My wife calls me once she’s settled in in her hotel room and I think, not for the first time, about the awkward time difference between Helsinki and here. Two hours – not so big that conversation is impossible, but significant enough to make it jarring. She is in bed, her journey and her day almost over. And me? I’m sitting on a wall outside having stopped on my way to the pub, not long having been admiring the gorgeous, coral-coloured sunset over the side streets.
The conversation feels disconnected, too. I am always talking as she’s talking, the gaps in our sentences and the pauses and silences never quite lining up. I wonder, really, whether we are having the same experience. It’s frustrating to be in two different places, in more ways than one. Two hours – so her morning is my morning, her evening is my evening, only not quite. And the phone call, much as I miss her, has that air of “not quite”, too.
We swap stories. Her flight, her spilling her coke on the plane, the man with only one leg next to her helping her to mop it up. My awful meetings and conference calls, my skirmishes with morons, my meal for one on the sofa. I don’t tell her how big the flat feels, or how I partly went for a walk because outside seemed so much smaller, but it’s true. I think, too, about our rushed goodbye this morning on the crowded train, how unsatisfactory it was. Any long relationship sometimes feels like a ladder of hellos and goodbyes.
Her voice gets more muffled and smaller, and I know that I don’t have her for much longer. The next thing you know, it will be tomorrow for her, but it will be tonight for me for a while yet. Only two hours, but that can feel like a long time.
When we hang up I go to the pub and sit in the front room. I drink my cider, read my book and listen to the ukulele practice out the back. It’s nerdy and exuberant and I love it – men and women, all ages, enthusiastically launching into a cover of “Delilah”. I make out kazoos, wheezing away in the background. I chat to the landlord, I enjoy hearing all those voices, I soak it all up. I am in a big group of people now, and yet I’m still disconnected.
I suppose it will be like this for a while. It used to be difficult, now it’s just different.
The following morning I wake up to a breezy text from her talking about her breakfast. I can hear it in my head in her voice, and in my head it’s strong and clear, not stifled by miles and tiredness. I smile as I put on my coat, lock the door and head for the station. But, of course, she has already started work by then.