Chapter 34.
Now
After Amsterdam, Ash and I go back and forth a bit over where we should live. Eventually, we decide that him moving into mine makes the most practical sense. We’re not ready to buy somewhere together, and there’s a part of me that would find it almost impossible to leave my house. It’s my sanctuary if I’m struggling, the place I escape to when I need to make sense of the world. My heart lies within its walls. Every day, I lavish love upon it. Only yesterday, I spent hours painstakingly oiling the kitchen worktops, and scrubbing the first copper tinges of autumn out of the back patio.
By contrast, Ash – though he loves his place – is able to contemplate moving on one day. Finding his forever home. ‘A wreck that needs doing up,’ he tells me one night, over spaghetti. ‘That would be the dream.’
‘I reckon you might be quite good at that,’ I say, privately thinking that I would, too.
He smiles, twirling pasta around his fork. ‘It’s getting hold of one that’s the tricky bit.’
‘You must have loads of contacts.’
‘Yeah. But you can’t get mates’ rates on old houses any more.’
I think about my mother’s house, the crimes against period charm she commits every day.
‘You’re crazy,’ Parveen says, when I tell her Ash is moving in.
‘You think it’s too soon?’
There is a part of me that does feel this is quick. That it’s exactly the sort of thing my mother would do – move in with someone because it feels romantic, not because it’s the sensible choice.
Parveen laughs, and says, ‘No, I mean you should buy a place together.’
‘It’s way too soon for that. And I’m too attached to mine, anyway.’
‘Do you know how long me and Maz were dating, before we decided to buy our place? Six weeks.’
‘You were not.’
‘We were. We just knew.’ She pauses, sips her coffee. ‘Plus, you know – I was pregnant.’
I manage a smile, even though after all these years, the word still has a habit of hitting me square in the stomach. ‘Well, exactly. We don’t have quite the same imperative as you did.’
She turns back to the 3D rendering she’s looking at. ‘I just think, when you know, you know. People get sneery about whirlwind romances, but only because they’re jealous.’
I think of my mother. To her, love isn’t love unless it feels storm-gauge. ‘Or sensible.’
‘God, wouldn’t life be so boring if we were all sensible, though?’ She shudders. ‘I’d choose the whirlwind any day.’
She reminds me so much of Lara, when she says things like that.
Lara and I go for lunch at the waffle place on St Giles Street. I’m wolfing mine down because I’m on a tight deadline at work and don’t really have the time for long lunches. But I wanted to see her.
‘Aren’t you hungry?’ I ask her eventually, gently, because for the past ten minutes she’s mostly been pushing the food around her plate.
‘How are things with Ash?’
I can’t hold back any longer. ‘Is it this diet you’re on? Was it your idea?’
‘What? I’m not on a diet. What?’
I set down my fork and attempt to make eye contact. She avoids it. ‘Lara. That detox—’
‘I miss work,’ she says, the words falling from her mouth in a rush. ‘I miss London, and work, and my flat, and my dad, and my old life, and knowing—’ She breaks off, then shakes her head.
I lean forward, feeling stupid for thinking her lack of appetite was just about food. ‘Knowing what?’
She just shakes her head again.
‘Lar. Is it Felix?’
Seeming to recover slightly, she takes a sip of water. ‘Is what Felix?’
‘Is Felix why you’re feeling so—’
‘Felix is the love of my life.’ She looks me right in the eyes as she says this.
‘I know. But sometimes... that makes things harder, not easier.’
She considers this for a moment or two, then shakes her head for a third time. ‘Come on. Talk to me. How are things with Ash?’
I haven’t told her that Ash is talking to an estate agent today, enquiring about letting out the Old Yarn Mill, and calling the mortgage company to see if he can switch his loan. He’s doing all this... yet I still haven’t confessed my theory about what really happened on the night of his accident. I’ve been kicking it down the road for weeks, not wanting to derail us getting back together, or Amsterdam, or moving in. Every day it seems, there’s another reason to hold off.
But there’s no good reason not to fill Lara in.
I open my mouth to tell her everything; but I can sense from her demeanour that she has too much on her mind to hear it all right now. Though whether that’s because of Felix, or her mum, I’m not too sure.
So instead, I just tell her about our most recent nights out and what we’re watching on Netflix and his friends teaching me darts, for which – it turns out – I have an unexpected gift.
‘I know,’ I say, as Lara laughs. ‘Why couldn’t I be secretly talented at something really cool, like snowboarding, or poker, or being fluent in seven languages, or something? The landlady kept trying to get me to join their ladies’ league. She’s got my number. She WhatsApped me all the details.’
Lara shakes her head, trying to regain her composure. ‘Well, what’s wrong with that?’
‘My mum’s a member. And... last Christmas, they did a darts league calendar.’
Her mouth drops open a little. ‘Oh my God.’
‘Lots of strategically-placed dartboards,’ I say, my insides shrivelling at the memory.
‘I have to see this. Does she still have it?’
‘Obviously. Pride of place in the downstairs loo.’
‘Which month was she?’
‘February, May and August. Of course. Couldn’t get enough.’
We carry on laughing, which means I can leave all the more complicated stuff – the emotional heft of loving a man who only knows half the story – for another time.
Ash and I are in bed, delaying getting up because for the first time in months, the air is shot through with an autumnal chill. We’ve been laughing because we got in late last night, drunk on espresso martinis, and Ash made us cheese toasties, which we ate in bed. Only now that we’re sober have we realised the mattress is sprinkled with crumbs. Ash shook his head and said we were animals, but I didn’t care. It was the best cheese toastie I’d ever eaten, because he made it for me in a sweet late-night effort to mitigate my hangover.
Once we’ve stopped laughing, he turns towards me on the pillow and says, ‘Hey, I want to ask you something.’
‘Okay,’ I say, my heart thumping a little harder, as it always does when he looks at me this way.
‘Will you come to my parents’ house with me, for dinner? Saturday after next?’
I smile cautiously. ‘What’s the occasion?’
‘The occasion of me wanting you to meet them.’ He shuffles a little closer, then rolls onto his front, propping himself up on his elbows. I feel his breath skim my skin. ‘Well, that, and it being my mum’s birthday. Gabi’s going to be there too.’
I have often tried to imagine how life has felt for Ash’s family since his accident; the peculiar agony of losing someone still living and never quite getting them back. What would they say, if I told them what I believe? Maybe they’d be relieved. Perhaps they’d finally feel as though – for the first time in nearly a decade – everything at last made some kind of sense.
But disclosure isn’t an option. I haven’t even talked to Ash yet.
He’d been going to introduce me to his family at a barbecue back in August. But before it could happen, I called him Jamie by mistake. This morning is the first time he’s mentioned me meeting them again since.
‘What have you told them about me?’ I ask him.
He sneaks me a look. ‘I don’t want to say.’
‘Well, you have to.’
‘Why?’
‘So I can prepare. Or, you know. Cancel.’
‘Well,’ he says, ‘I’ve told them I love you, and that I want to make a life with you.’
‘To which they said?’ I whisper.
He bends down to kiss me. ‘Actually... they said they’d never seen me look so happy.’
Even as I melt into the kiss, I know a confession is long overdue. Because if I believe he is not entirely who he appears to be, then I cannot be who he thinks I am, either. We are both living a lie – but only one of us knows it.
He pulls gently back, his pitch-blue eyes seeming to search mine. Does he sense, somehow, that I am fermenting with secrets, with half-finished sentences and hidden sentiments?
I open my mouth to speak, but at the last moment, change my mind.
The timing’s all wrong. I’ll talk to him once I’ve met his family. It’s just a couple more weeks. Maybe meeting them will help me to zoom out of the situation, to view its whole context, make sure I’ve missed nothing. And then I’ll tell him what I believe, the thing that is feeling increasingly like tentacles wrapped around my chest.