Chapter 54.
It takes me a few days to muster up the courage to get in touch. Should I call him? Message? Send an email?
In the end, I opt to sit quietly on my sofa and ask Lara what she thinks I should do.
Doorstep him , she’d have said, without missing a beat. It’s the only way you’ll get an authentic reaction.
I decide she’s right. Anyway, I’m reluctant to leave a trail of messages on his phone, in case this thing with Lexie is serious.
I get to his apartment at around eight o’clock on a Wednesday night. Midweek, I thought, I’ll be more likely to catch him at home. But when I press the buzzer, there’s no reply. I decide to wait for a bit, because I really can’t bear to do this over the phone.
I sit down on the concrete step at the front of his building and watch people come and go. None of them are Ash. Traffic thrums from the road beyond the car park.
As the minutes pass, I start to think that maybe it was ill-thought-out to turn up without messaging first. Six months with no contact, and I just show up one night and expect him to be waiting for me?
And what if he suddenly arrives with Lexie? How could I be willing to put him in that position? How could I do it to myself?
I get to my feet, sling my bag over my shoulder and prepare to make my way home. I’ll email him instead, I decide. That way, he can choose whether he wants to see me, and can let me down gently if he doesn’t.
But just as I am starting to walk off, a cab pulls up.
I feel my pulse in my throat as I watch him climb out from the back of it.
He is alone.
The cab turns around, and he is almost at the front door when he sees me.
He takes a single step forward.
‘Hello,’ is all he says.
I had a bit of a speech prepared. But it goes out of my head as soon as his eyes meet mine, and I feel the kinetic rush of just being close to him again.
‘How are you?’ I ask, because I’m not quite sure how to begin.
‘I’m okay.’ He swallows. ‘Have you... been here long?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, the words tumbling from my mouth. ‘For not seeing you for who you really were. Even though I loved you all along, I know comparing you to Jamie was really disrespectful and short-sighted and cruel and I’m so, so sorry , Ash.’
It takes him a long time to reply. Eventually, he just says gruffly, ‘You’d better come in.’
I’d imagined, for some reason, that within seconds, we would slip straight back to how we were. That we’d share a look, or a laugh, and be away. But in the lift, we say nothing, nor do we make eye contact. You could measure the tension in voltage. I think about Lexie, and wonder if he’s annoyed that I have just shown up like this.
Once we’re inside, he asks me to give him a minute, then disappears towards the bedroom.
I look around as I wait, finally able to see the apartment as Ash’s home, and not just a version of something Jamie once wanted. I pace a small circuit of the space, running a hand over the window frames and bricks and steelwork, taking in their textures with my fingertips, just as I did the first time I came here. I look at the lamps I picked out, and the cushions and console tables and rugs – all back in place now – and feel the open wound of my regret. Why couldn’t I have come to my senses before I destroyed what we had? Before he met someone else?
I scan the room for hints of her, but there are none. I know it’s not my right to care, but I do. I care so much, it’s setting fire to my insides.
Pausing by the windows, I survey the star-speckled sky, the dark slither of river. The city at night is a carpet of lights. And – possibly for the first time – I am not thinking, Jamie would have loved this , but I can see why Ash loves this .
Behind me, I hear him clear his throat. I turn around. He’s swapped his work clothes for a sweater and jeans. Tonight, he is clean-shaven. His dark hair looks newly trimmed.
‘Okay,’ he says calmly, like he’s ready now to hear what I have to say.
I have thought so hard about this moment. My first instinct was that I should open by telling him Lara is dead, but I know I cannot. That has to come later. I can’t risk clouding his reaction by eliciting his pity. I have to know how he really feels.
I draw a couple of tense breaths. The fear of rejection is making me shake. ‘I need to tell you that... it turns out Jamie never really loved me. He was cheating on me – he was planning to leave me for someone else on the night he died – and I know you’ll think I’m only here because Jamie was a cheat and a liar, but... you’re wrong. I’m here because I missed what was staring me in the face all along, which was you, Ash. You, and not Jamie’s ghost.’
‘Neve—’
‘No, don’t say it. I mean, I know you’re seeing Lexie from Tunstalls and I don’t at all expect you to forgive me. I know we can’t just go back to what we were. And I’m not asking you to pick me over her, or anything like that. I have zero expectations, I swear. I just... had to let you know. I had to tell you I’m sorry.’
He just listens, his expression calm as open water, his dark eyes patient.
‘I never told Jamie about what his mum did, you know. Asking me to get an abortion. I never told him, and I convinced myself that was because I loved him too much to break his heart, but I actually think it was because I didn’t feel good enough to say, You know what? I’m better than this . I never spoke up for myself. I was always too scared to rock the boat. But now I know – I am better than that. I’m better than losing the rest of my life to the memory of a man who never loved me to begin with.’
‘Yes,’ Ash says softly. ‘You are.’
‘I... I started seeing a counsellor. And she made me realise that everything I used to think... I had it the wrong way round, Ash. Yes, there are similarities between you and Jamie, but there are actually way more differences. She asked me to make a list.’ I remove a piece of paper from my pocket.
‘Neve . . .’
I ignore him. ‘And I did start making it. But then I thought, this is all really missing the point a bit, isn’t it? Because I know you were never Jamie. You’re a million times the person he ever was.’ I rip the piece of paper in two, letting its halves flutter down to the floor. ‘Actually, you’re beyond compare. You’re your own, incredible person, and... I’ve said goodbye to Jamie now, for ever. I’m never going to think about him again.’
I draw a breath. He is just watching me, his eyes steady.
My heart flails helplessly through the seconds that follow.
‘I’m not seeing Lexie from Tunstalls.’
‘Oh.’ A beat. ‘I thought . . . Parveen said . . .’
‘Well, what happened was that I went on two dates with her and realised... she wasn’t you.’ He shrugs, almost like he’s powerless but glad to be. ‘It’s always been you, Neve.’
My blood rushes, a spring tide of hope. ‘I loved you all along. I was just too caught up to see it.’
‘That’s . . . unbelievably good to know.’
‘I really want to... If you want to, that is—’
‘There’s nothing I want more.’
I am giddy with relief. And now, at last, he closes the space between us, a smile on his face. In the next second, his lips are on mine. And it is the best kiss of my life, an expression of love as fierce and firm as I have ever known it, a landslide of emotions, every one of them finally real.
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