Chapter Twenty-Four
I’ve failed at many things I’ve attempted to do in my life, in varying degrees of importance. Applying winged eyeliner without it going wobbly or getting into my eyeball, my sociology A level, eating just one pickle out of the jar, going to the cemetery and actually making it through the gates.
But this? Operation True Love? I really, hand on heart, thought it might work.
I knew it would be tricky, but I thought that mine and Henry’s years of togetherness, my willingness to do absolutely anything to get him back, would ultimately count for a lot more.
But no. There he was. Kissing Marisol Keats.
Properly snogging Marisol Keats. For crying out loud, I was the one who introduced him to her poems earlier this year.
Showed him her Instagram account. Kept on talking about how amazing she was.
How much I wished I could be as cool as her.
How fucking embarrassing.
I stumble into the hotel room and dive straight into the bathroom, scrubbing the make-up off my face and having to do it three times in a row to remove all the extra mascara I put on, which now, on top of everything else going to shit, is seeping into my eyes and making them sting.
Oddly, I’m not crying. I’m surprised that I’m not crying, especially because I’ve drunk way more alcohol than I usually do and that always sets me off. I feel angry and deeply embarrassed but, curiously, not broken.
I unclip my showy silver earrings and drop them onto the bathroom counter.
Shit. Is that why Marisol is here at Jim’s party?
Because she’s not just a close friend of Jim but is dating Henry?
I mean, if that’s true it’s likely he would have arranged to bring her along – he had no clue I was going to show up until the last minute.
My God, did they scurry her off to a separate room once they knew I was here?
Has everyone been creeping around trying to keep it a secret from me?
And there I was so caught up in my own dumb plan that I completely missed it?
What an idiot I am. A bona fide idiot.
I use the flannel to wipe beneath my eyes, the memory of the day I first met Henry popping unbidden into my head.
My whole body had been aching with sorrow that day and then up walked this man.
This accomplished, gorgeous, clever man who seemed to think that I was accomplished and gorgeous and clever too.
The relief of diving into a brand-new love affair was a balm to my broken heart.
The way it took the edge off. The way it put the worst of my grief on pause.
The way it’s held it on pause for the past four years.
And now? The thought of that horrendous empty feeling returning like it had started to in the weeks after he declared our break, makes me feel hot and nauseous.
I’m not brave enough to feel like that again.
I can’t do it. I won’t make it out the other side.
I stomp out into the main bedroom just as River strides in looking for me.
‘Are you okay?’ he asks, his face looking as sad as I feel. ‘Fuck. That was … brutal.’
‘I’ve let us both down,’ I mutter. You came here to help me get Henry back and I’ve failed. How will I finish my book? Fuck. Are you going to be stuck here for ever? Oh God.’
I run my hands through my hair, yelping with pain as my fingers get tangled in all the hairspray I used to keep it so straight and shiny.
With a growl of frustration I march to the bathroom and grab my hairbrush, yanking it furiously through my stupid hair.
I wonder if Henry was laughing at me when he saw me all dressed up.
I wonder if he said to Marisol. ‘Bless her, she’s tried to do her hair all fancy. ’
The super-strength hairspray strikes again and as I’m brushing, the brush gets caught up in my hair. I try to pull it out but it won’t budge without yanking out the hair right from the root. Ow.
Leaving the brush dangling off the side of my head, I march back out into the bedroom and slip my feet into a pair of trainers.
‘I should actually go and talk to Henry right now. Let him know that nothing is going on with you and me. That it was all a ruse. That we were just trying to make him jealous so that he’d stop this pointless break in the relationship.
He can’t have moved on already. He can’t.
He told me … Jesus, how could he kiss someone else that way?
Even if he did think he was hidden from view.
Even if he did think you and I were … How embarrassing.
He’s the one who declared the break! He said he was still considering the relationship.
That he still loved me. Why not just break up with me full stop if he wanted to kiss Marisol fucking Keats! ’
River stands there, a slightly horrified look on his usually stoic face. I must look absolutely ridiculous. Wearing a sexy dress I have no business wearing, mascara all down my face and a paddle brush stuck onto the side of my head.
‘Yes, I know what I look like,’ I mutter, heading back to the bathroom and grabbing some cotton wool to try to remove some of the remaining mascara.
‘God. To come to a party to seduce your ex into getting back together with you and being so bad at it that you actively lead him into the arms of a much, much better woman.’
River edges towards me, his heavy cowboy boots almost creeping over the wood. He cautiously reaches a hand out towards my shoulder and gently pushes me to sit down on the end of the bed.
‘Maybe you could talk to him tomorrow?’ he suggests, voice gentler than I’m used to. He plops down beside me. ‘May I?’ He signals towards the brush suspended from my head.
I nod and he reaches up his fingers, dextrous and surprisingly patient, in my hair until he’s unravelled the brush. ‘There,’ he says, handing it to me. ‘That’s one problem solved.’
I turn the brush over in my hands, sighing as I sway a little to the left. ‘It’s weird. I don’t even feel that hurt. Just angry. I hate feeling angry. It’s like a mosquito bite, itching relentlessly in a place you can’t reach. Best to be avoided at all costs.’
‘Maybe it’s useful sometimes to feel angry. Necessary, even.’
I shake my head, and hiccup. ‘Not true. Josie used to say the same thing to me all the time. Get your mad up once in a while, Gertie. Stand up for yourself, Gertie. Give it some oomph, Gertie! And then one day I did get my mad up with her and … anyway, you don’t need to know that particular story.
Thanks for getting the brush out. I really am sorry for …
you know, everything.’ I stand up from the bed with a sigh.
River gently takes my arm and pulls me back down.
‘Tell me,’ he says. ‘Finish the story.’
I shake my head and wave him away. ‘It’s boring and sad.’
‘I sat through the video of Henry’s book launch speech, didn’t I? Can’t possibly be as boring and sad as that.’
I smile despite myself.
‘Go on,’ River says, a slight frown playing around his eyes. ‘I ain’t busy.’
I swallow down the acid in my throat. ‘Okay. Well. Josie was pretty much perfect in every way, but sometimes she could be really selfish. And ordinarily it didn’t bother me – it was just a tiny part of a generally incredible picture.
But there was this one day, she’d promised to come with me to watch a play at The National.
I’d been wanting to see it for so long, paid a fortune for the tickets and less than half an hour before we were due to set off, the guy she’d been casually seeing at the time called her and invited her to some wanky restaurant-opening in Mayfair.
She barely even apologised when she told me she’d much rather do that than go watch some stuffy play.
She wasn’t sorry in the slightest. I was seriously pissed off and I told her so.
At first she laughed, thought I was kidding, which just made me madder.
I told her she was selfish for flaking out on me at the last minute, that she only ever thought about herself.
She asked me if I really needed her to “hold my hand” to go to the theatre.
I’d not slept well the night before and somehow we got into a shouting match.
Our first ever. And when she yelled that I needed to let her do things on her own every once in a while, I got really mad and called her a self-satisfied bitch.
Ugh.’ My stomach twists at the memory. Her surprise at how I spat out the words with such vitriol.
The way her face dropped at my name-calling.
‘It was seriously out of character for me, but I remember being so furious that day. Not just because she’d been so flaky about the theatre, but because I knew deep down she was right.
I did rely on her too much and I’d been noticing her trying to do more stuff without me.
I tried to apologise to her, but before I could, she held up her hand and snapped that she’d had her fill of me.
That she was going out to have fun with people who actually liked her.
About thirty minutes later she got into a car accident.
She never came back. Gone. Just … poof! No more Jo. ’
‘Christ, Gertie,’ River murmurs. ‘That’s … I can’t even imagine.’
‘She was only twenty-four.’ I meet his eyes.
‘And I haven’t even got the guts to go to her grave and tell her I’m sorry.
Tell her that of course she wasn’t a self-satisfied bitch.
Not at all. That I only said it because I was rattled by how much I needed her when she clearly didn’t need me at all.
The last thing I ever said to my sister.
Probably the last words she ever heard – “You’re a self-satisfied bitch”.
So, yep, that’s what happens when I get angry. ’
River grabs hold of my hand with both of his. ‘Should I run you a bath?’ he asks. ‘Would that make you feel even a little better?’
I look up at him with a suspicious frown and laugh darkly. ‘You sure you’ve never been a boyfriend before?’ I ask, in an attempt to lighten the sombre mood a touch.
River scowls but it’s playful. ‘How dare you even ask such a thing.’
‘River?’
‘Yeah?’
‘I’m so sorry. Operation True Love has been a resounding failure.’
His face softens. ‘You got nothing to apologise for. This was all just … an idea. A guess. A crap-shoot, let’s be honest. It might not have even worked anyway.
Like you said, we don’t know for certain what any of this is.
’ He pauses before by the bathroom door. ‘Bubbles, right? The lavender-y ones?’
My eyes well. ‘Lavender-y bubbles, yes, please.’
‘Coming right up. And Gertie?’
‘Yeah?’
‘It was Operation Windbag.’
*
By the time I get out of the bath I feel utterly exhausted. I notice that River is already asleep outside on his chaise longue, no blanket, no pillows, just splayed out in the cool evening air like a total psychopath. But he has left me his pillow mint, stacked on top of mine.
I eat them both and burrow into the blankets, left only with the terrifying reality of no Josie, no final story for Bedlam Creek and now, categorically, no Henry.