Chapter 38
38
I wake with a start. I’m in our bedroom, in our house, but without James.
Memories of the past four days open up a hole in my chest: Kit at the races, the locket, my wedding dress, Ava’s face, my hand clutching the note from James. Then there is Mum. Mum overwhelmed by anxiety and being restrained in the hospital bed, her fingers gripping my arm as they sedated her so she could have more scans.
She’d been trying to come to the wedding, had made it all the way to the kerb to wait for a taxi before the panic attack hit and she collapsed, smashing her head against the pavement. She’s out of the woods, thank God. The slight swelling on her brain, which was giving us so much cause for concern over the last few days, has subsided and her panic attacks have calmed now that she’s acclimatised to her new surroundings in a side room. She was comfortable and asleep when I finally allowed Ava to take me home from the hospital in the early hours of this morning.
Relief and exhaustion had unravelled me, and I have a hazy memory of telling Ava what had happened; she’d listened to my fractured sentences as I tried to explain about my week in 2016.
I try to sit up, but my head feels heavy, like it’s filled with cement, then I remember the two sleeping pills she had given me so I could fall asleep. Yet, despite my exhaustion, and the pills, sleep has come in staccato bursts, my face burying into James’s pillows, my fingers typing fevered messages to him, all of them not delivered; not read.
I reach for my phone, dialling James’s number again, but it’s still switched off. I bite back tears of hurt and frustration. Nobody has heard from him since the wedding. He’d already left when we got the call about Mum, and yet I keep waiting for him to walk through the door any minute, but the door remains closed and his phone remains turned off.
Kit is the love of your life. I’ve always known that; we’ve always known that.
I call the hospital and am told Mum’s had a comfortable night and is more settled. The nurse’s Brummy accent is thick. ‘The consultant wants to send her for another MRI, and we’d like to keep her in for a few more days, just to be sure there is no residual damage, but hopefully she’ll be able to come home next week.’
‘That’s… well, that’s great news.’
Ava knocks on the door as I lie in bed, phone still clutched in my hand as I try to settle my thoughts.
‘Hi,’ she says. ‘Thought you could do with a cuppa?’ She treads softly into the room, her hair in a messy bun, a pair of my pyjamas hanging off her slight frame. She places the mug beside the bed. ‘How are you doing?’ she asks gently, lying down next to me.
‘Oh you know. My wedding day was a disaster and for the second time in my life, my boyfriend has disappeared. ’
‘Shit then?’
I let out a small laugh. ‘Yeah. Shit. Mum’s doing better though… They say she can come home next week, so that’s something.’
‘Still no word from James?’
Tears fill my eyes. I sit up and cup the tea in my hands, blowing over the rim. ‘No. Not a text. Nothing. How could he do this to me?’
She sits up. ‘Look, don’t get me wrong, right now I’m furious at him, and sneaking off like that was a dickhead move, but… well… I kind of get it.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Look, I’m no expert but… Kit is a tough act to follow. If I was in James’s shoes? If I was about to watch the woman I love fall back in love with her ex? I’m not sure I’d be strong enough to stick around to see it. We all know what it was like to be on the outside of you and Kit, and I can understand why he wouldn’t want a ringside seat to watch the big reunion.’
‘But it’s James I want to spend the rest of my life with. He must know how much I love him.’
She smiles, her voice gentle. ‘He does, but he also knows how much you loved Kit and he also knows that, now Kit is alive, you might not want to marry his brother.’
Kit. At the centre of everything that has been right and wrong with my life.
‘Are you ready to see him yet? Kit?’
The past week in 2016 flashes through my mind. I take a deep breath blowing out all of the air from my lungs before nodding. ‘Yes.’
I need to know if what I found out is true, if it was all real. And if it was, then I promised Kit I’d help him. Tears threaten again but I blink them back. Maybe Kit knows where James has gone, but then it doesn’t matter if he does. James has left me.
I stare up at Lynn and Alan’s house. The exterior is just as immaculate as it was seven years ago.
Where has he been all this time? How did he hide for so long?
I unclip my seat belt and step out onto the kerb, shielding my eyes as I look up. I take a deep breath and walk up the path, my hand reaching for the knocker.
The door swings open, Alan’s face breaking wide open, my body immediately pulled against his chest. I can’t help but laugh as he releases me; it’s as though he’s been inflated since I last saw him in this timeline – he’s fuller than the man that had so desperately asked me to go for a coffee with him. He looks over my shoulder, with a hopeful expression; there is a brief drop of disappointment at James’s absence. Ava had made sure not to mention James’s note to the wedding guests. As far as they know, Mum had a fall, the wedding was cancelled, end of story. She hasn’t mentioned the note to anyone, and James’s absence hasn’t been questioned at the club, because Himad and Simon had already agreed to run it while we were on our honeymoon; they must be presuming he’s busy with me at the hospital.
Lynn appears, standing next to Alan with her usual air of superiority. ‘Olivia,’ she states.
‘Is he here?’ I ask them both. Alan’s mouth goes to speak but she intervenes.
She folds her arms. ‘I don’t know what you?—’
‘It’s OK, Mum.’
My eyes track the voice I know so well. And there he is: Kit. Standing in the lounge doorway.