Chapter 28
TWENTY-EIGHT
As I approached our flat, I thought I could hear next door’s baby crying.
They’d slipped a note through our letter box a couple of days before, announcing proudly that they’d brought little Freya home from hospital after she’d spent three weeks in the special care unit, and apologising in advance for any noise.
Given they’d only moved in a couple of months back and we’d never actually spoken to them, I sensed that the note was less of a courteous gesture and more of a desire to tell the world that they had a baby and she was well and home with them.
I hadn’t heard a peep out of them or Freya anyway, so either she was angelically well behaved or our soundproofing was better than I’d imagined.
I remembered approaching Molly and Ben’s front door the first time we went to see Arthur, hearing his cries from a distance. Molly hadn’t responded to my last couple of messages, and I was worried about her. I’d call her, I resolved, as soon as I was sitting down and could chat properly.
It was almost a week since Jamie’s near miss with Jasper at work.
Since then, both of us had been keeping our heads down, Jamie being tasked with putting together multiple PowerPoint presentations for Jasper to pitch to potential new clients while I was arranging accommodation, theatre tickets, restaurant reservations and private shopping appointments for the son of a Turkish oligarch who was spending time in London with his girlfriend and planning a proposal at the end of it.
I’d caught myself sighing wistfully as I imagined being in her five-thousand-pound Gianvito Rossi shoes, with nothing to do but look as pretty as possible and help someone spend their father’s money, with the guarantee of a lifetime of the same at the end of it.
Then I’d thought, I couldn’t stop my own boyfriend – who, while absolutely wonderful in my eyes, was essentially just a regular bloke – from going after another woman, so what chance would I have keeping hold of the heir to a billion-dollar fortune?
Every thought I had came back to Sam.
Sam and Ava.
Ava and her letter.
I still hadn’t found the courage to mention it to Sam. After Jamie’s nocturnal visit, things between us were still frosty, although not actively hostile. Gradually, though, the frost had been thawing, and we’d even laughed together a few times, been out for dinner together and had sex.
He wouldn’t have done that if he was sleeping with her as well. Would he?
Then I remembered Jamie’s words. What a player. Maybe Sam was a player. Maybe he was enjoying having two women going at the same time – the illicit thrill of it. Jamie had loved it, until he got caught.
But Sam wasn’t Jamie. I was sure of that.
These thoughts, coupled with my guilty knowledge of Jamie passing stories to Gossip Guru, made me feel deeply uneasy around him.
So when, on this Thursday afternoon, there was a power cut at the office that could apparently last several hours, I was relieved to take my laptop and head home to finish that day’s work there.
Except I’m not going to get a whole lot done with that baby screaming its head off, I thought as I approached the front door. Freya had apparently found her voice.
Then, as I slipped my key into the lock, I realised it wasn’t a baby. There was something different about the sound – it was less shrill, more raw than the sound Arthur made when he was hungry or annoyed. It was a woman. And the sound was coming from inside my flat.
I pushed the door open, my heart hammering. I knew what I was going to see, and I didn’t want to see it. But I was here now. There was no going back and no hiding from the truth.
‘I can’t go on…’ I could hear a voice now, not the wordless keening there had been before. ‘I can’t bear it. It’s too hard…’
‘Ssssh. It’ll be okay. I promise.’ It was Sam, his tone low and soothing. ‘You have to trust me to do what’s right. We’ll come out the other side, and it won’t seem so bad.’
I froze in the doorway.
This was it. The moment I’d see with my own eyes what I’d imagined had been happening all these months.
Adrenaline coursed through me, making my scalp prickle and the soles of my feet tingle. My whole body wanted to run, to be somewhere else. But my mind resisted. My mind was determined to know the truth.
My bag still slung over my shoulder, my keys still in my hand, I walked silently through the hallway. The bedroom door was closed but that didn’t matter – the voices had come from ahead, from the living room.
I stepped around the corner and looked.
Sam and Ava.
They were on the sofa together, the sunlight from the balcony falling on their intertwined bodies. Sam’s arms were tightly around her back, hers around his shoulders. I couldn’t see her face, but his was gazing tenderly down at her. Her mass of copper hair spilled over his forearms and hands.
They were both fully clothed but so close they might as well have been one person.
I must have made some sound – a gasp or a cough or perhaps a sob – because Sam looked up and saw me.
‘Georgia.’ He didn’t sound surprised – more resigned. And I couldn’t tell whether it was me or Ava he was addressing.
Either way, she pulled away from him as if he’d suddenly become red hot – or perhaps ice cold.
She turned to look at me. She was just the same as I remembered – pretty and elfin, with huge hazel eyes, high cheekbones and a pointy chin – but also not.
Back then, when she was half of SamandAva, she’d been slim to the point of wispiness; now, she was heavier, curvy where before she had been gamine.
She’d worn artsy clothes in vivid colours; now, she was dressed in baggy black jeans and a grey T-shirt.
Her skin had been pearly perfect; now, it was red and blotchy.
Although to be fair, if I’d been crying like she was, my skin wouldn’t look like a foundation advert either.
She was staring at me, her pretty eyes wide. I wondered if she was doing a before-and-after comparison in her head too. Except she probably hadn’t even been aware of my existence back at uni, on account of being so engrossed in Sam.
That hasn’t changed, at any rate, I thought – she’d looked pretty damn engrossed when I walked into the room. I felt sick, like any moment my lunch might come rushing up from my stomach and I’d have to run to the bathroom. But I couldn’t run anywhere – my legs just weren’t capable of moving.
Sam stood up, and Ava did too.
‘Georgia,’ he said again. ‘What are you doing here?’
I could have asked him the same question – I could certainly have asked it of Ava. But there didn’t seem to be much point.
‘I came back early to work from home,’ I said. ‘Home. As in the place where I live. That’s what I’m doing here.’
Sam reached out and gave Ava what I guessed was meant to be a reassuring pat on the shoulder. She’d stopped crying, but she was mopping her eyes with a piece of kitchen roll, and her chest was hitching and heaving like she was struggling to breathe.
Sam stepped forward into the gap between Ava and me, like he was trying to hide her from me.
‘I’m sorry, Georgia,’ he said gently. ‘I’m sorry you came home and saw this. But it’s not what it looks like.’
‘Not what it looks like?’ My voice was shrill. ‘Oh, right. Because what it looks like is you in our flat on our sofa with your ex when you thought I’d be at work.’
‘It’s my fault.’ Ava’s voice came from behind Sam, small and frightened and hoarse from crying. ‘I needed to see Sam. He said he was home, working, so I came round. I checked you weren’t here because I didn’t want to upset you.’
‘You didn’t want to upset me?’ I almost shouted.
‘Thanks. That was nice of you. Because I haven’t been upset at all these past few months when my boyfriend’s been off seeing you, texting you at all hours, spending the night at your place, coming home with sexy love letters from you in his pocket. Keep up the good work, Ava.’
So much for keeping my powder dry and not mentioning Ava’s note to Sam until I was sure what I was going to do about it. But it was a bit late for that now – and anyway, the letter seemed like flimsy evidence compared to that of my own eyes. Eyes that were smarting with furious, burning tears.
‘Sam,’ Ava gasped, ‘have you already told her?’
‘No.’ He sounded like the words were too heavy to get out. ‘I promised I wouldn’t.’
‘Thank you.’ I could barely hear Ava’s whisper.
He’d made a promise to her that was more important than my feelings? Than me? Than us? The pain of knowing that was almost worse than the pain of seeing them together.
Then she moved past Sam, picking up her bag from the coffee table – a grey felt tote, I noticed, the purple backpack presumably long since fallen apart – and paused next to me.
‘I’ll go now,’ she said. ‘Georgia, I’m so sorry about all this. I know how you must be feeling. But please don’t blame Sam – none of this is his fault. It really isn’t.’
She extended a hand as if she might have been about to touch me, but must have seen my face and changed her mind.
‘I’ll call you,’ Sam said.
Ava nodded and headed past me to the door. Before it closed behind her, I heard her start crying again.
‘So,’ Sam said. ‘I guess we need to talk.’
All the outrage left me in an instant, replaced only by fear. This was it. The moment I’d dreaded. There was no running away, no pretending any more.
This was finally happening.