Page 88 of Carry Me Home

I should lie. I should say I meant I understood, that I could see what she was saying. I should say anything other than the truth I’ve been carrying for eight months like a stone in each pocket.

But she’s standing here in pyjamas with no socks and her face is destroyed, and I can’t.

‘I was there,’ I say. ‘When he bought it. He asked me to come.’

The silence is absolute. No harbour sounds, no gulls, no wind. Just Nina’s breathing and my own.

‘You were with him.’

‘He wanted a second opinion. He was nervous – And you know Peter, Nina. He was never nervous, but he was nervous about this. He must have looked at fifty rings.’ I can hear my own voice and it sounds like someone else’s. ‘He chose the aquamarine because he said it was the colour of the sea off Treloar’s Point. He said you’d know what it meant.’

Nina looks down at the box. Opens it. The stone catches the streetlight – pale blue with just the faintest hint of green, the colour of water, the colour of everything she’s lost.

‘He chose this,’ she says. Then, harder: ‘And you watched him choose it.’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ve known all this time?’

I nod, not trusting my words or my voice.

‘Months.’ Her voice has flattened into a register I don’t recognise, where there is no warmth, no wryness, no Nina. Just the stripped-back sound of a woman recalculating everything she thought she knew. ‘Months of sitting across from me in the café. Of bringing me tea and fixing my windows and finding me a dog. Months of holding my hand when a storm hits, or the rescue alarm goes off. Months of smiling at me, while the whole time…’ The shake of her head is small, but its effect on my heart is catastrophic.

‘Nina—’

‘Who else knows?’ She cuts across me. ‘Brynn? Jude? Has everyone been keeping this secret while I’ve been—’ She presses her hand to her mouth. Takes it away. ‘Was anyone going to tell me? Or was I going to find it alone at midnight in a dead man’s sock drawer?’

‘I wanted to protect you.’

‘Protect me.’ Flat. Lethal. ‘From what? From knowing my boyfriend loved me?’

‘From more pain. You were already⁠—’

‘Don’t.’ The word snaps out between us. ‘Don’t tell me what I was. You don’t get to decide what I can handle, Tom. You don’t get to sit there with your patience and your fuchsias and your’—she gestures at me, at the surgery, at the half-closed door behind me—‘your whole quiet martyrdom thing and deciding that I need protecting. Deciding for me.’

‘That’s not what I was doing.’

‘Then what? Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you’ve been carrying around this piece of my life – my life – and not mentioning it. For months. While I’ve been talking to you about Peter, about missing him, about not knowing how to move on. And the whole time you knew.’

The streetlight hums above us.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I didn’t know how to tell you.’

‘You could have opened your mouth. That’s how telling works.’ She’s shaking, but not with grief anymore. ‘You could have said, Nina, there’s something you should know. You could have trusted me to handle it instead of treating me like I’m made of glass.’

‘I wasn’t⁠—’

‘You were. You’ve been doing it for years. Standing on the sidelines. Being patient. Being there. What I don’t know is why.’ Her voice cracks on why, and for a second the anger gives way. ‘Why do you do it, Tom? Why do you show up every day? Why do you water the fuchsias and fix the shutters and sit on my kitchen floor at three in the morning?’

The question hangs between us. The real question. The one underneath all the others.

I could answer it. Right here, right now, on the surgery doorstep at half one in the morning, I could tell her the truth. I could say: Because I love you. Because I’ve loved you since I was sixteen. Because I heard you say it was like kissing your brother and I stayed anyway because the alternative was a world without you in it and that world was not survivable.

I don’t say it. Because she’s angry and she’s hurt and she’s holding another man’s ring, and telling her now would be the most selfish thing I’ve ever done. It would turn her grief into my confession. It would make this moment about me instead of about Peter.

So I say, ‘Because you’re my friend.’

The word friend lands between us like an avalanche.