Chapter 49
Phoebe and Luca walk side by side back through the village later that evening. When he reaches for her hand, she lets him take it, feeling goosebumps dart their way up her arms despite the worries clouding her mind.
‘Have you heard from Kate?’ he asks as if reading her thoughts.
‘No. I’ve messaged to see how she’s doing but haven’t heard anything yet.’
‘I’m sure you’ll hear from her soon,’ he replies, squeezing her fingers.
‘So, what do you think about Kate’s plan?’ After she’d left, they’d pored over her notes together, Jay helping them decipher bits where the handwriting grew particularly messy in Kate’s haste to get it all down.
‘I think it sounds good,’ says Luca. ‘I’d never heard of a “bathing water” before.’
‘We have them on certain beaches down in Cornwall,’ says Phoebe. ‘It means the water quality gets regularly monitored and protected. I had no idea what was involved in the process of getting somewhere accredited as a bathing water though. It sounds like a lot of work.’
‘Yeah, especially as this would be the first river in the country to have bathing water status. But everyone seemed keen to help. And I think I can get the rowers on board too. You’d be surprised how much water you accidentally swallow when you’re rowing, from it splashing up off the oars. It’s in all of our interests to clean up the river.’
‘Exactly. And if we can clean the place up enough to get bathing water status, and prove how much the river means to everyone, then hopefully we can protect it for the future. I really don’t want to lose that place.’
‘I know you don’t. Neither do I.’
It’s still hard to think of their beautiful river as polluted. It doesn’t look polluted. But Phoebe, of all people, knows that what goes on beneath the surface isn’t always obvious just from a glance.
They reach the deli and pause for a moment to look in through the window, to where Luca’s father is tucking into a sample of cheese and passing one across to a customer, talking animatedly to them. It’s the deli’s weekly cheese and wine night and the place is buzzing.
‘I roped him in to help out so we could go out,’ Luca explains.
‘He looks as though he’s enjoying himself far too much. You might be out of a job.’
‘Maybe he could be my Saturday boy. I was thinking about expanding the workforce eventually if the business really takes off – as it seems to be doing. Take the pressure off, so I’ve got more time for myself. But is it unethical to hire your seventy-five-year-old father and pay him only in cheese?’
‘I think cheese as reimbursement is frankly the answer to a happy workforce.’
They grin at each other.
‘Hey, do you want to get something to eat?’ he asks, but before Phoebe can answer, her attention is pulled down the street, to where a familiar voice is calling her name. She drops Luca’s hand in surprise as she turns to follow the sound of the voice.
‘Max?’
He is striding towards them, looking from Phoebe to Luca and back again. Phoebe instantly regrets having dropped Luca’s hand, but as she reaches out for it again, she notices that he has stepped away from her.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘We need to talk, Phoebe,’ Max says, doing his best to appear to ignore Luca.
Luca is hovering by the door to the deli and Phoebe glances inside at the lively atmosphere, wishing herself in there with Luca instead of out here, confronted with her ex-boyfriend. But before she can turn away, Max reaches out, placing a hand on her arm.
‘It’s over. I left her. It wasn’t even a real thing anyway. I miss you.’
It all tumbles out in one breath and Phoebe is so startled that she can’t find any words. Looking at him, she realises for the first time quite how awful he looks. His face is gaunt, his eyes ringed with dark circles.
Luca clears his voice. ‘Phoebe, do you want me to stay?’
Max’s eyes meet hers and for a second she falls into them, pulled back by the memories of their life together. Jesus, it wasn’t perfect. But they were together for three years. When she looks into Luca’s eyes, she feels a spark of excitement and the thrill of getting to understand someone new. But Max’s eyes are so known to her that it throws her for a moment.
‘No, it’s OK. I’ll see you in a bit …’
Phoebe turns just in time to catch the steely expression on his face as he silently turns and opens the deli door and then is gone. But it’s too late then. Shit! What was she thinking? She wants to be in there with Luca, not out here with Max.
She finds her voice now, her expression hard. ‘What, Max? What the fuck do you want?’
His face twists into a grimace, but suddenly she doesn’t have any sympathy for his exhausted expression. He left her! He slept with someone else and took her bloody furniture!
‘Can we go upstairs? I need to talk to you.’
‘What if I don’t want to talk to you?’
‘Please, Phoebs.’ He bobs up and down on the spot. ‘Look, the truth is, I’ve been driving for ages and I’m dying for a piss. Please, just let me upstairs and I’ll use the loo and then go.’
‘OK, fine, but that’s it.’
She follows him upstairs, lingering in the living room as he closes the bathroom door. She paces back and forth by the window.
The sound of the taps running and then the bathroom door opening causes her to spin around.
Max casts his eyes around the apartment, his gaze falling on the sofa.
‘Wow. That’s, um, bold.’
‘It was a gift from a friend. I couldn’t exactly be picky once you’d cleared the place out, could I?’
‘Yes, yeah, of course.’ He looks nervous now, resting a hand on the back of the sofa and seeming very interested in the fabric. ‘I’m sorry about that. I was being a dick.’
‘Why are you here, Max?’
He takes a deep breath, rubbing one hand along his jawline. ‘I made a stupid mistake, Phoebs. I never cared about her. It wasn’t even a thing. And I know that’s not an excuse, I know I did a really shitty thing. But I was just feeling so lonely.’
His words hit her square in the chest. He looks smaller somehow and something inside her softens, anger releasing its grip.
‘All those nights when I’d be at home on my own, waiting for you to come back. Or when you’d cancel a plan yet again … I hated it. It made me feel that I didn’t matter at all.’
‘I know,’ she says quietly, all the fight suddenly draining out of her. Yes, the way he left was bad. But she has to accept the part she played in ending their relationship too. It didn’t break because of him. They broke it together. Or maybe it simply was never going to work to begin with.
‘What you said in one of your messages when you left,’ she says, perching on the edge of the bright orange sofa. ‘Maybe you were right. You do deserve to be with someone who makes you feel like they want to be with you. I clearly didn’t do that and I’m sorry for that. But I also deserve to be with someone who understands how much my career means to me, who is proud of what I do rather than resenting it. And that will never be you, Max. We were never going to be right for each other. We can’t make each other happy.’
When Max left, Phoebe thought it was proof that she couldn’t make a relationship fit around her life, she’d just have to deal with being single forever. But now …
Her thoughts turn immediately to the curly-haired man who smells like icing sugar and pesto, who she can sense moving about in the deli beneath the flat even if she can’t see him. A man who understands the drive that sits at the very core of her being, spurring her on even when it’s hard. Who doesn’t want to rein her in or dull her shine. You’re fucking luminous, he had told her. And when she’s with him, she feels as if maybe she could be.
‘I think you should probably go,’ she says, but softly now.
Max hesitates for a moment and then nods. They share a brief awkward hug that she instantly regrets instigating.
‘I’m sorry again about the furniture,’ he says as he pauses for a second at the doorway. ‘I think I’m going to stay with Mum and Dad for a bit, so I don’t even need it. I’ll bring it all back.’
But Phoebe shakes her head. ‘Don’t. I actually like my new things.’ They make her think of her new friends and the new life that she is building for herself. A life where there’s space for other things and other people to matter alongside her work.
‘Even the sofa?’ he asks, wrinkling his nose.
‘Especially the sofa.’
When Phoebe’s phone rings just after the door closes on Max, the sound makes her jump. Bloody hell. She just wants to get downstairs to Luca and to explain that Max is well and truly out of the picture. And just hope that he’s still interested despite the way she dropped his hand when Max turned up on the scene.
But when she sees the name on her phone screen, she picks up immediately.