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Take the day he’d first noticed her. He’d been in the year above, already cultivating a rep for being a waste of good teaching resources. The rest of his class had gone on a history trip to the Tower of London that day, but because he’d failed to bring in the permission slip and the five-pound coach fee—as if he was going to risk a kicking from his dad to pinch a fiver for some dopey school outing—he’d been forced to join Hal’s Year Ten drama class.
Sulky and pissed off with himself, because if he’d remembered the stupid trip he would have bunked off, he was not in the mood to do some stupid trust exercise, especially when the teacher had paired him with Hal. Short and cute thanks to a soft layer of puppy fat, she had looked like a studious pixie, her hair sticking up all over the shop. She’d sent him an excited smile and he’d slapped her down, telling her he wasn’t going to do the stupid stunt, which involved falling backwards into her arms, because she probably caught like a girl. She’d surprised him, though, with her ballsy comeback: ‘Fine, then, you sexist snot-bag, you can catch me.’
He’d stood too far back, ready to let her crash to earth for calling him a snot-bag, but secretly expecting her to step back, because everyone did when they started to fall, didn’t they? But not little Haley Dunlop. She’d spread her arms out like Christ on the cross, straightened her spine and launched herself into thin air. And gone down like a plank. They’d ended up in a heap on the floor, him jumping in to break her fall at the last second before she broke her stupid neck.
But instead of bitching at him, or blabbing to the teacher, she’d laughed, the sunny expression returning as she dusted herself off and said: ‘If that’s how boys catch, it’s a good thing I catch like a girl.’
Reconciling that brave, eager, witty girl with the woman sitting across the aisle from him earlier was impossible. How could that girl, who only three years after their first meeting had screamed her head off through fifteen excruciating hours of labour, but still came out smiling when their newborn daughter was placed in her arms, have been so irrationally terrified of taking off she’d practically given herself lockjaw?
She fronted a live TV show every week. That had to require a lot of guts. She ran her own business empire and had brought up two kids virtually solo. How could she not still be Indestructible Haley?
But as he’d observed her sweating and trembling and trying to hold it together with every last ounce of her strength, he couldn’t shake the conviction that the fact she didn’t feel lucky any more was down to him.
He’d hurt her. He’d always known that. By bolting like that without a word. But, at the time, he hadn’t had a choice. It was either get out or get sectioned. That didn’t mean he hadn’t felt like shit about what he’d done once he’d pulled himself together. But, until ten minutes ago, he’d had no problems qualifying the guilt.
Especially when Halle had made such a staggering success of her life on the back of his desertion. Because she hadn’t just scraped a nil-all draw away to Wigan in the relegation play-offs, she’d scored a bloody hat-trick against Germany and won the World Cup.
But what if her wealth and success were only a mask? What if he’d damaged her in some irrevocable way? What if he’d turned Indestructible Haley into Fallible Afraid of Flying Halle? Did that mean all the ways he’d absolved his own actions were really nothing more than grubby excuses?
The sort of grubby excuses his dad used to reel off, after he’d slapped Mum’s head against the table and knocked her front tooth out, or shouted at his youngest brother, Curt, so aggressively he’d made him wet himself. The sort of excuses that meant sod all, because you never learned from them, and they would all be reeled out again the next time you went on a bender and came home tanked up to the eyeballs on self-pity a
nd too many cans of Special Brew.
What did he really know about her life now? The few puff pieces he’d seen in HELLO! magazine while waiting in the dentist’s didn’t count.
It was a sobering thought, guaranteed to make this next fortnight even more complicated than he had anticipated.
‘You know what, this was always exactly the problem between us.’ Halle interrupted his thoughts. ‘You never came clean about anything.’
She shot him her dick-mincing look to reiterate the point. And he had a moment of clarity.
Damn it. He couldn’t go back and change what he’d done sixteen years ago, so there was no use getting cut up about it now. And he certainly wasn’t the cause of her fear of flying. They’d never flown anywhere when they were together, for the simple reason they couldn’t afford it.
‘I’d really love to know how my lack of clean underpants became a major problem in our relationship,’ he countered.
‘I’ll tell you how. Because those pants are yet another symbol of your complete failure to communicate about anything.’ She pressed her hand to her chest. ‘I thought the sun shone out of your arse for four solid years. And yet you never once trusted me with a single one of your secrets.’
She was right, he’d never told her his secrets. But he’d had very good reasons for that. Reasons it had taken him two whole years of therapy to put behind him. And which he had no plans to discuss now, with a woman who had refused to speak to him for sixteen years.
‘I thought we just established that my lack of clean underpants wasn’t a secret,’ he replied. ‘The whole school knew about it, remember.’
‘Stop being so bloody facetious.’
‘I’m being facetious? You’re the one who’s suddenly turned into the underwear police.’
‘Fine.’ She threw up her hands. ‘Make a joke about it, have a good old laugh about how neurotic I am.’
‘Does this look like my joking face to you?’ He wouldn’t be able to crack a smile right now if he had dynamite to hand. ‘And when exactly did I accuse you of being neurotic? Because I must have missed that bit of subtext.’
‘Oh, shut up.’ She clicked off her seat belt and stood, the furrow on her forehead deep enough to rival the Grand Canyon. ‘I’m going to the toilet.’ She grabbed her purse from under her seat. ‘And I’d really appreciate it if you would leave me alone when I return. Getting through this flight without having a breakdown is my main priority and mulling over the crappiest four years of my life is not going to help make that happen.’
She marched off, leaving him to stew in her wake.
Since when had he been the one suggesting they take a stroll down memory lane? Was he the one who had brought up their schooldays? No. And where did she get off saying their four years together had been the crappiest years of her life?
They hadn’t all been crap. Had they?
And what, exactly, did any of this have to do with his underpants?
