Chapter 18
JACK
‘Jack…’ Maggie exhales long and hard. ‘I think… I think I might know who it was.’
Do I want to know more? Do I want to know who he is, the man who took so much from me? Yes. Yes I do.
‘How? How do you know who it was?’ Maggie looks up at me. There’s hesitation there, more words to be said.
‘I… you see, I think that I was there, Jack – the night you had your stroke. And I’ – she rubs the space between her eyebrows – ‘I think it was my fault. Well not my fault exactly but—’
The room is too hot, the air too close, too full.
‘How can it be your fault?’ My words come out scratchy.
‘Luke? The guy who you think shoved you? He had a scar on his eyebrow, was wearing black that night, and he has blond hair. He was my boyfriend and I’d, well, I found out’ – she looks away then back to me – ‘that he was sleeping with someone else. Behind my back. I said something. But at the time I was so hurt, so angry that I wasn’t…
I wasn’t at my best. Anyway, we were on the beach wall and we had this blazing row…
and—’ She rubs the side of her face with both hands.
‘I told him to take it out on someone else. And… it seems… that someone else was… you.’ Tears have filled her eyes.
‘I’m so sorry, Jack. I shouldn’t have said it. ’
There is an image, then. It’s fleeting, but it comes with a throb and I touch the back of my head to ease the pain.
When I came out of the pub, I’d heard raised voices from across the street.
I can remember shadows around him as he shouted, the etch of another figure in front of him, the sea at their backs, the moon a half-crescent hanging low in the sky.
But then I’d looked at my phone. Vicky said that I’d messaged her but I couldn’t remember sending it, and when I tried to check my phone in the days after…
I was too embarrassed to ask what I’d said.
But now I remember holding the phone in my hand.
‘He was pretty riled up,’ Maggie says, scanning my face. ‘I think that’s why he might have shoved you.’ I look down at the label on the bottle of my water; the pain at the back of my head starts to ease.
I sit still, fleeting images that were so hard to picture starting to form. The way the wind was blowing against the right side of my face, how I squinted at my phone screen as I typed out a message to Vicky. How the last shot of Sambuca hit me as I started to walk.
‘You were there?’
‘No, I mean, I didn’t see you fall or anything. I walked one way; he walked the other. I was angry, upset…’
I nod while something feels like it’s worming its way into my brain.
‘I’m so sorry, Jack. If I hadn’t said the things I did, he would never have stormed off.’
Images are sharpening, pushing against each other like pieces of a jigsaw trying to fit in the spaces they don’t belong: watch where you’re going… My voice? Or was it his?
I look up. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes verging on tears. I blink, back in the room now.
‘I know sorry isn’t a big enough word, but I really am. I’m sorry that this happened to you and that I started the whole chain of events.’
I sit. Stunned. Unable to find the right words or thoughts to process what she’s saying.
‘Jack?’
‘I…’
‘I wish I could take it back.’ She clasps her hands together.
‘You don’t need to be sorry.’ I look up at her. ‘This isn’t your fault.’