He didn’t hear from Jess after he left for America. He had thought about emailing, about phoning but he never knew what he was supposed to say. He didn’t know if she’d want to hear from him anyway. He kept in touch with Gemma for a year or two but he didn’t think Gemma had ever told Jess about that. He knew Jess had graduated from her journalism course, that she had started to work at a newspaper, but after that he lost touch. All the pain and grief that he had brought with him to America, that he had bottled up in an attempt to leave it behind, had finally caught up with him. He had lost touch with everything and everybody for a while after that.
Part of him wasn’t expecting Jess to call at all and he certainly wasn’t expecting it to be so soon but when he saw her number flash up on his phone he answered on the first ring. The last time he’d seen her number on his phone it was 2007, when everyone had had flip phones.
‘Jessie,’ he said breathlessly. Captain was barking in the background and he asked her to hold on while he let him out into the garden.
‘Is that a dog?’ she asked.
He smiled. ‘Yup, that’s Captain. I got him just after I moved to York.’
‘I never had you down as a dog person.’
‘Things change, Jessie.’
She didn’t reply and for a moment he thought she’d hung up on him.
‘I can’t believe you’ve called,’ he said.
‘Didn’t you think I would?’
‘Honestly? No.’
‘It was Mum,’ she said. ‘She said something that persuaded me to give you … this … us another chance.’
‘Good old Caro,’ he said. ‘You will give her my love, won’t you?’
‘Of course,’ she replied. And then she was quiet again. He tried to think of something to fill in the silence.
‘I can’t walk away from you, Rupert,’ she said suddenly. ‘I don’t think I ever got over you. I want to see where this goes. It’s just … I need …’ She faltered as though she was telling him too much.
‘I know,’ he replied, his voice filling the silence that sat between them. ‘It’s completely overwhelming, isn’t it? Wonderful but overwhelming.’ He paused. ‘I don’t think I ever got over you either.’
‘But we have so much we need to talk about, so much to catch up on. It’s as though we’re different people somehow.’
‘I think that deep down we’re the same,’ he said.
But he didn’t know if he was. He felt as though everything about him had changed in America, as though he would never be the same.
‘Can I see you again?’ he asked. ‘I could come down to you.’
‘No,’ she replied, a little too quickly. ‘I’ll come to you. Are you free this weekend?’
For a moment he hesitated. His memories of her were so perfect and if she’d changed even half as much as he had then he wasn’t sure that real life could live up to his expectations. He took a deep breath. ‘I am,’ he said.
It was time to make new memories, not dwell on the past.
… Over the next two weeks, while your parents were in France in the new house they’d just bought out there, and your sister was wherever nineteen-year-olds who are home from university go in the summer, we practised kissing as much as we could. Sometimes we’d practise all day, dripping pieces of our clothing in puddles all around your house, until the afternoon when we ended up on your bed, just the cotton of our underwear between us. It was raining outside, big fat drops that left wet stains the size of pennies on the dry, hot concrete. Beatles for Sale was playing on your stereo. We were obsessed with The Beatles that summer.
‘I bought condoms,’ you said, quietly, embarrassed, blushing. ‘Just in case.’
You must have felt me tense underneath you.
‘We don’t have to …’ you reassured me. ‘We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.’
You started to move away but I pulled you back. I couldn’t find the right words, but you and I never really needed words. You knew what I was trying to say.
The condom box was open. I questioned that, terrified I wasn’t your first.
‘Practice,’ you said. ‘You didn’t think I was going to put a condom on for the first time in front of you, did you?’
I laughed and you held my gaze, keeping my attention away from what you were doing.
The sound of summer rain on the corrugated iron roof of your parents’ garage will always remind me of that afternoon. When it happened, it was nothing like I was expecting. It was over quickly but had nothing of the clumsiness of our first kiss. All that time spent practising, working out all the ways our jigsaw pieces fitted together, had been time well spent.
Afterwards we lay breathless, terrified, staring at each other, Lennon and McCartney harmonising ‘Eight Days A Week’ in the background. Too young to be here, too old not to be. We’d always done terrifying things together. It felt like the first time we jumped into the deep end of the swimming pool, hand in hand, as children.
‘Thank you,’ you whispered.
I smiled. ‘You didn’t think I’d let you go back to school a virgin, did you?’
‘I love you,’ you said. You paused, smiling. ‘Eight days a week.’ …
14
JESS
I took the train from London to York on the Friday after Gemma’s wedding. Despite my mother’s reassurances, my mind was still clouded with doubt. I was second-guessing myself the whole train journey. Whenever I thought about what had happened, I tried to remind myself that my perspective was skewed, that things hadn’t been as black and white as I’d thought, that Rupert had been grieving too. I thought that I knew what I wanted then. I thought he wasn’t supporting me. I had felt I had no choice other than to give him his ring back at Heathrow airport before he left. I always wondered what he did with it, what people thought when he walked through customs with a diamond in the pocket of his jeans.
I knew though that the only person I could talk to about any of this was Rupert. I didn’t want to spend the whole weekend talking about the past. I wanted to see if we had a future. But I felt as though we were intrinsically linked by what had happened after my father’s death and I needed to know how he felt, I needed to know about Camilla. In turn I needed to tell him about Dan and I needed to be truthful about what had happened years ago, after I’d contracted glandular fever. I needed to know if he could cope with the fact that I could get ill again.
I had tried to forget about him after he went to America, cutting him off for my own sanity. I’d never really considered how he would have felt about that. As a teenager I’d been jealous of Camilla, scared that she would come between Rupert and me, but now I knew that none of this was her fault – I had given up on myself and on Rupert too easily. I never thought I’d get this second chance.
As the train headed north, it started to rain. Big fat drops slid down the outside of the train windows and landed on the fields either side of the tracks: earth warmed by the summer sun. Rain in summer always reminded me of Rupert, of the first time we were together. As much as I tried, I was never able to let it go completely.
I’d booked a cheap hotel near the station. Rupert hadn’t asked me to stay with him and I didn’t know if it was because he presumed I would or presumed I wouldn’t. I thought it was far too soon to be staying with each other.
He was waiting for me at York station. He stood with his hands in his pockets, his collar turned up. From a distance he looked as though he hadn’t changed in ten years; he still stood with his hands in his pockets and his collar turned up but the lines around his eyes and the sense of weariness that he exuded made me wonder how the last decade had treated him. He smiled as soon as he saw me, his eyes creasing at the corners. He walked towards me, reaching out, drawing me to him when he was close enough.
We stood in the station car park holding each other. He looked down at me and for a moment I thought he was going to kiss me. Even though I knew there was so much we had to say before I should let him kiss me again, I wouldn’t h
ave pulled away. He let go first, his arms dropping to his sides, but the smile never leaving his face.
He shook his head slowly, taking my bags from me. ‘It’s just so good to see you.’
‘I’m booked in here,’ I said, pointing at the hotel. I saw a flash of disappointment cross his face as though he’d wanted me to stay with him.
‘Well, why don’t you go and get checked in,’ he said. ‘Then we can go for an early supper somewhere if you like?’
I nodded and smiled. It still felt so awkward, as though neither of us knew where to begin. He walked to the door of the hotel with me and waited outside on the pavement as I checked in, as though he knew I needed some time to myself. I watched his brow furrow as I walked away. I didn’t think I could bear any more concern from anyone. I knew then that he’d worked out there was more going on than I’d told him, that I had perhaps been more ill than I was admitting.
I sat on the bed in my tiny hotel room and took a breath. I felt as though this weekend was pivotal somehow, for our second chance at happiness. As I stood up to get a glass of water, I felt dizzy. I sighed as I walked slowly to the bathroom. There were days when I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. In many ways I knew I was lucky, but some days I just wanted to be normal, to feel normal. Whatever normal meant.
I thought of Rupert now, standing outside waiting for me. It had started to rain again and I didn’t want him to get soaked so I drank my water, reapplied my lipstick and rolled my shoulders back. I could do this.
I walked out to where he was standing, waiting. I touched his arm and he turned around. He began to smile but when he saw me his face fell.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked.
‘I’m fine.’ I smiled at him. Smile back at me please, I thought. Don’t tell me I look tired.
‘You don’t look very well, Jessie,’ he said.
I reached out for him then – I couldn’t resist him. I didn’t want him to leave me here because I was too ill to go out for the evening. This was exactly why I didn’t want to tell him everything yet.
‘I’m just hungry,’ I said. ‘Let’s go eat.’
He seemed to relax a little then, and he led me down Blossom Street and through Micklegate Bar – one of the old medieval entrances to the city of York – towards a small pub he knew.
‘It doesn’t look like much,’ he said. ‘But the food is incredible.’
It really was. We squeezed together on a little table in the corner and ordered too much food, which we ate as we talked, reminiscing about when we were kids and life was easier. Rupert made me laugh, his face flushed from too much red wine, and when he talked about Captain – who was at home with a teenaged dog-sitter that Rupert wasn’t sure he trusted completely yet – he talked animatedly, full of amusing anecdotes.
His eyes lit up when he spoke about his dog – a dog who had a habit of destroying anything in sight when Rupert wasn’t with him.
‘It’s why he has to have a dog-sitter,’ he said. ‘He can’t be left alone even for a few minutes!’
I marvelled at this new version of Rupert who loved simple things like good red wine and his dog. I liked this version even more than I liked the old version.
But when I asked about Rupert’s parents or about his time at Harvard, his face closed and he shrugged and the voice in the back of my head reminded me that we were skimming the surface again, that there was too much we weren’t saying to each other and that, however good it felt to be snuggled up in a pub with him again, it wasn’t going to work.
As the waitress cleared the dishes and Rupert poured himself the last of the red wine, he looked at me and smiled sadly.
‘What happened to us, Jessie?’ he asked.
15
RUPERT
What happened to us?
He had never really known how to answer that question, no matter how many times he had asked himself.
When he was younger he’d been so sure about Jess, about them as a couple, so sure about what forever meant. But as the years went by, he’d been plagued by doubts. People used to tell him how lucky he was, how easy it was for him that he’d met ‘The One’ on the day he was born. He would never have to worry about looking, about dating. Jess would never have to worry about her biological clock. People had a lot of opinions on the matter. He sometimes wondered if people’s opinions put more pressure on them than they were able to handle.
He’d never really understood what happened between them that summer ten years ago. He’d never understood how he went from being so sure to having no idea what was happening so quickly. He’d never quite worked out how he ended up walking onto that plane to America alone with a ring in the back pocket of his jeans.
Back then he felt as though he didn’t have a choice and it had taken him years to realise that was what grief felt like, that losing Ed had affected him more than he had realised. And it had taken him even longer to understand how it must have looked to Jess, that he had chosen Harvard over her. But she had been wrong about Camilla – he had never chosen Camilla.
When he asked that question in the little pub in York, rain drumming against the windows outside, music and laughter and Friday night chaos all around him, he still had no idea how to answer it himself. From Jessie’s silence, it was clear she was struggling too.
‘Jessie?’ he asked again.
She shook her head. ‘You left me, Rupert, when I needed you most,’ she said quietly.
He leaned across the table and took her hand. ‘I felt at the time that I had no choice,’ he said. ‘I wanted you to come with me. I never wanted to leave you behind.’
‘I needed you to stay. I couldn’t have left Mum then and moved halfway across the world. You must understand that?’ Her voice shook with a long-held frustration and his fingers squeezed hers.
‘My father …’ he began, but she pulled her hand away from him before he could say any more.
‘Your bloody father,’ she said coldly. ‘You always did do what he wanted in the end.’
He sighed then, looking down at the table. He didn’t know what to say because Jess was right. He hadn’t thought he’d had a choice. He had thought he had to do what his father wanted – he was threatening to cut off his money if he stayed at Cambridge and Rupert had been scared. But the fact was that he shouldn’t have cared about the money. He should have stayed even though he was scared. There was always something good on the other side of fear. If he didn’t believe that he wouldn’t be sitting here in this pub with Jess again now. He had to hope that deep down Jess believed it too.
Harvard hadn’t been what he wanted at all and he had been a coward when he got on that plane to Boston. He should have moved heaven and earth to try to make Jess happy again. Harvard had never mattered as much as she did. It had never mattered at all really, not in the end.
‘Do you think,’ he said quietly, ‘that I haven’t spent the last decade kicking myself about that decision? Do you think I haven’t regretted walking away from you every day for the last ten years?’
16
JESS
I stared at him. I hadn’t thought that at all. I’m not sure that I’d ever thought about how Rupert must have been feeling after he left.
‘When you met me at Heathrow that morning …’ He stopped. ‘God,’ he said under his breath. ‘It wasn’t as if Harvard even …’ He stopped again.
I took his hand again, just as he had taken mine earlier.
‘What?’ I asked. ‘What happened?’
But whatever he was going to tell me had gone. He just shook his head and turned to look at me, squeezing my fingers.
‘I shouldn’t have gone to America without you,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have listened to my father. I said things to you that summer that I shouldn’t have said. I should have been there to support you and your mum.’
‘You were twenty-one,’ I replied. ‘It wasn’t your responsibility to look after us. You had to live your own life.’
‘My life was with you.
’
Our original plan had been to get married after our finals, to live in London together. I would study a post-graduate course in journalism while Rupert researched his PhD. Finding out that I loved writing had been a surprise when I worked on the college paper at university. I’d always expected to do a post-graduate course in Classics or something similar, but fate had other ideas – in so many ways.
A few weeks before our finals, my father died waiting for a new heart. He’d had degenerative heart disease for most of his life and had had several operations but while I was at university his health deteriorated rapidly and the only thing that could help him was a transplant. With the optimism of youth, I had been sure a heart would turn up, but it never did. He died just after the Easter holidays, and when it came it was sudden. He was gone before I could get back from London.
I didn’t have to take my final exams and I got my degree based on special consideration and the marks I’d attained during the previous three years. But Rupert didn’t, because it hadn’t been his father who had died. I’d known he was struggling but I hadn’t realised how much pressure he’d been putting on himself to get the marks he needed to please his father while looking after me at the same time. I hadn’t been able to see what was happening to him through my own grief.
Rupert’s grief eluded me at the time. He had been so close to my father. The two of them had a bond that Rupert didn’t have with his own father who was always shut up in his dusty office, with his books and his politics and his endless lectures about being the best. My dad was everything that Anthony Tremayne wasn’t, and I wondered if anyone had acknowledged Rupert’s pain back then, or if he had just struggled on alone.
‘If I could do it all again,’ I said, looking down at where our fingers were entwined on my lap, ‘I’d do things very differently. I could have come to America later, after Mum had settled. I could have waited for you.’
‘I should have done my PhD at Cambridge,’ he said. ‘Neither of us should ever have listened to my damn father.’
The Pieces of You and Me Page 7
