Chapter 22
NICK
For months after finding it, the letter haunted me. By the time I got home that day I’d calmed down a little so, instead of tearing it up or burning it, I hid it in at the bottom of my wardrobe under a pile of boxes. I’d decide what to do with it another time.
Except that time never seemed to come.
I still couldn’t bring myself to open it: I didn’t care what it said because there was nothing Emma could be telling me that I’d want to hear.
But for some reason I couldn’t bear to throw it away either. It felt too final.
I wished I could talk to Andy about it. Only, for the first time ever, this was something I couldn’t tell him, because I knew what he’d say. That Emma was tricking me. Lying to me.
And so I stewed on it alone, as the thought of it burned a hole inside me, never fully out of mind.
The truth was I missed Emma like a limb, the need to see her like a physical ache. There were plenty of times I almost went back to the bandstand at the time we usually met to see whether she was there. I wanted to confront her, ask her what she thought she was doing, writing to me.
I also wanted to throw my arms around her and hold her forever.
So I resisted going back and slowly, as the days and weeks passed and the memory of that night – of those few amazing weeks we spent together – faded, I began to emerge from my cocoon of grief and start to live again.
I spent time with Andy, Amanda and my beautiful nieces, Ella and Imogen.
I went for the deputy head position at a nearby school and got it.
I went on the occasional date, usually set up by Andy and Amanda, and although some led to a second date or a third, I wasn’t looking for love, necessarily.
I just couldn’t seem to let myself go, to give enough of myself to someone.
Because all the time I kept wondering how long I had left.
I felt like a ticking time bomb, scanning myself for signs of illness, worrying that every little niggle was cancer, or wondering whether today was the day that I’d step off the kerb and get run over by a bus.
It was no way to live, and one day, almost a year after walking out on Emma, Andy had a suggestion.
‘Do you think you should get some counselling?’ he said.
I shook my head. ‘No, I’m fine. I’m happy,’ I said.
He gave a mirthless laugh and shook his head. ‘You used to be the happiest person I knew, but it’s like the joy has drained from you and I’m looking at a shell of my baby brother.’
‘Thanks for the vote of confidence,’ I said.
‘Come on, Nicky, you know I’m right. Ever since you made the assumption that Emma had discovered you’d died, it’s like you’ve been waiting for it, not living.’
‘I am living. Nothing’s changed,’ I insisted, but he just shook his head and said, ‘That’s exactly my point.’