Lemon Infused WaterShe lifted the glass, and the sharp scent of lemon carried her back to that sunlit kitchen where her grandmother had first taught her that even the simplest water could taste like hope.

I haven’t drunk lemon water for more than ten years.

I avoid it the way you avoid old wounds. The way you don’t go back to the café where someone slid a ring onto your finger, and then took it off again. The way you don’t re-watch the films you used to watch together. Lemon water became a symbol of loss. Of someone who will not come back. Of someone I don’t want to come back.

I remember it all as if it were yesterday. Every last detail.

We flew to Málaga at the end of May. He said: “This is going to be the best holiday of your life.” I was twenty-eight. He was thirty-two. We had been together eight months. I already had a toothbrush at his flat, and he knew all my friends. Everybody assumed a wedding was coming.

The hotel was called the Miramar. It wasn’t the most expensive place, but it was cosy. Whitewashed walls, a blue pool, palm trees looked after by a gardener with sad eyes. Our room was on the third floor, with a view of the sea. True, the tap ran with rusty water, the air-conditioning only worked half the time, and the people upstairs made noise at night. But still, we were happy. At least, I thought we were.

On the first day he ordered fizzy water with lemon.

“Have you tried this?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.

“No.”

“It’s the taste of love.”

I laughed. But he wasn’t joking. He honestly believed in omens and signs. If you drank that water at sunset, love would last forever.

And so we drank it. One bottle, shared between us, straight from the neck. Sour, sweet, and the bubbles tickling the tongue. He looked at me with adoring eyes, and I sank into them without a second thought.

“Let’s always drink lemon water,” he said, dreamily.

“Let’s,” I agreed, never suspecting that the taste would become my curse.

Back home, everything began to go wrong. He turned colder. He cancelled one plan, then another. Then he stopped calling, and then he only answered every other time. I made excuses for him. Work. A bad patch. Depression.

A month later he said: “I need to be alone for a while.”

Two months later: “Don’t call me any more.”

Three months later, he disappeared without a word.

His phone stayed silent. Friends said they didn’t know where he was. His mother spoke through gritted teeth: “My son doesn’t want to talk to you. Stop calling. Stop tormenting him and yourself.”

I didn’t call. I waited. A year.

Then I married someone else. He was kind, dependable, and completely ordinary. He never drank lemon water. He never looked at me with love in his eyes. He never said, “You are my life.” He was just there. He brought home a wage and did things around the house when I asked. I told myself that this was love: the calm, everyday, grown-up kind. Neither one thing nor the other.

I had a daughter, Molly. My husband was pleased, but in a detached way, as if the baby were a piece of new furniture bought from Ikea. After five years, we divorced. I couldn’t go on living in the bog. That was how I put it. Not because of lemon water. Not because of Spain. Not because of the memories. I had simply understood that a boring marriage is a cage. I wasn’t a bird. I was just a woman, and I wanted to live, not merely exist.

So I was left alone. With Molly, with my cat Mabel, and with the feeling that my life had somehow failed. I worked as an accountant in a small firm. I had a flat on a mortgage, and a car that kept breaking down. Friends had scattered. Mum had died. I never knew my father. Molly. Mabel. That was it.

I didn’t drink lemon water. I didn’t drink anything that reminded me of that cursed taste. In restaurants I ordered cola, juice, still water. I had told everyone I was allergic to lemons, even to the smell.

“Since when?”

“A long time.”

Nobody knew the truth. The truth seemed too ridiculous for a forty-year-old woman. But the truth was that I was afraid. Of the water. Of the lemon. Of the bubbles. Of my own memories.

Then, the other day, I caught myself thinking that I couldn’t remember his face. I was sitting in the kitchen drinking tea, staring out of the window. Molly was doing her homework. Mabel was asleep on the windowsill. And I suddenly thought: what was his nose like? Straight or hooked? What were his eyes? Brown or green? His hair? Dark or light?

I couldn’t remember.

I could only remember the lemon water.

That evening I popped into Tesco. Bread, milk, eggs, cat food. And then, on the drinks shelf, I saw it. Lemon water. The same as in Spain. The same yellow label with a lemon cut in half. The same bubbles dancing inside.

I picked up a bottle. Held it in my hands. Put it back. Walked away. Came back. Picked it up again.

“Are you taking that?” a young man in a uniform asked, as he unloaded crates.

“No,” I said, and left.

All the way home I thought about the water. About him. About Spain. About how ridiculous it is to be afraid of something that no longer exists.

That night I couldn’t sleep. I lay on the sofa and stared at the ceiling, listening to Molly shifting in her room. Mabel padded in, settled on my chest and began to purr. Silence.

Then, suddenly, I got up. I threw on my coat, shoved my feet into slippers, grabbed my keys and went out.

In Tesco I bought that lemon water. One bottle. Nothing else.

Back home, I went into the kitchen and took down a glass. A plain, old-fashioned tumbler. I took a deep breath. I opened the bottle. It hissed as the bubbles escaped. I poured half a glass. I smelled it.

It smelled of Spain. Of the sea. Of being young. Of pain. Of that sunset when he said: “It’s the taste of love.”

I drank.

And nothing happened.

No memories came flooding back. No tears rose up. No ache tightened in my chest. It was just fizzy water with a bit of lemon. Completely ordinary.

I finished it. I threw the bottle in the bin. I washed the glass and set it on the draining rack. Then I went to bed and, for the first time in years, fell asleep without a sleeping tablet.

In the morning I woke up with a smile on my face.

“Mum, what’s the matter?” Molly noticed the change.

“Nothing.”

“You’re being weird.”

“I’m fine. I just slept properly.”

All day I felt good. Not the usual morning heaviness, not the afternoon tiredness, not the evening resentment toward everyone. I felt light. Free. As if I had put down a backpack I had been carrying for more than ten years.

That evening I bought another familiar bottle. I drank it. I smiled.

“Silly woman,” I told myself. “What were you so afraid of?”

I understood: the lemon water had never been my enemy. The enemy had been in my head, whispering: “Don’t drink it, or you’ll remember. You’ll never forget. You’ll start suffering all over again.”

And then I had drunk it, and I was still whole. More than whole. Calm. Happy. I had let go.

A week later I met my old university friend, Poppy.

“Poppy,” I said, “I’m drinking lemon water again.”

“What?” She nearly choked.

“Almost every day.”

“What about your allergy?”

“There never was an allergy.”

“So what now?”

“Now I’m free.”

“Don’t you want to write to him?”

“Why would I?”

“Maybe he still remembers you. Maybe he still loves you.”

“Then let him remember. I’ve chosen to forget.”

I chose to forget. Now lemon water isn’t about the past for me. It’s about life carrying on. In spite of everything. Or, perhaps, because of it.