by Dani Atkins
I sat up very slowly, noticing that a thick fleecy blanket had been draped over me while I slept, dead to the world. Richard again. I got to my feet, feeling the kinks in my spine groaning in a chorus of protest. The old, poorly sprung three-seater was not the most comfortable place to have spent the night, but it was probably a darn sight more accommodating than the chair where Richard now slept.
Trying to make as little noise as possible, I walked across the room, feeling the chill of the wooden floor beneath my feet. The boots, which I had definitely still been wearing when I sat down the night before, were now standing upright like a pair of bookends beside the table. There was something very intimate about the image of Richard slowly unzipping and removing them from me while I slept. How could I not have felt him doing that? Great guard I’d turned out to be, falling asleep pretty much thirty seconds into my watch.
‘Good morning.’
I jumped, not realising he too was now awake. ‘Morning,’ I replied, running my fingers through my hair and rubbing my eyes. ‘I can’t believe I fell asleep.’
‘Fell into a coma, more like,’ Richard corrected.
‘Why didn’t you wake me?’
He gave me a look I recognised; it was the one he usually reserved for responding to totally idiotic comments. ‘You needed to sleep. You looked absolutely terrible.’
‘Gee thanks,’ I said, glancing at the mirror hanging over the fireplace and seeing that I still did. Well, perhaps more dishevelled than anything else, but it certainly wasn’t my most attractive look. I glanced down sorrowfully at the white shirt which had looked so much better the day before, when it hadn’t been slept in, or plastered to my body in the rain, and gently removed by Jack. I shook my head, refusing to allow such dangerous thoughts to creep in.
Richard was folding the blanket that had been covering him, before reaching for mine. ‘Thank you,’ I said, nodding toward the coverings. I bit my lip, wondering if there was any way to say my next sentence without sounding supremely ungrateful. ‘Why didn’t you go home, Richard?’
His eyes met and held mine and there was something in their clear blue depths I didn’t want to acknowledge. ‘I thought somebody should stay and guard the door,’ he supplied easily, ‘and I don’t think you’d have heard if anyone had taken a run at it with a battering ram, so I decided it was best to hang around until you woke up.’
‘I see,’ I said slowly. ‘Well, thank you again.’
‘Emma, you don’t have to keep thanking me. That’s not what I’m here for.’
I felt an icy cold shiver run over my heart, because I really didn’t want him to expand on that comment one little bit. I wasn’t ready to hear that. Fortunately I managed to divert both of us with my sudden exclamation. ‘Mum! Is she all right? She didn’t try and get out again, did she?’
Richard shook his head, and I could tell he was sorry to have our conversation derailed. ‘No. She’s still sound asleep. I went up about forty minutes ago and I could hear them both snoring in tandem through their bedroom door.’
I gave a small smile. I seemed fated to be surrounded by nasally-challenged sleepers. ‘You weren’t doing too badly in that department yourself, a moment or two ago.’
He grinned in a way that was achingly familiar. ‘So you’ve always said, but I just don’t believe it.’
‘I’ll record it next time—’ I broke off in shocked horror. The laughter slid from his face at my comment. We stared at each other wordlessly, both lost in a country we vaguely recognised, but probably shouldn’t have ventured into.
‘I’ll go and make some tea,’ Richard said eventually, and I nodded with as much gusto as if he’d just promised to cure cancer.
‘Tea would be absolutely wonderful,’ I over-enthused.
When he had safely disappeared into the kitchen, I ran lightly up the stairs and splashed copious amounts of cold water on my face and cleaned my teeth. By the time I’d dragged a comb through my hair, I was starting to feel a little more presentable and much more in control.
I could hear crockery being moved in the kitchen and smell the appetising aroma of toast beginning to fill the hall. I was turning towards the kitchen when a soft knock on the front door stopped me. I glanced down at my watch, it wasn’t even seven o’clock in the morning. Who could be calling on us at that hour?
If I looked crumpled and untidy, Jack was the exact antithesis. He stood on the doorstep looking immaculate and clean-shaven, wearing a dark suit, shirt and tie. Even though he was a metre away from me, I swear I could breathe in the smell of his shower gel and aftershave on a waft of air that hit me as I opened the door. Or was that just my imagination?
I wanted to throw myself straight into his arms, and it would only have needed a microscopic amount of encouragement from him for me to do so, but none came.
‘Jack,’ I said, my voice sounded strangely small and uncertain.
‘I’m sorry it’s so early,’ he apologised.
‘No. That’s fine. I’ve been awake for a while now.’ Where have you been? Why didn’t you call me? I needed you. My head was suddenly crowded with all the things I wanted to say, but the only thing that managed to come out was, ‘I left a message on your mobile.’
‘I got it.’
Those three words told me more than a whole chapter of explanations. I’d been reaching out to him, asking – well pleading really – for him to call me. And yet he hadn’t done so. Something hard started to form in my chest, somewhere in the region of my heart.
We looked at each other, and I noticed for the first time the stiffness in his stance and a small muscle moving at his jaw. He looked tense, which was something I’d never seen before.
‘How is your mother? Is she all right?’
‘Yes, she is,’ I replied. ‘Better than we are.’ I felt a hot flush flood my cheeks in case he thought the ‘we’ I was referring to was him and I. ‘Er… I mean the family, my dad and me… you know…’
The uptight look relaxed slightly, as a small understanding smile found a gap and crept through it.
‘Are you coming in?’ I asked, because that’s what you do when people turn up on your doorstep, even if you know, without a shadow of a doubt, that the answer they are going to give you is No.
‘No. I’m sorry. I can’t. I have to leave for London. I’ve got a meeting at just after nine.’
I nodded. Life went on. It didn’t matter what tragedy you lived through: car crashes; missing family members; fledgling romances withering and dying before your eyes, life still carried on regardless.
‘I don’t suppose you can still come with me…?’ His voice trailed away in a very un-Jack-like manner. I guessed we both knew my answer before I voiced it.
‘I can’t. Things are going to be crazy for the next few days. I’m needed here. We’ve got doctors and social workers and—’
‘I understand.’
Do you? I thought, letting my eyes speak to him, when my throat was too frightened to. I don’t think you do. I don’t think you understand anything at all, because if you did, you wouldn’t be standing there, so close and yet a thousand miles away from me; you’d be holding me in your arms and kissing all the coldness away.
‘I should have phoned,’ said Jack, his voice regretful. I’m not sure if he meant last night or this morning before calling round to see me. It didn’t really matter; my answer was the same either way.
‘Yes, you should.’
‘It’s just—’ He stopped suddenly as the door to the kitchen swung open and Richard walked casually into the hall, his shirt unbuttoned and untucked, clearly displaying the firm taut muscles of his abdomen.
‘Breakfast is ready, Emma,’ he announced in a purposely relaxed tone of voice. I threw him a horrified glance over my shoulder, before my eyes flew back to Jack. His face was a frozen plateau of hard angles and ridges, as though it had been carved out of a glacier. Richard’s, on the other hand, looked vaguely smug. If he’d had a thought bubble above his head, I’m sure
it would have read Payback’s a bitch, isn’t it?
Jack’s eyes narrowed and hardened and I knew they saw everything, from my crumpled clothing to Richard’s lack of it. In a horrible parody of the scene in his own kitchen, Jack read what he thought he had just interrupted.
‘This isn’t what it looks like.’ I reached out my hand to Jack, but he took a half step away from me. Everything I felt as I saw him recoil from me was plainly written on my face. I turned desperately to Richard. ‘Tell him. Tell him why you’re here. Why you stayed. Tell him nothing happened.’
Richard shrugged, in a supposedly nonchalant way, but said nothing. It probably didn’t matter. I doubt that Jack would have believed him anyway.
‘Jack, please,’ I said, my eyes filling as I saw the look in his.
‘I’m glad everything’s worked out for you, Emma.’ Jack’s voice was tight and controlled. ‘I’m glad you’ve got everything you were hoping for.’
‘But I haven’t. It’s not like that.’
He smiled then, but it was cool and distant. There was no sign there of the man who had held me in his arms and changed my life in one single night.
‘I have to go, Emma. Take care of yourself.’ He turned from me then, and walked away.
I remained at the open front door long after his car had disappeared from view. When I eventually closed it and turned around, Richard was still standing in the hall, watching me carefully.
‘That went well,’ he observed mildly.
My mouth tightened in annoyance as I strode angrily towards him. I grasped on to the trailing end of one side of his open shirt, and yanked on it hard enough to hear the seam rip slightly in protest.
‘Nice one, Richard. Very mature.’
He had the grace to look a little shamefaced, but I noted he didn’t apologise as he tucked the shirt back into his jeans before following me into the kitchen. I sat down heavily at the table, not realising how much the scene with Jack had affected me, until my trembling hand spilled tea over the table as I reached for my cup.
Richard sat opposite looking wary, no doubt wondering if I was actually furious enough to aim my drink all over him after what he’d just done. And I was mad at him for his childish stunt, but nowhere near as angry as I was with Jack at that moment. Why had he so readily believed the circumstantial evidence? Or Caroline’s stupid comment? Why hadn’t he known that the person who had given herself so completely to him the night before would be physically incapable of turning to another man? Didn’t he understand anything at all about me?
‘What does he mean to you, Emma?’
I kept my eyes focused on the table top, and answered with a long and painful sigh. ‘It doesn’t really matter, does it? Whatever I thought was there, evidently wasn’t. I think he just made that abundantly clear.’ I raised my head to look at Richard’s carefully neutral face. ‘You must be very happy.’
Surprisingly his hand came across the table and took hold of mine. Even more surprisingly, I didn’t pull away. ‘No, I’m not. Nothing that hurts you could ever make me happy. Even if it’s seeing you being rejected by the man you replaced me with.’
Way to go, Richard. Any more salt you want to grind into that particular wound?
‘But I’m not sorry he’s out of the picture,’ he continued. ‘Caroline said he’s going back to America in a few days?’ I nodded mutely.
‘Seeing you with him yesterday morning was the single worst moment of my entire life.’
I looked into his blue tormented eyes, and clearly saw his pain at the memory.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said softly. ‘Whatever’s happened between us, whoever is to blame, I would never have chosen to have deliberately hurt you like that.’
Richard’s throat swallowed convulsively, and I knew he was going to have a lot of trouble dispelling the image of Jack and me together. So would I, for obviously different reasons. ‘I’ve never felt anything like that before, such blind rage and jealousy. I wanted to lash out, to hurt someone as badly as I was hurting.’ He gave a small laugh, which held absolutely no humour. ‘I never really appreciated before how it must have felt for you, when you found out about Amy. I thought if I just apologised… if you understood it had all been a terrible mistake, that you’d forgive me… that we’d get past it…’ He ran his free hand through his hair, looking helpless and boyish, and more like the man I once loved than he’d done in a very long time. ‘But if the pain I caused you was just a fraction of what I felt yesterday…’ His voice trailed away, as a whole new level of sadness welled up within me at the hopelessness of everything, and where we had all ended up.
‘Except for just one thing…’ His words sounded tentative but optimistic. ‘Despite everything, despite knowing about you and…’ he hesitated, as though the very name tasted bitter on his tongue, ‘… Jack, I still believe there’s a way forward for us. You see, the reason it felt like my heart had been ripped out of my chest when I saw you with him, was because I still love you, very much.’ His voice dropped. ‘I understand your pain now, better than I ever wanted to, and I think I know where it comes from. Because I think you still love me too.’
His words sideswiped me. I hadn’t seen them coming or been expecting them, but when I tried to pull my hand from his, he wouldn’t let me.
‘Just listen for one moment, Emma, please.’ I nodded reluctantly. ‘I know this whole mess is down to me, I know I ruined things. God knows, whether you ever forgive me or not, I’m still going to spend the rest of my life regretting what I did to you. But there’s only ever been one person in the world for me. And I know it’s probably too soon to be saying this, but I don’t want to waste any more of our lives. I want you to have this… again.’
He took his hand from mine and delved into his pocket, retrieving a small velvet-covered box and sliding it across the table to me. For the second time in the conversation I lost my footing as, like an accomplished magician, Richard pulled away the rug on which I’d been standing.
I looked at the small box with a mixture of astonishment and trepidation. ‘I don’t believe it. Did you actually find my ring in the ravine yesterday?’ I asked incredulously.
His smile was regretful. ‘Now that truly would have been amazing, wouldn’t it?’ He shook his head. ‘I think that kind of thing only happens in books or the movies.’
My fingers were shaking as they reached for the box. Although I was afraid I already knew what it contained, I was unable to resist the lure of the small velvet container. The catch sprung open easily, revealing a diamond ring, which was an almost exact replica of the one I had thrown away.
‘Oh, Richard,’ I said on a long sad sigh.
‘I’ve had this for quite a while now,’ he confessed, ‘ever since I realised I wasn’t going to find your first one.’ Carefully he pulled the ring from its slot in the jeweller’s box and held it out to me. ‘You see, I never stopped believing. I never gave up hope. We belong together, you and I. I know it, our friends know it, your family know it… and deep down, I think you do too.’
His words whirled around me like a cyclone, filling my head and making it spin in confusion.
‘Richard… I… I don’t know what to say.’
‘It’s not that hard; you just have to say yes, like you did before.’
‘It’s not that simple. Not now.’
‘Yes it is.’ His voice was suddenly stronger, more confident. ‘Just answer me this, do you still love me?’ His eyes were like lasers slicing through my protective armour and reaching the vulnerable inner core of truth. I couldn’t lie, however much I wanted to.
‘Yes,’ I said quietly, giving the one admission I never thought I’d hear myself make. ‘I do still love you, Richard.’
The roads were quiet, but it was early so I hadn’t really expected to meet much traffic. I yawned widely, and opened the car window to let in some much needed fresh air. I hadn’t slept well the night before; I’d been too tense trying to plan exactly what I was going to say when I saw
him.
Two days had passed since Richard’s proposal – or re-proposal, if that was even a word – and so far I had told no one about it. Not my parents not Caroline, and definitely not Jack. Not that I had any idea where he’d been or how to get hold of him anyway, because on the few occasions when I’d tried his phone it had gone straight to voicemail. This time I hadn’t left a message.
Mum, and the new plans for her ongoing care, had taken up my days. It was a harsh truth, but it had taken the near tragedy of her trip to the ravine to finally get through to my dad that the kind of help she needed was more than he and I could provide alone. And it turned out there was a great deal more assistance available than either of us had realised, and none of it required her being put into residential care. At least not yet.
And there was something else that had been resolved in the last two days too. There was an answer I was now ready to give, and my heart hammered like a caged bird in my chest every time I thought of it. I was still ten minutes away from his home when my mobile phone trilled and vibrated from within the depths of my bag. I switched it on to speakerphone and smiled as Caroline’s cheery voice filled my car.
‘Hey, Emma, sorry to call so early, but I wanted to catch you before you left for work.’
I smiled wryly, as I wondered if I even had a job left to go to, but I didn’t bother to correct her, because I didn’t want her to know where I was heading this early in the day.
‘That’s okay. What’s up?’
