Chapter 25
25
THREE DAYS BEFORE HE LEFT ME
James is still processing, our conversations and theories lobbing back and forth. We’ve checked out Rebecca Thomas on his Instagram page. She works at Barbers and Co – an insurance firm. She used her maiden name to contact Kit. To keep the messages secret, I’m presuming.
‘You should go to her, tomorrow, ask her straight out what she is doing meeting him,’ James suggests.
‘Would she tell me though? I mean, if they are having an affair?’
James gives me a look that reads, ‘I’ve told you that’s bollocks.’
‘Well, she’s hardly going to tell me, is she?’
‘I still think you should confront her.’ He blows out the air from his cheeks. ‘Do you have anything stronger than coffee?’ James asks, rolling his neck from side to side.
I look at the clock. It’s gone midnight. ‘No but I can order room service?’ I pick up the phone and order a bottle of red wine, Merlot, James’s favourite. I ask if they have any mixed nuts but change the request to just peanuts .
‘Why did you change it from mixed nuts?’ It’s a test, even after everything I have told him.
‘Because you think walnuts look like hamster brains, which makes you feel queasy.’
There is a small smile hiding in the corner of his mouth as I say this. I feel warmth in my solar plexus. He likes that I know these things about him.
‘And the Merlot?’
‘Shiraz gives you a headache.’
He laughs. The sound taking him and me by surprise. He groans and lies back on the bed, his head hanging off the end. I join him, our hair hanging upside down. He turns to me. ‘This is the weirdest day of my life.’
‘Weirder than the day you turned up in fancy dress to your friend’s birthday party when you were thirteen and no one else was dressed up?’
His eyebrows rise again.
‘And yes, you do tell me that you had a crush on his older sister and that she told you your Mario costume was cute .’
His hair hangs there. I want to reach out and touch it, to feel the thickness run between my fingers.
‘It’s gone midnight,’ he says. ‘Shouldn’t you have disappeared or something?’
I turn to him. ‘No. The next day only starts after I’ve fallen asleep.’
I lift my legs and give my toes a wiggle. ‘Just so you know, I’m not this fit in our future.’
I notice his Adam’s apple travelling up and down. He sits back up on the bed. ‘We need to find out some answers.’ He gets up and starts opening the drawers in the bureau opposite. I know what he’s looking for; he needs to write a list. I open my handbag, pull out a pen and a receipt. ‘I need to make a?— ’
‘List. I know. Here you go.’
He frowns briefly then takes it from me, sitting back at the desk. ‘Number one, is Kit in trouble with money?’ I make my way over to him, looking over his shoulder as he underlines it twice. ‘Number two, Becky. Number three, dodgy double-glazing man. Number four, motivation.’ He underlines that too. Then adds ‘Why did he leave?’ and on the line below… ‘Why do I lie?’
A lump forms in my throat as he underlines ‘I’. It’s interesting to me that he’s questioning his own motivation as much as Kit’s. James is an honest man, a good man. He knows that it’s out of character to behave that way.
‘Have you tried calling him since this afternoon?’
I shake my head. The image of him inside the car with his ex is too visceral right now.
There’s a knock on the door and James gets up and answers room service, then pours us the wine. He knocks back half of his glass in three large gulps. I take the other glass from his hand. He sits down heavily and opens the bag of peanuts, offering me one before shaking out a handful and loading them into his mouth.
‘Can I ask you something?’ he says between chews. He crosses his legs and we sit opposite. He swirls the wine in the glass.
‘Shoot.’
‘How do I cope?’
‘With Kit leaving? The same as me. We’re both wrecked, we?—’
‘No, I mean about us. I betray him. Being with you.’
I take a moment, my mind wandering back to those weeks where we would laugh at the same thing then reset our faces as though laughing together was as much as admitting we’d given up on him. The moments where we’d cook together forming a natural rhythm, the times where our gazes lingered on each other for a fraction longer than would be polite .
There was a night in a busy wine bar. We were squeezed in together, a fairy-lighted brick wall behind us. I had felt the warmth of the outside of James’s thigh next to mine. It was a few weeks after the call I had made to Ava, from the morning I had dropped the water and realised I was in love with him. We had stayed that way for a few seconds. I had been trying to ignore the pull of attraction, was still trying to deny my feelings for him, still unsure of his feelings for me. He had shifted, a pencil width away, and I had worried that I’d misread the signs. The tiny gap between us felt as though it was vibrating, like I was being pulled towards him but pushed away in the same moment. I had moved closer so that our legs were touching. This time he didn’t move away. As the night had worn on, we stayed that way, heat burning through the fabric of our clothes. James and I didn’t fall in love. We climbed into it, each step towards each other met with resistance, fraught with danger.
‘You fight it at first. We both do. But then we both learn to forgive ourselves.’
He nods, his finger running around the rim of the glass.
‘It’s real,’ I say and he meets my eyes. ‘What we have, James.’ I look down into my glass. ‘I love you.’ I can only imagine how weird it must be for him to hear it from me. ‘I love you both,’ I add.
‘And now?’
I meet his eyes. He’s watching me closely.
‘Now? Now I can’t stand you.’ I laugh.
‘Oh, don’t I know it,’ he says, but he’s smiling. ‘But I meant now, now that you know he’s alive? Will you still marry me – future me?’ He grimaces at the words but there is weight to his question even though to him, this must all seem very hypothetical. He holds an expression I’ve never seen on his face before, almost self-conscious. Our declaration of love for each other was never shy; it was visceral, raw, painful, beautiful .
‘Honestly?’ I reach for a nut and chew thoughtfully. ‘I don’t know. If you’ve lied to me, James…’ I shake my head. ‘If you know Kit’s alive, I’d find it hard… to trust you again.’
‘I understand.’ He pauses. ‘I feel sorry for him, future me.’ James takes another long sip of wine. ‘He can’t compete with Kit coming back. He would know that. Me. Future James. He would know you would choose Kit.’
I can feel tears welling up; I blink them back. ‘You don’t know that. I don’t even know that. I love you as much as I love him, James. It’s just a different kind of love.’ I pause. ‘Can I ask you a question? Can you picture us together, at all ?’
‘I… no. Not really.’
‘Don’t sugar-coat it for me, will you?’ But I’m teasing him.
‘It’s not that I don’t. I mean, you’re not hideous to look at or anything.’ He bites back a smile.
‘If it makes it easier… if the roles were reversed and you were telling 2016 me that we were about to get married, I would think you were off your bleeding rocker.’
He snorts, gets up, retrieves the list, places it between us on the bed, tops up our glasses and stares at the paper. He taps the top of his glass with his pen. Catching me looking at it, he stops. ‘Sorry.’
‘You don’t have to be sorry. You fidget all the time. After a while it’s just like white noise.’
We’re quiet for a moment, both of us lost in the what ifs and maybes. ‘Can I ask you another question?’ I say. He nods. ‘Why do you hate me so much?’
James swirls the wine again and takes another sip. ‘I don’t hate you, Liv. I just… ’
‘Find me irritating? Can’t stand to be in the same room as me? Wish you’d never taken a summer job at Waterways?’
He laughs then. ‘No. I wouldn’t wish that. I’ve never seen Kit as happy as the day he met you. You are irritating though.’ He smirks. ‘Sorry.’
I laugh then. ‘It’s fine. We get past it.’
‘Right. Let’s see if we can work out why he leaves, then maybe all of this won’t matter anyway.’
I don’t correct him. I don’t remind him that Kit will still leave, that I can’t stop what is about to happen.
We move the conversation back to the list; we finish the wine. The clock is edging towards twoa.m. I yawn. James notices. The weight of what will happen if I fall asleep presses into the room.
‘Do you want to get out of here?’ he asks. ‘Go for a walk? You can’t fall asleep while you’re walking, right, and we need to keep thinking.’
‘Sure, good idea.’
The hotel is dimly lit. Outside the air is cool. It’s a clear night. The moon is almost full and the sky is full of stars.
‘Cassiopeia,’ he says pointing to the sky. ‘It’s named after the?—’
‘Vain queen Cassiopeia. She boasted about her own beauty.’
He digs into the pockets of his jeans. ‘I’ve used that line before I’m guessing?’ Our feet are crunching along the gravel as we head out of the hotel grounds, along the narrow road. I shiver, do up the top button of my jacket, still damp from my run earlier. This is the same road that I had looked out at on the morning of my wedding, as I’d pictured James running along, his ear pods in, grey hoody on.
‘No, I just knew that fact.’
‘Oh. ’
‘I’m messing with you, James. Yes, you’ve used that line on me before. Wait. That was a line ?’
‘Of course it’s a line,’ he says with a small laugh. ‘It’s the only fact I know about the stars.’
‘What’s your success rate? With that line?’
‘Not bad and I hear that it’ll be pretty successful in a few years.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Well apparently she agrees to marry me even when she discovers that I know nothing about constellations.’
The breeze runs through the trees lining the road, leaves rattling; hedgerows alive with nature, unmuted by the cacophony of daytime sounds.
‘So, what’s changed? What is the future like?’ he asks, our breath coming out in puffs of mist.
I decide against mentioning the pandemic. He doesn’t need to know and I want to save him from it all. ‘Nothing much, really. The world just keeps ticking on. We do have an electric car though.’
‘You’re shitting me?’
‘Nope… and it’s an automatic.’
‘Now I’m questioning everything you’ve told me. There’s no way I’d agree to an automatic.’
‘Well, you do.’
‘Why?’
‘I have many powers of persuasion.’
He clears his throat and I realise I’ve just taken things a step too far. I have to remind myself that this is the old James. Thinking of me in that way must feel so strange to him. I yawn.
‘Think back to today.’ He brings the conversation to why I’m here. ‘Do you remember anything at all, anything out of the ordinary? ’
‘We argue, me and Kit, when I get back from shopping with Ava.’
‘What about?’
‘My coat.’
‘Your coat ?’
‘Yeah, or rather…’ I stop walking. We argued about the cost. ‘Money.’ We both have the same expression as the thread begins to unwind. Not only was Kit late paying Ian at the club, but he also brought up money with me, which was something he never did.
‘Do you normally argue about money?’
I shake my head. ‘No. You know what Kit is like: he likes to spend money. I remember thinking that it felt like he was gunning for a fight, that something must have happened at work to put him in such a bad mood.’
James veers to the side where there is a gap in the fence. He climbs over the ditch, turns and puts out his hand, and I think the action startles us both; 2016 James should have just walked on ahead. He wouldn’t have put out a hand to help me.
I’m quiet.
‘What?’ James asks, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye.
I realise I’m smiling. ‘Oh nothing. It’s just that, well, if you want to know how our relationship started, then this is a pretty good demonstration. This is what we do after he leaves. It’s kind of how it all starts.’
We keep walking, going around in conversational circles as we try to make sense of it all until we’re back inside the hotel.
We take off our coats and sit down. ‘What now?’ I ask him, yawning again. He sits next to me.
‘Now you have a place to start looking, you need to connect the dots. Look into his bank accounts, speak to Becky. If Kit’s in trouble, there’s only you who can save him. You’re the only person he trusts. You can do this, Liv. You’re stronger than you think.’
My stomach drops, his words bringing back the morning I stepped over the void and onto the pavement, James’s hand outstretched. You can do this; you’re stronger than you think.
He turns to me. ‘Liv?’
‘Hmmm?’
‘I… I need to tell you something.’ He exhales deeply, eyes looking at the door then back to me. ‘I don’t hate you. I… fuck me.’ He scratches the back of his head. ‘I can’t believe I’m going to tell you this but it doesn’t matter, does it? All of this won’t happen?’
I’m about to open my mouth to remind him that it will still happen to me; I will still remember today.
He takes my hand in his; my eyes widen in surprise. He’s shaking, just a gentle tremor.
‘It was me who swam you back, that day on the river. Not Kit.’
‘It was your voice I heard?’ I frown, looking up at him. ‘You saved me?’
He nods, squeezing my hand. ‘Yep.’
What?
My memories of that day become scrambled. I was unconscious when it happened but when I think of that day, it is always Kit that I imagine holding me as he swam me back to the river bank. It was always Kit’s face, Kit’s voice. The image changes slowly, Kit’s green eyes replaced with James’s brown ones; Kit’s shoulders and arms powering through the water rubbed out, James’s tattoos and dark hair taking the lead role.
‘Me that swam you back, me who told Kit to stay with you while I tried to radio for help.’
‘Why wouldn’t he tell me that? ’
‘And destroy your version of the great lightning bolt love story? Not a chance.’
I think back to that day, the weeks and months after, the way I told the story as if it was fate that we’d met; how I would tell anyone who would listen, that I knew from the first time I heard his voice that he was the one. How must it have felt to James to hear me saying those words? How did Kit feel, knowing that our meet-cute wasn’t actually ours?
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
His thumb is running over my knuckles, eyes focused on the rhythm.
‘What would be the point?’ His eyes lift. ‘I saw the way you looked at him, how you couldn’t take your eyes off him. Telling you the truth would have achieved nothing.’
I can feel this information filling in the gaps in my history that I never knew were there.
‘And that’s not the first time I saw you either,’ he continues after a breath.
‘It wasn’t?’ I tilt my head but he’s staring straight ahead, as though lost in his memories.
‘I saw you earlier, in the car park with Ava… and I thought’ – he swallows, eyes dragging back to my face – ‘that you were the most beautiful girl I had ever seen.’ His words slam into me. His voice is tight with emotion. ‘I’ve been in love with you for years, Liv.’
He lets go of my hand, rubbing the heels of his hands against his eyes like a toddler who doesn’t understand why he can’t have his own way. James holds himself, arms crossed and wrapped around his torso, the tops of his arms flexing and moving as he tries to contain the emotions inside. He buries his head deep in his chest, so I can’t look at him .
‘You can’t be. You don’t even like being around me,’ I say gently, leaning forward.
‘No,’ he says, his head lifting. ‘It’s just hard being with you. And… hating that I love you. I hate that I’m in love with you.’
Everything starts to shift.
Libby’s voice: He always wanted what Kit had.
I don’t know what to do with this information. This is a different version of the man I fell in love with. The man I fell in love with grew to love me, changed during our time together, fell in love with me at the same time as I fell in love with him.
‘Liv.’ He shifts. I can feel the warmth of his hand hovering over my shoulder blade before he drops it and takes my hands in his. ‘Please understand that I would never tell you this under normal circumstances. This is my burden. Not yours. Not Kit’s, mine.’ His eyes are fierce. ‘And if I don’t tell you, then it’s because I’m too ashamed to admit that I’ve been in love with my brother’s girlfriend since the first day they met. Until tonight, I’ve not even really admitted it myself. Do you have any idea how hard it is for me to not look at you? To not let my feelings slip. Being in love with you is… exhausting . It eats away at me like a parasite. I try to stay away from you, try to focus on your faults.’
‘My faults?’
‘Yeah, you know… how you section your dinner so you eat one part at a time. How you turn over every chip separately on the baking tray instead of going at them all with a spatula. And how you are always, always late. But… it’s never enough, because then I notice that perfect crease between your eyebrows as you concentrate, or I’d realise that you’re always late because you’ve grabbed an extra snack for us, or because you’ve sent your friend some flowers because they’re having a tough time… You make it impossible .’ The final words come out of him in a long breath.
He drops my hands. Gets up, pulling on his coat. ‘Come and find me tomorrow,’ he says, his voice above mine. ‘Tell me about the Power Rangers pyjamas. And if I still don’t believe you, tell me all of this.’ He heads towards the door then turns. ‘If I go back to avoiding you, tell me this first.
‘I’ll believe you because I would never say this to you, under normal circumstances. I would never betray Kit. I guess that’s why I never tell you, even when we’re about to get married.’ He gives me a sad smile. ‘But maybe I can help you get back to him.’
I look up and reply, ‘And back to you.’
The air in the room thickens as he looks at me, and I see it. The look I’ve seen a thousand times before: the way his eyes darken yet soften, the seriousness behind them that lets me know he loves me.
James loves me.
Now.
Not just in the future, but right here in 2016.
I get up, stepping towards him.
‘Come and find me,’ he says again, his hand on the door. ‘You’re not alone.’