Page 48 of The Christmas Letter

‘Sorry,’ Holly muttered, and dragged her suitcase around her. Her eyes were stinging. God, she was going to cry. She needed to get out of here – out of this office, and out of London.

‘No problem,’ the woman said, even as Holly was already moving away. ‘Hey, were you just coming out of Jack’s office? I didn’t mean to cut your meeting short—’

‘No, I wasn’t with Jack,’ Holly said quickly, and left, practically at a run, managing to catch the lift just as the doors were closing.

Was that her, Jack’s wife? Either way, it wasn’t on Holly, to explain. To explain what? she wondered. Nothing had happened between them. Nothing. So why did she feel like this, after two days? Why did she feel like something was tearing at her insides?

Because of Emma. Because she’d messed it up, again – and now, any chance of reuniting Emma and Jack was lost. And what if Emma got worse? What if there wasn’t another chance? What if . . .? But no, she wouldn’t let her mind go down that road.

She reached the ground floor and tore through the reception, heading out to the grey and the cold. And then she fled, away from this mess and towards the safety of her home and Abi. Abi, who had been right, as usual. Because it had been wrong of Holly to get involved. Wrong of her, to think that she, of all people, could be the one to fix what was broken.

June

Chapter Sixteen

Jack stared at the front door. At his front door. This should not be difficult, for Christ’s sake – he still owned half the damn flat. Though they’d bought in Balham because that’s where Vanessa had wanted to live, compromising on the space – and the garden – that they could have had if they’d gone for somewhere on the outskirts of London, as he’d suggested. But still.

He squared his shoulders and knocked. He had a key, but after nearly nine months not setting foot in the place, it felt kind of rude to use it.

Vanessa opened the door. Wearing a blue dress to match her eyes, her blonde hair neat as always. She seemed to wake up with that hair – in two years of marriage, he’d never seen it anything other than perfect and honestly, he didn’t know how she did it.

She smiled – and it was only because he knew her so well that he saw the tentativeness of it.

‘Well, hi there, stranger.’

‘Vanessa.’

Her lips twisted. ‘So formal.’

‘You asked me to come, so I’m here, ok?’

She sighed as she stood aside to let him into the flat. It was hot – it had always been too hot in here in summer. He followed her through the hallway and into the living room – wooden flooring, with a big, patterned rug that Vanessa had spent a fortune on in the centre of the room, two leather sofas he didn’t recognise at its edges. It was weird, to see the flat looking so hers, with no sign he’d ever lived there, even though it shouldn’t have come as a surprise – he’d moved his stuff out six months ago. Not that he’d had a lot of stuff, but the painting they’d bought together, the one which made him chuckle – of a man looking totally baffled as he turned in his seat to see who was there – had been taken down, and, of course, none of his books were shelved on the bookcase anymore. The few photos he’d put on the top – initially at Vanessa’s insistence to make the place feel ‘homey’ – were also gone, still in boxes at his rental flat.

Vanessa headed to the square wooden coffee table in the middle of the living room. She bent down, picked up a few papers, then held one out to him. ‘I wanted to show you these,’ she said, and though her body language was calm, he could hear the tightness in her voice. Well, good. At least he wasn’t the only one who felt uncomfortable and strange.

He glanced down at the paper she was holding and felt a little jolt. He didn’t need to take it to know what it was, but he did anyway, staring down at the county court stamp, his and Vanessa’s names printed at the top. She’d never taken his surname – neither of them had been bothered about it – but somehow the different surnames, Tooley and Fox, seemed to jump out at him, announcing the fact that they were completely different entities now. That maybe they always had been.

He glanced at Vanessa. She was watching him, her hands twisting together in front of her. ‘It’s official?’ he asked.

She dropped her hands to her sides. ‘It’s official.’

He looked down again. The final divorce order. Proof that the marriage had been ‘dissolved’, nine months after filing. He put the paper back on the coffee table. He didn’t want to hold it, this document that proved how epically he’d managed to fail.

‘You could have just told me this over the phone,’ he said with a sigh. All the paperwork was sent to this flat, because he hadn’t had a permanent address when they’d separated. Which they’d done after she’d arrived home late one night and told him that she’d cheated on him.

‘I know, but I wanted to see you. Thought it was the kind of thing we should do in person.’

He couldn’t think of what to say to that. Do how, exactly, he wondered? There was nothing to sign this time.

The last time he’d seen her was when she’d come into the office because she needed a signature on one of the forms that they’d missed first time around. He’d been ignoring her calls and so she’d taken it upon herself to just turn up. He still cringed at the memory of Mike’s voice, on speaker. Your wife’s here. Still remembered Holly’s expression, shocked and hurt. He shouldn’t have let her believe he was married. It was cruel, something he’d done only because he had felt hurt, angry that she’d tracked him down and hadn’t told him why, then thrown it on him like that, asking for something he couldn’t give. He’d told Mike a dozen times to stop calling Vanessa his wife. Vanessa herself had stopped when they began the proceedings back in October – and in March, they’d already had the decree nisi. But while Mike had many good qualities, following directions wasn’t one of them.

‘Want a drink?’ Vanessa asked, heading for the kitchen.

Jack raised his eyebrows. ‘Are we celebrating?’ But he followed her anyway – it felt weird, to be standing in the living room alone.

Vanessa gave a sad little headshake. ‘Whatever you may think of me, Jack, I do not deem a failed marriage to be a cause for celebration.’

He blew out a breath. ‘Fine, yeah. Let’s have a drink.’ He leaned against the granite counter as she opened the fridge – a fancy, bloody expensive one that had a wooden door to make it look like a cupboard.