by Nicci French
'Maybe, maybe not.'
Where will you go?' I asked.
There was a pause and she looked at me intently, as if she were committing my face to memory.
'Abroad. But it's probably better if I don't tell you.'
'You're probably right.'
'I know I'm right.'
'Good luck,' I said. 'I'll be thinking of you.'
'What will you do?'
'Nothing.'
'Nothing?'
'I've got six years. I'll take that, a day at a time, and I'm going to try to love as well as I have hated. After that – well, I'll see.'
'Oh,' she said faintly. 'So you're still waiting?'
I winced. But in a way of course she was right. I was still waiting for Brendan and when he came I would be ready for him, like a soldier who can feel his enemy approaching even in his sleep.
'We'll never meet again, will we?'
'I guess not.'
'This is goodbye,' I said and smiled at her for the first time.
We both reached out at the same time; our hands met in a fierce grip. We stared into each other's eyes and didn't look away.
'It was probably wrong, wasn't it?' she said. 'I try to imagine myself justifying it to people and I'm not sure I could, except…'
'To save your life,' I said.
'I hope so,' she said. 'So what about you? Are you telling your… your boyfriend?'
'Don?' I said. 'I think I should. But I won't. I'd better keep it to myself
There was nothing really left to say. We let our hands drop back to our sides.
'Goodbye,' she said.
'Goodbye.'
She turned and walked back the way she had come and I watched her figure getting smaller and smaller, until it was a dot on the horizon, until it was nothing at all. Then I turned too, into the stiffening wind, and went back over the bleak marshland under the circling birds, back to the old grey church and my car. Back along the small road to the larger one, to the motorway; back to the teeming city where my life was. Back up the stairs to Don.
'I'm home,' I said, listening to the word as I spoke it. I repeated it, to make sure. 'Home.'
'I missed you.'
'Well,' I said, kissing him. 'I'm here now.'
Dearest Troy, I think I need to let you go now. I don't know how I'll manage without you, but I'm going to try.
I'm sorry.
Nicci French
Nicci French is a journalist who lives in Suffolk. She is the author of six bestselling novels: The Memory Game, The Safe House, Killing Me Softly, Beneath the Skin, The Red Room and Land of the Living.
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