Chapter 38 #2
‘I can’t hide my feelings. You saw that when you first got here and I might have been off with you last Saturday when you gave me that bottle of wine. Was I?’
I grimaced in response.
‘I’m so sorry. Once again, it was not about you. I was about to take Scampi for a walk when you knocked. I don’t suppose you fancy joining us so I can explain?’
We took our empty bottles inside and headed along the path behind the forge and cottage with Scampi running ahead.
‘Last Saturday was a difficult day for me,’ Caleb said. ‘It should have been my wedding day.’
I’m not sure what explanation I’d been expecting, but it certainly hadn’t been that.
‘She left me just after Christmas,’ he continued, before I could say anything. ‘It was the right thing for both of us and I’m totally over her so I thought Saturday would be just another day, but I woke up and it hit me like a brick.’
‘I’m so sorry, Caleb. Do you want to tell me about it?’
He nodded. ‘Her name was Elenna and we met about two years after I settled here. She’d found a box of kittens abandoned in a layby and brought them into the practice.
She stopped by the following day to ask how they were doing and what would happen to them because she wanted to adopt one herself if she could.
If I’d known she was going to call it Gouda, I might have talked her out of it. ’
He rolled his eyes at me and I smiled at him. That really was a crazy name for a cat, but each to their own.
‘Elenna was the one who asked me out. I thought she was only interested in the kittens – had completely missed the signals that she liked me – and six months later she moved in. She was an area manager for a Newcastle-based brewery so she travelled a lot around Northumberland but, last year, she got a promotion to manage the whole of the north. It meant more travel and overnight stays, which was fine. But then she decided she didn’t want to live here anymore. She wanted us to move to Newcastle.’
I winced. From what he’d told me about going off the rails when he’d lived in Newcastle and how much peace he’d found moving to the countryside, I couldn’t imagine that suggestion going down well.
‘I couldn’t do it,’ he said. ‘City life isn’t for me.
I know they say that, if you love someone, you’ll make sacrifices for them but that was a step too far.
This was my home. My job, business and friends were here and I’d always said I never wanted to move.
It was what she’d wanted too, right up until the point where she got the promotion, so it seemed unfair of her to expect everything to suddenly change. ’
‘Sounds like her priorities had moved in a different direction.’
‘They had. I didn’t say no immediately, mind.
I went to Newcastle with her and looked at a few apartments and houses, but I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
I’ve nothing against Newcastle. It’s an amazing city and there are loads of things I like about it, but I personally couldn’t live there anymore. ’
‘I’m the same with cities. It’s one of the reasons I chose to go to university in Loughborough – small market town rather than big city. I like to visit a city occasionally but I get my energy from being in the countryside. I can totally understand you not wanting to move.’
‘Thank you. Unfortunately, Elenna couldn’t understand it.
A couple of days before Christmas, we had a massive argument.
I say argument but she was the one having the rant, telling me I was selfish and unsupportive of her career.
She said she needed some space to think so she was taking Gouda to spend Christmas Day with her parents and we’d talk afterwards.
Adam and Shelley insisted I spend Christmas with them, which was really good of them, especially when Shelley had only just moved in.
I arranged to meet Elenna back here on the 28th, came back on the 27th and she’d already cleared out all her stuff.
There was a note on the bed with her engagement ring saying I can’t marry a man who doesn’t put me first all the time.
Should have known you were too good to be true. ’
‘Ouch! She really expected you to put her first all the time?’
‘Apparently so. Shelley said I’d had a lucky escape and I probably had but it made me wonder how I’d got it so wrong about Elenna.
I thought we were an equal partnership – I’d never have asked her to marry me otherwise – but she obviously didn’t see it that way.
Apparently I had to lose myself to make her happy. ’
‘Have you heard from her since?’
‘No. Adam and Shelley thought I should ask her for half the money we lost from cancelling the wedding – especially as she’d lived with me rent-free – but I wanted a clean break so I let it go.’
We’d done a lap and arrived by Tall Stone. Maverick was by the gate and we gave his neck a stroke.
‘This might seem a strange question, but did you grieve the relationship being over?’ I asked Caleb.
‘Not really. I think I was resigned to it happening because I knew we’d hit a stalemate. Neither of us was going to change our mind so it was a case of when it ended rather than if. Why d’you ask?’
‘You said you didn’t understand why it hit you last Saturday but, if you’d never grieved the end of your relationship, that was probably it.
You loved Elenna and had planned to spend the rest of your life with her so, even though you could see the end coming, it didn’t mean it wasn’t going to hurt.
She’d agreed a date to talk but moved her stuff out without giving that closure opportunity.
She even took the cat before you could say goodbye.
My take is that you were so shocked that you went into survival mode – cancel the wedding, let people know, get on with life as normal – but you never got closure and you never grieved for the loss of the woman you loved.
Those feelings got buried but what should have been your wedding day brought them to the surface. ’
Caleb looked at me with evident admiration. ‘God, you’re good!’
‘Trained therapist,’ I said, shrugging. ‘Is that why you’ve been away this week? Or at least I assume you’ve been away cos I haven’t seen you out running or spotted your van.’
‘I cancelled work for the week and went to Adam and Shelley’s. It might not have been the best place to be because there were bridal magazines and wedding paraphernalia all over the house, but it was good to get away and clear my head.’
‘I’m sorry you went through all that – last year and this week. For what it’s worth, I agree with Shelley that it sounds like you’ve had a lucky escape.’
‘I did. After what Elenna put on the note, I could look back and see so many times when it was all take and no give.’ He fixed his eyes on mine. ‘I really am sorry about Saturday. It was so kind of you to bring me the wine and I should have invited you in, but I wasn’t in the mood for company.’
‘I completely understand. You’re okay now though?’
‘I’m great. What about you? How are you doing?’
‘I’m good. Clemmie’s recovering nicely and Maddie’s talking to me at long last. She’s finally started working on the farm and she’s got a date tonight with someone I actually like – massive improvement on her ex.
It’s great having my bestie, Jude, around and seeing how much more relaxed she is after a stressful year and… why are you smiling at me like that?’
‘Because I asked how you were doing and you told me about your daughter, your best friend and your cat. I asked about you, Grace.’
I shook my head, smiling. ‘Jude’s always telling me off for doing that but I am good. Mostly.’
‘What would make you fully good?’
‘Knowing why Laurie left me but I need to come to terms with never finding that out. It would have been our twenty-two-year anniversary last week, although we’d been together for five and a half years before that.’
‘You met at school?’
I smiled at him. ‘I’m flattered, but it was university. We were friends from day one and became an item at the start of our second term.’