He pulled a chair out opposite me and sat down, putting his boxes of cakes on the table next to us. “Oh, Kate Atkinson. I like her.” He took the book out of my hands. It was open at the center pages. He read a line or two, then looked at the cover. “What’s it about?”
“No idea,” I said abruptly.
He gave a nervous laugh; he’d never known me to be rude. “How have you been?”
“Fine. Everything’s hunky-dory, thank you.”
Just then the waitress arrived with my hot chocolate and coffee cake. “That looks good,” he said. “Mind if I join you?”
I glared at him, but he turned to the waitress. “I’ll have black coffee and the same cake, thanks.”
We sat in silence until she returned with his order. I kept my head down. I didn’t want to talk to him or even look at him. When the waitress was safely back in the kitchen, he reached out to touch my hand. I snatched it away.
“Ruby, I’m so sorry.”
Suddenly my throat was swollen with tears and I couldn’t say a word.
“I know we can’t be friends,” he said. “That would be too odd after all we went through, but surely we can chat if we bump into each other?”
“All we went through?” I couldn’t believe it. “We? I’m the person without a job or a home, thanks to your bright idea that we should leave our partners. I don’t think you’ve been through much at all, have you?” My heart was pounding. “Oh, wait. Are you suffering early labor pains?”
He winced. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you about the baby face-to-face. I know it must have hurt you.”
“And you think dumping me wouldn’t hurt me?”
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I was stupid. And thoughtless. And cruel. But what do you mean, you’re without a home?” I was silent and then it dawned on him. “You’ve left home? But when?”
“On the day we agreed,” I snapped. “At the time we agreed. When do you think?”
“But I told you not to,” he said. “Or not until you were ready to.”
“What? Your last words to me were, ‘I’ll see you at around eight o’clock. Don’t let me down!’” Actually he’d told me he loved me then, too. I didn’t repeat that, I just couldn’t, though from the flush that stained his face, I saw he remembered it, too.
“But I e-mailed you,” he said. “I told you not to leave that night.”
CHAPTER 59
Ruby
I looked at him in confusion. “No, you didn’t.”
“I did! I sent you an e-mail before I left work that night. A really long e-mail. I told you about the baby, remember?” He reached out for my hand, but I moved away. “I asked you to forgive me.”
“I knew about the baby from Sarah, on the Monday afterward. I didn’t get an e-mail.”
“What? I sent it to your Gmail account; the one linked to your phone. Remember you told me the address one time?”
I certainly did remember. I was in bed with him at the time.
“I didn’t get it and I’ve used it dozens of times since then. But why would you do that? We never sent e-mails to each other.”
“I needed you to get it straightaway. I couldn’t call you in case Tom was there, and if I’d sent it to your work address you wouldn’t have gotten it until Monday.” He was quiet for a while and drank his coffee. “When you didn’t reply, I thought you were angry with me.”
“I was. I was furious.” I didn’t need to add that I still was; he must have been able to tell. “I wrote to tell you that.”
“You did?”
“Yes, I gave a letter to Sarah. She put it in your drawer.”
“No, she didn’t,” he said firmly. “You think I wouldn’t have seen it? Responded?”
“I didn’t ask her whether you’d read it. I thought that would sound pathetic.”