Chapter 37
THIRTY-SEVEN
JADE
It was all going horribly wrong. If I’d had things my way, everything would have come together perfectly.
Thomas was supposed to be on tour with the army for another three months yet.
I didn’t know how or why he’d got early leave, but his impending return had ruined everything.
Forced me to flee with only the clothes on my back just weeks after giving birth, still dealing with the heavy bleeding that had gradually worsened this past week.
I hadn’t had time to figure out all the details of my plan, and it showed. It was a mess!
If it hadn’t been for Sarah randomly passing my house as I was putting out the rubbish in my dressing gown – concealing the bulge of my post-partum belly as Amala slept indoors – excitedly sharing the news that our husbands were on their way home, I would never have had time to get out.
Trust Thomas to think he was being romantic in surprising me!
I hadn’t seen Sarah in months, not since before our respective husbands went away, and had managed to hide my pregnant belly from the world so she was none the wiser.
Thank heavens! She’d always been an oversharer – of both her own business and everyone else’s.
It was actually a fact I was immensely grateful for.
It wasn’t the first time she’d inadvertently given me information that had completely changed my path.
I ran my hand over the still tender bruise on my upper arm, recalling how I’d tripped over the rug, smashing my arm into the wooden bedpost in my hurry to get out.
That bruise had probably been the thing that had swayed Annie into letting me stay, though I hadn’t realised the significance of it at the time.
Annie was still standing, holding Amala, her leathery, sun-damaged forehead creased in confusion.
‘How can you not have met Ryan?’ She shook her head.
‘You’re lying. My aunt sent me a photo of you at your wedding to him.
I’ve been searching high and low for it, but I never forgot it.
It took me a little while to make the connection, but I know it was you in the photo. ’
I pursed my lips, thinking of the envelope that had been jammed down the back of her bedside cabinet drawer and that was now hidden behind the bath panel in my en suite. The accompanying invitation that still had the unanswered RSVP attached.
Thomas scratched at his pale, freckled arms, dragging his pathetic, broken-hearted gaze away from Amala to meet his sister’s eyes.
‘You’re confused, Annie. I sent you the photo of Jade last year.
It was of her in a white dress at our engagement dinner.
’ He cleared his throat. ‘Along with an invite to the wedding. You never replied.’
Annie shook her head. ‘ You sent it?’
He nodded. ‘An olive branch. After the way we left things when we last spoke.’
She gasped, clearly remembering, her eyes wide as she rubbed circles into Amala’s back, still swaying her hips in the instinctive way mothers always seemed to fall into whenever they held a baby.
‘You sent just a scrap of a note with the invite, saying you’d met someone.
There was no apology.’ She swallowed, and I could see a thousand unresolved emotions crossing her face.
‘You didn’t take back any of the awful things you called me after Mum and Dad died.
Did you honestly expect me to turn up to your wedding? ’
He looked down, suddenly sheepish. ‘I meant to have a face-to-face conversation with you when I saw you. To get to the bottom of our disagreement. The whole day I kept watching the door, hoping you’d walk in, but you didn’t come.’
‘I was angry,’ she admitted. ‘Hurt.’
‘I know.’
She shook her head. ‘But… there was definitely a letter from Aunt Betty telling me that Ryan had got married. I remember reading it. I was shocked that he’d moved on so quickly.
You know, thinking about it now, there must have been two letters around the same time.
I guess I blended them into one in my memory. ’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, his brow creasing as if holding back a wince. I could imagine how uncomfortable he was right now. I’d once been told that he was deep, but that hadn’t been my experience of the man. He met his sister’s eyes. ‘That must have hurt to hear he’d moved on.’
She gave an ugly snort. ‘You have no idea,’ she replied, her tone filled with disdain, and I played back our past conversations in my mind, watching their interaction, my thoughts racing from one to the next as I tried to work out what to do next.
Thomas had never mentioned Annie being in an abusive relationship.
Did he even realise what she’d lived through?
Or had it been easier not to notice. To pretend he didn’t see the glaring truth?
Men really were pathetic. Always looking for the easiest road.
‘I was upset,’ she admitted. ‘About both of the letters. Yours and Betty’s.
I recall not wanting to face either of them.
It was too much to cope with – our fall-out, Ryan’s wedding.
He did get married – there was definitely a photo of a girl with long brown hair, just like Jade,’ she said, throwing a glance my way.
‘I remember because he had his arm around her and his hand was in her hair. It was made to look romantic, but—’ She broke off, shaking her head, her lips paling.
I was hardly about to admit that she was spot-on about there being a photograph of me.
I hadn’t seen the one of Ryan and his new wife, but if her reaction in the loft having seen the old snap of the two of them in the pub was anything to go by, she would have set it alight the moment she laid eyes on it.
She had told me herself that she didn’t want a photo of her ex under her roof.
The photo of me, though… that one she’d kept.
I’d found it myself in the back of her bedside table.
It was just me in the picture. I had been smiling so much it hurt my cheeks.
Not because I was excited for marriage, but because I knew I was close to pulling this off, and Thomas wasn’t going to back out.
He had been so sure about me, right from the moment we met.
The photographer had made me stand under the floral archway, the Italian-style waterfall in the foyer of the hotel artfully behind me, and I had complied, knowing my dress was beautiful, my face youthful and happy, my long brown hair loose and shining.
‘Look.’ Thomas pulled his phone from his pocket and showed it to Annie. I knew what she was seeing. His lock screen had been that very photo for the past year. ‘See?’ he said.
‘Yes…’ she whispered.
My stomach cramped, and I clenched my teeth together, trying to hold in the blood, wishing it would just stop. I let out a long, slow breath, closing my eyes and counting silently to ten, then looked up to find them both staring at me with avid expectation on their faces.