Chapter Seventeen
I spend the next two days in bed.
I tell everyone I’m feeling ill, and I just lie there, thinking about everything that’s been happening and trying to ignore the world. I just want to be alone and embrace my solitary misery. But of course I can’t even have that. Not when I’m living in Celeste Bretherton’s house. She is in and out on a constant rotation, bringing me soup, plying me with Strepsils and/or Anadin Extra, asking me questions about how I’m feeling. It’s endless and well meant, but all I want is peace.
It all feels like too much; it’s overflowing and overwhelming. I feel like I am too soft and life is too hard. I revel in my grossness and stink; unshowered and unchanged.
And of course, that is when he turns up.
‘Are you feeling well enough for a visitor?’ Celeste asks from my bedroom doorway.
‘Not really.’ I don’t even look up, flicking idly through my phone. I assume it’s Myfanwy. She’s already dropped off three tins of Roses and a carrier bag of Quality Streets. I suspect it’s all Christmas leftovers from last year but I’ll still eat them for sure. It’s all very generous and kind, but I definitely don’t need any more.
‘I think you should see him,’ Celeste needles and at that, I do look up.
‘Him?’
‘I’ll send him in,’ she grins excitedly. ‘Brush your hair.’
I sit up, suddenly electrified. Which him could it be? I leap out of bed and grab the deodorant, spraying myself head to toe. Yanking a brush through my hair, I pull out more than I detangle, squeaking in pain, just in time for the man I was supposed to marry to enter my teen bedroom.
‘Daniel,’ I breathe out and for some reason my first feeling is… disappointment. I’ve wanted to see him so badly since the split – and in some ways even more since the funeral. I think maybe I’d imagined this moment so often, I thought it would be more dramatic than this. I thought it would be ground-breaking and earth-shattering. More than him just turning up in my bedroom, with me here in my pyjamas, the odour of Quality Street coming out of my pores, and a poster of Robert Pattinson still glowering balefully from the wall.
‘Hi Ginny,’ he says shyly and I blink back. Hearing him say my name feels so strange. But then, this whole thing is off-the-charts strange. He looks unfamiliar too. He’s grown a beard in the month since Diane’s funeral. I’ve never seen him with facial hair before. He’s always been so clean-shaven, I wasn’t sure he could even grow one.
‘What are you… what are you doing here?’ I finally get out, suddenly so aware of my own filth.
He doesn’t reply immediately, though I don’t think I expected him to.
‘Can I…’ he looks around the room for a chair and finds none available. Instead he gestures to the end of the bed, where Celeste has left a pile of folded-up clean washing. She wanted to put it away for me and I had to literally beg her not to. ‘Can I sit down?’
I nod dumbly, shame at the state of everything radiating off me. He must think this is all about him; that all these months later I am still a shell – a wreck – from our break-up. And honestly, it’s only, like, 80 per cent of why I’m a wreck.
He sits heavily and I do the same, the space between us on the bed suddenly very significant. We sit in silence for a full minute. I don’t want to be the first to speak. I’ve already asked the only question I have.
I’ve had so many questions since he left me – so many questions – and I couldn’t ask any of them at the funeral. It wasn’t the right time, even if he’d been willing to stay more than six minutes. Those questions took over my life for weeks, filling up my brain and overflowing in every direction. Why did he do it? Why didn’t he talk to me? How long had he been feeling this way? Why couldn’t he tell me? Did he mean anything he ever said? Did he ever plan to marry me? Why did he leave like that? Was our whole relationship a sham? Was there someone else? Did I ever really know the real him? Where did he go when he left? What do his family and friends think? Do they blame me? Was it my fault? Was it Celeste’s fault? Why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why.
It was the word of the day, week, month, for such a long time.
But, I realize suddenly, that voice has quietened down in recent weeks. Sure, I’ve still been sad, so very sad, about what happened, but the questions have dried up. And now I don’t really want to ask Daniel any of them – or anything else.
At last he clears his throat.
‘Firstly,’ he begins, and I notice his hands are shaking a little. ‘I need to say how sorry I am.’
A sort of numbness creeps over me as he speaks. Sorry. Sorry. I’ve wanted to hear that word from him, but I don’t know how I feel about it now. It feels a bit nothingy, a bit hollow. It doesn’t feel like enough.
‘I know it’s probably too little, too late,’ he says now in a rush. ‘I’ve wanted to say it so many times, I’ve wanted to see you so many times, and then when I came to the funeral, I ended up chickening out and running away.’ He hangs his head. ‘I’m sorry for that, too. I was scared of the conversation with you, but also terrified of seeing your family and how much they must all hate me.’ He looks down at his hands. ‘I kept wanting to message you. I’d start a text, but then I couldn’t ever figure out what to say or how to put it.’ He looks up at me now, his eyes beseeching, pleading with me to understand. I stay silent. He continues after a few seconds. ‘But in the end, my cowardice wasn’t enough to keep me away. I needed to see you.’
His words make my chest tighten. Needed?
‘I’ve missed you so much, Gin,’ he adds, looking at me in his familiar Daniel way. ‘What I did was the worst thing I’ve ever done, to anyone, ever. I regret it so much.’
He regrets it? He wants to… no, I can’t even think it.
He moves closer on the bed. ‘Please say you can find a way to forgive me?’ I look away and he reaches for my hand, his voice now almost a whisper. ‘I just got so, so, so scared. And I didn’t see it coming, it hit me out of nowhere. We were planning the wedding and – hey, do you remember when you got back from the hen do and you were saying all that stuff about how out of hand everything had gotten? You said Celeste had expanded the guestlist again and you were just so exhausted and beaten down by it?’
I nod slowly and he nods too, encouraged by my agreement.
‘See, I thought I was fine, even then. I laughed it off and cheered you up, and then I went off to get some work done.’ He pauses. ‘But I couldn’t focus. What you said kept going around and around in my brain. I started getting more and more freaked out. And I was meant to be going on my stag do the next week and suddenly that was terrifying, too. I started packing and kept finding myself putting things I didn’t need into my suitcase. My old teddy, mementoes, stuff I definitely didn’t need for a weekend in Amsterdam.’ His breath is coming out in ragged short bursts. ‘And then, when you went to work that Wednesday, I found myself packing up the rest of it. I couldn’t stop myself.’ He sounds like he might cry. ‘And then I left.’ He throws his hands up in the air, like he was helpless in all of it.
And I feel sorry for him.
I don’t feel angry, I feel sad. He’s clearly genuinely devastated by all this. He hurt me so badly and made awful choices that made everything so much worse than they had to be. I want to be angry with him, but I don’t have it in me, I just feel sad that all of this has happened. I feel sad that he let all of this happen when he didn’t have to.
He looks at me now, waiting.
‘Well, that’s what I wanted to say,’ he hesitates, still waiting for me to say something. ‘I guess I better go,’ he says limply after another minute.
‘OK,’ I reply simply. And then, because I cannot stop myself: ‘I get it, I understand.’
He looks up at me with shining eyes. ‘Really?’
‘Really,’ I say, trying to smile. In this moment, making him feel better, letting him off the hook – I hate myself. I hate myself.
Because I don’t get it, I don’t understand. I can see he is upset and I feel for him, but I still don’t understand why and how he could do all that to me. He did all of this. He let all this awfulness happen, knowing what it would do to me. He ripped apart my life and my heart, and he put his own fears ahead of how much it would destroy me.
He could’ve talked to me, he could’ve been honest at any stage of this, and he chose not to be. He chose to be scared and cowardly instead of being honest, knowing full well how much worse it would make everything for me.
‘Thank you, Gin.’ His voice is full of emotion and I smile at him as nicely as I can.
I hate myself. I hate this! I hate that I’m still trying to make other people feel better in a moment like this; still putting their hurt ahead of my own. I am a pathetic loser.
I picture how Myfanwy would react in this moment. She would shout and scream and tell him the full extent of how much he’d hurt her. She’d order him out of the house and out of her life, calling him a bunch of cool rude names. She wouldn’t feel sorry for him or pity him. She’d put her own pain ahead of his self-inflicted agonies.
But I can’t.
I walk out with him to a seemingly empty hallway, but I know with absolute certainty that Celeste is within earshot. And probably eyeshot too. We stand together in silence, face-to-face at the top of the stairs and I think about our hallway, back in our old flat. Someone else will be living there by now. There will be another person or maybe another couple in there. They’ll stand like this in that hallway, in what was once our hallway, talking about their day or kissing or arguing. Maybe they’ll want to paint the walls, like we did. Maybe they’ll have more imagination than us. We went with an ordinary, boring white. Cotton white, the tin said. But it was an ordinary boring, cotton white that we chose together.
‘I wish…’ he trails off, looking at me with intense longing.
He doesn’t continue and I don’t ask him what he wishes. If he wants to say what I think he wants to say, I’m not sure I can hear it.
Do I wish it too? Everything I’ve been through since he left me, everything I’ve done and realized – would I wish all of that away to go back?
A big part of me still wants him. Desperately. There’s no denying I still love him. He’s the same handsome and fun Daniel I wanted to be with forever. He still has an energy that can so easily brighten up a room. And getting back together would solve everything, wouldn’t it? I could get out of Celeste’s house and we could get a new flat. We’d get those two dogs, Kirstie and Phil. We could have the life I envisioned for myself, together.
We could have our lives back and forget about those six silly predictions that have taken over my life this year.
‘Can we – can I…’ He pauses, his eyes searching for mine. ‘Can I see you again? Soon?’ he pleads, taking my hands in his.
My hand crackles at the touch of his skin. There is so much warm, comforting familiarity there. I look up at him and for a moment I think he will kiss me.
It’s too much and I take a step away, letting his hands drop away from mine.
‘I need a bit more time, Daniel,’ I say simply. I don’t want to hurt him but I don’t know if I can forgive him for any of it, never mind everything. I don’t know if I could ever forget that he left me the way he did, right before the wedding, without a word. He hurt me so badly and left me to go through everything on my own. I don’t know if we can get back to where we were, or anywhere near it.
‘I understand,’ he nods, hope still lighting his eyes. ‘But I’ll be in touch, if that’s OK? Thank you so much for seeing me again.’ He moves closer again and it sets something off in me, low down in my stomach. I really do want him to kiss me, I realize, so deeply disappointed in myself. I thought I had more strength of character than this. How can my body be so ready to forgive and forget everything he did, so easily? But it’s not really me reacting, not my brain, not the me that gets the final say. Just because parts of my body still fancy and want Daniel, it doesn’t matter. My head is in control, not my heart – or any other body parts.
I walk him to the door and close it on him as he turns for a hug. I know too well that my body parts might well win the day if we touch again.