Chapter 33
THIRTY-THREE
I sat up in bed, my mouth as dry as cotton wool and tasting absolutely foul.
Something had woken me. It wasn’t even early – I could see that the sun was high in the sky outside.
But I hadn’t woken with the usual gentle drifting in and out of dreams, deciding to sleep for just a bit longer and then longer still until eventually thirst or the need for a wee forced me out of bed, as was normally the case when I had a lie-in.
There’d been a noise. And something was wrong.
Something had happened last night. This wasn’t just one of your everyday hangovers – it was one that had announced its arrival with the all-singing, all-dancing symptoms list: manky-smelling sweat on my sheets, a banging headache, churning nausea and a crawling case of the horrors.
Shit. Jamie. Jamie and I had kissed – at least, he’d kissed me. I’d stopped him – I definitely had. Nothing more than that had happened. But still. I’d kissed a man who wasn’t Sam.
Guilt settled over me in a dark fog. If things between me and Sam had been irretrievable before, they were irretrievable-plus now.
There was no way Jamie would have done that without some sort of signal from me – no way he’d have carried on for as long as I remembered him having done without my consent.
If Sam found out, he’d never, ever forgive me. And even if he didn’t, I’d never forgive myself.
Then I heard the noise again – a tap on the door, soft and tentative.
My heart raced. Surely it couldn’t be Jamie turning up unannounced again?
I jumped out of bed and pulled on my dressing gown. My feeling of unease escalated. I hadn’t let him think this was a good idea, that he’d be welcome here – had I?
If it was, I’d see him through the peephole and just not let him in. I’d say I’d been out, if he asked. I’d find a way to patch things up on Monday, to style things out between us.
Besides, it might be Sam. Sam, electing not to use his key to let himself in because he had chosen to leave and was being considerate. That thought sent me dashing to the door, and I flung it open, all thoughts of peering out first forgotten.
But it wasn’t Sam standing there, smiling sheepishly and ready to say sorry. It wasn’t Jamie, grinning cheerfully and bearing bacon sandwiches.
Ava.
I could barely see her face because it was concealed by a massive bunch of flowers – not roses or peonies but a burst of colourful gerbera daisies, snapdragons, sunflowers and other things I didn’t know the names of.
‘Hi, Georgia,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry to turn up like this. I didn’t have your number. Did I wake you?’
There was no point in denying it – my dishevelled hair, yesterday’s make-up and bathrobe gave me away.
‘Uh… yes, a bit. What time is it?’
‘I’m sorry.’ She lowered the flowers, which revealed she was blushing. ‘It’s ten o’clock. I thought…’
Of course. She’d thought that the right time to turn up on a Saturday was exactly ten a.m., when normal people would be awake but wouldn’t yet have headed out to do whatever they’d planned to do that day.
Except I had no plans, a brutal hangover and a life that had been turned on its head over the past two days.
‘You’d better come in,’ I said, not knowing what else to say.
I didn’t want to invite her in – flowers or no flowers. But there was no way I could send her packing or shut the door in her face without feeling even shittier about myself than I already did.
‘Thank you.’ Diffidently, she stepped inside. She’d been here before, of course – just the day before yesterday, although it felt much longer ago than that to me – and God only knew how many times before that.
She handed me the flowers cautiously, as if she was worried I might hurl them back in her face. But I took them and thanked her.
‘Have a seat.’ I gestured towards the sofa where she’d sat in Sam’s arms, weeping like her heart was breaking. ‘Would you like a coffee?’
‘That would be amazing, actually. But take your time, if you need to…’
I looked down at my bare feet and shabby robe. Ah, I did need to.
‘Give me five minutes, okay?’
‘Of course.’
It was more like ten before I rejoined her, having dressed, cleaned my teeth, washed my face, necked two paracetamol, fed the cat and made coffee. I was in nothing like the state I would have hoped to be in if I’d imagined she would ever come knocking at my door, but it would have to do.
‘So.’ I perched on the armchair at a right angle to the sofa – the uncomfortable one, bought for its elegant lines and sunshine-yellow velvet upholstery, which neither Sam nor I ever sat on.
Then social etiquette took over and I heard myself asking the woman who’d stolen my boyfriend, ‘How are you?’
But Ava was in no mood for pleasantries. ‘I wanted to talk to you, Georgia. I owe you an apology – and an explanation.’
I blinked in surprise. I hadn’t been expecting that – but then, I hadn’t been expecting her to turn up here in the first place.
When I didn’t respond, she carried on. ‘I talked to Sam yesterday. He told me what happened between you two.’
He told you he dumped me, I thought. That was nice of him. Had he also told her that he was now free to continue his relationship with Ava, pick up where they’d left off all those years ago, and the flowers were some kind of consolation prize?
‘Right,’ I said, taking a sip of my coffee.
‘He… what he said, it made me realise…’ Ava went on, in fits and starts, like she was struggling to find the right words. ‘It made me realise I’ve been selfish. I had stuff going on, and I was all wrapped up in that, and I just didn’t think about the impact it was going to have on you.’
You didn’t think arranging clandestine meetings with my boyfriend might upset me just a tiny bit? Okay, Ava, you do you.
‘Impact,’ I said. ‘Yes, it kind of did.’
‘I know.’ She hung her head, the bright hair obscuring her face. ‘Which is why I wanted to apologise. But like I said, I need to explain too. Then maybe you’ll understand.’
‘Okay.’ I drank some more coffee, then put the mug down, clasping my hands between my knees so she couldn’t see them shaking. ‘Go on.’
‘I’ve been going through some stuff.’ She looked at me directly again. ‘Working through it, my therapist says. It’s to do with something that happened round about the time Sam and I split up.’
‘Six years ago,’ I said. ‘That’s a long time.’
‘I didn’t want to talk about it when it happened. Or afterwards, come to that.’ To be fair to Ava, she didn’t look much like she wanted to talk about it now. But I could see her forcing herself to do just that.
‘But I realised it was – well, it was affecting my whole life,’ she went on. ‘I haven’t had a proper relationship with anyone since Sam. I’ve had nightmares and flashbacks and panic attacks. I thought it would get better eventually, but it didn’t.’
‘That sounds horrible.’ I still had no idea where she was going with this, but I knew she was more likely to keep talking if I listened sympathetically.
‘So I found a therapist who specialises in post-traumatic stress disorder. I didn’t know that was what I had, but there were other things on her website that looked familiar.
We had a couple of sessions over Zoom, but it wasn’t really working for me so I stopped.
Then I got offered a new job in London, and she’s based here, so I was able to start seeing her in person. ’
‘That was fortunate,’ I said encouragingly.
‘It didn’t feel that way.’ Ava smiled weakly. ‘It meant confronting things I really didn’t want to confront. And part of that was talking to Sam because he was the person I was closest to when it happened.’
Shit. Okay – she was getting to the point at last. But was she saying that whatever traumatic thing had happened to her had been something to do with Sam? That she was having nightmares and flashbacks because he’d hurt her?
‘What did he—’ I began, but now that Ava was talking, she didn’t seem inclined to stop.
‘My therapist suggested I get in touch with him.’ Her words were coming more rapidly now, although not easily. ‘I didn’t want to because I felt so bad about the way I’d treated him. I knew he’d have moved on – and he had, with you. But she said speaking to him would be part of the healing journey.’
This therapist, whoever she was, had certainly got Ava talking the talk.
‘And I went from not wanting to, to finding I needed to,’ she explained. ‘After my sessions with Elizabeth, I’d call him and tell him what we’d gone through, and it helped me to process it all.’
Well, isn’t that nice for you, I thought with a flash of resentment. Maybe you and your precious Elizabeth – and Sam, for that matter – could have spent three seconds thinking about what all that might have meant to me.
‘Sam told me about you,’ she said, as if she’d read my thoughts – or more likely, I hadn’t been able to stop my face revealing them. ‘He said you were serious. He said he felt awful seeing me, guilty, like he was betraying you. He said he was going to tell you we were meeting up.’
‘Which he did,’ I confirmed. I didn’t tell her how I’d reacted to that – either Sam already had, or Ava would surely have guessed.
‘But I begged him not to tell you what had actually happened,’ she continued. ‘And he agreed to that, eventually. He wasn’t happy about it – he hated keeping things from you. But I said it was none of your business to know.’
That stung because I could see the truth in it.
Again, Ava noticed my reaction.
‘I’m so sorry, Georgia. I know how that sounds.
’ She smiled uncertainly. ‘The thing is… Everything Sam had told me about you made you sound so perfect. So together. You had this cool job, and you’d travelled all over the world, and you and Sam had bought this place together, and he said he could imagine marrying you one day.
And I’d just been drifting. I already felt ashamed of what happened, and now I felt ashamed of just being me as well.
I thought if you knew, you’d look down on me, and I couldn’t face that. ’
My eyes widened. ‘I never looked down on you. I thought you were… I remembered how you and Sam were at university, and I thought I could never measure up to that. I was jealous as hell, if I’m honest.’
‘Jealous? Of me?’ Ava let out an incredulous laugh – a harsh, almost ugly sound.
‘Okay. God, that never crossed my mind. If I’m honest, I’ve been very…
introspective is the word, I suppose. I couldn’t see past my own nose.
I guess that’s part of having therapy. I needed to look so hard at myself, I didn’t really have the headspace to think about anyone else. ’
‘I can see how that might work,’ I admitted grudgingly.
‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘I wasn’t thinking about you.
I should have done, and I really, really apologise for that.
But Sam was always thinking about you. The day I came here, he told me that he couldn’t hide the truth from you any more.
He said he was going to have to tell you, that you’d understand, and that it wasn’t just about me any more because it was having a serious, horrible impact on you and him. ’
When I’d found them in the flat that day, that was what had been happening. Ava begging Sam to change his mind and Sam refusing. No wonder she’d been so distraught. No wonder he’d been furious when I reacted the way I did: he’d been fighting my corner – fighting for our relationship.
Against Ava.
And I’d thrown it back in his face.
‘I know.’ Ava did her mind-reading thing again.
Maybe this was also a trick Elizabeth had taught her.
‘You must think I’m the most selfish person ever.
Like I came barging in and ruined everything for you because I was trying to sort out my own shit.
That’s why I had to come and see you. I thought if I explained, you might be able to understand. ’
I kind of did – but also, I didn’t. I still didn’t know what had happened to Ava, all those years ago, when she was half of SamandAva. And if it was something Sam had done, surely she would realise that I needed to know?
I couldn’t ask her. But she told me anyway, and afterwards I almost wished she hadn’t.
‘So here’s the thing.’ She looked down at her hands, then up at me again.
I could see how hard this was for her, and for a moment I felt in awe of her courage, even though I could never have guessed what she was about to tell me.
‘Here’s what happened – why I couldn’t be with Sam the way I’d been before, and I couldn’t even like myself, and I… I did all kinds of other stupid shit.’
‘It’s okay, Ava,’ I said, trying to channel Elizabeth, who was apparently some kind of Ava-whisperer. ‘Deep breaths.’
‘Sam was away for the weekend with some mates.’ Her words came in a rush now.
‘It was fine – I wanted him to have a good time. So I arranged a night out with some friends as well, people I knew from uni and some other friends of theirs. A proper night out in Manchester – cocktails and a meal and then clubbing. I got really drunk – we all did. But it was all just good fun. Until…’
She hesitated. I didn’t say anything, just sat patiently and waited.
‘Later on, in the toilets in the club’ – she swallowed so hard I could hear it – ‘a man attacked me. I was raped.’