‘Hah!’ I said. ‘I’m hardly one to judge.’
‘Even without the – what did you call it? The “riot of pink confetti petals”？ – it’s a beautiful tree.’
‘I’m so glad you said that!’ His approval mattered. ‘It helps me. Seeing that, in a way, she lives on, as something beautiful.’
Out of nowhere, a blanket of sorrow dropped – all that we’d hoped for and all that we’d lost. Warily, we watched each other, thinking about the little girl who didn’t get the chance to live. As tears spilled from his eyes, he was in my arms, and I cried with him. It was sad, it was terribly sad but we were grieving together and that was right and good.
Eventually we wandered back into the house and Luke put his jacket on, readying to leave. The impulse to fix his collar felt automatic, but I resisted. There would be no more of that, and it was okay.
‘Safe journey.’ My heart was swollen with gratitude, regret, sorrow, acceptance – too many emotions to know.
‘Thanks. I’ll …’ Luke shifted awkwardly. ‘We’ll …？’
‘Be in touch?’
He nodded. He smiled. His hand twisted open the lock on the door.
And I let him go.
You know it’s not an either or? It doesn’t have to be Quin or Luke. You can have a very happy life without either of them.
80
‘… I swapped my regular Wednesday night meeting for pregnancy yoga, so I was getting to just two meetings a week …’
The alarm on my phone pinged and, with a long exhale of relief, I stopped typing. Wasting no time, Nola had me doing my Twelve Steps again, making me focus long and hard on what had been in play, when I’d talked myself back into taking the pills.
For the past fortnight, I’d been getting up an hour earlier than usual to do the writing before work. Currently on step four, I was examining my behaviour when I got pregnant. Complacency was the biggest culprit – I’d been clean for such a long time, I’d let my attention shift entirely to my expected baby. Basically, I’d sort of forgotten I was an addict. When the opportunity for sleeping tablets reared its head, there was nothing in place to protect me.
The process was teaching me new respect for my addiction, for its patience, its stealth, its dogged determination.
And now, to my relief, I had to go to work. Self-examination was faaar harder than my actual job. It was so much nicer to be looking at the delusions of others rather than my own.
But I was doing okay, especially considering all that had shaken down in the sixteen days since Mum’s party.
Almost as soon as Luke had left my house that Sunday morning, I’d had the most thorough shower of my life, washing away every single trace of him. Then I unmuted my phone, ignored the twenty or so messages from Claire and went directly to Quin’s.
He would only admit me as far as the hall. ‘You had sex with him?’
I’d nodded. ‘I’m sorry.’ Hurting him was horrible.
‘And …？’ His voice was husky. ‘You’re back with him?’
‘It was a one-off.’
‘But …？’
‘… It brought up a lot of stuff from the past, I’m sort of all over the place.’
‘Yeah. Me too.’
His defiant tone made me focus on him more carefully.
‘Yeah.’ He shifted in a pretence of awkwardness. ‘Me and Golden.’
Maybe it shouldn’t have, but it knocked the breath from me. ‘… Last night?’
‘The night after we got back from Barcelona.’ Then, defensively, ‘What did you expect, Rach?’
Now that he’d said it, it was clear that even before I’d spent the night with Luke, Quin and I were done – the mortifying exchange with the ring in Mr Navabi’s showroom had seen to that.
He refused to look away, slightly ashamed, a lot more defiant, glad I knew and angry he’d told me. Reluctantly, he said, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘And I’m sorry, Quin. I’m so sorry.’
In painful silence, we watched each other. I couldn’t think of one other thing to add – shockingly, our two-year relationship appeared to have been dispatched in moments. As I moved towards the door, he said, ‘Don’t.’
‘… Quin, you want me to. Isn’t that why you slept with her? Why you told me?’
‘And now I want you to stay.’
‘If I did, you’d change your mind again. I’m sorry, Quin, this is all my fault.’