Chapter 31
I didn’t cry in the lift, or in the hotel room, or on the plane. I held it together until I reached Mum’s hospital room.
She was awake and looked like herself again – colour back in her face, eyesore of a dressing gown on and a full face of makeup, including lipstick, firmly in place. Of course she’d felt the need to look glam for surgery.
‘Oh, darling,’ she said, as I sat on the seat next to her bed and burst into tears. If Mum had accused me of pulling focus on the day she was due to have surgery, it would have been a fair accusation. Instead she offered me a tissue from the box by her bed.
‘Can I stay at your place and look after you?’ I asked between sobs.
‘Of course you can, darling. I’ll tell Hamish not to cut his trip short,’ she said in an even voice.
Neither of us mentioned that I’d never stayed at her and Hamish’s house.
When I’d moved out, Dad had sold our family home, and his spare room was an office.
I didn’t want to be an imposition on my friends, and most of them had more kids than bedrooms. I had nowhere else to go.
‘Now, I’ve heard rumours of a French bakery across the street. And I’d love to have something that doesn’t taste like institution waiting for me when I come to.’
I’d expected another sleepless night in Mum’s guest room, but I passed out almost as soon as my head hit the pillow.
As the initial shock of Matt cancelling the wedding wore off, the feelings flooded in.
In fact, all I did for the next two days was sleep and cry.
I picked up Mum when she was discharged, got her comfortable and brought her meals and pills.
Then I collapsed back into the spare bed with a box of tissues.
I made Mum simple food – soups and sandwiches – but I had no appetite.
I’d never understood it when people said they couldn’t get out of bed, but now I did.
Mum had fractured her ankle and been discharged from the hospital with a pain management plan and a rehabilitation team.
But no professional had given me advice on how to manage the all-consuming body aches, or the moments when I’d wake up in the night feeling like I couldn’t breathe or when I missed Matt in every part of my body.
No physio was booking an appointment to rehabilitate my broken brain, and life, and heart.
I made languid attempts to make myself feel better.
I tried drinking – but wine reminded me of Matt.
I tried to distract myself on my phone but found myself scrolling through his social media and photos on my camera roll.
I blasted podcasts to drown out my thoughts, but he’d recommended most of my favourite ones.
Occasionally I checked my messages but no one needed me. Matt hadn’t reached out. Nothing was on fire at work. I felt like a ghost, like I couldn’t feel anything real, like I wasn’t part of the world.
On the third night I awoke with a start. I checked my phone – it was 3 am. I rolled over and closed my eyes, willing my body to take me back into the blissful state of nothingness I’d been in temporarily. But my brain had kicked into full gear; I knew there would be no more sleep for me.
I opened my laptop. As I was already awake, I thought I might as well be productive. Maybe doing would numb feeling. I opened a new document titled: Cancel the Wedding .
1. Tell family.
2. Tell friends.
3. Email all guests.
4. Cancel venue and catering.
5. Sell dress.
6. Cancel hair and makeup.
7. Cancel photographer.
8. Cancel Belinda.
I looked at the list once I’d finished drafting it and mentally allocated roles.
I didn’t really want to do any of it, though I knew I’d put my hand up for half.
That’s how our breakup would go. We’d both zealously try to do the right thing – split the tasks, split the bills.
It would all be excruciatingly amicable.
I clicked on the ‘Share document’ button. I typed in Matt’s email address and stared at it for a few seconds. Then I hit delete. Maybe in the morning, the real morning, I’d feel stronger. Or maybe the day after.
I stared down at the diamond perched upon my left hand. I felt a wave of despair break through the nothingness. I yanked it off. There was a slight indent above my knuckle and my finger looked naked. Even my hand missed being engaged.
I knew the right thing to do was give it back to Matt. But I also knew he wouldn’t take it. In which case, what was I meant to do? Sell it? No, I couldn’t do that. This piece of metal and colourless stone meant too much to me.
Then I had a thought. I rolled out of bed and opened the spare wardrobe. When Dad had sold our house, I’d left a few boxes of stuff at Mum’s place.
I slid a bunch of clothes in dry cleaner’s plastic wrapping down the railing and there they were – Mum hadn’t moved them.
I pulled out the box at the top of the stack.
It was full of old school stuff. The first layer was my diaries, then a smattering of school reports.
Under these were a stack of UMAT practice test books.
I don’t think I’d cracked the spine of any of them.
But I’d kept them. Had I felt bad about how much they’d cost?
Had I thought I could pass them on to someone who needed them?
I stuffed everything back into the box and opened the next one. This one was from uni, though I hadn’t kept very much, considering it had been a six-year chunk of my life. Most of the box was filled with stuff from Oxford. From my final term at Oxford.
I picked up the menu from the Shelley Society dinner, then the fabric wristband from the Trinity College ball, then a photo of a tree at dawn.
I’d been heartbroken when I’d packed this stuff away.
Part of me had wanted to burn it. But I think I’d also needed proof, tangible proof, that it had happened.
I sighed as I pulled the final notebook, the one with the ‘Salad Days List’ in it, out of the box. And then I spotted it. There it was, glinting, loose in the corner of the box, half tucked under the taped-down flap.
I picked it up. It was a delicate silver band with a tear-shaped turquoise in the centre.
As Alex had said, I could tell it wasn’t expensive.
But I must have instinctively known when I was packing up this box that it wasn’t junky costume jewellery that had been bought at Claire’s or Primark.
Had I tried to give it back to Lily? Had she said it wasn’t hers and then I stuffed it into this box with the rest of the Oxford mementos?
Or had some part of me known that it meant a lot to someone? I truly didn’t remember.
I slipped the ring onto my bare finger. It had only been there for a few hours. Hours that had been lost to the ether. How could this ring have any meaning? Why did we let these inanimate pieces of metal and stone take on so much emotional significance?
This ring didn’t mean anything to me. But I knew it meant a lot to Alex.
I pulled out my phone.
Do you have time to meet up today? I asked. Then I realised it was only 5 am – an antisocial time to message someone.
Yes. What time? He wrote back instantly. So, he still didn’t sleep.
I stared at my phone.
Lunchtime? Let’s meet somewhere near the office.
In the end we met up at a cafe between our houses. He was wearing shorts, a T-shirt and Birkenstocks – I guessed he’d been working from home. I hadn’t seen him since Arlo’s party. His summer tan had deepened since then. How had that only been two weeks ago?
‘I know we were going to steer clear of each other,’ I said. ‘But I wanted to return your mum’s ring. I found it with some stuff I’d kept from Oxford. Sorry I had it for so long.’
I carefully placed it on the table. He paused for a moment then picked it up. The ring looked even more dainty in his large hands.
‘So, you really did propose that night?’ I asked.
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I did.’
‘I always wondered who did that. People who met someone and just... whipped out a ring,’ I said.
‘Well, now you know,’ he said with a shrug.
‘I always thought that it was so . . .’
‘Romantic?’ he offered.
‘Silly,’ I said. He laughed.
‘I’m really sorry I hurt you that night. You took a leap of faith, you opened yourself up and asked me to live life with you, and I left. I know, after what happened with your mum, how losing someone you loved with no warning would have been horrible. So, I’m sorry,’ I said.
He looked down at the ring and then finally met my eyes. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘Did someone give that ring to your mum?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t even know if she ever loved anyone. Or if anyone ever loved her...’
‘I know she had a great love,’ I said.
He looked up at me blankly.
‘ You . I never met her. But I just know, because I know you – that you were the great love of her life.’
‘Yeah. She loved me with... everything,’ he said, slowly nodding.
‘But I still wish I knew the story of this ring. Did she wear it because she just liked it? Or because it meant something? I wished that I’d asked her so many questions about her life.
There’s so much we never got to talk about.
I was a teenager when she died. I didn’t know what questions I’d need to ask back then. And then, I ran out of time.’
He paused for a moment and I could tell that he was collecting his thoughts. ‘I gave you a bum steer that summer,’ he said finally.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘You were hurt. You were grieving that your family had fallen apart. I wonder if part of our gravitational pull towards each other was that we could both sense that we were processing a whole lot of buried pain and confusion,’ he said.
‘You were still angry at your mum. And I encouraged that, I think, because I was still mad at my mum for leaving too. And maybe it was easier for us to be angry and hurt together, or something. But our situations were, and are, different. She loves you and you still have her. You can still ask her all the things, you know?’
I nodded. But did I agree? The anger and hurt that we’d shared that summer had been so comforting. That he had changed his mind, had softened, had processed some of the pain he’d felt, somehow felt like far more of a revelation than what had happened the night of the ball.
‘I’m glad I got to see you again,’ he said.
‘Me too,’ I said, then felt a stab of guilt, because I hadn’t told Matt that I was here with Alex. Matt was no longer my fiancé, I reminded myself. Here I was, alone again.
‘I also wanted to tell you that I think you’re really good at your job,’ he said. ‘It almost kills me to say this. And I mean it in the least patronising way possible. But I’ve been seriously impressed.’
I looked at him, searching for an edge of judgement in his voice. But for the first time ever when talking about the job I’d chosen, there was none.
‘So, you don’t think I wasted my brain, time, energy and life?’ I asked.
‘Not if you don’t,’ he said with a wry smile. I felt another stab of guilt. Because I was good at my job, I couldn’t tell him that his job was about to become a nightmare.
‘Matt and I aren’t getting married,’ I said. I felt an enormous frog in my throat as I said it out loud for the first time. ‘We broke up a few days ago.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘Are you?’ I replied, then laughed – a slightly more bitter one than I’d intended.
‘Of course I am,’ he said. The lines around his eyes crinkled in concern. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Not really,’ I said. ‘I’m... a mess. This is the first time I’ve got out of bed or dressed since it happened.’
‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘You don’t have to tell me, obviously. Only if it’s helpful.’
‘He said that he didn’t think that I was all in. He said he deserved more than that,’ I said.
Alex stared at me for a second and I could see his brain rolling through all the permutations of the things he could say.
‘I meant what I said the other day. I’ve never stopped loving you, Rebecca. I want to be with you. I knew from the minute I met you that you were my person. I stayed away for a long time because I was hurt by how we ended. Except deep down I must have known that I didn’t have the full picture.’
He moved into the seat next to me and stared at me with his piercing blue eyes.
I turned away from him. I couldn’t have this conversation. How could I let him comfort me, open up to me, when I was basically betraying him? I felt a sudden, desperate urge to tell him what was going to happen to his work.
‘I have to go,’ I said. I couldn’t do it. I’d just lost Matt. I couldn’t lose work too. My job was an ark in this emotional storm raging around me. It was the one place where things made sense in a life without Matt. I felt my stomach churning.
‘I just... everything’s been changing really fast,’ I finally said. ‘I’m a mess right now. I only came here today to return your mum’s ring.’
‘I’ve waited for nine years,’ he said, his eyes twinkling but his deep, husky voice serious.
‘You’ve just called off a wedding. I know you’ve got a lot to work through.
But when you’ve had a chance to process your breakup you should think about giving us another chance. I can wait for as long as you need.’
I took a small sip of my sparkling water.
‘So, are you free tomorrow?’ he added, and in spite of myself, I smiled.