CHAPTER 31
At seven, I walked to the end of the passage and, sure enough, there it was: an old, wooden door that looked like it hadn’t been used in years. I opened it and peered inside. It was dark and not very inviting. In fact, it was reminiscent ofanyscene from a horror movie—take your pick.
Girl walks into strange, dark passage, only to be eaten by a man wearing a clown suit and holding a red balloon . . . TheItsoundtrack started playing in my head. My head has always been filled with soundtracks for as long as I can remember. Listening to music when I was younger was a kind of escape for me.
I still remember the first CD I ever got, as if it were yesterday. I’d saved all my pocket money for it. Roxette,Crash! Boom! Bang!(three exclamation marks!!!)—God, I thought they were so cool; her, with her short, white hair, and him . . . my first official celebrity crush. Although, looking back now, I’m not sure what it was that appealed to my ten-year-old self. Mind you, he’s probably one of the least embarrassing celebrity crushes I’ve had in my life. Let’s just say there was a point in time when I thought the guy from Nickelback was quite the catch. I shuddered, just thinking about it. Now, when a Nickelback song came on the radio, I couldn’t wait to turn it off.
I walked into the dark corridor, put my phone torch on and waved it about. This corridor looked old and unused, and I wondered why it had been built in the first place. I wondered what clandestine things had happened in here—I could almost see them, if I closed my eyes. Secret illuminati meetings, mysterious men in long, purple, velvet coats, or women with caldrons and the skulls of small creatures. My imagination started running wild, as it usually did. I finally reached the end of the passage and was just about to knock on the door when I heard a car coming up the driveway. I looked out the small, dusty window, and my blood flash froze.
What the hell was he doing here?Wait, was it even him? Or were my eyes deceiving me? I blinked a few times to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. But I wasn’t.
I watched, my jaw dropping in horror, as the police car drove up the driveway and came to a stop. I held my breath, waiting to see who was going to climb out, waiting to see if it was . . .
Yup! Fuck! It was him. Mike. Magic, mystical Mike really knew how to appear out of thin air when you least expected it. I watched as he strode up the driveway towards the house. I moved to get a better look. And—boy, oh boy—did I get alookalright. Ash came out the house, she walked up to him and then . . . they hugged.
Hug. (Verb)Squeeze (someone) tightly in one’s arms, typically to express affection.
“Bastard,” I hissed, under my breath. No wonder he rushed off. No wonder he left me holding the condoms. Clearly, he’d had some kind of last-minute guilt crisis, or needed to rush back to his wife, or girlfriend. My heart thumped and I felt more wounded than I think I should have felt. I took a step backwards, away from the window, and my back crashed into something—a wooden wall. The sound was loud and suddenly I heard Ash’s voice.
“Sam, hang on! I’m coming!”
Shit!I couldn’t let Mike see me here, and so I ran. I bolted up the dark passage. But then it seemed to split. Wait—I hadn’t noticed this before.Which way was I meant to go?I heard the door open behind me and I went right. I went right and I didn’t look back. I raced down the passage and pushed the door open and . . .Cold air?
It took me a second to realize that I was now outside, in the back garden. I looked around, disorientated. A stone fountain, a rose garden and, far behind that, horses’ stables. I’d clearly taken the wrong turn.Typical.
“Sam?” I heard Ash call again.
“Who are you looking for?” It was Mike talking this time.
“I invited one of our guests for dinner. I thought I’d heard her at the door.”
I ran through the garden to the front of the house, grabbing my car keys out of my handbag as quickly as I could. I jumped into my car and pulled off, doing a little wheelspin as I raced out of there.
How was this possible?Out of all the accommodation in the town, what were the chances that I would land up staying at the place where Mike lived, or was visiting? This was too much of a coincidence—or was it more than that? My stomach plummeted, like it had in the elevator.What was going on?
I drove. I didn’t know where I was going, but I just knew I needed to be as far away from that house as possible, as far away from Mike. There were two reasons, really. One: he was going to arrest me if he saw me again. And two: I’m not going to lie, my heart was feeling just as bruised as my ego was to learn that he had a partner. Suddenly, his line about wishing we had met “under different circumstances” took on a whole new meaning.
I felt an all-too-familiar tug on my ribcage. I recognized that feeling. The same one that comes from hearing those words from your work colleague:But everyone knows he has a girlfriend.He was the editor at the paper where I worked as a junior journalist. Her words came too late, though; I’d already given him my heart on a silver platter after our romantic weekend away in the winelands, where we’d drunk fine wine and made love until noon. He’d happily taken my heart and then deceived me—the young, naïve junior writer with stars in her eyes at the famous, award-winning editor, who’d hired her and taken her under his wing. And then I’d done something I deeply regretted: I’d continued my affair with him, even after I knew about his girlfriend. I can justify this by telling you how many times he told me it was over between them, how many times he told me she meant nothing to him and I meant everything and he was ending it today. But, honestly, there isn’t really a good enough justification for becoming the other woman.
I drove all the way to the outskirts of town and found myself right back at the same gas station I’d been at that morning. I pulled into the parking lot and looked at the time. There was only one thing to do, now. I was officially out of options. I was going to wait here until it was late enough that he and Ash would be asleep, then I would creep back to Sugar Manor, pack my bags and leave. Leave without a book, and just face whatever consequences would come of that.
But, strangely enough, for the first time, the thought actually made me feel relieved. I could finally let go, now. Let go of writing this book that seemed so hard and insurmountable.
I breathed a sigh of relief and suddenly I wanted to cry. All this lying and breaking-and-entering, and plagiarizing wasn’t me, and I could finally let go of it. I looked at the convenience store. The wordshot dogflashed at me in neon lights, so I climbed out and grabbed a few. I would sit in my car and stuff my face until it was safe to return, and then I’d get the hell out of this strange little town. And get as far away from Mike as possible.
