Now I really was embarrassed. “He did understand. I’ve been telling him for a long time that it’s not working.”
“Maybe he didn’t want to tell me. He seems the sort of guy who’s quite proud. I can’t imagine him telling me anything private, really.”
I nodded. “He hates anyone to know anything about him.”
“So you’re really not going back?”
“No,” I said firmly. “That’s not going to happen. I’m just waiting until my house sells.”
“So are you staying with your parents?”
“No. They’re going to Australia tomorrow to see my sister. They plan to stay there for months.”
He laughed. “Have they told her that?” He’d been to my house on Tom’s birthday when my parents and sister were there and he’d seen Fiona’s exasperation with my mum.
I grinned. “She’s told them to get an open return but my mum’s interpreted that as Fiona wanting her to stay there for a long time. But in any case I can’t stay there. I might embarrass them in front of the neighbors. Apparently I’m killing my mother. She says she can’t stop crying.”
“Really? I saw her in a café in Liverpool on Friday afternoon. She was having a cream tea with a friend and looked pretty happy.”
I laughed, feeling lighter for the first time in ages.
“Put it this way, she hasn’t lost her appetite as a result of you leaving Tom. That cake stand was empty.”
“You should’ve sent a message,” I said. “I could have phoned her, just as she was tucking in. It would have been funny to see how her expression changed.”
“I will do if I see her again.”
The waitress approached us and left the bill on our table. Oliver took out his wallet and smiled at me. “I’ll get this. So was it just that you were unhappy with Tom? I wondered whether you might be interested in someone else.”
I was startled. Had he seen me change as I grew involved with Harry? I knew Tom hadn’t noticed—he would have said if he had—and even Sarah had been astonished at my revelations. Oliver and I had always gotten on really well. Had he noticed what nobody else had?
“Tom had changed over the years,” I said, careful not to actually answer his question. “He always wanted to know what I was doing, where I was. It was suffocating at times. And things had to be done his way or I’d pay the price afterward.”
Oliver looked shocked. “He’d hurt you?”
“No, nothing like that. He just had these moods and I never knew what to expect. He’d ignore me. Blank me. He could go on for weeks, acting normal with everyone else, but not speaking to me at all.”
“I’d never noticed,” said Oliver. “How often would that happen?”
“It wasn’t often at the beginning. He could go months when everything was great. When he was moody then, I could get past it. But it’s been more and more often. For the last few years I’ve been living on my nerves, worrying about when it would happen again. Do you remember the Christmas before last? He didn’t speak to me for the whole of the holiday period.”
Oliver frowned. “I was at your house for New Year’s for drinks that year, wasn’t I? Josh was there, too. Everything seemed normal.”
“Tom hadn’t spoken to me for five days at that point. He used to behave normally while other people were around, but if you watched carefully you’d see he never spoke directly to me. He’d be quiet if I spoke, but never reply. Even Josh didn’t always notice. Tom only started talking to me again because I went to work at Sheridan’s after Christmas and he wanted to know where I was going each day.” I laughed at the memory, though it hadn’t been funny at all. “The curiosity near enough killed him.”
“Why would he do that?”
I shrugged. “I don’t really know. It didn’t have to be anything I did. It could be something I didn’t do. Something I didn’t know I was meant to do. He was always careful not to let anyone else know, though. And I was so stupid. I went along with it.” I stretched my arms behind my back, trying to get rid of the tension. “It doesn’t matter now.”
“But why didn’t you leave before?”
That question really irritated me, but it confused me, too. I didn’t know why I hadn’t left. It’s so hard to leave a marriage, to walk away from everything. It’s like leaving your family. I knew I was weak, knew I hadn’t had the courage to leave, to take that leap into the unknown. And I was always broke, too. I’d known that if I’d left I’d struggle to manage financially. I had a sick feeling that I’d only managed it this time because I had Harry to go to. I wished I was stronger, wished I was the sort of person who could just think, I’ve had enough and end it. “I kept hoping it would get better, I suppose. And then I reached a tipping point a while ago and knew I had to leave.”
“What happened?”
I shook my head. I wasn’t going to answer that. “I just knew I couldn’t live like that anymore.” I sat quietly for a while. “Then I met someone. Someone special.” A familiar flare of anger shot through me. “Or so I thought. It turned out he wasn’t special at all.”
Oliver sat back, staring at me. “You were seeing someone else?”
I shrugged. “Nothing came of it.”
I wasn’t going to tell him about my affair with Harry. That was private, something I held to myself even now, when I was in bed in the dark. No matter what had happened between Harry and me, nobody could take that time away from me. And I knew that wherever Harry was, whatever he was up to now, it would be the same for him.
CHAPTER 21
Ruby
On Monday morning I got up early and drove to Sarah’s house to put my letter to Harry through her door before she left for work.
She lived on a quiet street a couple of miles from my flat. As I approached her house I could see it was in darkness with the curtains drawn, and, like her neighbors, it seemed that she and her family were still sleeping. As quietly as I could I pushed the envelope through her letterbox and slid away in the early-morning mist back to my car.
I started to drive toward my flat, but when I turned on the radio and heard the six o’clock news bulletin, I thought of Harry and what he’d said to me one day.
“I wake every morning just before the alarm at six thirty,” he’d said. “Isn’t it odd how that happens? Every single day I wonder what’s woken me. And I lie there and my mind seems to scan through everything that might have happened. Was it my phone? Someone at the door? A car engine starting? And then, always, within a second or two, my alarm will go off. And that happens no matter what time it’s set for.”