Chapter Fifty-Two
JESS
I wake up with a jolt. No! I can’t have fallen asleep! I need to … I need to …
What the heck?
Last time I remember feeling sleepy I was on the sofa downstairs, but now I’m back in bed again. On my own, which must mean that I’ve slept in. How did I get here? I don’t remember walking myself up the stairs!
Oh.
I’m too late.
My stomach swoops. This is it. Today’s the day.
I bring my left hand out from under the duvet to where I can see it, but my ring finger still only has two rings on it instead of three.
What am I going to do? And what is Luke going to say if he discovers I’ve misplaced a family heirloom?
I’m going to have to try and find it, or at the very least prevent him from noticing its absence until this day is over.
Have I been without it for a whole year?
That can’t be good. When Luke’s grandma lost it at the beach, it came back to her within twenty-four hours, but I skipped right over that day, and hundreds of other ones after it.
What does it mean that it hasn’t found its way back to me? Has it considered me somehow unworthy?
But there’s not much I can do about that now. I’m just going to have to put my best foot forward, build on everything I’ve already tried to change, and hope I’ve done enough. I take a few deep breaths, flip the duvet back and get out of bed.
I find Luke downstairs, sitting at the kitchen table with a mug of tea, engrossed in his phone. ‘Morning, gorgeous!’ I say, cheerily. ‘I think it’s your turn to make the pancakes this year!’
He frowns at me. ‘What pancakes?’
I put my hands on my hips. ‘You know … the banana and blueberry pancakes. Our tradition.’ Or it seems to have become that over the last few years.
Luke looks perplexed and he stands and goes over to the fridge. ‘Do we even have any blueberries? Or eggs, for that matter?’
‘Um … I don’t know.’
He opens the fridge door and scans the interior. ‘Eggs, no. Blueberries, yes. You can always have them with yoghurt.’
I blink. Yes, I can, I suppose. He stands back from the fridge door and allows me to gather what I need to make myself some breakfast. When he returns to the table and picks up his phone, I notice a plate with toast crumbs sitting next to his mug. He must have eaten without me.
As I dollop yoghurt into a bowl and start hunting through the kitchen cupboard for some almonds or pecans to sprinkle on top along with the blueberries, I start chattering away to him. ‘When are you off work this afternoon?’
‘Normal time,’ he says without looking up from his phone.
‘You’re not finishing early because of the party?’
‘You said you had it all covered. And we knew that was the downside of doing it on our actual anniversary rather than waiting for the weekend.’
‘Oh, yes. I forgot.’ I sit down opposite him with my breakfast, and he still doesn’t look up from his screen. ‘What have you got planned for today? Have you got any prospects on the go in terms of houses?’
‘Houses?’
The only way I could think of to find out if he’s finally made the break from Harris & Sons is by asking him outright. ‘Yes. Anything on the horizon with Elena?’
That gets his attention. He finally lifts his head, looking more than a little flustered. ‘Elena? Why would you mention Elena? I … I mean, we … haven’t seen her in years.’
‘But I thought—’
He stands up abruptly, jams his phone into the pocket of his trousers and starts whizzing around the kitchen, putting his stuff in the dishwasher, picking up his keys.
I have the weird feeling that he’s avoiding the subject for some reason.
‘Right. That’s me. I need to head off. I’ll see you later.
’ He doesn’t even meet my eyes as he gives me a perfunctory kiss on the cheek and leaves.
The sound of the front door slamming a second or two later makes me jump. I stand there in the kitchen, my arms hanging limply at my sides. ‘Happy anniversary,’ I mutter after him.
Feeling deflated, I go back upstairs, take a shower and get dressed.
Is it me, or was Luke being strange? We had such an amazing time last night, our relationship seemed so strong in comparison to last time, that I thought at least I’d get a bit more affection from him.
What’s happened in the last twelve months?
Have I jinxed it all by losing the ring?
I continue to ponder why things feel a bit off as I put my jewellery on. As I’m concentrating on inserting an earring, I let my gaze wander around our bedroom. Hang on … What’s that print doing there?
I walk across the room to where a large vintage-style rail poster for the Lake District hangs above the chest of drawers.
That shouldn’t be here. It should be the black-and-white framed photograph of Venice we picked up there second time around, when we were happy and in the mood for gathering memories and souvenirs, rather than sulking with each other.
I shake my head. My memory is so scrambled at the moment. I must be mixing things up. What’s really important right now is that I find that ring. Since the last place I checked was the living room, I might as well continue the search there before trying anywhere else.
I pull all the sofa cushions off again and have another rummage, to no avail, and it’s as I’m putting them back again, that something catches my eye.
The tiles in the fireplace. They’re wrong.
Because we bought the house a year later this time around, we couldn’t find the same tiles.
Instead of the cream ones with the red tulips we originally had, I ended up with large yellow flowers, but here are the tulips staring back at me.
No. It can’t be.
I race into the kitchen diner, grab my bullet journal off the desk and leaf madly through it.
When I can’t find what I’m looking for, I pull the previous year’s journal off the shelf and turn it to the fourteenth of May.
My work commitments for the day are in there, but there is nothing to suggest I met with my mother that morning.
I was sure I wrote that in there. I pick up another book and flick to the back.
Where there should be a tally of all the money I lent my mother that year, that list that caused an argument six years ago, there is a creamy blank page.
I sit down heavily on the desk chair and stare across the room.
No. This isn’t fair.
It’s not how this is supposed to go. I’m supposed to arrive on my tenth anniversary the same way as I arrived in all my others, building on the progress and course corrections made in previous years.
I don’t want to admit it to myself, but I have the horrible feeling that’s not what has happened this time.
This house is exactly the same as the one I left the last time I lived my tenth anniversary. Luke didn’t remember our new tradition about pancakes. And instead of being warm and affectionate this morning, at times, it felt as if he was looking right through me.
This isn’t a new version of our tenth anniversary. This is the old one. The nightmare.
I glance down at the space on my ring finger where the eternity ring should be. Of course, I wouldn’t be wearing it if I was reliving the first version of this day. Luke hasn’t given it to me yet. Well, technically, he didn’t ever give it to me. I just found it after he left.
That must be the reason. What else could it be?
After all, the ring has been the key to everything so far – I don’t know why I didn’t put it together before now.
I ‘jumped’ back in time after I found it the first time, and things weren’t going well, no matter how hard I tried, before Luke gave it to me properly in Venice.
After that, things got quickly better and stayed that way.
And now the ring is lost, I’m back at square one.
That has to be it. It has to be.
A flash of memory, Luke shouting at me, the hopelessness in his eyes, the front door banging behind him fills my mind. Oh, God. If I’m right, it’s all going to happen again. And I’ve only got – I count silently in my head – twelve hours to change that.
I put my elbows on my knees and rest my head in my hands. What am I going to do? I can’t live through that again. I let down every wall, every barrier. I gave it my all. If he leaves me again, I will just be a shell of a person, filled with longing and regret that will never leave me.
I will end up just like my mother. I won’t have any other choice.