I walk from room to room checking for any pieces of myself which I may have left here in this place we'd called home. My bags are in a small mountainous pile by the door ready to be taken tomorrow.  I hadn't wanted to move them out from the bedroom until Oliver had gone to work. It felt cruel and cold somehow. Him having step over them on his way to work this morning seemed like some final act of unkindness.

Bizarrely, from the moment we both recognised that our marriage was over it was as though a dam had burst and all of our thoughts and feelings had flowed freely. We had connected, finally. We had talked more in the last three days than the entire three years we'd been married. My head was a mess, as was his, but now he knew me. In the last dying days of our marriage he had gotten his wish; he truly, finally, knew who I was.

I'm not sure if that's irony or something else entirely.

My final appointment with Esther had been rescheduled to today after Oliver suggested we remain out at the lake house and try and 'talk' some more. He wanted to figure out if there was anything between us left to save or work on. I think deep down he knew there wasn't but as with everything he did, he wouldn't have been able to live with himself without at least trying to make a success out of failure.

He didn't have it in him to just give up. For me, it was different. The moment I'd admitted how I felt about Aidan out loud I knew there wasn't anything to save between Oliver and I. I'd remained there with him purely out of a delayed sense of duty.  I thought I'd loved Oliver, and I do — in a way. Not in the way he wanted or needed, but we'd shared a life together; we'd shared pain together and we'd lost a child together. And the vows I made to him in front of my family and friends had not only kept me there with him but kept me here in this marriage too.

I was in love with Aidan. Desperately and finally in love with someone. Someone who wasn't my husband. It had been a relief to finally admit it. In fact, after admitting everything else I'd been keeping to myself, it was almost too easy. I had tried on the thing and it had fit me, perfectly.

I had only been afraid before. I still am. To finally be on the other side of love. To not know if he still wants me is the purest form torture I've ever known. Though to fall in love with a man who isn't my husband is almost too ridiculous to even comprehend that I deserve everything that happens to me now.

Esther is showing out another patient as I arrive at her waiting room and after she says goodbye to him, she smiles and beckons me forward. Inside her comfortable office, I slide off my brown sandals and make my way to the couch to sit down. She's painted it since last time I was here. It's a light green colour that goes nicely with her dark wood and olive soft furnishings. I can still faintly smell the odour of fresh paint.

"Ellie, you look great. How are you?" She asks as she sits down, placing her floral notepad on her lap.

"Thanks, you too. I'm good thank you," I say. My marriage is disintegrating, the man I really love hates me and I'm leaving tomorrow to return to a city where I currently have no job and no home. Yet I feel strangely positive about things. Terrified and nervous, but definitely positive. My mind and body feel lighter, as though I've shaken off a heavy, suffocating weight. "I could try the colour thing if you like?" I suggest.

She dismisses that with a shake of her head. "No need. This is more just a wrap-up session. A debriefing if you like," she smiles.

"A debriefing," I nod. "Well, I guess a lot has happened since I saw you last time."

"Yes, I see that. You and Oliver have decided to go back to London. That's good," she says writing something down.

I take a deep breath. "Actually no. Just me. Oliver and I are separating."

Her eyes widen a fraction. As though she's a little surprised but not that surprised. Not when she takes a moment to consider it. "Oh Ellie," she tilts her head, apologetic, "I'm so sorry to hear that. What made you decide this? Was it a mutual decision?"

"Well, after he found me half-naked with the artist I commissioned to do the piece of art for his birthday, I think we both realised it was best if we went our separate ways."

Now she's surprised. Esther's mouth practically drops open in shock. "You're having an affair?"

I nod. "Well, I mean I was."

And it was an affair.  Oh, how I long for it to have been something more than that. But the fact is, even though I am in love with Aidan, it didn't change what it was at its core, what we'd created between us, what we'd partaken in. An adulterous affair.

As I look at her I think that as well as being surprised, Esther looks a little annoyed that I hadn't told her.  That I hadn't ascribed a colour to my adultery during one of our sessions together. White. That would have been the colour of my time with Aidan if she'd asked me. Bizarre. My adulterous affair was purest cleanest white.

"I had planned to discuss it with you at our next meeting, and well, here I am."

She nods and writes something down. "And how is Oliver coping?" She asks as she brings her head up.

"Well, he doesn't hate me as much as he should. And since I don't love him as much as I should, it seems we're destined to always be at cross purposes," I smile sadly, trying desperately not to pick at the skin around my thumb. It had only stopped stinging yesterday.

"The man you were sleeping with. The artist. This is over now? You said, 'was'."

I nod. "I think he might hate me more than my husband does. But I'm going there after this. To try and salvage something." Anything.  I'm also going to beg his forgiveness. To tell him I'm in love with him. The look he gave me as he left me that day has haunted my every waking moment and I need to replace it with another. I don't say any of this aloud. I refuse to tell Esther any of this before speaking to Aidan. For one I think she'd give me an even greater look of pity than she's giving me now.

Esther is too human to be a psychiatrist I've always thought. She's a normal, down to earth woman and her emotions always show far too easily across her face. Though it is one of the reasons I always liked her.

"I told Oliver everything, too.  About the baby," I say as I let out a breath. Esther nods and her eyes go sad, her mouth softening into a melancholic smile.

"How did he react?"

"He accused me of hating him. Which of course I told him wasn't true. Though I don't know if he really believed me. We stayed up all night drinking Bourbon and just talking. About us, about life, about death even. It was the most we'd ever talked. He admitted sleeping with a woman back in London a year ago that he worked with. Whilst I was pregnant. He said the guilt had almost eaten him up inside. He says because of it he also felt guilty when the baby died. I don't blame him for it, for the cheating, I probably wouldn't have blamed him at the time either. I've never given myself over to him the way I should have, and I think he always felt that. He needs the kind of woman who wants him fiercely. He needs a woman to worship and idolise him, and feel lucky to have him. I never did."

Esther stares at me a long time and then closes her pad and rests it on the arm of her chair along with her pen.

"You've always had a remarkable self-awareness, Eloise," she says. "I've never met a woman who analyses herself quite so deeply or quite so harshly as you do." She smiles but the tone of her voice doesn't make it sound like a compliment. "You assume yourself to be the person you think you are when for the most part we are who others perceive us to be. How others see us is normally what defines us best —a blessing really because, for the most part, we are incapable of being fully objective about our own flaws and weaknesses. As well as seeing our own strengths." She sits forward in the chair and clasps her long-fingered hands in front on her lap. "I guess what I'm saying is: don't be so harsh on yourself. Your fears about Oliver despising you for not wanting the child you'd both created was a fallacy. I think maybe part of you always thought less of him for not caring that you never loved him the way he loved you. Therefore you could never truly see him as your equal. Maybe what you need is the kind of person who thinks the very same as you do about love. A person who believes themselves incapable or unworthy of it, so you can both find some middle ground where you accept each other and yourselves. Though I wouldn't want to do the couples therapy on that one I should add," she smiles. "Or maybe, and here's where I shoot myself in the foot, but maybe there's nothing wrong with you at all. Maybe you and Oliver just weren't compatible. Maybe you weren't ready to have a child with him because you always sensed your marriage wasn't going to last. You knew it was temporary. We all make mistakes Eloise. We are human beings. Flawed but unique."

I hug Esther for a long time before exiting her office, and she offers to see me via Skype if I ever feel the need to talk to her again. She doesn't come right out and tell me that I'm cured, but her parting comments as I'm leaving suggest I'm going to be just fine.

I decide to walk for a bit and then take the subway to Aidan's loft, partly as it's a lovely day, and partly because I'm desperate to prolong our confrontation for as long as possible. I'm desperate to see him but I'm afraid too. Afraid of having him look at me how he looked at me that day.

The outside of his building looks exactly the same. Though it's not as though I seriously expected it to look any different, as though the inner thoughts and emotions of its inhabitants would somehow be reflected on its facade. As I climb the steps of his building there's a UPS delivery man leaving and he holds the door open for me to slip inside. He smiles a friendly smile that I return before I venture tentatively through the lobby of the beautifully restored building.

Since the service lift is on the ground floor, I take it as a sign to stop procrastinating and face the bloody music. I yank up the door, which is heavy and noisy, but which slides down with far more ease. As the lift ascends I try and steady my breathing. My stomach echoes the feeling it had the first time I came here to see him; filled with desperate flapping wings and a ball of pent-up tension.

Was I in love with him even then? Was I in love with him the moment I heard his voice in the gallery that night? Or the instant I turned around and looked into his eyes? I don't believe in love at first sight, and so I don't want it to be true because it seems so bloody stupid, but there's a very good chance that it is. What if he doesn't want me anymore? Now. What the hell will I do then?

I feel ill.

As the lift jerks to a stop on the third floor, I use both hands to slide up the door before stepping out into the large quiet corridor. The sound of the lift returning to ground distracts from the loud thumping of my heart in my ears.

The doorbell to Aidan's loft is one of those old hanging things with a rope and a brass handle on the end like you'd see in an old schoolhouse. It echoes loudly around the space on the other side of the door as I pull it. My heart rate increases the louder the footsteps get behind the door until suddenly the large metal door is pulled open.

My body deflates a little as Aidan's friend looks back at me, surprised. "Eloise." There's a note in his tone that sounds suspicious, a little hard.

I try and smile back but my mouth feels oddly stiff. Patrick must know everything. He must hate me. I straighten my spine. "I really need to speak to him," I say.

A weird expression flickers across his face and then he frowns. "You can't. I mean, he's gone. He left yesterday afternoon."

The beating increases again. "Gone where?"

He runs a hand over the back of his neck looking slightly uncomfortable now. "Home. London."

I feel my legs wobble slightly and my stomach bottom out. Whatever look Patrick sees on my face then has him step forward and put an arm around me.

"You better come in."

Tea is a wonderful beverage, really. An upset tummy.  A hangover. The stirrings of a cold. And though it can't fix this, I'm still grateful to Pat for making it for me. I've rarely had tea since coming to New York. I've missed it.

"He told you everything?" I ask, glancing up at him. "God, you must think terribly of me."

He sticks his bottom lip out and shakes his head, bringing his tea to his mouth. It's the same mug Aidan made me the hot Irish whiskey in. Grey with white polka dots.

"I'm not really the judging type," he says. "And no, he told me next to nothing, to be honest."

Instantly, I relax.

I nod, lifting my cup to my mouth and gulping quietly. I take a deep breath. "Oliver came. Found us together.  I asked Aidan to leave." I say.  Three whole sentences to explain what had happened back at the lake house. Reductive, to say the least. Patrick nods and sips at his tea again. "They fought," I add.

He raises his eyebrows. "Seriously? So that was the bruise? He mumbled something about jumping into a lake?"

A warm shiver rolls over me as I recall that night. The memory of him moving inside me, submerged in the cold of the water. Everything was better with him.

My body physically aches for him. Every inch of it. I need him. I'm not sure I'll survive if he doesn't want me anymore.

"So, how much do you think he hates me?" I ask, hesitant. 

Pat shifts in his chair, looking uncomfortable and I immediately regret asking the question. Why do I need to know this second hand?

"I'm pretty sure he's incapable of hating you, Eloise," he says. He sounds sincere and I feel myself relax a little further.

I lift my cup and gaze around the room which is now empty of Aidan and his things. His records are gone. His clothes, drying on vents around the room, are gone. The dining table which had always been scattered with his sketches and photos is now sparse and clean. 

"It's upstairs if you want to see it," Patrick says.

I glance at him, confused. "What is?"

"Your piece. It's not parcelled yet. I was going to call you to arrange the delivery. Tomorrow was the soonest pick-up I could get."

My heart stops. How could I have forgotten about it? My piece. The one he'd made for me. The only thing I have left of him at this point. Although technically this isn't true, I have the hand-drawn flowers in the insert of my bag. I need to frame it as soon as possible because the edges were starting to wear. Folding and unfolding it the number of times that I had being the cause of its distress.

"I want to see it," I practically spring up from the couch.

"On you go," he gestures with his head, "I'm guessing you probably want to be alone."

When he smiles a warm smile I decide that I like Aidan's friend immensely. He loves him, which I like. I also enjoy being in his company because it makes me feel close to Aidan, somehow like I have access to some of his thoughts and feelings. I get just to the bottom of the stairs when Patrick calls after me.

"Eloise, hang on," he says, standing up. I watch him walk to the record player and lift up a medium-sized white envelope which he brings to me. "He wanted me to send this with it. But you may as well have it now," he says. I reach out to take it from him. He shrugs, "I've no idea what's in it. He's written something about the final payment he said."

I glance down at the thing. It feels warm and a little heavy and a strange vibration runs over me knowing Aidan wrote this. His beautiful talented hands. Suddenly I don't want to read it. I'm afraid of what it might say. But I have to because I need to pay him for his work. Because that's likely all I am to him now. A customer. A client.

"Thank you," I nod, turning back to the stairs.

I take each one with heavy-footed dread. I suppose I half expected him to have destroyed it. To have torn the canvas holding my face in half, or to have slaughtered it with red paint to show the depth of his rage for me now. When I arrive at the top, I can't see it immediately because it isn't hanging in the same spot it was before. I have to come fully up and into the room and turn forty-five degrees before I see it resting almost casually against the brick wall. 

My legs give out immediately and I lower myself to my knees on the floor in front of it. It's not the piece I saw last time I was up here. It looks like he's started again but as I study it closer I realise I'm mistaken. He's simply altered the colouring of the original painting and used it as a kind of background for a collage of smaller pictures of me. Thirty-two in total.

From here, and because of the way the pictures have been developed and placed, I can see the original painting as it looked before and, as I lean closer, I can see each individual picture has been placed just so to make that possible. They're all placed equal distance apart in four rows of eight, slightly pronounced from the original canvas to showcase each image on its own. Each picture is of me in varying lights, poses and moods, and each highlights Aidan's skill with the camera and lighting, and with his subject, me.

It's a stunning piece of work. Contemporary, visually striking, layered and extremely beautiful. I can actually see past the fact that it's me and accept that it's a piece of art in its own merit that would look incredible hanging in an art gallery, or in the dining room or bedroom at home. Then I remember that I don't currently have a home. I literally have no clue where I'm going to hang this incredible, breathtaking piece of contemporary art which I now owned. I don't care. It's the least of my concerns.

This is mine. This is me. By Aidan.

Glancing at the bottom right corner of the large canvas I see his scrawl. And on my knees, I move myself a little closer to read his signature, as well as the title which is, of course, his message for me:

Eloise: A redefinition.

The envelope in my hand seems to get heavier and warmer, and I flip it over to tear it open carefully, my heart feeling overworked and strained as I rip at the thick paper. It's a rough creamy white postcard-sized card, with his name and an address in London embossed in a stylish light grey font at the bottom.

I read it five times until I can't see anymore from the tears.

His formal tone is painful. Physically and heartbreakingly unbearable. But the words. What he's saying can't be true. It isn't... possible. It couldn't be. He didn't. I don't understand. I can't breathe. I can't stop crying.

When I hear a noise at the top of the stairs my head whips up and the tears dry up almost instantly.

"Do you like it then? You've been up h—." Patrick's words die on his lips as his expression transforms into one of shock. He rushes toward where I am on the floor. Raising myself up, I wipe the back of my hand over my face. 

"Did you know?" I ask, not bothering to hide my accusing tone. He looks confused as he glances down at the card in my hand. I don't hesitate to hand it to him, no intimate words of love or affection in it. Only a life-shattering revelation. It's the most devastating thing I've ever read. I feel sick. I need to stop throwing up in Aidan's studio. Though I guess it isn't his studio anymore.

I watch Patrick's face as he reads the contents, as Aidan's words reflect across his eyes and mouth. When he's finished he looks up at me in shock, slightly embarrassed. 

"Fuck sake Aidan," he mutters with a shake of his head.

"Tell me it's not true. Tell me he's not saying what I think he's saying. Please, Patrick."

Patrick looks apologetic as he hands me back the card. "I'm sorry." Is what he says.

"How? How is it even possible? I mean, it doesn't even make sense." 

Nothing makes bloody sense. Why wouldn't he tell me? Patrick says nothing. He just shifts on his feet and continues to look awkward, scratching the back of his head, avoiding my eyes.

"I thought he might have told you himself. I told him to, but not like that, fuck sake," he gestures toward the card.

"So why didn't he?" 

"How the hell do you tell someone that? He probably didn't have a clue how to," he suggests. "He's been in love with you for thirteen years, Eloise."

I can't breathe again. "What?" In love with me? Aidan's in love with me.

He lets out a breath. "He's been bonkers about you since he was eighteen. Since the first time you sat down in front of him. Everything he's ever done, ever created, ever dreamt about has been inspired by how he feels about you. He's insanely in love with you. Like honestly, you've no fucking idea," he smiles rather awkwardly.

Everything goes entirely quiet. I can't hear the normal New York traffic, or most concerning, I the sound of my own heart thumping anymore. How could he not tell me? What reason could justify his not telling me? I touch my hand to my forehead which feels hot and clammy and then to my mouth to check I'm still breathing.

"I...can't. I don't understand," I whisper.

"He should have told you. I told him to fucking tell you," Patrick mumbles.

I turn to stare at him open-mouthed. My legs are threatening to collapse under me and my breathing still isn't doing what it should be doing. My stomach is threatening to empty itself onto the floor of the studio which isn't Aidan's anymore. My whole life seems to crystallise into one single point. Like in the last few moments I've developed tunnel vision and the only thing I can see at the end is him. It's accompanied by anger. At him.

Why didn't he bloody tell me? He never once said he loved me. Not once. His moods and intense looks and long periods of thought were about some long shared history that I couldn't bloody remember. How was that fair? He'd had this beautiful lasting memory of me without my knowing?

It's like a slap in the face — his persistent bloody memory. I can't lose you again. How obvious it all is now. I don't know who's the bigger idiot, me or him. I was here, for him, for us, without knowing how he felt about me. He'd held onto some idea of us for over a decade and then just walked away because I asked him to.

No, he wouldn't have given up that easily. Surely not.

"I need to go to him," I say finally. My voice is stronger than I expect. I feel physically stronger too, more solid. 

Patrick studies my face, looking wary. Looking frightened for Aidan I think.

"I love him, Patrick —I'm in love with him. I need to go to him."

Patrick smiles, not the sad one he'd given me frequently since I arrived, but a relieved one. He moves and puts an arm around my shoulders and lets out a tired breath. "I fucking swear you two are going to kill me one day, honestly. Crazy fucks the two of you," he says as we walk towards the stairs. "Well, you should probably know about the day in the cafe. That fucking cafe has haunted him more than anything I reckon."

"What day in the cafe?" I ask, glancing towards Aidan's piece of me resting by the wall.

I'm not sure what happens first. That I see the picture of me sitting on the window of the lake house, my reading glasses on and my hair tied up on the top my head, or the image popping into my mind of a day thirteen years ago. Except it isn't just an image though is it? It's a memory.

It's a memory of a boy with incredible large grey-blue eyes and a soft-accented voice telling me he knew me.

And he did know me. Every inch of my body and every crevice of my soul. He always had. He loved me. Persistently he had loved me.

I needed to hope he still did so I could love him back.