Chapter 27
‘Ava,’ he repeats, in a low voice. ‘Can we talk?’
I frown as he leans against the BMW, his pride and joy, wearing the dark grey suit he bought after his latest promotion.
He looks good. He always looks good. But who wears a suit for a ten-hour drive?
His bright blue eyes regard me playfully, like this is one big joke.
His dark hair is slicked back into his favourite style, and his dark-rimmed glasses are as on-trend as ever.
‘Nope,’ I say, fumbling in my bag to locate my house keys. It’s a struggle. My shaking hand fishes around in its mass and finds nothing. Seriously, there is nothing in the bag except my house keys and phone, how can I not find them?
I glance up and frown at the small drops of rain that start to spit from the sky. Great timing. I hope it pisses down on Seb.
‘Need a hand?’ he asks.
‘Not from you.’
Keys. I’m drunk. I need to find the keys and get the hell away from Seb and his stupid fancy car. I don’t want to look at him for too long. I don’t want this to be real. I don’t want to see Seb here, in Ullapool. This is my happy place, my peace, and he is ruining it.
‘Oh, come on, Ava. I’ve come all this way.’
Seb’s self-important tone vibrates around the narrow streets. His accent sounds weird here too. Posh and pretentious. Did I really listen to him for six years?
‘I brought a few things you left at our flat,’ he says, trying to lure me into conversation.
‘Your flat.’
Bingo! I want to cheer out loud as I finally find the keys. I push one into the front door, but it’s stiff. I give it a shuffle but end up shaking them out of the door again. I close one eye, staring at the lock.
‘Have you been getting this pissed here every night? That text. You sent me that when you were pissed, didn’t you? At half one in the morning.’
‘The one you didn’t bother replying to?’ I say indignantly, as he moves in front of me and turns the key in the lock.
‘There you go.’ He stands back to let me walk in front of him. Into my own house. The twat.
‘Fine, bring me my stuff, dump it in the bookshop and go. Please.’
‘It’s after midnight,’ he points out.
‘Great to hear you can still tell the time. Well done.’
‘Where am I going to go?’
‘Seb!’ I turn around to face him. He stands in the doorway, giving me his best puppy dog eyes. ‘I don’t care where you go. I didn’t invite you here.’
‘Just give me a second,’ he says, rushing back outside to the car.
I flick my shoes off and they tumble into the corner, stopping with a thump.
Fuck this. Fuck Seb.
I don’t need his shit.
He returns to the front door clutching a book. I recognize it straight away – my granny’s cookbook. The one I thought I’d lost in the move. My heart swells at the sight of it.
‘I saw the news interview,’ he says. ‘There was a closeup of your granny’s recipes displayed in your bookshop. Then I remembered you’d left this in the cupboard. I’m pretty sure it was your granny’s too?’
I take the book from his outstretched hand. ‘You turn up here at midnight to give me a book?’
He shrugs. ‘Thought you’d like it.’
I hug the book close to my chest and inhale the scent of the pages.
He speaks again, more softly this time. ‘I wanted to see you. I want to apologize.’
I fold my arms across my chest. ‘Why now? It’s been months. I was living in your flat for days after the little show you put on with Macy and you didn’t come once to apologize. You had a key. You could have come whenever you wanted. Wait, did Macy dump you?’
He blinks twice, as if astounded at the suggestion. ‘No. If you must know, I broke things off with her. It’s you I want, Ava.’
I pull myself up to sit on the till area.
The memory of the time I was hoisted up here by Rory flickers through my mind.
It’s past midnight at the wedding too. I wonder what Rory’s doing.
Is he toasting his friend’s marriage with a few drams at the bar?
Is he spinning Elle around on the dance floor?
I shake my head.
‘So you and Macy aren’t together?’ I demand, crossing my leg over the other.
‘No, that was all just a stupid mistake.’ He releases a dismissive sigh, as though we’ve already talked about it a million times. ‘It was never going to be a real thing.’
My heart thumps in my chest as tears suddenly spring to my eyes as I think of my friend. My best friend. ‘I don’t want to hear that, Seb.’
‘Seriously?’ He frowns. ‘I thought that’s exactly what you’d want to hear.’
‘What, that you and Macy threw away everything we had for nothing? I’d rather you lived happily ever after. At least then there would have been a point to the whole thing.’
‘I’m sorry to disappoint,’ he says. ‘Look, I drove all the way up here to the fuck-all of nowhere to speak to you, in my BMW, which I never drive long-distance, as you know. I want us to try again.’
He moves slowly towards me, creeping along the edge of the till. I fold my arms more tightly across my chest. If he thinks I am this easily manipulated, he has another thing coming. He hovers his hand above my knee, en route to touching me, but I bat it away.
‘Hands to yourself,’ I warn him, narrowing my eyes.
‘I really miss you, Ava,’ he says. ‘I watched your TV interview over and over like some sad sack. I can’t believe what you’ve accomplished here. I’m so proud of you.’
‘I don’t need you to be proud of me, Seb. No, you don’t get to be proud of me. There are lots of things I’ve needed from you in the past, but I stopped needing anything when you slept with Macy behind my back.’
‘Look, Ava, we can go over this and over that, but I have driven for hours to get here. Can’t we get some sleep and talk about it in the morning?’
‘And where exactly do you plan to sleep?’
His sheepish expression tells me all I need to know about his plans. He has to be joking. He cannot seriously expect that I will allow him to stay with me? After everything he’s done?
‘Look, I’ve taken some time off work so we can talk things through,’ he says. ‘David encouraged me to come and win you back because I’ve been off my game for months without you. That tells you everything you need to know.’
David, his boss, is a workaholic and expects everyone to follow suit. We used to laugh about that, but Seb lost that privilege. Doesn’t he get that? Plus, I don’t care if he’s been ‘off his game’. Maybe being a manipulative cheat keeps Seb up at night, but that’s not my problem.
‘How much time have you taken off?’
He puffs out his chest like a proud peacock. ‘Three days.’
I roll my eyes. Three days. That’s all he’d decided it would take to lure me back to London. Three bloody days.
‘I don’t think you’re fully grasping the issue at hand here, Seb. Even if I was ready to overlook the fact that you slept with my best friend, which I’m absolutely not, I am set up here now. My business is here. I live here.’
‘Ah, come on, Ava,’ he says, glancing around.
‘What does that mean?’
‘You put your money where your mouth is with your social media strategy and you’re smashing it.
You’ve proved your point, but you don’t need to stick around here any more.
Come back to London with me. You’ll walk into one of the big agencies and start earning real money again.
Don’t tell me that selling second-hand books is profitable.
You must be earning a quarter of your previous income, if that. Am I right?’
I’m not about to open up about my current financial status to Seb. No chance. I’m only getting angrier the longer I talk to him. Who the hell does he think he is, coming here to tell me to pack it in and admit defeat? He has no idea what I’ve achieved here.
Rain starts to batter against the bookshop window as the wind picks up pace. A strong gust makes the door rattle in its hinges. Seb throws a disparaging look in my direction.
‘Is it always like this? I left twenty-five degrees for this.’
‘No, it’s not always like this. It’s been beautiful for the whole summer up until you arrived. Surprise, surprise.’
‘Your flat,’ he says. ‘Let me see it.’
It’s not even a question. I used to love Seb’s assertiveness.
He has balls. He hadn’t just climbed the career ladder, he’d skipped a few rungs along the way, negotiating his salary upwards with every move.
He’d encouraged me to do the same; in fact – and I blush at the memory – he’d guided me through it.
He took charge of every situation, from sending back a dish in a restaurant that wasn’t cooked the way he liked it to surprising me with an upgrade during a weekend hotel break.
He’d coached me in time management, reviewing my schedule so I could ‘work smarter, not harder’, even though I ended up working all hours under the sun anyway.
Aside from the whole cheating-on-me-with-my-best-friend thing, he had been there with me every step of the way.
I walk towards the staircase. ‘It’s not been renovated yet, so lower your expectations.’
He quickly follows behind me. ‘I can help you with it. The flat renovation.’
A laugh escapes my mouth as I climb the stairs. ‘Seb, your toolbox has never been opened. I’m pretty sure it’s still sitting in the bag with the receipt from three years ago. And remember that time your fingernail got into a fight with a hammer and lost?’
He laughs too. ‘Of course, Nurse Ava was there in a jiffy, with her reassuring words of comfort: “You’d better not get any blood on the white walls.”’
‘Shame. We could have used some blood splatter as a distraction from the fifty shades of grey in your flat. Anyway, here it is.’ I sweep my hand around the small space. ‘Home sweet home.’
He looks around, taking it all in with a shake of his head as though he can’t quite believe it. He moves forward, peering around the door into the bathroom, staring at the green tiles. ‘My eyes. My eyes!’
‘Yes, I know, they’ll be the first to go. You need to have an open mind here. Think about the potential.’
‘We could get you a good return on your investment, if you decided to rent it out now,’ he observes, as he wanders around.
‘Given all the media interest. You should capitalize on it. People would love the idea of staying above a bookshop for a week or two. How romantic, et cetera. You’d make your money back and more, Ava. ’
It is the one piece of financial advice that Eilidh has avoided giving me, even though we both know it would make sense.
‘I’m not renting it out, Seb. I live here.’
God, I wish I could sound more confident. Does my voice give away just how in the red my spreadsheets are right now?
‘Come on, Ava.’ He walks ahead of me to peer into the kitchen and makes a face at the small space. ‘Now’s the time. You’ve proved your point. Let’s learn our lessons and move on.’
I shake my head and yawn. I don’t have the energy to think of twenty new ways to say ‘no’ to him.
‘I need to go to sleep, Seb,’ I say. ‘You can crash on the couch in the bookshop.’
‘You’re kidding,’ he replies, as I hand him a cover and pillow from my bed. ‘I’ll be like Buddy the Elf on that thing.’
‘It’s either that or your car. You’re not sleeping with me.’
‘Fine.’ He turns around to stomp downstairs. ‘We can continue this conversation tomorrow.’
I roll my eyes as I brush my teeth in the bathroom. This evening has been a roller coaster of emotions and the beginnings of a hangover are already starting to creep in.
I’ve been doing fine without Seb. In fact, I’ve been doing well.
Now he is back and pretending it never happened, in a ploy to lure me back to London.
He knows which strings to pull, too, talking about financial sustainability and all sorts of corporate mumbo jumbo that I’ve tried to block from my memory.
As I climb into bed, my body and mind feel utterly exhausted. I’m not thinking clearly. Things will be clearer in the morning. They have to be.