I wiped my moistening eyes with my sleeve and sniffed back the emotion. I’d been trying not to ‘man up’ when the urge to cry came over me. But lately the tears had been coming less often, though the grief behind them was ever present in the background like a thunderstorm one town over that threatened to descend on me.
‘I just wanted to come here and tell you, even though I’m pretty sure that I’m just talking to the ground and nothing else, that I love yer and I’m always goin’ to love yer. But eventually I’m gonna have to make some room in there to love someone else.’ I wiped my cheeks again and exhaled loudly, the air taking with it a weight that I’d felt for far too long. ‘I’ve got a lot of decisions to make. Should I stay or should I go? In the words of The Clash.’ I chuckled, knowing that she’d have appreciated that reference with her love of punk rock. ‘But whatever I choose, I’m not forgettin’ yer and I’m not replacin’ yer.’
I took another minute before standing and taking a breath. I reached out a hand and rested it atop the marble stone, thinking how much time Abi and I wasted in those years we hadn’t spoken, using our damaged pride as a reason not to act on anything. But there was no changing that now and there was no changing the fact that this stone was here, with her beneath it. I unfurled my hand, the glass clinking a little as it touched the top of the marble. I let my hand linger a moment longer before turning around and walking away to where Steve awaited me in the car park, leaving the piece of orange sea glass where it really belonged.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Four months later
Nell
I walked through the glass-roofed foyer of Aston University and onto the large grassy area out front, which was always speckled with lounging students whenever the weather allowed.
Tom and Marni, the two students in their early twenties who had befriended me in the first week, chattered away beside me as we made our way out into the lazy afternoon sunshine.
We all collapsed down onto the grass amidst the scattered groups of students, all dressed in various forms of blood-spattered shirts and rubber masks. I had completely forgotten that today was Halloween, until I’d walked downstairs and found Ned sitting at the table dressed as Leatherface, the severed arm strapped to his belt making it troublesome for him to sit down.
‘Got any plans for the weekend, Nell?’ Tom asked, his long brown hair pulled into a tiny little man bun at the crown of his head, that reminded me of a Samurai warrior.
‘I have one shift at Healthy Minds tomorrow and then I think my mum is coming to visit for a day or two,’ I replied. ‘Rock and roll, I know.’ I turned my face up to the sorry excuse for sunshine and leaned back on my hands. ‘You guys?’
‘There’s a Halloween party over at Laurie’s place if you fancy it?’ Tom asked.
‘Tom, you should know better,’ Marni teased. ‘Friday nights are when she and her husband have movie night.’
They’d taken to calling Ned my husband ever since they’d learned about him and the fact that I’d told them he was dating my mother hadn’t seemed to deter them.
Lately I’d noticed Tom had started to get a little flirty, touching me more frequently, asking me out for coffee. He was nice enough and good-looking, but there was absolutely no way that I could even contemplate seeing someone right now. Professor Gundersen had approached me after class a couple of weeks ago and told me that the student who was doing a year of study abroad had found out she was pregnant and so was coming home at the end of October. She seemed to think that I would be a good candidate to take her place and had given me a handful of paperwork to think over.
‘So,’ Tom asked, reading my mind. ‘Is New Zealand a go-go or can you simply not deprive yourself of our company for that long?’
‘I handed the paperwork in yesterday,’ I said with mingled terror and excitement in my gut.
‘I can’t believe you’re abandoning us and your husband for a whole year,’ Marni jested.
‘Ned will be just fine and so will you guys,’ I said, picking at the grass with my nails. ‘It’s going to be strange, being so far away.’
‘Yeah, the flight to Auckland is, like, over twenty-four hours, isn’t it?’ Tom asked. I gulped audibly. Twenty-four hours, airborne, thousands of miles above the earth. I shook the thought from my head and took a breath. No, I wasn’t going to let fear override this chance that had fallen into my lap.
I thought of my last flight, how I’d held on to Charlie’s hand so tightly that his fingers had turned blue. I’d have no hand to hold this time, unless I managed to make friends with the person sitting next to me, which, with my verbal diarrhoea, wasn’t out of the question. I felt the ache in my chest that came as a by-product of every memory of him and waited. I knew that, like all the other times, it would be only a minute or two until the ache subsided. In his last message to me, Charlie had told me that he was feeling good, working in the family shop, and that living with Carrick was making him feel as if he’d regressed in maturity by about twenty years.
‘You okay?’
