretches out, lingers, like a relentless ostinato playing at the back of my mind.

I want to tell you about Linda and my epiphany of the flesh last month. It was so refreshing, so pleasing to be so unequivocally wanted by someone decidedly unapologetic about who she is. Someone so sure, so confident and proud of her desire for women. When I got into her hotel room in Soho, I knew why I wanted to let her make love to me. I knew that I wanted to make my body understand, to make it stop aching for you. To erase us somehow. To bring about some kind of amnesia. I wanted to break the spell, validate the distance between us one kiss at a time. Mark had been telling me about her for months. The woman that goes around with my Wurlitzer, that I hadn't even met. I was the first one surprised at her obvious lust over my pregnant body. I felt like it was not only her kissing me. Wanting me. It was like this past life, coming for an embrace. She is the exact age I was when I started touring, twenty seven, and so much more gifted at it than I ever was. So much freer. This Linda episode washed over me in a seamless sequence. Catching a glimpse of you in the corridor the day before, the internal fall I've gotten used to, your eyes averting mine, then catching the train to London the next day, finding myself in Phillis' office for my 2 o'clock appointment, under the patient scrutiny of her stare, and then after the show, in the smoky green room, encased Linda's unblinking lustful gaze, as Mark was introducing us to each other, smirking all along. I was surprised to feel no nostalgia at all, but complete joy at seeing what has become of the band. It was like seeing deeply loved estranged family again. I was surprised at the affection in Mark's eyes when he saw me pregnant. I didn't tell him over the phone. He found out by seeing me.

I knew she wanted me and was surprised to find myself attracted to her too when I hadn't been able to even notice anyone but you for months and months before we even found each other, when i didn't even seek to question this condition of mine, this acquired blindness to anyone but you.

But I was still astounded when she asked me to come to her hotel room and spend the night with her. Linda and her purple yoga mat stretched out in her hotel room. Her conspicuous Californian ease around life, around desire. The easiness of her kisses, her youth. Her obvious amusement at my accent and my ignorance of most of the sexual terms she used. Her sun kissed afro and smooth cinnamon skin, her New England Conservatory education gone wild. And then in the morning, after gulping down an appalling beverage she calls « green smoothie » made with the blender she carries everywhere and forcing me to have some after a ten minute long new age monologue about toxins, her speech about the joys of polyamory occasionally interrupted by the constant flipping between one electronic device and the other that made me feel so old. I felt so hopelessly set in my ways with my journal and fountain pen and my attachment to books made of ink and paper, and cups of teas in cafes and desperately monogamous ways where I actually felt like I just cheated on you the whole time when we broke up months ago. The painted smile on my face as I listened to her, trying to enjoy this London adventure but really already so ready to trade it for a morning in my cottage with Monsoon on my lap and a good book in my hands. Linda who unknowingly gave me a taste of how I made you feel when I accused you of being « too old to change ». How ruthless I have been really. And then, the sequence coming full circle again on monday morning, upon seeing you, the internal fall, unaltered. If anything, even deeper, more pronounced. The realization that It would take more. Much more.

I know that the surface of my resolve is uneven, chipped. My mother's incorrigible sense of contradiction is definitely to blame for this too. She's currently engaged in a silent protest in your favor that has me dumbfounded. I thought she'd be thrilled when I told her we broke up but ironically, without having even met you, she is irrevocably taken with you. It's nothing too overt of course. You've never met her but suffice it to say she is a woman with a distinct mistrust for words and iron cast opinions that she only shares sporadically usually drenched in copious amounts of sarcasm and disdain. She wouldn't dream of making direct comments about my personal life and likes to use hyperbolic ways to make herself understood instead. It would be funny if it wasn't so infuriating. This is a woman who barely acknowledged Richard's physical presence in a room beyond the absolute bare minimum, for the whole length of our marriage. All she had to say when I told her we were separating was « Oh. I see. Well I guess you'll get granny's china back before he's destroyed every single piece of it then, nice surprise, I suppose. Such a clumsy man.» I don't know what it is really since you haven't even met. I find myself wanting to tell her, « Mum, she is a woman, you are a fervent catholic, aren't you a bit relieved? » But I know better. Her ways are impenetrable just like dad's always said. So imagine my surprised when upon telling her the news, that I was pregnant, but that we weren't involved anymore, she ignored the first piece of news to focus on the second and actually asked a couple of direct questions about the break up. I knew she wouldn't want to comment on my pregnancy. She collected the shattered pieces of my soul when depression stroke after the forth miscarriage. The week after that she brought me an « interesting article » she carefully cut out in a paper about the difficulty of coming out as a later in life lesbian when still married to a man and left it on my kitchen counter when she left. She was there when Lawrence stayed over and kept going on and on about « what a nice young man » he was and then added the lethal « poor woman, it's no wonder she's a bit tentative after being married to such a specimen. Anyone would understand that.» I've often thought it was a pity we didn't stay together long enough to have Celia and her meet one day, and just sit back and let the show begin, with a bowl of popcorn maybe.

Of course writing it here in my journal means this letter will be unsent but I truly hope not unread. I imagine reading these words for you some day. I wonder what shape our truce will take. How we will find our way to each other again. Amazingly, I have no doubt that we will. Just like I have no doubt that I cannot let it be now. I wonder what color will your love for this child be? Will you be the auntie that we visit on Sundays, or the distant unofficial godmother who once gave me this kiss of life, the one that allowed me to try my wings again. I don't let myself think of more but I know that something about our love has yet to be written.

Avec tout mon amour,

kate