I’m stunned into silence. The memory of that evening comes flooding back, and I swallow a painful lump. That party was over seven months ago. She’d known since then?
“Obviously, I had my suspicions long before that, but that was the first time I understood . . . how deep this went,” she says.
It takes me a while to pull a single coherent thought from my head. “Does Megan know?”
What I really want to ask her is if she thinks Eggo feels the same about me? Is he . . . is there . . . any possibility he could . . . be in love with me too?
And whether his girlfriend, Megan, has any inkling. They have a strange relationship, stranger than anything Georgia and I had, but I can’t see them splitting up over me.
I don’t ask that, though. I don’t think I’ll ever be ready to hear those truths.
She doesn’t answer my question anyway. “Megan is Megan.”
“What does that mean?”
It’s Georgia’s turn to stare at me silently for a few minutes. “She knows.” She pauses again, choosing her words. “We talk about it often. But Megan and Finn have other issues they need to resolve first.”
First?
“You could probably help if you talked to him. Tell him how you fee—”
“No, I can’t do that.”
She waits for an explanation. I can’t give her one.
“He has a kid. He’s a dad,” I say. It’s not the real reason I could never admit my true feelings, but it’s the best I can come up with at short notice.
“I’ve seen pictures. Logan’s cute as heck.” Georgia shrugs like she can’t see the problem either.
“Eventually he’s going to move back to Newquay to be closer to him.” I’m not sure why saying their names, Finn and Logan, is so difficult. It’s as though the words get stuck in my throat, like swallowing painkillers dry.
“Cornwall’s lovely. Honestly, it’s a veryyouplace,” Georgia says, giving me one of her more patronising looks.
“That’s not what I meant.”
She sighs. “You aren’t moving back to Australia. We both know that. You might want to visit occasionally, but can you imagine retiring from the Cents and going home to your family? I’m not being rude, Aid, but . . . I fucking hate them. If you’re gonna stay in the UK, you could do a lot worse than the beautiful golden beaches of Cornwall. You’ve been there. You know what it’s like. Fishing villages, farmland, cream teas, pasties . . . more National Trust properties than you can shake a stick at.”
I actually laugh. I fucking love a good castle or historical manor house to wander about in. “Damn.”
I love Australia. I miss Perth. I miss the landscapes and the beaches and the wildlife and the arts festivals and the summers and the weather. Fuck, I miss the weather, especially during winter in Bath when it’s minus four degrees and there’s rain inside my fucking wellies.
But at leastthey’renot here.
My family. I can handle seeing them every other year when I fly home for a fortnight, but to move back there . . .
A knot twists in my stomach. Suddenly, six weeks over the off season instead of the standard two seems a lot more daunting than when I booked my flights.
“Just because I can’t stand walking around castles in freezing sideways rain, or sweating to death inside a museum, doesn’t mean Finn and Logan will hate it too.” She laughs, perhaps remembering all the times she vociferously protested yet another visit to a historical site. She complained so often that eventually I just stopped asking her to accompany me.
That was probably the first sign of her tapping out.
“Can I ask you something?” I say.
Georgia knocks her runner against mine. “What d’you wanna know?”
I take a moment to gather my thoughts, order my words, and realise that no amount of philosophising will ever organise this mess inside my head. “When did feelings get so . . . vast?”
She laughs. “What?”
