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“That’s not what happened,” I say hotly. “Well, I mean, that technicallyiswhat happened, obviously. But I wasn’trelieved, I was furious. And I didn’t “go off with” Ben because I wanted tobewith him. I did it because I wanted answers. I mean, seriously, what did you expect? Did you think I’d just look at him and go, ‘OK, cool, thanks for coming,’ then forget all about it? Can you not see how big a deal it was for me to finally be face-to-face with him after all this time? To finally be about to find out why he walked out like he did?”
“Yes,” mutters Jack, speaking as if the words are being dragged out of him. “Yes, of course I can see that. I’m not stupid, Emerald. It was just… really bad timing.”
“Well, you have your sister to thank for that,” I point out, folding my arms. “She’s the one who told him where I’d be. Although, to be fair to Rose, none of us knew you were on a time limit because you had a flight to catch. Because you didn’t bother to tell us.”
“Because I knew you’d react exactly the way you did! I knew there’d be yet another scene about it, and I just… I just can’t keep doing this, Emerald. I can’t.”
Jack’s shoulders sag in defeat. This conversation has a “coming to an end” feel about it, which makes me feel sick and panicky, as if there should be a giant clock in the corner of the room counting down to my fate. A clock which I can stop, if I can just find exactly the right combination of words to convince Jack that we can somehow get past this, and go back to how we were.
“Look,” I say shakily, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for making you feel like I didn’t trust you, and that you had to tiptoe around me. I’m sorry for always being ‘dramatic’, as you put it. But I don’t understand why you didn’t just tell me what was going on, and that you were planning to give the land back to McTavish. If you’d just said that at the start—”
“I didn’t know it at the start,” he says, as if this should be blatantly obvious to me. “I found out the land had belonged to them at some point — not long before we got engaged, in fact. But I didn’t know what had happened, and how it had come to be part of the estate. It took time to find that out, and then to figure out what to do about it. And I didn’t tell you because I needed to think it through and figure it out for myself. I was feeling weird and conflicted about it, and I didn’t want to talk about it until I knew for sure what was going on, and what I was going to do about it.”
Number 4: Doesn’t like talking about his feelings.
“Also,” he goes on, his cheeks flushed slightly as he looks up at me. “I still think McTavish has a thing for you. And I couldn’t be sure you wouldn’t take his side over mine if it had turned out the land was ours all along.”
“Of course I would have taken your side,” I say hotly. “Of course I would have. I’m always on your side, Jack. Always.”
Except when I spied on you in the library. Except when I went through the papers on your desk looking for ‘evidence’. Except all the times you told me to trust you and I still didn’t.
I stare down at my hands, not wanting to admit the truth, which is that I don’t deserve this man.
In the corner of the room, that imaginary clock has almost reached midnight. There’s just a few seconds left for me to try to take this mess and turn it completely around.
“What do we do to fix this?” I say desperately, looking up at him. “Because I’m willing to do anything. Just tell me what it is.”
“That’s just it, Emerald,” he replies, his voice quiet. “I’m not sure we can. This is just… it’s too much. All of this is too much. I’m trying so hard to make everything work — the business, the estate …us. And it justisn’t. It isn’t working, no matter what I do. No one’s happy. Least of all us.”
I briefly consider putting my fingers in ears so I don’t have to hear whatever he’s going to say next. But it’s no good. The clock is striking midnight, and my time as Cinderella is finally coming to a close.
Jack stares down at the desk, so he doesn’t have to look me in the eye.
“I think we should take a break,” he says.
Chapter 23
Icry all the way to my parents’ house: and not in that delicate, appealing way, that makes people want to look after you, but in a wild, uncontrolled way, which makes a woman take her little boy by the hand and tut-tut loudly in my direction, muttering something about how the town is full of addicts these days.
“Ye’ll frighten the beasts wi’ a face like that,” shouts Old Jimmy as I pass him on my walk of shame — which is aliteralwalk, because I refused Jack’s offer to have someone drive me home; a decision I regretted by the time I reached the end of the driveway, but couldn’t take back because I was certain I could feel Kathryn’s beady eyes on me from the windows of the house.
When I finally summoned the courage to look, though, the windows were all blank: even the ones in Jack’s study.
He’s probably already buried in his work again. He probably won’t even give me a second thought.
I know for certain this isn’t true — I know him too well to think he’sthathard-hearted — but it comforts me to cast him as the Bad Guy as I walk down the long, tree-lined drive that’s always made me think ofManderley, then all the way back through town, and up the hill to mum and dad’s cottage.
“Shona phoned to say ye were on yer way,” says Mum, as she opens the door. “She saw ye walking down the High Street. Said ye looked a right state; and she wisnae wrong, either.”
“I can’t help being an ugly crier,” I say, feeling the tears well up again. “It’s just how I am.”
“Aye. Ye get it from yer dad,” says Mum, pulling me into a hug. “Remember when he lost the darts tournament to Tam?”
I sink into her arms, just like I did when I was a little girl and I’d gotten into some scrape or other. It’s going to take more than a Band-Aid to fix this particular wound, though, and I can tell by the fact that Mum remains uncharacteristically silent as she hugs me that she knows it, too.
“It’s just a break,” I tell her, pulling away at last. “It doesn’t mean we’re done for good. We just… we just…”
I give up on this sentence, remembering the look on Jack’s face when I asked him if the proposed ‘break’ was going to be a Ross-and-Rachel type situation where we’d get back together in the series finale, or if it had the potential to be something more permanent than that.
