I don’t know what it all means, whether it marks a step towards friendship or if hearing about Cleo came as a jolt to her.
‘Hey.’ I put my arm around her shoulders. ‘Don’t. You can’t cry on Christmas Eve, it’s against the rules.’
She crumples into me, snaking her arm across my body. Her hair smells of the same shampoo as the boys when I lower my head, and for a few minutes we stay that way, Susie’s shoulders heaving.
‘I don’t want to not love you either.’ I smooth my hand down the slippery silk of her hair, pressing a kiss against the top of her head. ‘It’s okay for us to still love each other.’
She inches back and lifts her face, tear-spiked lashes around her cornflower-blue eyes.
‘I don’t think I can love Robert, not enough anyway.’ I can feel the warmth of her breath on my lips, see the pain in her eyes. ‘Do you love her, Mack? Is it the same?’
The shake in her voice breaks me. ‘Of course it’s not the same,’ I say, gentle. ‘Suze, we’ve spent years building our love. Our home, our kids. Nothing will ever be the same as that.’
‘It scares me that I don’t think I’ll ever love anyone else as much as you.’
I’ve laid awake countless nights and burned for Susie to want me back. Our lives have been entwined every day since I was eighteen years old. She raises her head to mine now, our lips touch, still, tender, and I close my eyes and see a kaleidoscope of us. Our first tremulous kiss against her parents’ back wall. Our wedding-day kiss, the promise of for ever on our lips. The relieved press of my mouth to her exhausted one after the safe arrival of our first son. And a million other kisses in between; some lustful, others needful, each one a new sentence in the story. She’s been my love for almost half of my life, but we’ve never shared a kiss this meaningful, or as sorrowful. I ease back and look into her eyes.
‘I know you’re going to think it’s just nostalgia and wine and the holidays talking, but it isn’t. I’m so sorry for what I did to you, Mack. To us.’
‘Susie,’ I whisper, quiet in the warmth of our familiar living room on the comfort of our familiar couch. Everything about this situation is right. I’m home again and it’s Christmas Eve. The tree lights glow in the corner, and on TV something unbelievably sweet unexpectedly morphs into something so vicious it could rip your heart out.
Cleo
31 December
Salvation Island
I HAVEN’T MISSED LONDON AT ALL
‘You made it,’ Delta says, when I push through the door of the Salvation Arms at lunchtime.
‘It’s so cold, I can’t feel my face,’ I say, stamping my feet as I unwind my scarf and hang my coat on the stand.
Carmen looks over at me from her armchair by the fireplace and raises her hand, queen-like, to get my attention. ‘I’ll knit you a balaclava for coming over that hill,’ she says. ‘My wool –’
‘Is famously the warmest on the island,’ I say, and then laugh because both Delta and Erin said it with me. It’s pretty busy in the pub this afternoon, it looks as if I’m not the only one who fancied some last-day-of-the-year company. There’s a fire in the hearth and a sense of camaraderie amongst the islanders, more a family get-together than a pub. But then I guess that’s kind of what this is – the community here come together as an extended family, no one’s a stranger for long on Salvation. I’m easily the newest person on the island, not counting Barney because he grew up here, and everyone knows my name and my business, thanks in most part to Delta. People regularly ask me how the book’s coming on – I think I might just put a blackboard out on the porch at Otter Lodge and update it with my daily word count. Not that people would see it as I rarely get visitors over there now the weather has turned so cold. I honestly don’t mind; the solitude suits my mood just now. I open the café for a few hours on weekdays and that’s enough social interaction to make me brush my hair. Monday to Friday, at least.
‘Old Cuban, madam? It’s similar to a mojito, only better.’ Barney is so at home behind the bar it feels almost like he’s always been there. Everyone misses Raff terribly, of course, but it’s as if the universe knew he was going to be taken from us and convinced a passing shark to sink its teeth into the effervescent Barney Doyle.
‘Don’t mind if I do,’ I say. ‘Although you should know I’ve propped up many of London’s finest cocktail bars, so I’m judgey.’