Chapter Fifty-Five
JESS
There’s no point talking to Luke while he’s like this.
A walk around the grounds in the cool air will probably do him good.
But when he returns, I’m going to be ready for him.
I need all the magic his great-great-grannie’s ring can give me.
And, yes, it was lost in the other versions of our lives, but I’m not there anymore, am I?
The ring can’t be sloshing around with pebbles and empty shells somewhere just off the Kent coast, because in this reality or timeline or whatever it is, I didn’t lose the ring! Luke hasn’t even given it to me yet.
Oh, no. But that means it’s probably back at home, like it was last time. And it’ll take too long to Uber there and back again. I need to do something now to save my marriage.
But what if … ?
It’s worth a try.
I run back into the function room and go to the table at the edge of the dance floor where Luke and I sat earlier. His jacket is slung over the back of one of the banqueting chairs and I delve into one pocket then the next.
A-ha! Got it!
Diane is sitting across the table and gives me a quizzical look.
I can’t open it here, can I? She’ll recognize the ring and wonder why I didn’t wait for Luke to give it to me.
I smile brightly at her, and decide it’s easier to take the whole jacket than risk her seeing what’s inside the gift bag, so I turn, clutching it to me, and march myself out of the function room and back onto the terrace, where I throw Luke’s jacket down and grab for the gift bag in the left-hand pocket and pull it out.
‘What the hell are you doing?’
I jerk reflexively and the ring box jumps out of the tissue paper, bounces off the table and then lands on the floor. I turn around to face Luke, who’s standing behind me with his hands on his hips. ‘I—I was just … ’ I trail off. There is no explanation he would accept or understand.
‘You’re spying on me? Going through my pockets?’
‘No … Well, yes … But—’
He grabs his jacket from the table. ‘I was on my way back inside to get this,’ he says, then his gaze snags on the gift bag and he snatches that up too and shoves it back in his pocket.
‘What is up with you this evening? You are behaving very, very weirdly. And why were you looking for this? How did you even know about it?’
‘I … I don’t know what to say.’
‘An explanation would be nice!’
I give him a helpless shrug. That is honestly all I can tell him.
He runs his hand through his hair, and I see that same look in his eyes I saw earlier. Even though he doesn’t move, I feel him stepping away emotionally. It won’t be long before his body follows. I reach for him. ‘Luke, please … ?’
This time he does step away, shaking his head.
‘No. You tell me. What’s going on, Jess?
None of this makes sense at all. I’ve been feeling something has been off for weeks, months even.
This is the evening – our tenth anniversary – when we should be so happy to have reached this milestone, when we should be celebrating, enjoying each other, but here we are, neither of us understanding what the other one is doing, let alone thinking.
Is that what the next ten years are going to be like?
’ He shakes his head. ‘If so, I’m not sure I can—’
‘No! Don’t say it!’ I shout. ‘Don’t say it,’ I repeat more quietly, and then I begin to cry.
Luke doesn’t move. He’s over it, I can tell.
He’s over me.
I know I’m only seconds away from sobbing hysterically, but I gather every ounce of my energy, and I shove a lid on my panic, my grief, that this is all happening again – same conversation, different location.
I feel as if someone has hollowed out my insides with a spoon.
A memory slices through my brain: my mother, sobbing against the closed front door after my father left, her howls equal amounts of rage and despair.
I want to scream at him, tell him how hard I’ve tried, how he was already one foot half out the door when I arrived in this day, how it’s his fault he didn’t love me hard enough, make me feel worthy enough, but I let the words pass through my head and fly free.
As much as I want to blame him, I know where that leads.
I also know that where we are now is just as much my fault, but I don’t know how to get out of this dead end I’ve driven myself into. I’m boxed in. Nowhere to go, except …
It’s as if a door opens in my head and light shines through it.
There is a way. Just one. And it might be insanity to take that path. At the very least, it will require every scrap of courage and strength I’ve found within myself during the last thirteen days. I’m going to have to do the unthinkable.
‘Okay,’ I say. I walk over to the stone balustrade and rest against it, then gesture for him to join me.
When he’s settled, I clasp my hands in front of me, look him in the eye, and I start to tell him what happened on our tenth anniversary – not this time, the last time – and then I tell him what happened in all the days afterwards.