Chapter Twenty-Nine
Joel refused to see me when I turned up at the psychiatric ward after work a couple of days later with a box of his favourite Lindt chocolates. Rachel came instead and took me by the hands, thanking me for finding him in time. She said that Joel didn’t want to see me and that I should wait for him to get in contact. I doubted the day would ever come when Joel felt like dropping me a cheery hello, but I think it would be nice, further down the line, to speak to him again.
I’d returned home after the hospital with an exhausted brain and a weary body and Charlie, still unwilling to return home to a flat full of memories, had greeted me with a glass of Pinot Grigio. Ned had left to take Mum to the airport, but I’d decided to give this particular goodbye a miss. I didn’t think I was ready yet to see them making out in the drop-off bays.
I sat at the kitchen table with Magnus dozing on my lap and I sipped on the cool, crisp wine as Charlie chopped vegetables and tossed them into a sizzling pan. I wondered if this was what our future looked like? Me arriving home from work and him, the dutiful husband, cooking me dinner and talking non-stop about inane things that filled the silence. I watched his shoulders tense and relax as he worked away at the counter and I thought how strange it was that I hadn’t touched him properly yet, had barely kissed him more than a handful of times and yet, I loved him so deeply that it felt like we’d been together for years.
But I knew that it was only me who felt this way. It was like starting a new book before you’ve finished the last one. Your brain is still engaged with the first story, the new one exciting and distracting, but you have a sense of unease because you never knew how the first story ended. Abi was that story and he still hadn’t found the end of it.
‘Everyone I’ve ever made this for has asked me how I always get it to taste so good. Really, I think that the secret’s all in the bay leaves,’ he said, turning to me and waving his knife in the air to stress the point. ‘Wildly underestimated herb.’
‘Charlie, I think we need to have a talk.’ The words tumbled out of my mouth, making him freeze when they hit him.
‘Okay. Should I brace myself? Because nothin’ good ever comes after those words,’ he said, placing the knife down and coming to sit opposite me, his hands clasped on the table in front of him. I couldn’t help but smile at how cute he looked in Ned’s old pinny, stained and burned from years of use. ‘What about?’
‘I think you need to leave.’
He flinched. ‘What? Right now? But the bourguignon’s not done yet.’
‘Not right this second,’ I said, reaching out and holding his hand. ‘But I just don’t think that this is healthy … for me to have you staying here and it’s not particularly good for you either. Isn’t you living in the spare room just another way for you to run away from everything you need to be tackling?’
He looked at me and I had to look down at our hands, clasped together on the table, because I was weak for those eyes. ‘I know that we decided that maybe the timing wasn’t right for us to make a go of this just yet. But, I’m not going to lie, it’s kind of painful to have to see you every day and not be able to be with you in the ways I want to be. To love you and know that you can’t love me back, it hurts, Charlie. And there’s stuff that both of us need to sort out and I don’t think we can do that if we’re together, holding each other back.’
He smiled at me sadly, but I could see from his face that he knew I was right.
‘You said, when we were up on the clock tower with Joel, that no one needed you, but that wasn’t true.’
‘You don’t need me, Nell. You’d be just fine on your own.’
‘I’m not talking about me. I’m talking about Carrick,’ I replied. ‘I don’t think Carrick is as together as you think he is. He misses you and he loves you so much. I think he needs a friend. He needs you.’
‘What about you?’ he asked, his brows a little downturned at the ends. ‘What will you do?’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t know, but that’s the beauty of it I guess.’
He sighed, his thumb stroking my knuckles.
‘I wish I could … yer know, say it.’
‘I know.’ I smiled and squeezed his hand, all the while, trying not to acknowledge the feeling of my heart cracking in two.
Carrick arrived on the last day of April to help Charlie box up all of his stuff. It was strange having him out of the house and, even though we hadn’t been sleeping in the same room since that first night, knowing that he wasn’t a wall’s width away from me made me feel hollow and achy inside. This was for the best – we both knew it. I hoped that we could have a future, one that wasn’t filled with sadness and loose ends of previous loves. But he was going away and taking everything with him, except for Magnus who was now Ned’s, body and soul. He was erasing himself from my life, from Birmingham, from the United Kingdom, and knowing that
