Chapter 35
Seconds later, a flustered-looking flight attendant hurried over, with my sister striding in her wake. Amelie was wearing a full-length silk dress that I remembered was by The Vampire’s Wife – she’d agonised over its purchase before her first date with Zack. Hooked over her arm was a squashy shell-pink leather bag; she had no other luggage. Her hair was straightened, her make-up flawless. Her oversized dark glasses were perched on her head and she exuded an air of, ‘Why the hell didn’t you upgrade me to business class when I couldn’t sit in the emergency exit row?’
‘There’s a space right here, ma’am,’ said the flight attendant. ‘Can I assist with your bag? If you wouldn’t mind taking a seat, we’re scheduled to take off in two minutes.’
Amelie thanked her graciously, gathered her skirt around her and prepared to sit down. Then she clocked me and her whole face changed. The air of superiority vanished and she squeaked, ‘Lucy!’ and bent down to hug me so quickly her sunglasses flew off and landed in my lap.
I couldn’t say a word. I just pulled her close, squeezing her as hard as I could because I could barely believe she was real. My sister, who I’d felt so guilty about abandoning to her fate with Zack but been unable to persuade to leave, was here. Right here, on an aircraft that would be landing in London in six hours. And she was sitting right next to me, and the cabin doors were locked, so there was no way she could escape and return to Zack.
‘You’re here,’ I muttered, once Amelie had sat down and fastened her seatbelt and I’d regained the power of speech. ‘Are you… I mean, is this just a…?’
‘I’m coming home,’ she said.
‘Home for, like, ever?’ I asked hesitantly.
‘Well, yes. Although given that home’s going to have to be Mum and Dad’s until I find a job and a place to live, I hope it won’t be that forever.’
Then she noticed Ross, who was sitting silently next to me, half-watching our exchange while pretending to look out of the window at the tarmac taxiing slowly past.
‘Hold on,’ she said. ‘I know you. You’re Bryony’s bloke.’
‘Uh… I was,’ Ross said. ‘But not any more. Now I’m Lucy’s bloke, if she’ll have me, that is.’
‘What?’ Amelie squeaked. ‘You came to New York to break up one relationship and ended up starting another, Luce? That’s some going.’
‘I… we… Ross and me…’ I stammered. I wasn’t sure whether my sister was still pissed off with me about having spied on Zack, and if she wasn’t, whether she’d start being pissed off all over again for me having nicked her friend’s boyfriend.
But part of me didn’t care. She could be as pissed off as she liked – she’d come round eventually. For now, what mattered was that she was here and Zack wasn’t.
Unless – a horrible thought struck me – he was here, basking in the luxury of business or first class at the front of the plane, with Amelie relegated to cattle class along with all the rest of us.
Surely that wasn’t possible, though? Apart from anything else, my sister would never have stood for it.
‘Ross and I will explain everything later,’ I said firmly. ‘But we need to know what’s going on with you. And where’s Zack?’
‘Zack,’ Amelie said, ‘is at work. Or at the apartment. Or in bed with Brooke frigging MacIntryre. Or possibly having a swim in the lake in Central Park, and ideally being eaten by Pumpkinseed Sunfish. I don’t know where he is and I don’t care.’
‘You mean you’ve?—
’Left him,’ she confirmed. ‘As of this afternoon. Right after you left, I gave my head a good wobble and I got changed and went to his office to talk to him. And that’s when we had The Row. You know, the one where you call each other names you wouldn’t even think of your own worst enemy and you know there’s no coming back from it?’
I nodded. Although it was horrible to see Amelie’s pain, part of me would have really loved to have been there to hear exactly what she’d said to Zack and see how small he must have looked in the face of my sister’s rage.
‘And that wasn’t all. I remembered what you said, Luce, when we were on that bench on the High Line. I thought, if you’d put what Zack did behind you to make me happy, I needed to do my bit and make myself happy, too. I realised I wanted to be with my family, and my family wasn’t Zack. So I booked a flight and packed some things and got a cab to the airport. And here I am. Three doughnuts’ll do that to you. I recommend it.’
Ross said, ‘The seatbelt sign just switched off. If you two would like a bit of privacy I can take a walk?’
I glanced at Amelie. I didn’t want Ross to move – his presence there next to me felt stable and reassuring. But this was her personal crisis – if she didn’t want a relative stranger knowing all the details of what had happened, that was up to her.
‘No need for that,’ she said. ‘If you and Luce are an item, you’re part of the family, and you’d better get used to my dirty laundry. And there’ll be plenty of that, especially once the baby’s here.’
‘Baby?’ Ross said. ‘You mean you’re…?’
I realised that, amid all the drama with Ross telling me about his father, and Greg’s call, and then he and I spending the night together, it hadn’t crossed my mind to tell him this vital piece of news about Amelie.
‘I wasn’t sure if you’d want everyone to know,’ I said.
‘Mum and Dad don’t.’ Amelie smiled. ‘I reckoned when I turn up unannounced at their front door and say I need my old room back for the foreseeable, it might soften the blow a bit if I tell them I’ve got their first grandchild on board.’
‘Don’t be mad,’ I said. ‘They’ll be thrilled to have you. And when they find out about the baby – oh my God.’
Amelie’s face changed. Until that moment, she’d been all poise and bravado; now, her brow furrowed and her lower lip trembled a bit.
‘I just feel so stupid,’ she said. ‘After the wedding and everything. I mean, Zack paid for most of it but Mum and Dad paid loads. And it was all so perfect – all the time she spent on the phone to the bloody florist and having sleepless nights over the cake and shit. All for nothing.’
‘Am, that’s just the whatchamacallit. Sunk cost thing. Fallacy. All that time and money’s spent regardless – no one would want you to stay with Zack and be unhappy just to get their money’s worth out of the stupid flowers.’
‘I know you’re right,’ she said. ‘’But there’s so much else. All the wedding presents. We didn’t even want most of them but Mum and Dad’s friends all wanted to buy something so we had that register thing and now we’ve got three toasters we don’t even need. I’m knocking the carbs on the head as soon as this baby’s born. I could barely do up this dress earlier and it used to fit.’
‘You’re pregnant. Newsflash – pregnant people put on weight. And you can give the toasters to a food bank or sell them on Facebook or something. It’s still not a reason to stay.’
‘I know,’ she said again. ‘Seriously. I went through all that. After you left – and by the way, I was utterly shitty and I’m sorry?—‘
‘I was an utter idiot and I’m sorry too?—‘
‘Anyway, I was absolutely certain that I’d stay with him. I went through it all in my head. First I convinced myself that you were wrong – that you’d fucked up somehow. That Zack would never have sent that message to Adam, it was all a mistake, and even if it had been him he wouldn’t have actually done anything. And then I told myself that I’ve been a totally crap wife and I wouldn’t blame him if he had – I could forgive him and we’d move past it, and our marriage would be stronger than ever.’
Given her wedding had only happened a few months before, I reckoned that was a fairly low baseline to set. But of course I wasn’t going to say that.
‘Why did you change your mind?’ I asked.
‘I didn’t. Not at first. Like you saw, my mind was all made up. But then I thought – maybe I should be a bit more like you. A bit more logical. So I did a bit of digging. I’m not proud of it, but I went on the computer he uses when he works from home over weekends. I’ve never even looked at if before – he had no reason to set up a password or anything. And his WhatsApp was right there on the screen, with messages between him and this Brooke.’ She spat the name out like it tasted horrible, which I supposed it did.
‘Oh Am. I’m so sorry you had the see that.’
‘It was vile. I had to go and puke, and I hadn’t puked for two whole days.’
I felt a surge of anger at Zack, for doing this to my sister when she was least able to cope with it. But then, there would never have been a good time, would there?
‘And so I went to confront him. I told him I knew. I didn’t tell him you’d seen him, or about the letter to Adam or anything. I just said I’d felt suspicious so I’d looked at his computer.’
‘And what did he say?’
‘He went off on one at me for snooping.’
‘Of course he bloody did.’
‘And then he tried to deny it, and he got his phone out and tried to delete the chat, but I’d taken screenshots and I showed him. And then he said it was all my fault, because I’d been a disappointment to him as a wife and I didn’t understand the pressure of his job and she did.’
‘What a bastard!’ Ross interjected from next to me. ‘Sorry. It’s none of my business.’
‘You crack on,’ Amelie said, with a watery smile. ‘The more people call him a bastard the better. I need to hear it.’
‘Then what happened?’ I asked, reaching for Ross’s hand and twining my fingers into his.
‘Then I told him about the baby. And he started crying. Luce, it was awful. I ended up apologising to him. And he said he was sorry, and he would end things with her right away, and he just wanted us to be together and be a family.’
‘Oh my God.’ I could imagine Amelie, weakened by his tears and pleas for forgiveness and a misplaced sense of loyalty to a man who’d treated her appallingly, deciding to stay after all.
‘I’d almost decided to stay after all,’ she said, confirming my thoughts. ‘And then he got up to get us a glass of water and I looked at my phone – you know how you do: Russia invades Ukraine, you check your phone. House is burning down, you check your phone.’
‘Queens Park Rangers get relegated, you check your phone,’ said Ross.
‘Exactly. So I checked my phone, just for something to do, to kind of distract myself from what was going on. And I had the Ask Adam column open in one of the tabs and I refreshed it, and there was the question and your answer.’
It hadn’t been my answer – it had been GenBot 2.0’s. But I wasn’t going to tell Amelie that now, and I wasn’t sure I ever would.
‘And that set me straight. Honestly, Luce, it did. He came back with the water and I threw my glass over his head – I know, I’m not proud – and I told him he was shit in bed and had a tiny cock, and I was leaving.’
‘Good for you,’ I said.
‘Good for you,’ said Amelie. ‘Honestly, that column told me what I needed to hear. He’s a dick, Luce, and he’ll never change.’