shake the image of them from my head. The way he tilted his head back at the pressure of her fingers. The way she had laughed confidently, teasingly, as if at some shared joke between them.
The strangest thing was that I couldn’t cry. What I felt was bigger than grief. I was numb, my brain humming with questions – How long? How far? Why? – and then I would find myself doubled over again, wanting to be sick with it, this new knowledge, this hefty blow, this pain, this pain, this pain.
I’m not sure how long I sat there, but at around ten I walked slowly upstairs and let myself into the flat. I was hoping Treena had gone to bed but she was in her pyjamas watching the news, her laptop on her knee. She was smiling at something on her screen and jumped when I opened the door.
‘Jesus, you nearly frightened the life out of me – Lou?’ She pushed her laptop to one side. ‘Lou? Oh, no …’
It’s always the kindnesses that finish you off. My sister, a woman who found adult physical contact more discomfiting than dental treatment, put her arms around me and, from some unexpected place that felt like it was located in the deepest part of me, I began to sob, huge, breathless, snotty tears. I cried in a way I hadn’t cried since Will had died, sobs that contained the death of dreams and the dread knowledge of months of heartbreak ahead. We sank slowly down onto the sofa and I buried my head in her shoulder and held her, and this time my sister rested her head against mine and she held me and didn’t let me go.
18
Neither Sam nor my parents had expected to see me so for the next two days it was easy to hide in the flat and pretend I wasn’t there. I wasn’t ready to see anyone. I wasn’t ready to speak to anyone. When Sam texted I ignored it, reasoning that he would believe I was running around like a headless chicken back in New York. I found myself gazing repeatedly at his two messages – What do you fancy doing Christmas Eve? Church service? Or too tired? and Are we seeing each other Boxing Day? – and I would marvel that this man, this most straightforward and honourable of men, had acquired such a blatant ability to lie to me.
For those two days I painted on a smile while Thom was in the flat, folding away the sofa-bed as he chatted over breakfast and disappearing into the shower. The moment he had gone I would return to the sofa and lie there, gazing up at the ceiling, tears trickling from the corners of my eyes, or coldly mulling over the many ways I appeared to have got it all wrong.
Had I leapt head first into a relationship with Sam because I was still grieving Will? Had I ever really known him at all? We see what we want to see, after all, especially when blinded by physical attraction. Had he done what he did because of Josh? Because of Agnes’s pregnancy test? Did there even have to be a reason? I no longer trusted my own judgement enough to tell.
For once, Treena didn’t badger me to get up or do something constructive. She shook her head, disbelieving, and cursed Sam out of Thom’s earshot. Even in the depths of my misery I was left mulling over Eddie’s apparent ability to instil in my sister something resembling empathy.
She didn’t once say it wasn’t a huge surprise, given I was living so many thousands of miles away, or that I must have done something to push him into Katie Ingram’s arms, or that any of this was inevitable. She listened when I told her the events that had led up to that night, she made sure I ate, washed and got dressed. And although she wasn’t much of a drinker, she brought home two bottles of wine and said she thought I was allowed a couple of days of wallowing (but added that if I was sick I had to clear it up myself).
By the time Christmas Eve arrived, I had grown a hard shell, a carapace. I felt like an ice statue. At some point, I realized, I was going to have to speak to him, but I wasn’t ready yet. I wasn’t sure I ever would be.
‘What will you do?’ said Treena, sitting on