Chapter 21
21
THREE DAYS BEFORE HE LEFT ME
I open my eyes; the clock has returned to its position and is facing me.
I have a sinking feeling, like the bed is too soft and I’m cocooned in the memory foam. The shower is on. Kit is singing to ‘Stitches’ by Shawn Mendes. I roll over to his side of the bed, reaching for his phone. My eyes are stinging and, as I try to focus on the screen, I realise I’m still wearing my mascara. My head is banging and the inside of my mouth has all the tell-tale signs of one too many glasses of wine.
Then I remember. In 2016, I had been out last night. I have a fleeting memory of meeting Ava after I’d finished writing my comprehension questions. We’d hit the wine bar down the road from here. I ducked out once she started chatting to Pete Simms and it was clear where the night was heading for them both. Pete had gone to school with us and had always had a thing for Ava. She’d liked him too, although I could never understand why – he gave me the ick. It’s not that he was bad-looking, just a bit of a knob. He came across as insincere, sometimes being cruel to the other kids to impress the popular gang. But Ava, being Ava, sees the good in everybody and even though I’d tried to talk her into coming home, I had known my battle was lost.
Kit had made me a coffee and a sandwich, had listened to me lament all the reasons that Ava shouldn’t sleep with Pete, and put a bottle of water beside the bed. It’s still there, untouched, which explains the headache.
I go shopping with Ava today.
I remember we’d both been worse for wear and we’d consoled our pounding heads with lunch and by spending more vivaciously than usual. I’d bought the coat I’d wear a week after while I was standing in the cold, with the police. I had replayed today, wishing I was living it again rather than a day that involved me looking for Kit’s body. The day had started the same: Kit in the shower, me with a hangover. Kit had gone to work. He’d been tired when he came home, and we’d argued about money, something we never usually did. He’d commented on the coat, on Ava’s choice of restaurant for lunch. He’d gone to bed on his own that night. I’d stayed up, feeling angry with him. He’d woken me the next morning before work with a tired-looking daffodil that he had been outside to pinch from the house over the road’s garden.
I remember thinking he was almost gunning for a fight, but then I had put it down to the fact that the coat was expensive; I had felt a tinge of guilt myself when I bought it but it had fitted me so well. But of course, back then, I didn’t know he’d arranged to meet Rebecca Bevitt. He stops singing and I quickly check his messages. They’ve been deleted.
Kit comes into the room, towel around his waist, a coffee in one hand and two paracetamol in the other. ‘How’s the head?’ he asks with a smile.
‘Like there’s an elephant shoving its tusks into my eyeballs.’ I shuffle up the bed and take the coffee, swallowing down the pills.
Double glazing. Rebecca Bevitt .
‘I was thinking,’ I begin as Kit gets dressed, ‘why would a double-glazing salesman knock on our door when we’ve clearly got brand-new windows?’
‘No idea,’ he says stepping into his trousers and zipping them up.
‘Did he look familiar?’ I ask.
Kit sighs loudly, his eyebrows drawn in tightly. Kit rarely looks angry. ‘What’s with the twenty questions? How the hell should I know?’
I can feel the shock of his response registering with him. He opens his mouth, closes it as though he’s about to apologise, then starts opening and shutting drawers. Kit sits on the end of the bed and pulls on his socks. His shoulders sag a touch. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, his back to me. He turns his head. ‘I’m just in a rush and I’ve got another Zoom call this morning, then a meeting in town at one, and if I don’t land this account then I’m screwed.’
Meeting in town at one.
‘What do you mean, screwed?’
‘It just means I need to land the account, that’s all.’ He’s short with me again. Kit was never short with me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him like this.
My head is pounding. I try to replay this morning in its original form. I’d stayed in bed. Kit had still brought in the coffee and pills, but I’d groaned and he’d said go back to sleep.
‘Kit, is there something worrying you?’ I shuffle forward, wrapping my arms around his neck.
He relaxes a touch, leaning his head against mine. ‘I’m being a dick. Sorry, I had a crappy night’s sleep… You were snoring by the way,’ he says, but there is a smile there.
‘Sorry.’
‘And you smell like Jaeger.’
‘Jesus, what was I thinking?’ I enjoy the normality of this for a second before the thoughts of random men knocking on the door and strange women asking my boyfriend to meet them take over.
He looks at his watch. ‘I’ve got a Zoom call.’ He gets up and hesitates at the door rushing back to me, taking my face in his hands and kissing me. ‘Wish me luck?’
‘Good luck.’ He kisses the top of my head three times and then he closes the door to his office.
I knock on Ava’s door. The curtains are still drawn; I’m early. I knock the door again. There is still no movement inside. I’ve run here. It was like a gentle stroll to my younger body. Even though I’m hungover, I barely broke a sweat. I make a vow to get back into proper shape if I ever get home. I’ve told Kit I’m still going shopping. Today I know he’s going to meet Rebecca Bevitt.
Ava opens the door, mascara smudged, her face green. Her blonde hair is crimped, a hangover from a set of plaits she would have worn the night before.
‘For Christ’s sake, Liv. You’re two hours early.’ She turns her back, tying a pale pink dressing gown around her, long tanned legs heading into her kitchen.
‘I know, but this is an emergency.’ I close the door behind me.
‘It had better be.’ She blasts water from the tap and downs it from a Bulmers pint glass. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand as I begin pacing up and down. The glass is refilled and her eyes track me back and forth as I move from one white surface to the next. I give myself a nod and clutch the back of the stainless-steel stool next to her kitchen island.
‘So… something has happened. It’s going to sound like I’ve lost my mind. I might have actually lost my mind, but just listen, OK? ’
I spill the events of the past seven years in a hyphenated rush of words. Her eyes widen, her mouth opening and closing at moments where she wants to interrupt but I just hold up my hand and keep on going.
‘We need to get you checked out. You might have had a stroke, or an aneurysm or something…’
‘No, we don’t. We need to follow Kit.’
Ava leans on the island, sleeves pushed up to her elbows.
‘Last night you slept with Pete Simms,’ I say.
Her eyes widen and then narrow. ‘Who told you?’
‘You did. Not for a long time, but eventually you did. I mean, Pete Simms? He’s such a slimeball, Ava.’
‘He’s not that bad.’ She looks at me with suspicion. ‘And that doesn’t prove a thing.’ But I can see that I’m getting through to her. She clicks her fingers. ‘You could have guessed that or, or you could have found that out on social. He didn’t put anything on Insta did he?’
‘Not yet. But he will. If you don’t believe me, how about the fact that he broke your favourite purple thong and you had to walk home with it swinging about like a baby’s nappy under your skirt?’
‘Holy shit.’ She holds her head in her hands then looks back up at me. ‘Now that I’m looking at you, your heart chakra is off, like its bouncing between two magnetic forces.’
I try not to roll my eyes. ‘That’s about the size of it.’
‘So… hold on. You’re telling me you’re a time traveller? Wait. I’m still asleep right?’
I reach across the island and pinch her on the arm. ‘Ow!’
‘Does it feel like you’re asleep now?’
She rubs her bicep and scowls at me.
‘Let me make you a coffee.’
She watches me move around the kitchen. I pull open a drawer and slide a packet of paracetamol in her direction as well as a tub of vitamins. She takes them as I make the coffees and join her.
‘I can’t get my head around this; you’re from the future? How come you don’t look any older?’
‘It’s not like that. I didn’t hop in a DeLorean. It’s more like, my… I don’t know, spirit? Is here.’
She nods, as though the cosmos is talking to her directly.
‘Believe me, I don’t look this slim in seven years’ time.’
‘Why not?’
‘Life changed. I work long hours; I don’t do all the things I do now. Once Kit disappears, it all kind of fizzles out. And there are always biscuits in the staffroom, and James is a good cook.’ I ignore the way her eyebrow quirks when I say his name. ‘And life is just… slower. I can’t actually remember the last time I went for a run in my timeline. But I do still use the gym. We bought it. The boxing club. So I still use the punch bag, but more often than not, I just sit in the office catching up on work. Marking books. James is still fit though.’
I think about the way he’d been with me yesterday, the tone of his voice when he pretty much told me to mind my own business. Ava looks like she’s about to blow a gasket.
‘Can we… just rewind a bit? So let me get this straight. Kit goes… where?’
‘One of his favourite hikes in Pembrokeshire. On Good Friday, in three days’ time. He never comes back. No body, he doesn’t use his bank card, his car is left in the car park. But the thing is, I think it was all deliberate. Leaving the car in a popular spot, being seen on a common trek, making sure someone saw him setting up the rig, ropes in hand. But I don’t think he climbed there. Now I think he hid in that cave. We couldn’t look for him there. The cove is tiny, not a clear enough route for the lifeguards.’
‘You seriously think he planned to that extent?’
I nod. Tears in my eyes. ‘I just don’t know why, why he would put me, us, through it all. We thought he was dead; he made sure that’s what we would think. That he’d had a fall or that he drowned. But we held out so much hope, for so long… that he was lost, or hurt, that he’d got amnesia. You have no idea how long we hoped he would come back.’
She blows over the top of her cup, eyeing me.
‘Don’t look at me like that. I’m not crazy. You’re the one who has just slept with Pete Simms; maybe you’re the one who needs to see a therapist?’
‘Touché. Although… he wasn’t terrible .’
‘I’m sure… if the carpet burns on your back are anything to go by.’ I quirk an eyebrow.
‘How did you know I’ve got carpet… time travel. Right.’
‘Have you checked your phone this morning?’
She shakes her head and gingerly sips at her coffee. ‘Why?’
‘Just check your phone.’ She gets up and unplugs it from the charger by the silver bread bin.
Her eyes widen as she reads the several messages I know she will have already received this morning. Her face blanches.
‘Let me guess, five messages and a missed call?’
‘Nope. Two missed calls and three messages.’ She begins plaiting her hair over her shoulder and closes her phone screen.
‘You need to tell him it was a one-nighter. Trust me. This is just the beginning.’
Pete had hounded Ava for weeks after, turning up with flowers, constant messages and phone calls asking for a second chance. He gave up eventually, but I didn’t know all of this when it was happening. She never told me until a year after, once I’d started to climb out of my grief.
‘I will. Anyway, enough about that. I want to know more about what the fuck is going on with you. This is batshit. So Kit leaves, and you hear nothing from him until…’
‘My wedding day.’
‘Can we just talk about that? You’re marrying James? James . James Palmer. Brother of Kit Palmer. The man who is, what did you say last week?’ She makes quotation signs. ‘“A self-absorbed arsehole?”’ I flinch at my words. I really, really didn’t like him back then, but now I’ve experienced his avoidance of me this week, I can understand why I would have said that.
‘Things changed when Kit left. We… needed each other. Nobody else knew how it felt. We did everything we could to find him.’
‘You and James. James ?’ Then she makes a face that is something like impressed.
‘What?’
‘It’s just that… I know you’re not his biggest fan and everything, but I’ve always wondered…’
‘Wondered what?’
‘Nothing.’
‘No, go on – what? Today doesn’t matter. Everything you or I do or say will be wiped clean in the morning. We’ll have gone shopping, I will have spent a ridiculous amount of money on a coat and you won’t have told me a thing about Pete Simms, so you may as well tell me what’s on your mind.’
‘All that is on my mind is if someone slipped something else into my tequila last night and I’m high.’
‘You’re not high.’ I glance at the clock and drain the last of my drink. ‘We need to get going.’
‘Where? ’
‘I don’t know, but he said he had a meeting in town at one. We need to follow him. I need to find out what’s going on.’
An hour later and we’re parked beside a tanning salon. I’m wearing Ava’s grey cap and she’s rubbing her temples behind a pair of sunglasses.
There he is. My stomach swoops. I’m still getting used to seeing him in the flesh. Not a shadow, not a smudge of memory: Kit. He climbs into his car, starts the engine, turns right. I keep my distance, at least two cars behind, as he heads out of town. It gets harder to follow him as he makes his way along country A roads.
‘Where is he meeting her?’ I say.
‘No idea, hon. So if you’re right, he’s going to meet the woman from his Facebook messages?’
‘Yep.’
She sighs and I can see her looking at me through the corner of her eye. ‘Tell me about James.’ She shifts in her seat, adjusting the seat belt. ‘About your relationship with him.’
‘James is…’ I smile. I can’t help myself. ‘James is great. At least, I thought he was.’
‘Run through the morning before you ended up here, again. Just so I can have this alternate universe in my mind. But first please tell me I’m your bridesmaid?’
I grin at her. ‘Maid of honour.’
‘Naturally. So you’re in your hotel room? Where?’
‘The Grange.’
‘ The Grange ?’ she asks slightly aghast.
‘It’s close to Mum,’ I say in explanation.
‘OK. So you’re in the hotel room, then what?’
‘I wanted to call Mum, but I couldn’t find my phone charger. ’
She scoffs. ‘Some things are the same, then. You still don’t know your arse from your elbow. Sorry, so you’re looking for the charger and you find the necklace in James’s hoody with a receipt from the week before and a note?’
‘Yep.’ I keep my eye on the road. There are two cars in front of me, Kit leading the way. ‘Which means…’ I pause, still not wanting to believe that James knew. But the more time I spend here, the more I think that he must do. He had the necklace.
‘Could James have kept the necklace from before? Now? Jesus, this is all making my head spin.’
I shake my head. ‘The note was new. And then there is the date on the receipt. Kit was going to get it engraved this week, not seven years in the future.’
‘Do you trust him? James?’
‘Yes,’ I say without hesitation.
‘And now?’
I think back to yesterday, to the argument. He never told me about it.
‘Now I think that… maybe he knew? If not all of the details, I think he knew something was going on with him. Or maybe they’ve both been lying all along.’
‘Why don’t you ask James? Straight up. Tell him everything you’ve told me.’
I snort. ‘Can you imagine how he’d react? Hi, James, I know we can’t stand each other but in the future we get married.’
But, she has a point, maybe I should speak to James, tell him the truth.
‘The thing is, James was… distraught. He was grieving. You can’t fake grief. Or maybe you can.’ I crunch the gears.
‘Careful!’ she says as we bounce over a pothole.
‘Sorry, it’s been a while since I’ve driven a manual. We’ve got an automatic. James took some convincing, but he came around. ’
She’s quiet. I imagine she’s trying to picture me and James, our life together.
‘And you really love him? James?’
I pause. ‘You have to understand that I’m different now. Losing Kit, it changed me. Changed us. I think I lost a piece of me when he left… I wasn’t in a good place when he died. I moved back in with Mum.’
I try to force down the blocked-up entrance of my memories to that time, where danger whispered through the cracks in the walls; when I didn’t go to work, didn’t go to the shops, didn’t leave the house unless James was with me.
‘James was there for me in a way that no one else was. That’s not to say you weren’t there for me too. You were, but…’
‘I hadn’t lost him in the same way as you two had?’
‘Yeah.’
I think of Ava, sitting on my bed, refilling mugs of cold tea, urging me to leave the bedroom; the terror I’d felt when she’d asked me to go for a walk; the void that hung dark and threatening over the threshold from the front door to the kerb. And James. The way he helped me step over it, the way I felt like I could leave the house if he was with me.
‘We’re good together, James and I. We make a good team.’ I push down gently on the brakes as we head into a bend, the steering wheel light beneath my hands.
‘Can I ask you a personal question?’ She shifts, pulls at the seat belt, readjusting it.
‘Sure. You won’t remember any of this anyway.’
‘How soon did you get together with James?’
‘Three years,’ I say. I glance at her as she analyses my words. She’s not looking at me with judgement, just as though I’m a puzzle that needs solving. ‘It was intense. We got caught in this bubble that nobody else could be part of and it just developed from there. He’s not who you think he is,’ I add.
‘And who do I think he is?’
‘Grumpy, indifferent, moody?’
‘Actually, I think he’s pretty decent. It must be hard being Kit’s brother.’
‘Shit, we’re going to lose him,’ I say edging out so I can see past the cars.
Kit’s car turns onto a retail park: Tesco, Next Home, Costa.
I slow down and flick on the indicator. Kit turns right at the small roundabout. I slow down, circle the car park and pull up next to a white van, edging the bonnet forward so we can see him but keeping the rest of the car hidden.
‘Slouch down,’ I say to Ava as he gets out of the car, locks the doors and runs his hands through his hair. He looks agitated. Kit hesitates before looking both ways, crosses the car park and heads towards a small café, but he doesn’t go in; instead he gets in a car with a woman at the wheel. We sit back up, both of us watching his progress through the glass windows. He leans in, kisses her on the cheek.
My mouth is dry, my pulse strumming through my veins.
‘Do you recognise her?’ Ava asks, turning to me. My whole body is shaking.
I nod. I know exactly who she is.
I shake my head trying to clear my thoughts. She’s a bit younger than the last time I saw her at Kit’s funeral. Her hair is cut into a bob, brown not blonde. ‘It’s Becky Thomas.’ Her name is a nettle sting on my tongue. ‘Kit’s ex-girlfriend.’
I watch as Kit talks. She smiles at him as he speaks, leaning in as she listens to him. I can’t lip-read; I can’t hear what he’s saying, but whatever it is he says means that her whole body relaxes. She laughs and nods .
Rain starts to fall onto the windscreen. I flick on the wipers. The action feels so automatic, so normal .
My whole body is fighting against what I can see, resisting the implications of how comfortable he looks, how they’re interacting. He can’t be doing this to me. Can he? Of all the scenarios I have volleyed back and forth in my mind, the multiple reasons he would leave me, another woman never even made an appearance. He leans forward, gives an encouraging smile, then she laughs, nodding her head. They are holding each other now. I don’t know who made the first move, but Kit’s eyes are closed, his face a picture of contentment. They pull apart and she starts the car. I grapple with the door handle, stepping out of the car but they are already driving away. I run across the tarmac.
‘Liv, wait!’ Ava says chasing after me, but I’m too late.
We stand in the rain, watching the indicator tick as they pull onto the main road, the red tail lights merging with the traffic.
‘Liv?’ Ava says, trying to hold her coat above our heads. I don’t answer her; instead I stand there in the rain. Both of us speechless. Both of us unable to believe his betrayal could be so monumental.
Ava drops me home, against her will; I need to be alone.
I stand in front of the door to our flat, but I can’t face going in. I need to get back. I need to get back to the present day. I can’t do this. I’m not strong enough. Is this why I’m here? To find out that he was in love with someone else, that he was having an affair?
I begin running, a jog at first, but my feet begin pounding harder and faster as I follow the roads towards the Grange Hotel. The rain continues but I don’t care. Maybe if I go back to room 307 it will break this spell. I have my answer. This all makes sense to me now. I can understand why James wouldn’t tell me; he knew Kit having an affair would break me. I don’t forgive him for lying to me, but at least I can understand why he would.
I hurry up the steps, the same steps that had taken me into the building that I had walked into full of laughter and excitement. I ask if room 307 is available, ignore the looks I’m getting in my saturated state, and pay for it on my card, before walking up the stairs.
I stare at the hotel door. I touch the metal, tracing the numbers like reading Braille.
‘Take me back. I just want to go home.’
I take a deep breath, place my hand on the doorknob and turn.
Please let this work, please let this work.
I hold my breath in my chest and walk through.