The 3rd Woman. Jonathan Freedland

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       Chapter 13

      Leo Harris had sent texts, several direct messages via Weibo and, heaven help him, an email. Short of sending smoke signals from the Hollywood Hills, he didn’t know what more he could do. But Maddy had ignored them all.

      It was, he reflected now – still wearing his suit, his feet up on the coffee table, his back slumped into the couch – not just sympathy for an ex-girlfriend in mourning. The term stopped him. Was she even an ex? Was that the right word, given what had happened to them? They had never had the break-up conversation; they had never really broken up. They had tried to ‘take things to the next level’ – they had moved in together – but that had not worked out and suddenly they were no longer together at all.

      He never understood that dynamic, though he knew it was real. It was the same in politics. Pundits were always saying of this or that initiative that it was high risk because, if it failed, there was no going back to the status quo ante. He would nod along, but truth was, he never completely got it. Why couldn’t they go back? OK, so they tried something else, it didn’t work out, back to square one. But no, square one would be blocked off, suddenly deemed inaccessible. The conventional wisdom was adamant on this point: advance and fail and there was no going back. In an election campaign and in romance, the same stubborn rule held. But he couldn’t tell you why.

      Nor could he give a precise answer to the specific question of why living together had failed. He had been the one to push for it and while Maddy never quite said no, she did not quite say yes either. He had turned up at her apartment one Sunday morning with two lattes and thirty flat, self-assembly cardboard storage boxes: no more talking, let’s just get you packed up. He figured he would learn the lesson of their first night together. He had not asked her out on a date: if he had, she would only have said no. Instead, after some City Hall event, he had simply leaned in and kissed her. That’s how they had started: no process of deliberation, just action.

      But it had not been easy: even staying the night was tricky with a woman who didn’t know how to sleep. For all that, he never lost his conviction that they would find their rhythm eventually. He had imagined coming home to Madison, turning the key in the lock and finding another person already there, the apartment already warm. He had even, God help him, imagined a child – a miniature bundle of their combined energy, talent and neuroses. A little girl probably, gorgeous but crazy.

      Yet now he and Madison were barely in touch. Even at this moment, as she was reeling from the most unspeakable blow, he found himself unable to find the right words. No one should lose a loved one that young, was what he had left on her voicemail. Her laughter will live on. You’ll always hear it. That’s what he had texted. Trouble was, everything sounded like a presidential address following a natural disaster. He might have been in Vanity Fair’s list of Hottest Politicos Under Thirty-Five, but he already felt as if he’d been doing this too long.

      Anyway, it wasn’t just sympathy for Madison that had lodged inside him. Guilt was gnawing at him too. Leo had seen the reported time of death and he had worked out, just as he felt sure Maddy had worked out, that at or very close to the moment when the beautiful life force that was Abigail Webb was being snuffed out, he and Maddy had been engaged in their usual dance: two parts combat to one part flirtation.