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She must have heard the pain in my voice, because she reached across the table and took my hands. She squeezed tight, looked into my eyes.
"I’m sorry," she murmured. "I just...the way everyone has been talking since you left. I had to know. I had to hear it from you."
I let my head lower down and close my eyes. Everyone had been talking. So much so that even Mallory had started to question what she knew about me. When I had been going for the complete new start, this was hardly what I’d had in mind.
"You know I trust you, right?" She promised me at once, as soon as she saw the pain that was written on my face. "You know that I trust you. I just had to know. I had to know so that I could remind myself of that every time I heard someone talking..."
"So you hear them talking a lot, huh?" I asked quietly. She winced, and then nodded.
"I do," she admitted. "I don’t think...I don’t think you should come back yet, Abi. I don’t think it’s time."
Those words weighed heavy on me. I wanted to return, of course I did, but how could I do that when everything was just sofucked?I didn’t know what I could do to try and convince the people who mattered that I wasn’t some harlot out here trying to get with students as soon as they were old enough to walk out of the high school with a diploma. I hated that that was how I was viewed now, and I couldn’t imagine getting out from under the weight of that name, of that title, of that reputation. If there was one thing that this town was known for, it was holding on to the past. You didn’t get to just let go of what you had been before. People who had moved here twenty years ago were still calledincomers.The history that you left behind, it wasn’t so easily gotten rid of.
Joseph had been off at the rig for a couple of weeks, and that had left me with a whole lot to handle by myself. I supposed it was good, in some ways, not to be able to lose myself in him and forget about all my problems; I had to face up to what was right there in front of me, and God only knew how badly I needed to do that. But I wanted to bury my face in his chest and have him hold me and tell me that everything was going to be just fine.
The thing was, it was hard not to connect this back to him at the end of the day. I didn’t want him tied up in these thoughts inside my head, but the truth was, he was part of them – he had been the reason for all of this in the first place, and escaping that truth wasn’t going to be easy. Sometimes, when I thought of it, something stirred in me, some mixture of anger and love and guilt and worry, the fears that I would always hold these feelings towards him and that moving on from them was going to be impossible. I couldn’t handle losing him on top of everything else. I had lost enough so far already, and the thought of having to let go of him too – well, it just made all of this seem even more useless.
But that time by myself, it gave me the space to come to terms with the fact that I was going to need to hand in my notice.
I couldn’t stay at the school, not really. I couldn’t go back there and be wracked with the judgment of the people who wouldn’t so much as let their children around me any longer. The thought of living a life like that, it was too much for me to bear; I had to go out and start over somehow. Even if the investigation that they were carrying out came up with nothing, which I was totally sure that it would, the memories would linger long in the heads of the people who I was going to have to be around as long as I stayed there.
If it had been enough to get inside Mallory’s head, then it would be enough to have them questioning me for the rest of my life in that school.
I cried the day I handed in my notice. I didn’t want to leave. That place had been my home for so long, the thought of letting it go actually hurt me.
"Are you sure this is what you really want?" Jonah had asked me, when I had come into the school under cover of the sports day to give him my notice. I didn’t want anyone to pay any attention to me being there; the fewer people that saw me, the better. I ached as I walked past my classroom, which had been run by a substitute, Mallory had informed me; apparently, she was good, but not nearly as good as me. But then, what else was my best friend going to say about her? I nodded to Jonah, gathering all my strength.
"Yes, I am," I replied. "I can’t come back here, Jonah. Not knowing that all of you thought I was capable of doing something as awful as that."
He winced. He knew that I had a point. They had done something that I would never be able to get past; they had believed that I was some predator, out to collect the pelts of the boys who came through those doors.
"Besides, you really think most of those parents out there will be happy with the thought of me around their kids?" I pointed out, gesturing to the window, where the sports day was taking place. The sounds of their shrieks and laughs were enough to make my heart ache, but I managed to hold myself together. I didn’t want them to know that this was hurting me as much as it was. There was still something in my guts that told me to have some pride. If this was a break-up, and that was just what it felt like, then I had to make like it was my choice to come through and be the one to end it.
"I know," He agreed. "But I believe you, for what it’s worth. I wish that gossip didn’t stick so badly in places like this. You know that I would have kept you on, right?"
I smiled at him. That was good to hear, at least – someone still had my back.
"And if you need a reference for anywhere else," he continued. "I’ll be more than happy to provide it for you. With no mention of all of this."
"Thanks," I replied, and I meant it. I was so choked up that I couldn’t come out with anything more effusive, and I knew that I was going to have to make it out of there before I started weeping right there in the middle of his office. Jonah was a good man, but he was also one who had little clue how to react to emotion, and he wouldn’t have had a clue what to do with me.
I bid him farewell and made it back to my car before the tears really started to fall out of me. I wept in the car, trying to hold myself together, trying to figure out what came next, but nothing came to mind. I knew they always said that you shouldn’t look back, but it was impossible when what lay behind me was still what I wanted, so badly. How could what was to come be better than that?
Joseph was back the next day, thank goodness, so I would have some company to keep me sane. I wasn’t sure that I would have been able to make it through if it hadn’t been for him. By the time that he came to my door, I was ready to fall into his arms and just let him hold me while I cried all of this out of my system and tried to scrub it free. I was ready to let go, to move on, and I knew that I was only going to be able to do that by pushing through the tsunami of emotions that were controlling me in that moment.
But when I opened the door to let him in, I was greeted by his smiling face. Smiling? What was he smiling about? I had told him what I had done, and I would have expected him turning up with a bottle of wine and a hug ready and waiting for me.
"Abigail, there’s something I have to tell you," he began with excitement, and he kissed me on the mouth and stepped into my flat. I watched him in total shock; I had no clue how I was meant to react to this.
"What’s going on?" I asked, voice tiny. I hadn’t had much cause to use it since I had quit my job, and it felt dusty, like there were weights attached to it.
He sat down on the couch, and held out his hands for me; he pulled me into his lap and I landed there with a slight squeak of surprise. I couldn’t help but smile. When he had me in his arms, I could fool myself into believing that everything was going to be just fine, even when it was such a huge mess.
"I got offered a new job," He explained. "In Orkney."
"In Orkney?" I replied, my heart dropping. If he had to move all the way out there, then we would be so far apart – seeing each other was hard enough as it was, I didn’t want him to go anywhere else.
"It’s an engineering job, so I won’t be out in the middle of the sea most of the time – it'll be a nine-to-five, an office," he explained. "I’ll be able to be close to home all the time."
