That can’t be right. I did tell her what was going on – once I understood it. But then I remember her expression when the video call froze. Frustration with me. Hurt. I tried to dismiss it then, but what if Niven is right? Could I have made her run to Gabe?
I slump against the equipment-store door as the realisation hits.
‘There it is.’ Niven’s smile is scant comfort. ‘Hey, you know what we need? A bit of time off. Just a couple of days to blow away the cobwebs.’
A little time somewhere else would be good. All the stuff with Phoebe has exhausted my head.
‘What did you have in mind?’
Niven chuckles as we walk back to the van. ‘Ah now, you just leave that to me.’
Chapter Fifty-Five
Phoebe
Amanda understood. Her team, too. And the project was almost at an end anyway.
So why do I feel like it’s another failure?
Two weeks after the festival, I slink home, avoiding eye contact with everyone in the train, in case they see me and judge me for running away. As I hide from my imagined accusers, I make a promise to myself: the next time I leave home it will be for something I really want to do.
I call Meg from the train and ask her to meet me at a bar near Victoria station. I’ve let things slide between us for too long and it’s time to put that right.
She is red-faced when she appears and I wonder if she has run from the tube to be here. I don’t even have time to say I’m sorry before she hugs me.
‘I’m so glad you’re back,’ she rushes. ‘I’m sorry for what I said.’
‘Me too. It’s been a mess.’
We order food and I’m aware of Meg watching me. ‘How are you?’ she asks when the waiter leaves us.
‘I don’t really know. I said what I had to, so that’s something. I just have to work out where to go from here.’
‘Will you stay in London?’
‘Who knows? Although I can’t imagine going away again yet.’
‘How was Sam when you saw him?’
Reliving it is painful, but I want Meg to know what happened. ‘He could hardly look at me. And he didn’t try to stop me when I left.’
‘Did you hope he would?’
‘I hoped he might fight for me, just a little.’ Like I hoped he would listen to me when I called him from Paris, or later when I returned home. I shake my head. ‘I made one mistake in an entire year. One. And it was game over for him. But I was there for him that whole year. Waiting for him. Until I saw him at Eden, I think I still was.’
‘And now?’
‘It’s over. I just want to get on with my life.’
Meg picks up a beer mat from the table and spins it between her fingers. ‘Did you say everything you wanted to Sam? I mean, if you’d made a list of what you wanted to say before you saw him again, could you have crossed off every one?’
‘I said all that he’d let me.’
‘That’s not what I asked.’
‘I don’t think I could have said any more.’
She holds up the mat. ‘Fine, fine. It’s just that you were both in shock about seeing each other and he was understandably hurt – could he have had more to say?’
‘If he did he wasn’t saying it.’ I can tell she isn’t buying my explanation, but it’s all I have. ‘There was just a long silence. I said goodbye and left.’
‘So, he might have had more to say.’
‘He didn’t say anything. And he didn’t stop me leaving. What else could I have done?’
I’m glad when our food arrives to break the tension. And it seems Meg is, too, although I sense she isn’t finished with this.
It’s good to have her back in my life, but so many other loose ends remain. I’m rudderless again, trying to work out what to do next.
* * *
Gabe is home and while we’re being civil to one another, it isn’t an easy place to be. Increasingly I’m finding excuses to be out of the house during the day.
Today I’m at the British Library. I became a member when I returned from Cornwall, needing a safe place to be. Books, as always, are my salvation. And it’s while I’m there that I see the job advert.
It’s in a newspaper somebody left in the Members’ Room. I was between books and picked it up while deciding what to read next. I’m so glad I did. The job on offer is a one-year research fellowship in the oldest English Literature department in the world. Edinburgh University is undertaking a transatlantic project studying the impact of Scottish literature in the UK and USA, working with the Edinburgh Book Festival to promote Scottish writing around the world. There’s also the chance to be involved with the famous literature festival itself. I would adore that.
In the little café just outside the library, I huddle in a corner and call home. Dad answers and within a minute the warmth of his enthusiasm is making me grin like a kid.
‘What’s the money like?’
‘Not bad. I mean, it’s not a fortune, certainly not by London standards, but I could make it work.’
‘Would they offer you board at the university?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Hang on a mo.’ I hear the rustle of paper and imagine Dad sitting at my brother’s old pine desk which my father pilfered for his own office when Will went to university. ‘Where is it?… There’s so much crap in these drawers… You didn’t hear me say that, okay?’
‘Your secret swearing is safe with me.’
‘Good girl. Right, here we are. Now, how serious are you about applying for this job?’
‘Very. If I can make it work.’
‘Excellent. I’m going to call Alan and Sandra, see if we can sort you out some accommodation. Hang tight, sweetheart.’
An hour later, Mum and Dad’s friends offer me accommodation at their holiday barns and B&B an hour outside the city for a much-reduced rent. In return, I would help them with the writing weekends they host there and the general running of the holiday business. I don’t mind hard work and if it means I get to do something I really love, I’d be up for the challenge.
With everything in place, I apply for the job, cross everything and wait.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Sam
It turns out Niven McNish’s idea of a great weekend away is in a spa hotel near Abergavenny.
I do not know my friend as well as I thought…
Sitting with him in matching towelling robes beside a pool mostly populated by hen-weekend parties is hilarious, though, so maybe that’s the best therapy I could have asked for. It’s exactly what I need after seeing Phoebe again. I still don’t know what to do with that. I’d told myself I was over her; that I didn’t need to know why she never met me. But now that I have answers – and an apology, even if I don’t completely believe it – I don’t know how I feel. Although admittedly, it’s hard to think about that when I’m beside an aqua-therapy pool wearing very little and covering what dignity I still possess with a magazine the woman on reception gave me because ‘you look like you need to read’.