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She focused on the fire and felt her cheeks burn. “Seeing anyone?” she said as casually as she could manage.
“No,” was the barked reply.
Relief almost swamped her. She scrambled around for something else to discuss.
“What about...”
“Enough,” Alastair said. “I’m done talking.”
Rainne let out a heavy breath. “Help me out here, will you? If you don’t talk to me I’m going to drive us both crazy worrying about this whole situation. Distract me. Please. Talk about anything. Tell me about fishing. Or your dad. Or the shop. Or the football games you watch. Anything. I’ll listen to anything.”
He took a step towards her and suddenly the room seemed far too small for both of them. “You want me to talk, Rainne? You sure about that? You want me to chat with you like things aren’t heavy between us? You want me to talk to you the way you wouldn’t talk to me three years ago? Every time I look at you, I remember how it felt when you shut the door in my face.” His face was stone. All emotion gone. No, that wasn’t entirely right. There was anger. “What a fool I was. Running after you to Glasgow, hoping to convince you to come back. And you couldn’t even bring yourself to talk to me. You would have thought I’d learned my lesson when I was a kid—women always leave. You can’t trust them. My da learned that the hard way when my mum walked out on us when I was nine. And you reinforced the lesson when you tucked tail and ran three years ago. So you’ll forgive me if I don’t want to chat. The time for talking has passed.”
He pushed past her and slammed into the tiny bathroom, snapping the door closed behind him. Rainne stared after him, shock flooding her body. She’d known his parents were divorced. He’d never mentioned his mother, and now she knew why. This situation between them was so much worse than she could have imagined. The damage she’d done to Alastair by leaving was huge. She’d abandoned a guy with abandonment issues.
The bathroom door opened. Alastair stalked out. He didn’t look at her.
“I’m sorry,” Rainne said.
He stared at the glow of the firelight. Rainne cautiously closed the distance between them. Her fingers itched with the need to touch him. To comfort him. But she didn’t.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I didn’t know.”
He turned his head slightly to loo
k at her. “You never asked.”
The words were a blow. The memory of their time together played out in fast forward in her head. They’d only had a few months together before she’d left, and they’d spent it dealing with her problems. He’d listened to her worries. He’d comforted her when she was upset about her family. He’d been there for her. And she couldn’t remember ever asking about him. Not in any way that mattered. It had been all about her. She hung her head in shame.
“I was so selfish. All about me. My problems. My emotions.” She barked a mirthless laugh as she took a step towards him, her heart heavy with the realisation of exactly how awful she’d been. She tentatively reached out to touch his arm. “I am so sorry, Alastair. For all of it. For being self-centred. For only caring about me. For not trusting that you knew your own mind. For not believing you when asked me to stay. For running away. I’m sorry.”
She hung her head for a second. There was nothing else to say. She withdrew her hand from him, wrapped her arms around herself and turned away. They stood like that for an eternity. Alone, together in the same small space. Alastair staring into the fire. Rainne staring into the darkness. Rainne wanted nothing more than to be somewhere else. She was making everything worse just by being near him.
Not once when thinking about coming back to talk to Alastair had she considered the effect it might have on him. The memories she might bring up. The pain she might cause. She hadn’t changed at all. She was still the self-obsessed girl who’d left years ago. The one who only cared about finding herself. The one who only cared about herself full stop. She wiped a tear from her eye. She didn’t deserve to cry. Not when she was the one who caused the mess she’d ended up in.
“I thought it was my fault.” Alastair’s voice was low, as though he was thinking out loud.
Rainne turned towards him and saw he was still staring into the orange flames. She waited.
“I was a lot of trouble as a kid. Too loud. Too needy. I was always getting into scrapes. And I didn’t sleep much. She was always telling me I needed to stay in bed and sleep, that she needed the peace. I didn’t get it. I just wanted to be around her. She said I was too clingy. Always wanting attention.” He paused, and Rainne’s heart broke for the little boy who’d been abandoned by the mother he loved so desperately. She wiped another silent tear from her cheek, but didn’t move and didn’t make a sound. She didn’t want to break the moment.
“I heard them arguing the morning she left.” He folded his arms, his head bowed. “She said she’d never wanted to be a mother. She told him she’d never have married him if she hadn’t been pregnant with me. We were holding her back. She’d planned a grand future and it wasn’t going to happen in Invertary. Not with a needy wee boy clinging to her all the time and a husband who worked all hours. She packed her things and left. I never saw her again. We don’t even know where she went. London, I think. Maybe.”
Rainne waited. The silence a blanket around them.
“Da went into the sitting room and shut the door once she’d gone. I snuck past him and ran down the street after her. She was wearing her pink dress, the one she’d spent a week’s shopping money on and made Da angry. I grabbed her round the hips and looked up at her. I can still see her face. Her lips were bright pink and her hair was white blonde. Bottle blonde, they call it. I begged her not to leave.” He lifted his head and looked at her. “You know what her last words to me were?”
Rainne shook her head as the tears fell down her cheeks unchecked.
“They were: Go away, Alastair, and stop annoying me for once.”
“Oh, Alastair,” Rainne whispered.
“I never figured it out,” he said, sounding genuinely confused.
She was terrified to ask, but the words tumbled out anyway. “Figured what out?”
She waited for the pain his answer would bring. Pain for the small boy who was unwanted. For the man who’d been rejected.
