Chapter 9 #2
She whirls around when she hears me come in, that cute little blonde bob spinning as she turns.
Her face is red, her eyelashes damp. Like she’s been crying, and then maybe splashed herself with cold water to help her reset.
She stares at me as I walk over to her, hand her the steaming mug.
She accepts it gratefully, warming her hands.
It’s far from cold at this time of year, but I get it.
This is the kind of night you feel freezing from the inside out.
I’m hoping she doesn’t comment. That maybe those liquid-brown eyes of hers have missed the one little detail I don’t want her to see.
‘Your boat,’ she says, her voice a whisper. ‘It’s called the Juliet…’
Of course she didn’t miss it. I shrug, leave her side and sit in my usual spot on the couch. I need to not be looking at her. I need to remind myself that this is my home, my world.
She sits on the chair opposite, and for some inexplicable reason I’m disappointed. What the feck? Did I think she was going to come in for a cuddle? I’m losing my bloody mind…
‘Why did you name your boat after me?’ she asks.
I can see the effort it’s taking her to stay calm, to fight off the emotion.
I feel exactly the same. I sip my tea, hoping I look calmer than I feel.
From the bewildered expression on her face, I suspect I’m putting on a good show.
Cool as a cucumber, that’s me. If you don’t know about my thundering heart, burned fingers and the fact that I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut.
‘What makes you think I did?’ I ask, eyeing her over the tea steam. ‘What makes you think I didn’t meet someone called that and fall madly in love? Anyway, your name isn’t Juliet. You’re not actually a tragic romantic heroine, are you? You’re just…’
I stare at her, raise an eyebrow, let her finish that sentence however she likes. She recoils slightly, sitting further back in her chair, and I immediately feel like a cad. Old-fashioned word, but one that fits.
‘Yes,’ she replies quietly, defeat in every word. ‘I am. I’m just this.’
She gazes down at herself, and I want to rush over and comfort her.
Take her cheeks in the palms of my hands and kiss her.
Tell her how much I’ve missed her. Tell her not a single goddamn day hasn’t gone by that I didn’t think of her at some point or another.
That even though we were only together for one year of our lives, I never forgot that year.
Yes, she’s changed, and yes, she’s older.
There are more lines on her face, more padding on her bones, but all of her – all of her – is still perfect.
I can’t do any of that. I sigh out loud, trying to release some of my frustration.
‘I did name the boat after you,’ I say instead. ‘I’m… look, I’m just being a tool because I’m upset. How the hell did this happen? What are you doing here?’
‘I didn’t come looking for you, if that’s what you’re worried about,’ she snaps.
If she’s mollified by my admission about the boat, she shows no sign of it.
In fact it seems to have knocked her into attack mode.
‘And I’m here because of the stupid card from Moira in the stupid book in stupid Stratford-upon-Avon! ’
Ah. Yeah. The cards, the books. Angus and Moira and their paying-it-forward plan.
In my temporary insanity, I’d managed to shunt that whole aspect of it out of my mind.
I know she found one of the cards, I know that she followed the same route here as Kate and Brody.
And knowing what I now know, I wonder how she felt when she read that card, and saw that the bookshop she was being invited to visit was here.
In Bonnie Bay. Had she forgotten it was supposed to be our place?
Did it mean so little to her that she’s erased it from her mind?
That hurts even more than I would have expected.
‘Okay, I get the thing about the card. But when you saw it was from Bonnie Bay… why did you come? I’m sure it doesn’t hold many pleasant associations for you!’
She tries to glare at me, but she’s made up more of fear than fury, I can tell. ‘I didn’t really want to. Beth did. She thought… she thought it might give me some closure. Ha! It’s really not!’
No, I think. I have to agree. This isn’t closure – this is the tearing wide open of old wounds.
‘Why are you here anyhow? Last I heard you’d all moved back to Dublin.
Not a word, not a letter, not a single bloody message, Rory – you were just gone, you abandoned me!
After everything! And now I turn up, and here you are, in your magical Scottish kingdom, looking better than you ever did and living this perfect life! ’
I frown, because she sounds so self-righteous. So absolutely outraged at what I allegedly did to her. Except… I didn’t. Did I? What the hell is going on here?
‘My life has been far from perfect, Jane,’ I tell her. ‘I moved here ten years ago. I was working as a barrister, and then I wasn’t.’
‘A barrister?’ she repeats, looking shocked. ‘You? But you always hated stuff like that… you said you’d never work in an office, or do anything just for the money…’
‘Yeah, well, as we both probably know now, real life isn’t always what you think it’s going to be when you’re eighteen is it?
And I did hate it. That’s why I quit. I’d made decent money, had savings and a nice apartment, and I decided I had to change things while I still could.
When I was thinking about how to do that, the only location that came to mind was here.
Bonnie Bay. I just… well, I suppose I never gave up on this place, even if you did.
I sold up, took a leap of faith. And here I am. ’
‘Here you are,’ she echoes, sounding uncertain. ‘Here we both are, it seems.’
She stares at her hands, wrapped around her mug, and nods in satisfaction when she takes a sip. I made it with milk and one sugar, and it looks like I guessed right. She always did have a sweet tooth. ‘What did you mean about me abandoning you, Jane? I’m not the one who ended it, am I?’
Her face snaps up, and our gazes meet. I think we’ve both been avoiding that – the direct eye contact.
The intimacy of truly looking at each other.
Of the risks it brings, the memories it unleashes – of all those times we simply lay together, and wanted nothing more in the entire world than to stare into each other’s eyes.
Hours and days and maybe even months we spent, lying together – on our beds, on grass, in the park, on any available surface – just looking, losing ourselves. Talking without words.
What we shared was so intense, and feeling even a hint of it now is unsettling.
It’s why I’ve avoided anything serious since then, because when that intensity was taken away from me, it left me hollow.
Tennyson got it wrong – I’ve never been convinced it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
‘Yes, you were the one who ended it, you know you were,’ she says sadly, her voice barely there now. It’s like she’s retreated so far inside herself she’s disappearing. ‘I don’t know what’s happening here, Rory…’
I put my mug down on the table that lies between us.
I’m glad the table is there. It is a barrier, a reminder that I need to stay on my side of this.
She looks and sounds so genuinely confused that again, I feel that tug.
That urge to console her. That wouldn’t help either of us right now, I don’t think.
I rub my hands over my face, sweep my hair back. When I look up she’s put her mug down too, and is nervously wringing her hands. I go back over it all again, go back to that night. Sometimes I don’t think I ever left it.
It was summer. We’d met when I moved to the same school, and become close when we were cast in the play – Romeo and Juliet brought to life.
We’d been what we thought of as sensible, and waited for our A-level results to come through – it placated our parents, even if we knew that neither of us was going to use them that year.
We hadn’t ruled out university, but first, we were going to live.
We were going to run away, to this tiny village on the north coast of Scotland.
To Bonnie Bay, the place we’d picked out on a map.
Our families had both been tough on us, ever since it became obvious we were serious about each other. Too serious, in their opinion.
Jane’s dad was a dreadful snob who thought she could do better.
My lot didn’t want me tying myself down to a heathen, or heaven forbid having a child out of wedlock.
It sounds old-fashioned, but they held their beliefs genuinely.
They saw Jane as a wild creature who would drag me down, and her family saw me as threat to their girl’s bright future.
They didn’t like each other, they didn’t come from the same worlds, but they did agree on one thing: splitting us up.
Jane’s teachers were suggesting English at Oxford, and my parents had their hearts set on me doing something ‘professional’.
Nobody in my family had been to university before, and I was the big hope.
They did everything they could to keep us apart, from having ‘serious talks’ to outright banning us from seeing each other, and in my case having a heart-to-heart with Father Casey, our parish priest. Nothing like being lectured on love and sex by a celibate middle-aged man to convince you to run away with your girlfriend.
We planned it all, kept it secret, saved our cash.
We arranged to meet at the train station, then we were on to London, and a mammoth coach trip first to Glasgow.
It was impossibly exciting, and I didn’t have a single qualm about lying to my mam and dad, my siblings, even Father Casey.
Maybe especially Father Casey, so I’m definitely going to hell.