Chapter 4
FOUR
I knew before I opened my eyes the next morning that it was Sunday. Almost immediately after becoming aware of that, I remembered what had happened the evening before and realised that today wasn’t going to be like the others.
Back when I was working on yachts, Sundays had been like any other day – getting up what felt like seconds after my head had touched the pillow the night before, blearily making myself a coffee before I had to start making them for guests, and then spending all day on my feet, rushing round like my Shellaced toenails were on fire doing everything from making cocktails to babysitting toddlers to managing my team, all the while hoping that no one would throw an almighty strop or fall (or, in my case, jump) off the boat.
It sounds stupid, I know, but it was only when I returned to the real world and got a real job that I realised Sundays were a Thing.
A day to be spent in bed recovering from a hangover, trying to get a jump-start on the week ahead, seeing an afternoon movie, getting rashly drunk over brunch – whatever. But whatever it was, it was a Thing.
Actually, to be more specific, I only realised when I met Sam. I’d spent a Saturday night at his place for the first time and woke up to see his face on the pillow next to mine, already awake and smiling.
The smile widened as soon as he saw my eyes open, and he said, ‘It’s Sunday! What shall we do?’
‘What do you mean, what shall we do?’ I asked blearily, rolling into his arms to do the first thing that occurred to me.
And when we’d finished that, he sat up, stretched luxuriantly and asked again, ‘Now what shall we do?’
It had become a ritual. Every Sunday – or as near as made no difference – when we woke up, one of us would say, ‘It’s Sunday,’ and the other would continue, ‘What shall we do?’
Sometimes we didn’t do anything much – caught up with housework or, worst case, actual work work, had a nap together, cooked some meals for the freezer.
Sometimes we binge-watched whatever looked good on Netflix.
But often we went out and did something special – drove to the seaside in Sam’s battered Volkswagen, went somewhere fancy for lunch, wandered round the shops, a museum or an art gallery.
But whatever we ended up doing, we did it together, because it was Sunday – the day we’d have together before the madness of the working week, when we only got to see each other in the mornings before work and the evenings before bed.
But today – the day after we met Molly and Ben’s baby and Sam’s phone beeped with the text that had sounded just the same as every other text, until I realised it wasn’t – was different.
Before he’d even read the text, Sam’s face had changed. That dreamy expression that had been on it since he first picked up Arthur vanished, replaced with closed-off immobility. When I asked if he was okay, he said, ‘Sure,’ and something about the way he said it made me know not to ask again.
So I didn’t. Not until we got home, anyway, when he sat down on the sofa and started to compose a text of his own. It took a long time. I half-watched, in between clearing up the chaos left by my earlier cupcake-making, as he tapped away at his screen, stopped, looked at it and tapped again.
Of course, though I tried to focus on sweeping spilled blue sprinkles into my hand for as long as I could, it wasn’t long before I had to ask another question. ‘Who are you texting?’
I might have expected the answer I got from someone else, but not from Sam. So when it came, it was almost shocking.
‘No one,’ he said.
I dropped the sprinkles.
But clearly, it hadn’t been no one. A text received and responded to from ‘no one’ wouldn’t have left Sam silent and guarded all evening, or led him to announce at half past eight that he was off to bed and wasn’t hungry.
It wouldn’t have made him pretend, when eventually I joined him, that he was asleep when he plainly wasn’t, his shoulders rigidly still and the glow of his phone clearly visible even though it was face down on the bedside table next to him.
So I knew, with a feeling of chilly dread that had kept me awake much of the night and impinged on my consciousness the moment I woke up, that this Sunday wasn’t going to be like other Sundays.
On the surface, everything seemed normal: Sam breathing evenly next to me; Milton on my legs; the battered old teddy bear my grandfather gave me when I was a baby regarding me beadily from his place on the shelf.
Everything seemed normal. But deep down, I knew it wasn’t.
Still, some cowardly, conflict-avoidant part of me wanted to pretend that nothing was wrong. Maybe if I did, Sam would too, and we could carry on with our day as if nothing had happened yesterday, and if we pretended hard enough, then whatever it had been would go away.
I didn’t really articulate all of this to myself, of course. I just heard my voice, carrying across the pillows to Sam, say, ‘It’s Sunday.’
Sayitsayitsayit.
But he didn’t.
‘Yeah. I should get up.’
Desperately, I tried again to keep things normal – or to make them normal again. ‘What shall we do?’
Sam sat up, pushing the duvet off his legs while making sure it stayed tucked round my body. ‘Georgia, I have to go somewhere.’
Okay. Normally, this would have been unusual but not earth-shattering.
Sometimes we did have separate plans on Sundays.
Sometimes Sam had to travel for an early shoot on Monday morning or had been invited to watch a football game by a friend.
Sometimes I had a duty visit to pay to my mother or needed to go into the office to firefight some crisis or other. It happened. Just not like this.
‘Okay,’ I said as brightly as I could. ‘Where are you off to?’
‘Manchester.’
‘Manchester?’ He might as well have said the moon. ‘Why? Are your family okay? Has something happened? Should I come?’ I was already half out of bed, wondering where my travel-sized dry shampoo was and whether there was enough in it to salvage my hair.
‘Everyone’s fine.’ He swivelled round to face me, his long legs crossed on the bed, and took my hand. ‘And no, you shouldn’t come.’
‘Sam, come on.’ I turned to face him, our knees almost but not quite touching. ‘Something’s going on. Ever since you got that text yesterday afternoon, you’ve been weird. Just tell me. Whatever it is, it’ll be okay.’
But would it? Hypothetical scenarios whirled through my brain: Sam had committed some terrible crime, back in the distant past, and his misdeeds had caught up with him.
He’d been diagnosed with a horrible disease and needed emergency surgery, and the only specialist able to perform the operation was up north.
He was leaving me and had decided to wait until the day of his departure to actually tell me that he was going.
It couldn’t be that last one at any rate – Sam was incapable of packing for more than a night away without pulling every garment he owned out of the wardrobe and leaving it on the bedroom floor, and I’d have noticed if he’d done that.
‘Of course it will.’ He squeezed my hands. ‘It’s nothing to worry about, I promise. But you might not like it.’
I forced a smile. ‘Come on. Hit me with it. How bad can it be?’
‘It’s not bad. Not at all. It’s just – I’m going to see Ava.’
Ava?
The breath whooshed out of me, like I’d been punched in the stomach. My ribcage felt too tight to get enough air back in so I could speak, so it took a few seconds before I was able to reply. ‘Ava? As in, Ava your ex?’
‘Is there another Ava?’
There was, of course. There were lots. Ava Gardner. Ava Max. Reese Witherspoon’s daughter Ava.
But equally, at this moment, there wasn’t. Not one I’d ever met and clearly, as far as Sam was concerned, in the entire world.
‘I guess not. But why? Why do you want to see her?’
I tried to keep my voice calm. Rationally, I knew that calm was the appropriate response: people had exes. They stayed friends with them. They followed them on socials. Obviously, sometimes they met up with them. I knew that.
But something – everything – was screaming at me that this wasn’t the case here. This wasn’t just a casual meet-up with a former girlfriend. If it had been, Sam wouldn’t be being so damn weird about it.
‘Because she asked me to,’ he said simply.
‘But you and she… you haven’t seen each other for ages or even been in touch, have you?’
Maybe they have, I thought with a sudden flash of fear.
Maybe they’ve been messaging each other for ages on the sly and I just haven’t known about it.
But that didn’t make sense. Sam’s reaction to the text he’d received the day before hadn’t been the reaction of someone receiving an expected – if clandestine – communication.
‘Nope. Not seen each other, not been in touch. Truly, Georgia – scout’s honour. I’d have told you, like I’m telling you now.’
So what’s the big deal? demanded the rational part of my mind – the part that knew Sam loved me, that we were together, that I didn’t need to be insecure about Ava or anyone else, not least because if he decided he wanted to be with someone other than me, being clingy and needy about it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference.
It wasn’t a big deal. It didn’t have to be a big deal.
But Sam’s reaction to the whole thing was as good as screaming that it was a big deal for him – and therefore it was a big deal for me too.
I couldn’t help feeling it – like when someone yawns in front of you and you do it too, even though a second before you hadn’t needed to.
‘Why does she want to see you?’ I wasn’t doing so well on the sounding-calm front any more; my voice came out all thin and anxious, and now I could feel a lump in my throat alongside that tight constriction around my chest.
‘I don’t know. She wants to talk to me.’
So you’re going to get on a train, on a Sunday, when it’ll take the best part of three hours each way and cost a fortune, to talk? What’s wrong with FaceTime?
But I didn’t say those words. When I formed them in my head, I could hear my mother’s voice saying them, and I didn’t want to sound like her. Not now. Not ever. Especially not to Sam.
Instead, I said, ‘Okay. I guess I’ll see you this evening, then.’
Sam leaned over and kissed me. ‘Thanks, Georgia. Thanks for understanding.’
He swung round and stood up, and a few moments later I heard the shower start up. But I didn’t move. I sat there, my hands empty on my knees where he’d let go of them, until after he’d dressed and left the flat.
Like a hamster on a wheel, my thoughts skittered round my head, going nowhere. What just happened? Why is he being like this? What’s changed between us?
And, most unanswerable of all, What am I going to do now?