by Karen Clarke
‘That’s horrible, Sam.’ Beverley’s chin quivered.
He looked alarmed. ‘I was only joking, Mum. I’m having a great time.’
Sadie’s lip curled. ‘You’re so stupid, Sam.’
‘Sadie!’ Beverley grasped her chunky necklace, as if it might offer protection. ‘Sam’s not stupid. He’s just cycled from Paris to Geneva on a bike, and he went to university. He’s far from stupid.’
‘Oh, Mum.’ Giving up any pretence of eating, Sadie tapped the tip of her nails on the table. ‘You haven’t got a clue, have you?’
This was it. She was about to tell them what she’d seen at the café. A pulse throbbed at the base of my throat, and the room strobed in and out.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Sam leaned across to get a better view of his sister.
‘Yes, what does that mean?’ Beverley sounded almost scared, tugging her necklace hard enough to break it, her dinner abandoned.
‘What’s going on?’ Neil’s face was creased with confusion, and I couldn’t bear it any longer.
‘I kissed someone,’ I said to the dish of honeyed parsnips. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sadie open her mouth to speak and rushed on, ‘Sadie saw us, I’m sorry, I should have said something, but I… I didn’t, and I’m sorry.’
There was a brief, stunned silence. ‘Sorry you didn’t say anything, or sorry you did it?’ Beverley rushed in, sounding positively gleeful, as though I’d made her day.
‘You kissed someone?’ I turned to see Sam staring at me, slack-jawed and incredulous. ‘You kissed someone?’
I nodded, relieved to have got the words out, as if I’d sicked up something that had disagreed with me.
‘A man or a woman?’
‘Does it matter?’ I frowned at him. ‘A man.’
Beverley was up and pacing now, one hand in her curls the other on her hip. ‘I always said she wasn’t good enough for you.’
‘You never said it to me,’ Sam said, still looking at me with open disbelief.
‘Or me,’ said Neil, and his look of quiet betrayal was almost worse than Sam’s wide-eyed incomprehension.
‘I can’t believe it.’ Sam elbowed his dinner plate out of the way as though it disgusted him. ‘I’m away for a few days, and you kiss another man?’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Is that all that happened?’
‘Isn’t that enough?’ squawked Beverley. ‘After everything we’ve done for you, welcoming you into this family—’
‘Hang on,’ Neil said, holding up his hands. ‘We don’t know the whole story. I think we should let Meg explain.’
‘What’s to explain?’ Beverley sat back down, and leaned towards me. ‘How could you do that to my Sammy, and come round here all sweetness and light?’ she said, spittle gathering at the edges of her mouth. ‘I knew when I saw you on the telly, something wasn’t right, and Maura saw it too.’
I was crying now, hot tears dropping onto the table. ‘Sam, can we please talk privately?’
He was pale, like a man who’d been dealt a terrible blow he was trying to process – which I supposed he had. ‘Sam?’
‘I never thought you’d do something like that, it’s not you.’ His brow was furrowed, as though he was slotting a new, cheating version of me over the old Meg he knew. ‘I thought it was the bakery you were into, not another man.’
‘I always knew she’d let you down,’ said Beverley, her hand shooting across the table towards her son. ‘We’re here, my darling, you’re not alone.’
‘Oh for god’s sake.’ Sadie pushed her chair back and stood up. ‘You shouldn’t feel too bad, Meg,’ she said, clasping my shoulder. I looked at her through a puddle of tears and saw sympathy in her eyes. ‘I meant it, you know. I wasn’t going to say anything.’ She looked at Sam, and when she spoke her voice was loaded with disappointment. ‘Not after seeing him kissing another woman.’
Chapter Twenty-Six
‘Meg, please just get in.’
Sam had slowed the car to a crawl, eyes begging me across the passenger seat.
I looked away. ‘I’m good, thanks.’
‘It’s hot, you’ll get heatstroke. You know what you’re like in the sun.’
‘Oh, now you know what’s best for me?’
‘Meg, this is silly. Just get in the car and we’ll talk.’
‘I’ve nothing to say to you.’
‘Meg, please!’
I focused on putting one foot in front of the other – left, right, left, right – not caring that the sun was lancing across my shoulders, or that I couldn’t possibly walk all the way back to Salcombe. I just wanted to put as much distance between Sam and me as I could.
‘Meg, please, come on.’ His voice was cajoling, and I knew he thought it was only a matter of time before he talked me down.
‘If I need a lift, I’ll call someone.’ I slowed to take my phone out of my bag, and almost fell as the toe of my sandal caught in a crack in the pavement.
Sam pulled the car up ahead, and popped the door open.
I strode past, powered by something even stronger than anger. It felt close to relief… no, not relief. Justification. Because I’d known. Not the details, obviously, but I’d known on some deeply buried level that I wasn’t Sam’s true love. That, whatever had brought him back to me when his father nearly died wasn’t as simple as that.
He’d lied to me. And, perhaps, to himself, all these years.
And maybe I’d lied to myself too.
‘Meg!’
Something raw in his voice prompted me to turn.
He was on the pavement, holding open the car door, and with a sense of mounting fury I marched back. Resisting a strong urge to slam the car door on his fingers, I threw myself into the passenger seat. He jogged round to the driver’s side and leapt in, the grim set to his mouth softening a little. He thought he had me. That, within the hour, we’d have forgiven each other our silly transgressions, and things would be back to normal. He’d have to forgive me, now I’d found out that he’d kissed someone else too.
Clutching my bag in my lap I said tightly, ‘Admit you only asked me to marry you in the first place because George turned you down.’
Because, of course it was George he’d kissed. George, who he’d been admiring in the photo. George with the strong thighs, flashing eyes, and gold trophy.
It turned out the cycling group had been in Paignton, where Sadie was at college, and she’d seen them in the park on her lunch break with her friends.
Sam and George had been apart from the group, talking under a tree, and he’d suddenly cupped George’s face in his hands and kissed her tenderly, as though taking a long drink of something delicious. That was how Sadie had described it, the romantic in her leaping to the fore, though she’d apologised to me afterwards for saying it like that. At first, she’d thought it swoony, like something from a film, then realised the gravity of her big brother kissing another woman. After the woman had broken away and returned to the others, Sam staring after her as if his world had just ended, Sadie had rushed over and thumped him, she said. Not hard, because she wasn’t strong, but she’d wanted to really hurt him, and he’d looked upset and said it didn’t even matter, because George had just told him she was in love with Chris – womanising Chris, who didn’t deserve a decent woman. And it had sounded as if George was quite decent, after all, because she’d seen Sadie attack Sam and caught up with her to ask her not to say anything to Sam’s girlfriend, because the kiss had been a mistake, and the last thing she wanted to do was to cause any trouble.
And all this had happened about a week before Sam had proposed to me.
‘It wasn’t like that,’ he said now, twisting in his seat, a determined slant to his jaw, and it was almost funny how hard he was prepared to work to get me to see sense. ‘It only made me realise how much I wanted to be with you, Meg. That’s why I proposed.’
It made me realise it’s you I want to be with. That’s what he’d said when he came back from Edinburgh – afte
r Andrea broke up with him.
‘You only wanted me when no one else wanted you,’ I said, the truth finally dawning. It wasn’t that he didn’t care for me (surely he couldn’t have faked it all this time?), but there was no longer any doubt in my mind that Andrea had been his true love – or maybe he’d thought George would be. ‘If George had wanted that kiss as much as you did, we wouldn’t even be sitting here right now.’
‘Meg, that’s rubbish,’ he said, leaning towards me, as if he could change what was in my head by the sheer force of his presence. ‘I don’t even know why I did it when I had you at home. It was wrong, of course it was, but it led to me asking you to marry me, so, in a weird way, it was a good thing.’
I laughed, because I could see he really believed that, or at least that was how he’d justified it to himself.
‘That kiss didn’t mean anything,’ he said. ‘I doubt you can say the same about yours.’ His gaze darkened. ‘Yours was worse in a way, because I know it’s not the sort of thing you would do.’ His gaze darkened. ‘Did he force himself on you, Meg?’
I recoiled. ‘Of course not! I don’t even know who kissed who first, but I wanted it as much as he did, if not more.’
There was a long silence as the impact of my words hit home. ‘Right.’ Sam dipped his head. ‘So, your kiss really was worse, because you wanted it to happen.’
‘It’s not a bloody competition, Sam, about whose kiss meant the most. And you clearly wanted your kiss to happen with George because you instigated it!’
He chose to ignore that. ‘But, if you had a choice, you’d rather kiss this Nathan than me?’
‘Wouldn’t you rather kiss Andrea, if she came into your life right now?’
‘I thought you said it wasn’t a competition.’ He raised his eyes and now there was a hint of humour there. He was letting me know he was ready to turn the whole thing into a joke; something we’d look back on and laugh about in months to come. ‘I’m invested in our future, Meg.’ He traced a fingertip down my forearm with just the right amount of tentativeness. ‘Nothing like that will ever happen again.’
‘I suppose I was a safe bet.’ I pulled away, determined not to be deflected. ‘Good old Meg, always there like a faithful Labrador, never complaining. Meg would never cheat, or break up with you, or break your heart.’
‘Or so I thought,’ he said, and I knew I’d hit a nerve. Then his face relaxed again. ‘Look, no matter what you think, I am invested in our wedding, in having a baby with you, in living the rest of our lives together.’
I wished he’d stop saying invested, as if I was a savings account. ‘Until someone better comes along.’
He snatched his hand back and gave a short laugh. ‘OK, maybe I deserve that,’ he said quietly. ‘But the truth is, I’ll never find anyone better than you.’
I could see he really believed that, and tears distorted my vision. ‘It won’t stop you trying though.’ I glanced at the sun-filled street outside, the colours blurring together. ‘And, the stupid thing is, Sam, I was going to call off our wedding anyway. I wish I had now, before all this came out. Except if I had, I’d probably have never known about you and George.’
His head jerked as if I’d slapped him. ‘Meg, I—’
‘I don’t love you any more,’ I butted in. ‘I don’t think I ever have, or not for ages. Not in the way I should have done.’
‘Meg, you don’t mean that.’
But I did. Tears slipped down my face as I recalled how I’d let Sam call the shots in our relationship from the moment he’d told me we were breaking up because he’d met someone else in Edinburgh. He was the one who’d finished with me, and he was the one who’d decided we were going to get back together. It was what I’d dreamed of for so long, I hadn’t questioned it, and had let him set the pace ever since. I’d convinced myself I was happy to let him take the lead, when really I’d been scared to initiate anything in case I drove him away. It wasn’t as if he’d coerced me into buying our house, or getting engaged, or having tests to determine whether I was capable of carrying his children. I’d thought I loved him, and sometimes it had been easier to go along with what he wanted rather than challenge his decisions, but I supposed I only had myself to blame that he was shocked that I’d so much as look at another man, let alone kiss one, when I’d given him every reason to think I’d never want anyone but him.
I wiped my face, which was slippery and hot, and a memory struck, of Mum, reading in bed one Sunday morning, while I baked mince pies in the kitchen. It was nearly Christmas, a month before Sam came back, and Mum had finished her bookkeeping course and was looking forward to setting up her little business in the New Year. Kath was coming round later, to talk strategy – and to update Mum on her latest blind date – and I was going Christmas shopping with a friend. Happiness had flared as I rolled out pastry and made plans for the year ahead – a better job, more money, a savings fund. Maybe my own kitchen, one day. Four weeks later, Neil fell out of a tree, and Sam came back from Edinburgh.
A week after that, we were back together.
He tried to hold my hand, but I yanked it away.
‘Look,’ he said, back in persuasive mode. ‘You kissed another man, and it hurts, but I get it. I was away from home, and I might have been training a bit too hard for the challenge, but I’ll be around more now. We can put it behind us and focus properly on the future. You’ve got the bakery to think about and then there’s the wedding—’
‘I’ve just said, there’s not going to be a wedding, Sam.’ I twisted my ring up over my knuckle, tugged it off and dropped it in his lap.
‘Now you’re being dramatic.’ He attempted to put it back on, but I wriggled my finger away.
‘Please, Meg.’ His smile was tight with determination. ‘Let’s not do this, OK? We’ve both made mistakes, so let’s call it quits—’
‘I’ve just told you I’m not in love with you.’ I shoved the car door open. ‘It’s over, Sam.’
‘Wait!’ Fright skidded over his face. ‘Where are you going?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, my breath quickening at the enormity of it all. ‘But don’t wait up for me.’
‘Meg, I—’
I slammed the door and started walking, not slowing as he finally drove past, slowly at first, as if hoping I’d change my mind and beg him to come back, then speeding up before finally disappearing out of sight.
With every step my breathing grew easier. I began to feel stronger, as if he’d taken something heavy with him that I hadn’t known I’d been carrying, but soon I was panting with heat exhaustion, and my sandals were rubbing my heels.
I stopped and got out my phone. ‘Are you busy?’ I said when Cassie picked up. ‘I really need a lift.’
Chapter Twenty-Seven
‘Jesus, Jumping Jack Flash!’ Big Steve stared as I entered the kitchen the following morning, not through the back door as he’d have expected, but via the crooked staircase leading to the rooms above. ‘Meg, what the heck?’
He dropped his dough scraper and took in my puffy face, his eyes stretched to maximum. ‘Sam,’ he guessed, immediately. ‘Conscious uncoupling?’
‘You could say that.’
‘Oh, Meg, I’m so sorry.’
‘I couldn’t think of anywhere else I wanted to go.’
I’d asked Cassie to drop me at the bakery in the end, and she’d pulled away with a smoky chug after extracting a promise to call her and Tilly if I decided I wanted some company, or a shoulder to cry on. She’d nodded with understanding when I told her the wedding was definitely off, and, after I’d falteringly explained, said it was better to break up now, than get married and end up divorcing. She didn’t bad-mouth Sam, which I was grateful for.
Tilly had shown no such restraint, phoning half an hour later as I attempted to clear a space in the cramped living room above the bakery kitchen, saying Cassie had called to tell her what had happened (Cassie really was terrible at keeping things secret these days).
&nb
sp; ‘I knew he wasn’t a keeper,’ she’d said. ‘And he didn’t like me, because he knew I could see straight through him.’
‘But how?’ I was genuinely curious that she’d seen something I hadn’t.
‘It was the way he always wanted you to himself when we were at school, taking you fishing at weekends, implying that hanging around doing girl stuff was for girls, as though that was a bad thing. He never supported Legal Mystics and didn’t come and see us when we performed at Cassie’s house that summer.’
‘He found it a bit embarrassing, that’s all.’ I’d leapt to his defence out of habit. ‘It’s not like he ever liked All Saints. It might have been different if we’d formed a Green Day tribute band.’
‘I felt like he isolated you a bit,’ she’d said. ‘Probably because he didn’t want anyone else to make a move on you. You couldn’t see how gorgeous you were.’
‘He didn’t isolate me, Tilly.’ I’d started crying. ‘I liked being with him.’
‘I know, and I’m not saying he didn’t like you a lot too, I just think he knew you’d fallen for his whole family set-up and would be the perfect girlfriend.’ I’d sensed her choosing her next words carefully. ‘I think he knew he could play around with other women, and come back to you if things didn’t work out.’
‘Which is exactly what happened.’ I’d slumped on Mr Moseley’s velvet sofa, sending a cloud of dust into the stuffy room. ‘I suppose I was the sort of girl you take home to Mum, not the type that men feel passionate about.’
‘Er, does the name Nathan Walsh ring a bell?’
I hadn’t let myself think about Nathan until then. ‘It was probably just a chemical thing, like you said.’ Hugo’s words flashed into my head. My brother doesn’t fall in love lightly. ‘And, anyway, he’s leaving tomorrow.’
Even though she was still feeling rough, Tilly had volunteered to come over with a bottle of wine, but I’d been hit by a tidal wave of exhaustion, and couldn’t even respond to a text from Mum, asking if Sam had enjoyed his cycle challenge.
