Chapter 34
BETH
‘Stop fussing!’ I scream across the roof of Justin’s Porsche. I want to throw my bag at him.
‘You need to worry about that girl, not me. Something’s off.’
I open the car door and climb inside, throwing my bag in the footwell before I can launch it at him.
Justin gets in and fastens his seat belt. His jaw tightens, as do his hands around the steering wheel. He puffs out a long, low breath. I’m getting on his nerves, and I know he’s not listening to me. He rarely does. He used to. But that was before.
Before everything changed between us.
He starts the engine, ignoring my outburst. The way he ignores a lot of what he calls my hysterical behaviour, which has become more prevalent in recent months.
He reverses the car and pulls out of the driveway, throwing up a shower of gravel and baked mud in its wake.
‘Let’s talk about nice stuff. What about our wedding anniversary?
It’s only a month away,’ he says. ‘What do you want to do? We could go away.’
I turn and face the window, taking in the vivid blue sky and passing greenery.
How I hate this car. The seats are too close to the ground, and I end up feeling nauseous most journeys.
I feel every pothole, every blister in the road’s surface, where the tarmac has buckled under the heat.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand its appeal.
It’s a gorgeous-looking car. And when I was younger, I’d have enjoyed being thrown around the country lanes.
But not now. With my hypersensitive body, it’s far too uncomfortable.
Justin drives far too fast, as well, and not in a controlled way.
He’s erratic, reacting rather than reading the road.
But other than an Uber, or driving this car, I have no way of getting around.
Not since the accident. I haven’t replaced the car.
I doubt I ever will. The thought of getting behind the wheel again scares me too much. How I’ve changed. I was once so strong.
Justin puts his hand on my knee and squeezes it. ‘Twenty years, Beth. That’s cause for a big celebration.’
‘It’s weeks away.’ Planning ahead with enthusiasm becomes too emotionally difficult when living with a disease that could be terminal. Life knocks you sideways. And on some days, it’s too damn difficult to get back up.
He squeezes my knee again. ‘Less than a month. Where do you want to go?’ His voice is steady. It always is, even when the world around him is falling to pieces.
I open the glove compartment to find my sunglasses.
How I used to love the sun – loved nothing more than lying on a sunbed by a pool with a good book.
But when you hear the ‘C’ word, all the things you enjoy become a threat to your survival.
It’s like sitting on a time bomb, not knowing when it’s going to explode.
‘You name it. I’ll book it. We could go back to Scotland. Without me working this time, of course.’
I think back to the night we met. He sought me out across the uni theatre.
He’d been called in last minute to replace the lead who’d gone down with chickenpox.
Even back then he knew how to work his magic on the vulnerable.
During that long rehearsal, he pursued me.
By the time it finished, he’d invited me for a drink that turned into two, then three and four.
By the end of the night, he had me in his bed, teaching me things I’d never imagined possible.
I thought it would be a one-night stand and was shocked when he told me he was taking me for a drink after the following day’s rehearsal.
A bond formed between us. By the second week I was in love.
We became inseparable over the following fortnight.
I then saw it as a month-long fling. After all, how could someone like that want me?
After the final curtain, I thought I’d never see him again.
I’d resigned myself to the thought that our paths would only cross again by accident.
How wrong could I have been? A year later, as he repositioned my graduation cap that had dropped lopsided on my head, he asked me to marry him.
Two months later, I was walking down the aisle.
The first three years were bliss as he grew his counselling business, and I climbed the corporate ladder in the marketing department of a FTSE 100 company with a significant health and well-being portfolio that afforded us countless holidays in five-star hotels, sipping cocktails in places I’d only ever seen in magazines.
But it didn’t last.
He decided to supplement his counselling qualification with a diploma in hypnotherapy. He used me as his guinea pig. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I know what I’m doing.’
That’s when it all began to go wrong.
I’d leave him if I could.
But I can’t. Because from that point on, he knew everything about me. Everything.
I should never have gone home with him that night.
But I did.
And here I am.