Page 90 of Carry Me Home

‘Because I hoped I was wrong.’ A pause. ‘And because I thought maybe, if she wasn’t interested, you’d eventually see what was in front of you.’ She smiles, and it’s sad but it’s not bitter, and the absence of bitterness is the thing that breaks me. ‘And because I meant every word about the practice. You’re a brilliant vet. We’d be brilliant together. That part was real.’

‘I know it was.’

‘Scotland is real too. The listing. The partnership. All of it.’ She drinks her tea. ‘The question is whether you want it. Whether any of it – me, the practice, a whole new life – is enough. Or whether you’re going to keep standing in this village, watching those fairy lights, waiting for someone who might never turn around.’

I look at my tea. I look at the window, the harbour dark beyond it, the faint glow of the café lights through the glass.

‘She asked me why I show up,’ I say. ‘And I couldn’t tell her the truth, Cara. She’s holding Peter’s ring. She’s standing on my doorstep falling apart. I can’t make that about me.’

‘Noble.’ Cara says it gently, not mockingly. ‘That’s always been your problem, Tom. You’re so busy being noble that you forget to be honest.’

‘If I’d told her⁠—’

‘If you’d told her, she’d know. And then she’d have to decide. And that terrifies you more than the waiting, doesn’t it? Because the waiting has a shape. It’s familiar. You’ve built your whole life around it.’ She sets down her mug. ‘But if she knew, and she chose – really chose, one way or the other – the waiting would be over. And you’d have to build something else.’

The kitchen is quiet. The kettle clicks as it cools. Through the window, the fairy lights persist.

‘I need you to hear me,’ Cara says. ‘Not as the woman who wants you – though I am that, and I’m not ashamed of it. As your friend. As someone who cares about you.’ She leans forward. ‘You deserve to be someone’s first choice, Tom. Not their constant. Not their safety net. Not the person they call at midnight because they know you’ll always answer. You deserve someone who chooses you on purpose. In daylight. With their eyes open.’

The words land in the quiet kitchen and stay there.

‘Can you honestly tell me,’ she says, ‘that Nina has ever chosen you? Not defaulted to you. Not relied on you. Chosen you?’

I open my mouth. Close it.

‘Think about Scotland,’ Cara says. She reaches across the table and squeezes my hand – once, firm, certain. ‘Not as an escape. As a beginning. A life where you’re not waiting anymore. Where someone actually sees you.’

She stands. Rinses her mug. Stops at the doorway.

‘Whatever you decide,’ she says, ‘I’ll respect it. But decide, Tom. Please. For everyone’s sake.’

She goes to her room. The door closes softly.

I sit at the kitchen table for a long time.

The mug goes cold. The kitchen goes dark. Through the window, the fairy lights glow – stubborn, persistent, left on by a woman who doesn’t know I watch them every night.

Nina’s face on the doorstep. The trainers with no socks. The laces in the puddle. The way she’d said your friend like she was tasting something that had gone off.

Cara’s hand on mine. Warm. Certain. You deserve to be someone’s first choice.

And underneath both – the thing I couldn’t say. The truth I swallowed on the doorstep because the timing was wrong, because it’s always wrong, because I have been waiting for the right moment for eleven years and I am starting to understand that the right moment doesn’t exist.

I sit in the dark until dawn steals through the window.

Then I pick up my phone and I look at the listing Cara sent me. The practice in Inverness. The photographs – green hills, a stone building, a view of the loch. A whole different life, laid out like a road.

I don’t decide anything.

But I don’t close the page either.

Chapter Nineteen

TOM

Sunday lunch at my parents’ house is never quiet.

‘Pass the potatoes.’