by Dani Atkins
At last Richard shook hands with the coach drivers, retrieved his holdall from the baggage compartment and trotted over to where I was parked. He opened the passenger door, jumped into the seat and managed to kiss me on the lips in one virtually seamless manoeuvre. I didn’t push him away, but I didn’t exactly respond either, a fact which he didn’t seem to notice. ‘Hello, beautiful,’ he said, settling himself back in the seat and smiling at me warmly. I tried to smile back, but it felt false and forced. ‘Sorry that took ages,’ he apologised. ‘You’ve been waiting a long time?’
‘Not too long,’ was all I offered in reply. I switched on the ignition, but before I could start the engine, Richard leaned across and turned it off again.
‘Hey, what’s the rush?’ he said, holding his arms out to me. ‘Come over here, woman.’ There was a time, really not so very long ago, when those words would have brought a warm smile to my lips, and I’d have gone willingly into his arms. I tried to conjure up that feeling as he pulled me closer and, now that we had the car park to ourselves, proceeded to kiss me in a way which he certainly wouldn’t have done had there been lingering parents or students still around. ‘God, I’ve missed you,’ he murmured against my lips. Eventually, some of my reticence must have got through to him, for he pulled back and asked uncertainly, ‘Is everything okay? You seem a little… off.’
You have no idea, I thought. I shook my head and pasted another faux smile on my lips. I had no intention of getting into our discussion while we were still in range of the school’s CCTV cameras. I’d already picked out my perfect location, and it wasn’t here.
‘Just tired,’ I said, and that certainly wasn’t a lie. ‘I’ve not been sleeping too well recently.’
He tightened his arms around me in a hard squeeze. ‘That’s because I’ve not been beside you,’ he said, dropping his voice as he promised, ‘But we’ll fix that tonight.’
Despite having a collection of anecdotes from the trip that he wanted to share with me, Richard still thoughtfully asked first about my mum and dad, before launching into his stories. That’s what made all of this so impossible to believe: how could someone who so obviously cared about me, and every aspect of my life, do something so unthinkably cruel? It was so out of character.
He was busy regaling an amusing story of how he and two other teachers had accidentally got locked out of their rooms after some late-night sampling of the local beer, when he suddenly noticed that I had driven past the exit which would take us to his flat.
‘Hey, Emma, that was our turn-off.’
I took my eyes briefly from the road to look at him. ‘I thought we might go somewhere quiet first, just for a while.’
He frowned in puzzlement. ‘It’s quiet in my flat.’
What I really wanted to say was ‘Somewhere neutral and isolated, somewhere I can scream at you, should that be the way things go, without anyone calling for the police.’
‘Yes, I know,’ was what I actually replied, ‘but I thought it would be nice to go for a walk, maybe stretch your legs a little, after your long journey?’
‘What I’d really like is a nice hot shower and a back rub,’ he said hopefully.
Well, that certainly wasn’t going to happen. ‘Come on, Richard,’ I said in what I hoped was just the right sort of inviting tone, ‘let’s go for a walk, we won’t be long.’
He studied me carefully, before settling back into his seat, a doubtful expression in his eyes, which meant that he was just beginning to realise that something might be wrong. Welcome to the party.
I was heading for Farnham Ravine. It was a dramatic scenic area some fifteen miles from our home, and was a favourite summertime spot with hikers and day-trippers alike. Tall pines flanked the edges and sides of a steep rocky ravine, and in one of her earlier paintings my mother had perfectly captured the rays of dazzling sunlight piercing down through the lacy network of branches. Richard was quiet for most of the drive, and when I glanced over at him I discovered why: he was asleep. For some reason that made me incredibly and irrationally angry. We reached the small visitor parking area, and I slammed a little harder on the brakes than was strictly necessary, which brought him awake with a grunt.
‘We’re here,’ I announced, unclipping my seat belt and surveying the car park, which was empty except for our vehicle. Good. No one around to disturb us.
Richard peered out through the windscreen, and rubbed his eyes as he read the welcome sign. ‘Farnham Ravine? What are we doing here?’
I didn’t answer, but got out of the car and headed towards a sign directing visitors to the footpath. I could hear the crunch of Richard’s footsteps on the gravel surface behind me, but I didn’t slow down, forcing him to jog for a moment until he caught me up.
‘Emma? What’s all this about?’
I shook my head but didn’t reply, just quickened my pace. I was just this side of being out of breath when I eventually turned to face him. We had travelled only a short distance along the rough dirt footpath; to one side of us was an imposing battalion of tall pines and to the other was the steep rocky drop to the foot of the ravine, some thirty metres below. Now that the moment was finally here, I didn’t know where to begin, which was insane because I’d been practising this for days.
‘Emma, what on earth is up? You’re beginning to scare me now.’
I took a deep breath in, and then released it slowly. ‘It’s about Amy,’ I said, carefully studying his face for a reaction. I saw nothing except genuine bewilderment. Could it be that I might actually be wrong about all of this?
‘What about her?’ The wind was gusting along the path, gently lifting his dark blond hair from his forehead. Part of me instinctively wanted to reach out and smooth it back into place. Another part of me wanted to slap him. I gripped my hand at the wrist, unsure as to whether I could trust it not to end up doing either of those things – or both.
‘There was something she said to me… on the night she died. When she was lying on the road and we were waiting for the ambulances to arrive.’
There it was. The reaction I had been intently looking out for. His eyes flickered for a moment and he swallowed visibly. ‘What did she say?’ There was a thread of something in his tone that I couldn’t identify; it wasn’t exactly guilt, but it was certainly apprehension.
‘She thanked me for forgiving her.’
‘Why?’
‘I was hoping you could tell me that.’
He ran his hand through his hair, causing even more disarray than the wind had done. ‘How should I know? She was your friend.’
‘Was she?’
His eyes flew to mine, his expression confused and angry. ‘What sort of a stupid question is that? Of course she was. You three girls were like sisters. You did everything together, you told each other everything. Why ask me this?’
‘Well, it looks like we possibly didn’t tell each other quite as much as everyone thought.’
Was that relief I saw on his face – that I didn’t know what Amy had actually meant? Perhaps. Like a warrior in a battle, I continued to charge on. ‘Because I think Amy may have been sleeping with someone, maybe with someone she shouldn’t have been…’ I paused, not for dramatic effect, but because the words were just so damn hard and painful to say. ‘And I think it might have been you.’
I had worked out about fifty different ways the conversation might go from there. But I hadn’t once considered the way things actually went down. Richard’s face froze for a moment and then his stunned and impassive expression dissolved into one of someone in agonising pain.
‘Oh God, Emma. I’m so sorry.’ His words struck me like a physical blow, and I staggered backwards, fortunately in the direction of the trees, and not the steep drop-off. I was vaguely aware of his hand reaching out to grab hold of me, but I backed further away, as though retreating from a monster.
‘It’s true?’ I said in shock. ‘Are you telling me it’s true?’
I saw him nod just once, before his face c
ontorted in despair. My knees felt suddenly weak, and a wave of nausea threatened to choke off my words before I could get them out. ‘How could you do that? How could you do that to me? To us?’ He shook his head, already knowing there was nothing he could say to answer that accusation. He took an unsteady lurching step towards me, and I screamed at him, ‘Stay away, don’t come anywhere near me.’
‘Emma.’ My name sounded like it was being ripped out of him. I shook my head violently as the image of him and Amy naked together was suddenly projected into my mind upon a screen of red hot rage. I swallowed down the bitter taste of bile in my mouth.
‘Why, Richard? Why? Wasn’t I enough for you?’
‘It wasn’t that,’ he groaned in protest.
‘Then what? Were you bored? Felt like a change? What did she give you that I couldn’t?’
‘Nothing. It wasn’t like that.’
My eyes were blazing like hot coals as I rounded on him. ‘So what was it like? Because I can’t think of a single thing that could possibly justify you destroying everything we have so you could screw around with my best friend.’ And, as I said the words, I felt the knife slice through me, not once but twice, because the betrayal was dual-edged. The next question came out on a whisper. ‘Were you… were you in love with her?’
‘No. No, of course not. It’s you I love. Amy was… a mistake, a terrible stupid mistake. It wasn’t even an affair, it was just sex – it was just one time.’
‘Is that supposed to make me feel better?’ I thundered. ‘Because it bloody well makes it worse.’
Richard looked around in desperation, knowing he’d said the wrong thing even as the words were leaving his mouth. To be honest there was nothing he could say that was going to stop the noose from tightening around his neck.
‘So tell me.’ The words were spat at him, as though they’d come from a serpent.
‘What?’ he asked helplessly. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Everything.’
His eyes were blue pools of torment. He had nowhere to go, no defence he could possibly offer, and no way of avoiding answering my questions. He tried one last evasion. ‘Why, Emma? Why? Can’t we just find a way past this? I did a terrible, stupid and weak thing, but dissecting it isn’t going to help.’ His choice of words was particularly apt, because that was what this was starting to feel like: a post-mortem following the death of our relationship.
‘Tell me,’ I demanded.
He turned away from me as he began to speak, unable to look me in the eye as he ripped the skin from my body with his words. ‘I guess it all started a couple of years ago—’
‘What?’ I cried out, my voice like a demented harpy. ‘You’ve been sleeping with her for years?’
‘No, no. I told you it was just one time. What I meant was that we started getting closer a few years ago. After you’d gone away. After we broke up.’ He glanced over at me, but my eyes were narrowed in bitter anger; I could scarcely bring myself to look at him. ‘At first we were just friends, we went out with Caroline and Nick most of the time, just as mates. But as time went on…’
‘You fancied her,’ I said bitterly.
He ran his hand through his hair. ‘No, not at first. She was just Amy, your old friend. I couldn’t even think of her that way. Couldn’t think of anyone that way. I was still in love with you.’
‘I’m so touched.’ My voice dripped sarcasm like venom.
‘Time went on, and I started seeing other people, but nothing came to anything. Because of you.’
‘You’re breaking my heart,’ I said viciously, and then had to look away suddenly, because the truth of it was, that was precisely what he was doing.
‘Amy understood me. We got on well, we shared the same sense of humour, but I knew… well, I suspected, anyway…’ His voice trailed away, and he sounded embarrassed as he finished, ‘I knew she liked me. I knew she wanted something more.’
Amy. Her face appeared before me like a mirage. I had known her for most of my life; I’d shared secrets, hopes and fears with her. I had trusted her. And yet she had broken the cardinal rule of friendship, the sacred code: she had gone after her friend’s ex.
‘I resisted for a very long time.’
‘Well bravo to you.’
He ignored my interruption. ‘But eventually, when it looked like you were never going to come back, things began to… develop between us.’
It didn’t matter how many euphemisms he used, I was still getting the full ugly picture in glorious technicolour. ‘So you got with her when I was in London?’
‘No. Well, almost. Things might have happened then, I could see that, but then you came back home. And I realised what I’d really known all along: that it was you, it had always been you; I couldn’t love anyone else, because my heart was yours.’
‘So she just got a different part of your anatomy?’ I sniped.
Richard winced, as though he’d been shot, but still continued. ‘We cooled everything off immediately, as soon as you came back. We just went back to being friends, nothing else.’
‘And you didn’t think any of this was important enough to tell me when we got back together?’ I fired on him angrily.
‘You and I agreed that we didn’t need to tell each other details of the other people we’d dated.’
‘That’s because I thought they were nameless strangers, not my best friend.’
‘And it wasn’t like we dated, well not properly. We just kissed a few times and—’
‘Enough!’ I shrieked, already having enough trouble getting the unwanted visuals out of my head. I certainly didn’t need him to elaborate.
We were silent for several minutes. Richard was hoping that I’d finally heard enough of the ugly tale, while I was just trying to summon up the strength to hear it through to the end.
‘So when did you fuck her?’ I don’t know what shocked him most: the way I had phrased it, or my need to know it all.
His voice was hesitant, guilt in every syllable. ‘It was last year, after you got me to arrange a date for her with that prat at my school.’ He looked up at me, expecting acknowledgement perhaps. All he got was a glittering stony stare. ‘Well, she went out with him, but the guy was a real bastard. I told you I hadn’t wanted to set it up.’
Richard was very lucky there was nothing near enough for me to throw at him right then, because he had come perilously close to making it sound that I was in some way partly responsible for what had happened. He continued in a rush, ‘Anyway, things got really ugly, and she ended up calling me in floods of tears.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know why. Because I was the one who’d set her up? Because I was her friend? I don’t know. You don’t know how many times I’ve wanted to turn the clock back and have her call someone else.’ I braced myself for the final avalanche to bury me, as Richard completed his story. ‘It was late. I went to comfort her, we had a few drinks and then… well…’
He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to. I got it.
‘Afterwards, we both felt terrible. We both knew it had been wrong. Amy knew all along that I loved you, that it was you I wanted to be with.’ He looked at me beseechingly, but got nothing in response. My heart felt like a petrified lump of stone buried in my chest. ‘She begged me to let her tell you. She wanted you to know how sorry she was.’
I shut my eyes, but the pain was still there behind my closed lids.
‘In the end, I convinced her that I should be the one to do it. I was the one who had betrayed you most. It was my job to beg you to forgive me.’
‘And yet you didn’t,’ I said coldly.
‘I couldn’t,’ he answered, his voice a broken whisper. ‘I couldn’t risk losing you, couldn’t risk the thought that you might leave me. So I lied. I lied to you, and I lied to Amy. I told her that you said you would forgive her, but only on condition that the two of you never spoke about it. Ever.’
So. The mystery was finally solved. That was what she had
meant as she lay dying on the road. That was why she was thanking me. I looked at the man who had betrayed me in the worst way possible, and knew that he’d been right to be afraid that this would be the end of us. Because it most certainly would have been. And now it was.
He saw my actions, and gave a moan that sounded wrought with pain. ‘No,’ he cried, as he watched me begin to twist the engagement ring from my finger. ‘No, Emma, please.’
I looked up and saw he was crying. Strange. My eyes were dry; it was the complete reversal of our first break-up.
‘Please no,’ he begged, bridging the distance between us and trying to hold me. I gave one final twist and the diamond was off my finger. I held it in my palm towards him.
‘Take it.’
He shook his head.
‘Take it, Richard. I don’t want it. We’re over. Done.’
‘Don’t say that,’ he pleaded, as tears rolled down his face. ‘Give me another chance. I will never, ever, do anything to hurt you again for the rest of my life.’
The hand that held the ring remained rock-steady, although inside there wasn’t a single piece of me that wasn’t ripped to shreds. ‘It’s too late. You gave me this ring just weeks after sleeping with another woman. You told me I was the only person in the world for you, while you could probably still remember the scent and taste of her.’ I thrust the hand bearing the ring closer towards him.
