Chapter 33 Freya
FREYA
I wake up feeling sick and exhausted from being up half the night looking for Pete on social media.
I’ve been intermittently checking every month or two for the past four years, watching but not following his sister’s account on Instagram, waiting for some mention of her brother.
Yet his whereabouts have seemingly remained a mystery.
I ask myself for the millionth time what I’d do if the algorithm offered him up.
It should, given that his name is my most frequently used search term.
But for all the searching, do I honestly want to find him?
If his smiling face popped up on my feed, would I accept his friend request, knowing it would undoubtedly lead me to a place I wouldn’t want to go?
While all the while knowing I’d go there, because I couldn’t not.
Even now, Pete’s hold over me is all-consuming, the agony of how it ended still so raw.
I often wonder how different my life would have turned out if I hadn’t arrived at his apartment unannounced, to find his long-legged, blond-haired colleague Bryony curled up on his sofa.
Pete had always seemed somewhat enamored with her, waxing lyrical about how they’d grown up in neighboring towns in Melbourne without knowing each other, making me feel as if they were bonded by shared memories that I could never be a part of.
But that night, it was obvious that they’d done more than reminisce.
“It’s not what you think,” Pete said, as he chased down the stairs after me.
“It’s gone midnight,” I yelled. “It’s exactly what I think. I should have known. It’s been Bryony this, Bryony that for weeks. I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid.”
“Baby, please, you’ve got it all wrong. She was upset. She’s had a huge blowout with her boyfriend and didn’t want to go home. We’re friends, that’s all.”
As I stormed off toward the towpath, I willed my brain not to jump to its default.
To try to find another way to deflect the explosion that was threatening to erupt, knowing it would blow my world apart.
And if he’d not followed me, perhaps I would have managed to dampen the fuse that had caught alight.
“Freya, please just stop,” he shouted, reaching out.
“Get your hands off me,” I spat, seeing red as I pushed him away with every ounce of strength I had. “You don’t get to touch me ever again.”
I look in the mirror as I get dressed, desperately trying to ward off the memory that makes me cry out in my sleep.
“I thought you’d still be in bed,” says Charlie, coming in with a cup of tea and handing it to me.
“I’ve got a meeting.” I check my watch. “That I’m going to be late for if I don’t get a move on.”
I feel trussed up in my black trouser suit.
But meeting medical professionals feels much like being hauled in front of the headmaster at school, the sense of authority always putting me on the back foot.
My efforts to match their superiority in appearance alone is farcical, but antifeminist or not, there aren’t many situations where a pair of high heels don’t make me feel on a more even keel.
“Who with?” asks Charlie, looking me up and down.
“With a consultant who specializes in the disease Harry has.”
“The little boy you met at Unicorn?” he questions, as if he still doesn’t fully understand what it is I do.
I nod. “We’re about to pay for his treatment, so I need to fully understand the research that’s being carried out in America and assess how gene therapy might actually help someone like him.”
“Good for you. Where’s your meeting?”
“London,” I say, as casually as I can.
“London?” He can’t help but sound surprised. I haven’t been back in six months—at least not as far as he’s concerned. “Will you be okay?”
I laugh. “What do you think it’s going to do to me? Gobble me up and eat me whole?”
He shrugs his shoulders. “It holds a lot of memories.”
I smile tightly. He doesn’t know the half of it.