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‘The Breakup’ by Hannah Dolby

16th February 2023

“It’s not you, it’s me,” he said, looking out to sea. I winced at the words, so mouldy and unoriginal. “I told you I’m not good at commitment.”

I felt a clutch to my heart, the familiar fear of losing him. Although, to be fair, I had never quite had him. He had warned me of it in the early days, when I was full-flushed and giddy with newness and excitement. He had said it helplessly, as if commitment was entirely out of his hands. I had made it my mission to be the one who would change his mind. The girl who was different.

Why couldn’t he just have messaged me or even, god forbid, phoned me? I did not need to meet him on a bench on the Hastings and St Leonards promenade, with seagulls crying and people meandering past with dogs and ice-cream. It was not always kind to insist on meeting face-to-face.

But then he wanted to become an actor, and the promenade sat high above an audience of sea and shingle, stretching for miles in either direction, topped by the brooding immensity of the grey sky. It was a little like a stage.

“You know I want to perform, move to London,” he said, standing, leaning against the iron balustrade and stretching out his arms out wide. “I’m only twenty-seven, I can’t afford to be tied down.” I had not tried to tie him, was not ready for tying myself. I had only wanted to be, even for a short time, the girlfriend he rated most highly. I despised myself for it.

“It’s probably because of Em,” he said, and we were back to the girl who had broken his heart, once, ruining him for any other woman, destroying his trust, although as far as I could tell, she had only got fed up with him and moved to Leicester. It was hardly Romeo and Juliet. But his scars ran deep, and he liked to trace their shape.

The promenade was not the best place for his drama, though. There was a bunch of sparrows in the low square hedge next to the bench, and they were so busy, so happy, chattering about their business, so disinterested in us and our business, it diminished the importance of his words. And the sky was so huge, so all encompassing, the views so spectacular in all directions, that he looked small against the vastness of the landscape. His stage was too big for him and he was in danger of getting lost on it, an ant waving its legs in the wind.

I felt a tug of feeling as I looked at him. He was handsome, and he had made me laugh, at first. Laughter was my seduction, my weak spot. I had tried so hard, these past six, nearly seven months, to be funny too. I had made such a very great effort to be my best self, my most attractive self, carefree, fun, easy. Too easy. And yet still his eyes had often slid to other, better women.

The sun shone through the clouds, in that moment, lighting up the gleaming white of the chequered tiles, the stones on the beach, the curve of the balustrade stretching far away into the distance. And beyond them the limitless sea, blue now instead of grey.

It was a stage for Greek gods, for Victorian women parading with parasols, for Shakespearian tragedies and La bohème. It was a horizon of endless possibilities, of blue-grey dawns and red-gold sunsets, thunder and lightning, scorching sunshine, crashing waves. It was too spectacular for our small finale.

“Will you be OK?” he said, suddenly, frowning, and I realised I had not responded as he expected me to, or even at all.

My eyes slid beyond him, to where a man, half-naked, muscled, was carrying a surfboard towards the sea. I had not tried surfing.

I smiled. “I will be fine,” I said.

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