‘Joel took the woman’s card. He emailed her and explained that he wanted to buy it, but would need to get some money together first. She agreed to keep it for him and a month later, when the market came back, he bought it and gave it to me. He said that he understood that I didn’t want to marry, but he wanted to give that to me as a sort of promise ring, saying that we’d love each other forever.’
‘Sounds like he really loved yer,’ Charlie said, clearing his throat.
‘He still does – that’s what makes this so hard.’
‘What do yer mean?’
‘I mean that …’ I took a deep breath as I plucked up the courage to say what I had been thinking for years. ‘I mean that it was never that I didn’t want to get married, it was just that I never wanted to marry Joel.’
‘Is that a hint?’ He chuckled and handed it back to me.
I laughed nervously and held on to the ring, not wanting to put it back on, but not quite ready to let go of it. ‘I just see what you had with Abi.’ He looked down, unable to meet my eye while I spoke her name. ‘The kind of love you had, still have for her …’ I’m not going to lie, that last part stung. ‘Joel and I never had that. We were never meant to be.’
‘Yer know, I never believed in meant to be or destiny or anything like that.’ He spoke quietly and reached a hand over to my knee. ‘But the way this has happened, finding that sticker up there on the clock tower and leading me to Ned, then to you and meeting you in that café. It all just feels like someone wants us together.’
We had been through so much together already and, in that moment, I finally realised that I loved him too deeply already for this to all be for nothing.
‘I know what you mean,’ I replied. ‘I just can’t help but think that maybe this is what was meant to happen and I was meant to love you, but to me the timing …’
‘… feels off?’ He finished my sentence for me.
‘Exactly.’ I sighed and shuffled a little closer to him, the warmth of his hand finding my knee. I leaned in and placed my palm gently on his cheek. His impossibly blue eyes latched on to mine. ‘I love you, Charlie Stone.’ His mouth broke into a smile and for a heart-jolting moment, I thought he might say it back, but he just swallowed his smile and breathed a shaky sigh.
‘I want to kiss you without you thinking of Abi. I want to spend the night with you without you feeling like you’re being unfaithful to your wife. You’re still grieving, and that’s okay.’
He opened his mouth to protest, but the look in his eyes showed me that he agreed with what I was saying. ‘You need more time. Time to put your heart back together before you give it away again. I want us to have a chance and if we’re going to have that, we need to be patient.’
His eyes were glassy now, his lips puckering as he drew them into his mouth. ‘Yer right.’ His voice broke and he groaned in frustration. ‘Erg! I’m sorry I keep cryin’ all the time.’
‘Don’t apologise.’ I placed a hand on his other cheek and angled his face back to mine. ‘You need to let yourself feel it. It’s like owning a mean old bird.’
He chuckled and dislodged more tears. ‘How the hell is this anythin’ like owning a mean old bird?’
‘Okay, maybe not my best analogy, but hear me out. If you cage it up and lock it away, you’re never going to be rid of it. But if you open the cage door and let it out, it’ll take off out the window and make room for a nice friendly one to move in.’
‘And the nice friendly bird is what exactly?’
‘Happiness,’ I replied. ‘Let yourself hurt, Charlie, and when you’re ready, we can see what happens.’
He wiped his tears away and took my hands from his face, folding them inside his. ‘What if everything’s changed by the time I’m ready?’
‘Then I guess it’s not meant to be.’
I pushed myself up off the bed and slipped my feet into the pumps that lay on the floor.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked.
‘There’s something I need to do. It’s all well and good being the counsellor, but right now, I need to listen to my own advice. You know, practise what you preach and all that.’ I pulled on my coat from the hook behind the door and grabbed my phone from the bed, sliding the promise ring back onto my finger.
‘Let me walk you – it’s dark.’
‘Don’t worry. I’m not going far,’ I said. ‘I need to do this on my own.’
‘What are you going to do?’ he asked, flinging back the duvet and letting one leg fall to the floor.
‘Set the bird free.’
Joel was already there when I arrived, sitting with hunched shoulders on the bench outside the park. In the daylight, this small patch of grass was beautiful, with beds of yolk yellow daffodils and violet crocuses that never seemed to stay for long enough. But in the dark the flowers were all in shadow, their colour lost in the night. The only light came from the dim street lamp a few metres away. He hadn’t seen me yet, his eyes downturned to the phone in his hands, his face illuminated by the dimmed screen.
When I was a few
