‘Leave it in the gutter. It’s where it belongs now.’ And with that, he turned and walked out of the light and into the shadow. I looked at it, glowing orange in the light and then turned and walked away from it. Maybe someone else would find it and love it. Maybe it would mean something more to them than it ever had done to me and not carry the pain with it that it carried for Joel. I was giving Joel and myself a second chance. The ring deserved that too.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The next morning, I woke with that heavy, stinging feeling in my eyes that always comes after a night of crying. My head throbbed as if I’d necked two bottles of vodka and if that wasn’t enough to start the day off badly, I then reached out a hand to find the space beside me empty.
I got up, donned my dressing gown and went down to the kitchen, pausing to endure a scarring mental flashback just before I went through the door. Ned was sat at the dining room table, trying very hard not to look up from his magazine as I walked over to the draining board, took a mug and sat down, not in my usual chair beside him, but opposite. I poured myself a coffee from the cafetière and held it between both hands on the tabletop.
‘Where are the others?’ I asked.
He stopped reading an article about Elizabeth I’s spy network and looked up at me sheepishly, not quite making eye contact, but instead looking just to my left. ‘They went on a bonding trip to get some food for dinner. Charlie’s making lasagne.’
‘What a happy little family we make,’ I said sarcastically. ‘Do tell me when you want me to start calling you Dad, won’t you?’
He sighed and pushed his magazine to the side. ‘Look, Nell. Both of us thought very long and hard about acting on any feelings that we had.’
I held up a hand in disgust. ‘Please refrain from using words like long and hard. I’m not sure if it’s even possible for us to stay friends after seeing your … thingy.’
‘Come on, Nell, it’s only a penis.’
‘Yes, but it was your penis. Ergo my distress.’
‘Penises aside,’ he said, frowning a little at his own words, ‘I am with you till the end. You are the best, strangest friend I have ever had and nothing is going to tear us apart, not even what you saw last night. Me and your mother have had these feelings for a while now and as I said, we thought long an—’
‘Ah!’ I shouted and covered my ears.
‘Sorry, sorry. We thought very seriously about how to handle them. But in the end, I really like her and just because you’re freaking out, doesn’t mean I’m not going to see where this goes. I am a man and your mother is an incredibly attractive woman, the likes of which a man can only dream of being with.’
‘Oh, sweet Jesus, please stop,’ I begged. ‘Look, if you and Mum want to date, or whatever it is you two are doing, then that’s fine. I just don’t want to see it, okay?’
‘Deal,’ he said reaching over the table with an outstretched hand. ‘Does this mean we’re friends again?’
‘Hmmm.’ I pondered. ‘We shall see.’
A knock came at the front door and I stood, eager to get away from the conversation and the table, which I was pretty sure I was going to have to take out in the garden and set on fire, and made my way to let the weary shoppers in. But when I opened the door, I wasn’t met with the faces I was expecting.
‘Rachel?’ Joel’s mother stood in front of me with a worried look on her face. ‘Is everything okay?’
‘Nell, is Joel here?’ she asked, her eyes darting over my shoulder to see if he was behind me.
‘No,’ I replied. ‘Why?’
‘He left the house last night to come and see you, but he never came home. It’s not like him to not answer his phone when I call him. I just thought he might be here, seeing as you’ve been spending time together again recently.’
I saw a flicker of hope in her eyes and the guilt bubbled in my stomach.
‘He didn’t come back here with me. We met on a bench by the park and had an argument, but I came home alone.’
She raised a hand to her mouth and whimpered into it.
‘You don’t think something happened to him, do you?’
‘I just have a bad feeling,’ she said, her eyes moistening with worried tears. My mind was drawn back to that time spent searching the streets for Charlie back in Ireland. The unbridled panic that nothing other than finding him would cure. ‘Come in. Would you like some tea?’
She nodded and walked through to the kitchen where Ned was already putting a fresh kettle on.
I called around to some of our mutual friends, mostly people I hadn’t talked to since we split up, but whom Joel might have gone to for advice. None of them had seen him and every dead end caused another whimper to escape Rachel’s mouth. Charlie and Mum arrived home shortly after I finished making the calls. I rang the hospital to see if he was there, also asking if they had any unidentified people, but all were accounted for. I kept saying that I was sure he was fine, but something about the look in
