Chapter Twenty-Nine
Belle
The moon outside. The haunted bed. The dresser covered in products. The sofa we were sitting on moments ago. My reflection staring back at me.
My toes against the carpet. My dress under my fingertips, now creased at the hips. My breath, hot and panting. My hair stuck to my cheek.
The wind against the windows. The creak of my weight on the floorboards. The silence so loud, it’s deafening.
My faded perfume. The hint of smoke from the fireplace.
Whisky. The strength of it biting the back of my throat.
Five … Four … Three … Two … One.
The technique my therapist taught me to ground myself in the present, to pull myself out of the past.
I walk to the dresser and reach down, hands still shaking, to pick up my lipstick, which had fallen to the patterned carpet. As I crouch, I look to the mirror, half-expecting to see his reflection behind me, that same smirk, that grin.
I collapse onto the floor, my chest tight, heart thumping.
My lipstick. The fibres of the carpet, the ring on my finger—
He’s gone.
My nails perfectly manicured, a string of lint on the floor—
He’s gone, again.
I told him to leave and he walked out of the room, and that’s twice now this has happened and both times he has left without looking back.
The first time I’d been weeping into Dad’s lap as his car pulled away. I’d found comfort in Jules and then told myself I’d call him in the morning. There was no morning, there was just a phone call from Jake’s mum at 5 a.m. and a sound that came out of me that I didn’t know I could make.
And now he’s walked out again. And in the morning, I’ll be walking down the aisle to another man and there will be no more mornings for Jake again.
I sit in front of the mirror, palms flat against the carpet, trying hard not to hyperventilate.
I didn’t get to say goodbye.
Both times. The first because death took him from me.
The second because I was angry and … death took him from me again.
We never had closure. That was taken from us.
And now I’m replaying the argument in my head, and I know I was right.
I had a reason to be angry. He lied to me and then laughed at me, then made it about himself.
I sit back on the heels of my feet, wipe the hair from my brow, and look at myself in the mirror.
My dress has slipped down one shoulder and I don’t fix it.
For a moment I look nineteen again: sitting on my bedroom floor the next morning, eyeliner all over my face, wondering how someone could just be gone.
Same girl. Different room, but the same feeling.
I’m furious at him. Furious at a man who hurt me because he was scared. But I’m scared too. I’ve watched myself grow, throughout this evening. Watched every good and bad decision I’ve made throughout my life. I showed him exactly who I am and he still couldn’t give me the one thing I needed.
But he’s gone and I still don’t know if he’s sorry, and now I never will.
It’s getting late. I need to go to sleep. Maybe I’ll wake up in my London bed and it’ll be the morning of our rehearsal and this will all have just been a dream, a fever dream, cold feet, whatever you want to call it.
In the reflection behind me, my wedding dress hangs, perfect. I look away.
Is this really what I want? Safe?
I lean on my hands and stand. I go to the fireplace and stand there for a moment.
I go to the bathroom, turn the tap on, and forget why.
I pour myself some water, place it somewhere.
Then to the sofa, where I pick up a cushion that we’d kicked to the floor and I hold it tight to my chest because it feels better than doing nothing.
Then I spot it.
Something small, folded, and wedged between the sofa cushions.
His side. It feels light in my fingers as I turn it over in my palms. White paper, neat handwriting on one side, scribbles and chaos on the other, folded into a haphazard square, with crease marks where it’s been folded and unfolded at wrong points.
Perched on the edge of the sofa, I open it, smoothing it on my lap.
It’s the wedding seating plan that Jules had brought up earlier, the one where Jake had scribbled his name. I trace his handwriting with my finger. The curve of the J, hooked too far to the left.
I turn the page. It’s covered in notes, scrawled using different pens, different colours, in his handwriting. Jake’s.
Confused, I rub my head. I turn it this way and that, to decipher the scribbles.
I saw myself in him and wanted to be sick.
Crossed out, one word at the bottom of the page:
Weird
Big capitals, halfway down the page:
Still looking for someone to take control, still my fault.
Tiny words, almost falling off the page:
His speech. Good. They look good together. But she looked right at me after – did she feel that too?
He’d been making a list too.
Scribbled to the side:
Holiday fling, doesn’t count. First time she looked free. What I’d do, to have been the one by her side on that holiday.
In a Sharpie, the kind of thick nib whose ink bleeds through the paper:
She stopped wearing that red lipstick after him. She should never have stopped.
Written in red pen:
Did she choose safe because of me too?
There’s a smudge of pink on the page which curls and then vanishes. Did he use my lipstick to try to write?
At the top of the page, a sentence is crossed out:
She got with him to hurt me. She chose him because she was already hurting, I get that now.
Written upside down to the left-hand side:
She built all of this without me. Worse – she built it all because I wasn’t there to hold her back.
The paper shakes in my hands, as a tear hits the page and blots the sentence:
She has no idea. No fucking idea how perfect she is.
And then in the smallest handwriting on the page, so small it looks almost like a mistake, and tucked into one bottom corner, like he almost didn’t want to write it:
T—
Nothing after it.
I read what I can, once, twice. Then sink down to the sofa cushions.
A knock at the door then. My heart drops.
Timothy?
I fold the list in my palm and close my first around it.
I stand, wipe away the tears with the back of my hand, and shout, ‘Hello?’
The door opens slowly.
In he steps.