The Story of Us

by Dani Atkins

  ‘Nothing was ever the same after that night… not for any of us.’

  The silence around the table that followed this remark was its own acknowledgement. I felt rather than saw almost every eye turn to me. I guess they were right in thinking that I had been affected the most, for the scars on my face were nothing compared to the ones that scored me deep inside.

  ‘Come on now, let’s not do this tonight,’ implored Sarah.

  ‘No, of course,’ agreed Phil, and even though I’d kept my eyes averted to the tablecloth, I knew meaningful glances were being directed my way. It was all getting a little too intense and I was overcome by a sudden irresistible desire for the safe anonymity of my hotel bedroom.

  ‘I hate to break up the party,’ I began, and heard a small chorus of guilty noes from around the table, ‘and it’s not just because of… Jimmy.’ My voice hesitated before being able to form his name. ‘But I really do have a pretty bad headache, so if you don’t mind, I think I’ll call it night for now.’

  Sarah immediately began to protest, but then the intuition our close friendship provided made her completely back down.

  ‘Sure, sweetie. It’s been a busy day for everyone.’

  When I realised that she intended to wind the whole evening up, I felt instantly ashamed.

  ‘No, Sarah. You all stay. You haven’t even had coffee yet. I’ll just grab a cab. Please don’t break up the party because of me. Please.’ I got to my feet. Sarah still looked as though she was wavering, but then Dave interceded.

  ‘Let me go outside with you to hail a cab,’ he offered. ‘Trevor, why don’t you order some coffees and brandies.’

  I gave him a grateful smile. No wonder Sarah loved him. I decided he was worthy of her after all.

  ‘No need for a cab,’ a familiar dark voice interjected. ‘I’ve got my car outside, I’ll run Rachel back.’

  I was so taken aback by Matt’s unexpected offer for, apart from his initial greeting, this had been the first remark he had actually directed to me all evening. Before I even had a chance to react either way, he dropped a swift kiss on Cathy’s forehead.

  ‘Won’t be long,’ he assured her, then turning to look across at me, ‘Shall we?’

  I was about to protest; to insist that his offer really wasn’t necessary and that getting a cab was by far and away the easiest solution, and then I caught sight of Cathy’s face. Rage, disbelief and total indignation all battled for pole position. It was wicked, I knew, but that was what decided me. I owed her this for the cloakroom incident. I reached down, collected my bag and gave a general smile to the gathering of friends at the table.

  ‘Sorry to leave so soon, but I’ll see you all at the wedding on Saturday. Goodnight.’

  As I walked away from the table, I felt Matt place a guiding hand at the small of my back to steer me past a waiter approaching the table with a tray of coffees. I heard the echoing chorus of ‘Goodbyes’ as we walked away. Strangely enough, Cathy’s voice did not appear to be among them.

  Once outside in the bracing December air, I took a step away from him, deliberately breaking the lingering contact of his hand against me.

  ‘This way,’ he instructed, raising his arm to blip a key towards a low dark sleek vehicle parked under a bright sodium arc light. He opened the passenger door and cupped my elbow briefly as I lowered myself onto a cream-coloured seat with leather as soft as butter. I waited until he had joined me in the car before commenting:

  ‘Well, this is certainly far more luxurious than a taxi. A new toy?’

  He gave a little shrug. ‘It’s a company car.’

  ‘But you own the company.’

  He shrugged again. ‘And your point?’ He shifted towards me, and although the engine had not been turned on, there was still plenty of light illuminating the car from the restaurant’s security lighting. Looking into his face, being aware of the intimate proximity inside the car’s confined interior, I forgot the point I was trying to make, if any. Hell, if he looked at me that way for a moment or two more, I was likely to forget my own name. I decided on a change of topic.

  ‘Cathy didn’t look too pleased that you’d offered me this lift.’

  ‘Cathy’ll get over it.’ OK, that was clearly another conversational no-no. However he didn’t drop that theme entirely.

  ‘Cathy and I… you knew about that, didn’t you… I mean before tonight?’

  I gave a shrug that I hoped looked nonchalant.

  ‘Sure, Sarah mentioned it… in passing… ages ago.’

  His voice suddenly dropped in tone, sounding less self-assured than he had all evening. There was an echo of the boy I had known so well.

  ‘And you were OK with that, were you?’

  I may have hesitated for a second longer than I should have, before replying in a tone that was striving for breezy.

  ‘Well, of course. Why wouldn’t I be?’

  He straightened suddenly in his seat, flicked on the ignition and headlamps and with a briefly instructed ‘Fasten your seatbelt,’ reversed, at speed, out of the parking space. Clearly not the answer he had been hoping for, it would seem.

  As we left the car park, he pointed the car in the direction of my hotel.

  ‘I’m staying at the—’

  ‘I know where you’re staying,’ he interrupted.

  Oh, this was terrific. Now I had made him mad. At that moment I’d have given anything to have swapped this ride for the tattiest, smelliest cab that could be imagined. I sought for a topic that might be suitably innocuous to raise between us. But came up empty. There were too many landmines in our history to make chit-chat possible. In addition, the painkillers I’d taken for my headache had yet to kick in, so if we had to conduct the fifteen-minute journey in total silence, then so much the better.

  I wasn’t going to be that lucky.

  When we stopped at the first set of traffic lights which turned red as we approached, Matt caught me absently rubbing my fingers against the bridge of my nose to try to ease the pain.

  ‘You really do have a headache? It wasn’t just an excuse?’ I heard the doubt behind the question. It made me snappier than I should have been.

  ‘Yes, I really do.’

  ‘There’s a twenty-four-hour place up ahead, would you like to stop there and pick up something for it?’ The unexpected kindness took me by surprise.

  ‘No, it’s fine. I’ve got some pills.’ Not that they appeared to be working any more, I silently added.

  Several more minutes passed and I thought we had probably escaped the awkwardness when he threw a live conversational grenade into the car.

  ‘Cathy and I… it’s not that serious, you know. More of a convenience thing… I just wanted you to know that.’

  Too stunned for a moment to know how to respond, I eventually came up with: ‘I very much doubt that Cathy views it that way. Not from the look on her face as we left the table together. And why would you possibly imagine I needed this information?’

  He sighed, and I could see he was struggling to pick the right words.

  ‘It’s been hard tonight, seeing you again. All of us together again.’

  With one notable exception, but I let that pass. He gave a laugh that fell short of having any real humour in it.

  ‘It’s just that all night I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that I was sitting next to the wrong person.’

  I didn’t know how to respond. Should I feel flattered by the compliment, or offended that he was declaring such feelings when he was still clearly in a long-term relationship with someone else?

  ‘Matt, I think you’re just getting caught up in the nostalgia of the reunion, or something. You’re confusing the past and present here in a pretty drastic way. We were just kids back then.’ My voice lowered and trembled slightly. ‘Something terrible happened and things changed. We changed.’

  ‘We’re not kids now,’ he vowed, and without warning, his hand left the steering wheel and reached over to cover mine on my lap. I jerk
ed it back as though I’d been burnt.

  ‘No. Don’t do that. You’re with someone else, you’re not free…’ I carried on quickly when I saw he was about to offer something then, ‘… And even if you were, it wouldn’t be any different. I still feel the same way as I did when we split up.’

  This really grabbed his attention from the road, and he turned to stare at me in disbelief.

  ‘Are you still blaming yourself about Jimmy? Dear God, tell me that isn’t true. Not after all these years.’

  ‘How long it’s been is immaterial,’ I began, wondering how many more people in my life I would have to keep justifying this to. ‘If he hadn’t been trying to rescue me, then he’d still be here now.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t be.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘So this is how you intend to repay that debt? By shutting yourself away like some dried-up old spinster all your life? Christ, Rachel, you’re only twenty-three years old!’

  I noticed the speed of our car had increased exponentially with his anger.

  ‘And do you think this is what Jimmy would have wanted, for you to commit yourself to living a life all alone?’

  ‘I’m not alone,’ I refuted, sounding all at once a little too much like a sullen teenager.

  ‘Well, have there been boyfriends?’

  His attack stung, and I mindlessly sought to sting him right back.

  ‘Hardly.’ I swept back my hair to reveal the scar by the light of the street lamps. ‘Not exactly a turn-on, now is it?’

  He swore then, several times, my words seeming to have made him angrier than anything I had said before.

  ‘Don’t you do that to yourself. Don’t bring it all down to that.’

  The car jerked sharply into a narrow gravelled forecourt and I noticed with surprise that we had already reached my hotel. He braked sharply in a little flurry of gravel chippings. His rage seemed to fade away with the thrum of the engine and he swivelled towards me, reaching across to lift my chin and tilt my face towards him.

  ‘This scar…’ his finger traced down its raised white-lightning path, almost reverently, ‘it’s nothing. It’s not who you are.’

  I pulled back from his touch, scared by the intimacy. I was tired, I told myself, and in pain, otherwise I would never have allowed him to have got that close. Desperately I sought to bring him back to reality.

  ‘Your girlfriend doesn’t think it’s nothing. She thinks I should get it fixed.’

  ‘Cathy can be… a little thoughtless. She only said that because she’s afraid of you. And jealous.’

  That really made me sit up in my seat.

  ‘She’s what? But why?’

  His next words were so unexpected, I was literally rendered speechless.

  ‘Because she knows I’ve never really got over you. That whatever she and I might have, it’ll never be enough. There’s no future in it for us.’

  Things had gone much too far. I pushed him back so he was more squarely in his own seat.

  ‘And there’s none for us either, Matt,’ I answered firmly. ‘Please don’t say this stuff to me, not again. I don’t want to hurt you, and whatever she might think, I don’t want to hurt Cathy either. If you’re not happy with her… then leave. Don’t use me as the excuse. I’m not the solution to your problems.’

  ‘It’s not that—’

  But I wouldn’t let him finish.

  ‘Look, Matt, I don’t know where this has all come from, but whatever you think was going to happen between us, well, it isn’t.’ I tried to temper the rejection so the remains of the weekend would be at least bearable. ‘Part of me will always…’ I hesitated, anxious not to use the word ‘love’, ‘have feelings for you. You were an important part of my past. But that’s it. An awful thing happened, not just to Jimmy, but to all of us. And this, this feeling that I can’t be with anyone… for now, at least… well, this is how I deal with it.’

  ‘It’s hiding. Not dealing!’

  I stayed silent. That one had been used on me before. But his next words could not be so easily ignored.

  ‘And do you really think this is what Jimmy would have wanted for you? To see you by yourself? For Christ’s sake, Rachel, he was so in love with you he even sacrificed his own life to save yours!’

  I gasped, struck by a pain that dwarfed my headache to the merest of irritations. He saw my reaction and looked stunned by it.

  ‘What? You didn’t know? You couldn’t see it written all over his face whenever he looked at you?’

  This was too much. To hear this again, for the second time in one day, was more than I could bear. I shook my head in denial, my eyes blurring with tears.

  ‘You're wrong. So wrong. We were friends… just friends,’ I whispered softly.

  ‘For you, maybe. But not for him. Everyone else could see it. It was so obvious.’

  I was so confused that my pained brain could hardly function.

  ‘It's not true. I would have known. And he never said anything… not once, not in all those years…’

  Something stirred at the back of my mind. An elusive memory, just out of reach.

  ‘Why do you think he hated me so much?’

  ‘He didn’t hate you.’ I jumped to my lost friend’s defence, but even as I uttered the denial I had to acknowledge that there had always been a frisson of antagonism between the two of them.

  Once more Matt reached out, securing my face between his strong hands. ‘I had you, and he didn’t. There must have been times when he found that unbearable.’

  My heart twisted at the pain I had unknowingly caused. This didn’t make anything better at all. It just made it a million times worse. I pulled back before he could kiss me, for I was certain that was what he had intended.

  ‘I can’t do this, Matt. Don’t do this to me. It’s just not fair.’

  By this time my scrabbling hand had finally found the discreetly positioned door handle. I flung open the door, allowing cold December air and hopefully some sanity into the car. I was unbuckled and out of my seat before he could join me on the passenger side.

  Perhaps he could see the distress he’d caused, or perhaps the brighter illumination from the hotel allowed him to see I really did feel as sick as I’d been claiming, for he sounded conciliatory.

  ‘I’m sorry if I’ve upset you, Rachel.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Just go. Go back to the restaurant. Back to Cathy.’

  He nodded, but he didn’t look happy.

  ‘Will you be all right?’ His eyes searching my face were clearly concerned. ‘You don’t look very well.’

  ‘I’ll be OK. I just need to sleep off this headache. I’ll be fine.’

  I could sense his reluctance to leave me so I summoned up a manufactured smile from some unknown well of strength. ‘Go.’

  He smiled back. ‘I’m not going to give up on you, you know,’ he promised, getting back in his car. ‘You drove me off once but I’m not going to give in so easily this time.’

  ‘Go,’ I repeated, the entreaty threaded through with a note of desperation. And at last he did, the car sweeping across the forecourt and disappearing into the darkness with a flash of brake lights as it entered the flow of traffic.

  As I wearily mounted the three stone steps to the hotel’s foyer, I couldn’t help but think his parting comment had sounded more like a threat than a promise.

  When I finally swiped the key card into its slot and entered my hotel room, I was surprised to see that it was only a little after ten o’clock. It had felt much later. I kicked off my shoes and sank gratefully onto the bed. Drawing a pyramid of pillows up behind me, I switched off all but the bedside lamp and lay back with my eyes closed. The headache was still at fever pitch, and I was afraid it had settled in for the night. I also knew it was far too soon to take more painkillers and at this rate the bottle would be emptied long before the wedding, so I knew I had to start rationing myself.

  I tried for fifteen minutes to clear my mind b
ut it refused to empty. The day kept spooling through my tortured head in slow motion. I saw again and again the look in Janet’s eyes as she spoke of her dead son and how much she said I had always meant to him. I heard again my own denial, the same denial I had uselessly echoed to Matt when he had made the same claim. I couldn’t believe they were both right. That everyone had been right.

  Was it really possible to have been so blind, to have missed such a vital truth in our relationship? These were impossible questions to answer. And the tragedy of knowing I would never, could never, be sure was crumbling my resolve not to allow my thoughts to reach out for Jimmy. I needed him now, at this moment, more than ever; to hear his voice, to look into the smile that always lived in his eyes for me.

  Without pausing to make a conscious decision, I swung my legs off the bed and groped around for my shoes. The lateness of the hour didn’t worry me. I knew there was only one place I could go now to ask these questions, to say what I had to say.

  The night had turned even colder when I once more walked past the bemused doorman who had bidden me goodnight on my way in only twenty minutes before. The cold wind numbed my face as I turned and began walking swiftly to my destination. If challenged, I could always claim that I’d taken the walk to find relief from my headache, but in reality I needed an altogether different kind of solace. And the location held no horrors for me. How could it? There was nothing to fear from a ghost when they were someone you loved.

  The dark streets were almost deserted; it was too cold and late for an evening stroll. My feet crunched lightly on pavements already beginning to glaze with a light frosting of ice. When the wind bit into my face with icy fangs, I burrowed my chin deeper into my scarf and walked into its vicious jaws with steely determination.

  My feet faltered for a second when I rounded the last street corner and the church came into view. It stood alone at the top of a hill, with no shops or houses nearby. Its closest neighbour was the town’s railway station, and that stood almost two miles away. Even on a clear day, the red-bricked station building was completely obscured by the churchyard’s high iron railings. Its isolation was perhaps meant to engender a feeling of peace and tranquillity, but on this dark December night neither of those emotions were foremost in my mind.