I raked my hands through my hair. ‘When I walked into that changing room, I had a horrible moment of realization. It was like I was finally back in my own skin. And I was scared.’
Jo said, ‘Maybe you should go and talk to one of them therapists.’
Ferapists.I smiled. ‘Maybe. There’s no shortage of them in LA.’
Tommy’s eyebrows softened. ‘You’ve never done anything unbalanced like this before,’ he said. ‘Remember that.’
‘But maybe that’s because I didn’t own a mobile phone when I met Reuben. Maybe it’s because the Internet barely existed back then.’
‘No – you’re not crazy, Sarah. If even half what you’ve told us is true, Eddie should have called you.’
I walked round the kitchen island and hugged them both. My friends, the lovers. ‘Thank you, my dear Tommy, my dear Jo. Thank you for not deserting me.’
‘You’re my closest friend,’ Tommy said. ‘Aside from Jo,’ he added quickly.
They were still there when I reappeared forty minutes later with my suitcase. Eating toast made of sliced white bread, the sort Zoe would never tolerate. They looked like they’d been together for years.
I parked my suitcase by the door. ‘Right, then.’
Tommy stood up. ‘Hey, look, Harrington. One last thing before you go. I . . . well, I have to say, I’m still suspicious about Eddie.’
‘Oh, you and me both, Tommy. You and me both.’
He paused. ‘I just . . . It just seems like an enormous coincidence that you met him in that place, at that time.’
A bird tried its first woolly song in the tree outside Zoe’s flat.
‘What do you mean? Do you know something I don’t?’
‘Of course not! I just mean, think about what you were doing the day you met him. Marking the anniversary of the accident, walking along Broad Ride. I think you need to ask yourself why Eddie was there, too. On that day, of all days.’ His eyebrows had taken on a life of their own. ‘Has he got something to hide?’
‘Of course he . . . No. No, Tommy.’
I gave the idea a minute or two of my time and then dismissed it entirely. There was no way. No way on earth.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Dear Eddie,
I’m writing to say I’m sorry.
I ignored all of your signals and instead I bombarded you. I should never have written, and I should never have called you. And I certainly should never have turned up at your football match last night. (I’m guessing you’ve been told.) I cannot tell you how embarrassed I am. I know it won’t make any difference to anything now, but the tiny speck of pride I still possess urges me to tell you I really don’t behave like that normally.
For reasons I don’t fully understand, our meeting and your subsequent silence seem to have brought up a lot of old feelings connected to the car accident I was in nineteen years ago. I think that’s contributed to my insane behaviour.
I’m at Heathrow, about to board a plane to LAX. The sun is shining and I am desperately sad that I’m leaving like this, knowing that I will never see you again, but relieved to be going back there, where I have a busy job, friends, a shot at a new life as a single woman. I will work on whatever happened, and why I behaved the way I did around you. I will fix this. I will fix me.
Still, it would be remiss of me not to say that I found you cowardly and disrespectful for going silent on me like that, and I hope that you will think twice before doing that to another woman. But I accept that that’s what you chose to do on this occasion, and I accept also that you must have had your reasons.
Finally, I wanted to say thank you. Those days we had together were among the brightest of my life. I will remember them for a very long time.
Take care, Eddie, and goodbye.
Sarah x
Chapter Twenty-Eight
DRAFTS FOLDER
