Chapter 27
Emma’s neat little studio was nearer Fenlowe than Leaford, in a housing estate built back when I was still in primary school. A sweet little purpose-built village intended for families buying their first home, which had been carved up by landlords before the grass had seeded.
It was still a reasonably nice place to live but suffering a bit from decades of neglect and overoccupancy.
Emma said she paid a management fee to ‘maintain the grounds’ but she had no idea where it went.
As I got out of the car I nearly slipped on a crisp packet left on top of a dog turd like a festive hat.
The gutter practically rattled with discarded Monster cans and the surrounding front gardens were ragged and piled with bin after bin, the only sign of the overcrowding within the houses.
Emma’s was a ground-floor place and her garden was startlingly green and lovely, compared with those surrounding it.
The bordering hedge was clipped, and inside, a herb garden provided a riot of greenery, even now the weather was turning.
Between the plants, Emma had peopled her garden with gnomes and fairies, mosaics of broken plates and glass, and a concrete birdbath caked in moss.
It was the perfect cottage garden at the centre of an otherwise weary world.
I let myself in through the gate and up the brick path, tapping on the door. Emma opened it in a tie-dye fleece, purple leggings and Crocs studded with little crystal charms she had probably made herself. She raised her perfectly pencilled eyebrows at the sight of the pile of boxes in my arms.
‘Goodness, hon – I said bring brekkie, not start a humanitarian relief effort.’
Okay, so I might have gone a teensy bit overboard on breakfast. I’d decided on waffles with crispy sausage patties, maple syrup and a jug of banana and vanilla smoothie.
That had sort of spiralled into a yoghurt parfait, freshly baked almond croissants (from frozen, I wasn’t that much of a psychopath), some bacon and egg bites and a fruit salad.
‘Well… at least you’ll be well-fed through the week,’ I said. ‘Gotta keep my best employee fuelled up and ready to go.’
She smiled, but there was a wary twist to her mouth that made me feel terrible. We still weren’t past the damage I’d done to our friendship. I planned to keep trying until I had made up for it.
Emma let me slip past her into the studio flat.
I was always pleasantly surprised at how cosy it felt.
I was probably just too used to the sterile chill of my own flat.
Hers was hung all over the place with tapestries and her big squashy sofa was piled with huge comfy cushions and blankets.
Her kitchen was spotless and warm and full of handmade pottery mugs and jars of herbal tea blends.
It felt more like home than anywhere I’d ever been, except Aunt Lou’s house.
And Cooper’s boat. A boat I was never going to see the inside of again, I told myself firmly.
Emma flipped the kettle switch and turned her oven on to reheat the food. We hugged and sat down at her kitchen table. There were a few late roses in a glass of water on it, pearls of dew still on them. Emma must have picked them right before I arrived.
‘How was lunch yesterday?’ Emma asked, at the same time that I said, ‘How was your date?’
‘You first,’ I said, with a smile.
‘It was fine – good. Axe throwing is fun, as it turns out. I’m not sure we really have a lot in common but sometimes that can be interesting, you know?
You don’t want to be dating your twin, just someone that gets you.
’ She shrugged. ‘She complimented my cardigan and I told her you made it for me – turns out she knows the shop but hasn’t ever been in.
I think I might have convinced her to give us a try. ’
‘That’s great,’ I said, as Emma got up to pour hot water into a pot of tea. ‘If she does, you’ll have to point her out so I can be nosy.’
Emma chuckled, bringing the pot and two heavy handmade mugs over. ‘I will do… now, tell me about lunch. Because you seem stressed about it.’
‘Is it that obvious?’ I sighed.
‘To me? Yes.’
‘Okay… it was kind of a big production. Richard had arranged for Mum and Dad to be there—’
‘Oh, my God – did he propose?’ Emma looked as horrified as I’d felt in the moment, which was somewhat vindicating. Her eyes searched my ring finger like she was looking for a landmine.
‘No, and believe me, I was worried he might, which… doesn’t seem ideal.
He wanted us to celebrate going into business together – as property developers.
’ I watched her face crinkle as she tried to understand this.
‘He got the funding sorted out for his business and he basically said that since the shop was going to fail anyway, I should come and steam wallpaper and strip paint for him.’
Emma opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it again, pressing her lips into a line. I watched her as she clearly tried to sort through what she wanted to say, like a deck of tarot cards, trying to find the most diplomatic ones. In the end she gave up and slammed ‘The Devil’ down between us.
‘Is he out of his tiny little mind?’
I laughed and, honestly, it felt so good to just laugh at how stupid this whole situation had become.
All the fretting and worrying and overthinking and I just laughed it away for a moment.
Emma joined in after a shocked little pause and we were both giggling, making each other crack up again every time our eyes met.
‘I know,’ I wheezed, once I managed to calm down.
‘It was such a bold move I was almost impressed, you know? He was acting like I’d already agreed – more than that,’ I added, warming to my theme.
‘He was acting like I didn’t just take him back after he cheated on me.
Like it could be taken as read that I’d be over the moon to go straight into business with him and get married and have kids…
’ I stopped, appalled at the way my skin was crawling, just thinking of it.
What had I done? More importantly, what was I going to do about it now?
‘Are you… ready to tell me about why you did forgive him?’ Emma asked, carefully. ‘I feel like I missed something important somewhere – because none of this sounds like you.’
I looked down at the surface of the table and nodded. It didn’t really sound like me at all – was it only a few days ago that I’d convinced myself that Richard was my future? I felt like I was waking up from a trance.
‘I went to see Mum – I was already upset but then she told me that… my dad cheated on her when they first started going out.’
The timer went off for the reheated breakfast food and we both got up, scrambling to plate everything. As Emma slid crispy sausage patties onto two plates, she was still obviously reeling from this news.
‘I can’t believe she told you that – out of the blue,’ she said, as we retook our seats with heaped plates. ‘I mean, obviously it was meant to get you two back together, right?’
‘I suppose so… and it worked,’ I said unhappily, cutting into a warm waffle and dipping it into maple syrup.
‘She wasn’t happy about the break-up from the start, to be honest, and I suppose I just started to think, if they could get past it and have a whole life together, then maybe I could forgive Richard and we could get back to normal. Move on.’
Emma chewed a cube of melon meditatively.
‘I can see where she was coming from,’ she said slowly.
‘But… a lot of that isn’t about forgiveness, it’s about what happened afterwards.
About how your dad proved himself and what they committed to together.
Have you spoken to him since you found out? Asked about it?’
‘I tried to get into it at lunch but Richard interrupted.’ I took a sip of my tea and let it warm me through.
‘I should get his side of things. I know that. I didn’t mean to rush into anything but it all happened so quickly.
I saw Mum and she talked to me about it and I started spiralling.
Then, when I got back to the flat, Richard was already there and he was apologising.
If I hadn’t messed things up with Cooper, it never would have happened. ’
‘Cooper?’ Emma raised her eyebrows and a piece of sausage fell off her fork, landing in a puddle of syrup. ‘He was why you were upset?’
I winced and wished I’d kept that part to myself. It just made me feel so stupid. That I’d made such a big decision based on an awkward set-to with a virtual stranger. I set my cutlery down and poured myself a glass of smoothie as a distraction.
‘I bumped into him at the library and we were walking back to his place when it started raining. Everything was fine, he was fine. But then this car went past and… I don’t know, he acted scared almost. Hiding his face from it.
So I asked if he wanted to talk about it and he told me it was none of my business and ran off into the rain. ’
‘…and then his boat disappeared,’ Emma said, filling in the blank like it was the final clue in a weekend crossword. ‘I did wonder if that was connected to what was going on. Jesus! What do you think it was about that car? Is he in some kind of trouble? Legally?’
‘No idea. But whatever it is, it must be serious. He was really freaked out. I um… wondered if he was running away from his family. He mentioned not getting on with his dad that well. Or that maybe that’s his wife’s car or something and she’s looking for him.’
I couldn’t look at her while I said it but, when I glanced up, Emma was watching me with an odd expression. Sort of troubled but sympathetic. She reached over the table and covered my hand with hers.
“What?’ I asked softly.
‘I know I was teasing you, but I didn’t realise how much you liked him.’
My face burned. ‘I…’
But it was useless to deny it, because I did. I liked talking to him, I’d felt my heart lift every time we bumped into each other. And the thought of not seeing him again had been like a stone in my chest. I liked him. I cared about him. I just wasn’t sure if he cared about me.
Emma tilted her head to the side. ‘Tabitha, even if you’re not ready to think about anyone else romantically… it’s kind of obvious you care about him. Since he’s back, you should go and talk to him. Get a straight answer out of him.’
‘He didn’t want to give me one last time,’ I pointed out.
Emma patted my hand, her silver rings catching the light and sending up sparkles from the moonstones and amethysts there.
In her warm little kitchen, it was so much easier to believe that Cooper might want to talk to me.
I felt as if, in there, I was safe from the pressures of Richard and my mum.
Emma gave me the confidence to believe in my own thoughts and wants.
Whereas Richard made me doubt myself at every turn.
‘Last time he’d just been jump-scared by a car,’ Emma pointed out. ‘Maybe he overreacted and, if you talk to him again, he’ll handle it better. He came back after all. There must be a reason.’
‘And if he doesn’t react better?’ I asked.
‘Then he’s missing out. And just because he doesn’t want your friendship, that doesn’t mean you have to be with Richard.
Because it’s obvious he’s making you miserable – and he was even before you broke up.
You were always making excuses for him and pretending it didn’t bother you that he was never there when you needed him.
I mean, he ditched you on the opening day of your business and now he wants you to work for him?
’ Emma scoffed and gestured at me with a chunk of melon on a fork – like a magic wand. ‘That’s… pants.’
I laughed, and she let go of my hand with a smile.
It was good, sitting there and eating brunch with my best friend.
As if the cracks that our argument had left were closing.
I should have just been honest with her from the beginning – about Richard, about Cooper, all of it.
But that would have been almost the same as being honest with myself.
Emma and I were so close, it would have been impossible to manage my catastrophic levels of denial if I admitted how I felt to her.
She must have seen my expression shift. ‘I should have said something sooner, about Richard. I didn’t ever really think he was good enough for you.’
‘I should have been willing to see it,’ I said.
‘I promise to never let something like that slide again.’ Emma held up her tea as if in a toast. I clinked my smoothie against it.
‘And I promise to listen to your excellent advice, even when I’ve got my head firmly shoved up my bum.’
We dissolved into giggles. This was what I wanted my life to be like.
Warm and filled with laughter, understanding and love.
It wasn’t about hitting milestones and making other people happy and it certainly didn’t have to come from a man.
I just had to hang on to that when it became harder to believe.
Still, as we finished eating and Emma made another round of tea, I thought of Cooper and wondered if he’d be happy to see me. If he’d missed me like I’d missed him. Only there was somewhere else I needed to go first.
‘I think you’re right,’ I said to Emma, hands cupped around my mug. ‘I need to talk to Dad.’