The love he’d felt so sharply had morphed into its equal and opposite: fear.
—
He asked her to meet him to talk—he wanted to give her back the book she had lent him.
And then, after he picked her up, the day had not gone the way that he had hoped.
He had not planned on arguing with her, or crying and begging her to give him her phone. He had not anticipated her walking away, his chasing her and hitting her back when she struck him.
And when she had started screaming, he had notplannedto hit her again and again to make her stop. He had only meant for her to be quiet, but she stopped fighting back, stopped doing anything.
He had notplannedon bundling her up in the boot and driving for ten hours, or to buy supplies from a hardware store and hike for miles with a full load and start a fire—but one thing followed on from another, and he had.
—
He watches the last of the objects in the flames glow white-hot—everything in there was just a shape now. All abstract, nonthreatening, easily forgotten shapes.
Terrifying that no one has stopped him, he thinks, that no one has come to check on the dark smoke tumbling up and up.
Where are all the grown-ups?he wonders.
And while he traveled hundreds of miles not to get caught, part of him is certain he will at any moment. If the wind changes direction, if some part of it all goes slightly differently.
But the vast, rolling woodland around him remains quiet, only the breeze jostling the forest canopy high above and the crackle and pop of the warm fire.
It is almost nice. If only it were slightly different.
The firelight dances across his features, a large red scratch nicked into one cheek, a smear of mud across the other. He’s already decided he’ll need to buy concealer, then smash a glass when he is back at work, so it can be explained—he’ll have to make sure someone sees him doing it.
Simon wipes his wet eyes with a sleeve, recalling her expression as she turned to walk away, and then when he ran to stop her, and she’d spun around, and struck him. The rest a blur until he raised the stone to hit her—that moment, that realization in her eyes. That look would be forever in his mind.
If it weren’t for her parents, he knows, they would have stayedtogether forever, they would have married, had kids of their own, lived an entire life together.
“I’m sorry,” he tells the flames, but they crackle on, unmoved.
There is no way for Simon to go back and change things, no way to go back to their old school, his old life, even though he must. And he will.
He needs to go back, he tells himself, and live a better life, try harder, for Melissa. Simon decides he must pay for what he has done.
He promises the fire, the forest, the objects in the flames, that he will never, ever hurt anyone ever again.
Chapter 36
It’s a Date
The restaurant is achingly cooland everyone is a decade younger than me.
Young women in their twenties, brimming with a joyful confidence that my generation never possessed at their age—busy with their lives, living out in the world.
“Tough day?” Matt asks, noticing my wandering eyes. My attention snaps back to him, in his rumpled preppy outfit, and he laughs. “Tough day, I said?” he repeats gently, refilling my glass.
“Sorry,” I say. “I was just thinking about how busy London is. You can get lost in it, can’t you? In the crowd.”
His forehead creases, genuine concern in his eyes.
“You okay?” he asks. “You regret the move?”
I am not OK. And I am starting to think that I do.
