Yes Chef, No Chef - By Susan Willis Page 0,36
and grovelling for forgiveness? She obviously thought all of this was his fault, and although he did accept a lot of it was, she was the one who had left. If she’d been going through a bad time he would never have walked out on her when she needed him.
And then the memory of how she’d knocked his hand away from her breast on the Sunday morning brought the ugly memory of Sally’s laughing sneer which filled him with repulsion. He replied back huffily telling her she could collect more clothes anytime she wanted.
By Saturday evening he was exhausted following a week of working sixteen hours a day and ordinarily would have been longing for Sunday just to rest and lie in bed but now in another way he was dreading it. He’d managed to abstain from alcohol all week and had run every day so physically he was feeling much better. It was only mentally he still felt fragile and the thought of Sunday morning without Kate was just too much. As he jumped into the car to drive home he made a quick decision and rang Luke to invite himself up to Yorkshire for the day which he decided would resolve two issues together. Firstly, he could get straight out of bed without brooding and secondly, if he had the car he wouldn’t be able to drink.
He knew as soon as he opened the door she had been. Her keys were in the dish on the hall table and excitedly his heart raced in anticipation with the thought of seeing her – he burst into the lounge hoping she would be waiting for him. He cursed and banged the door with his fist when it dawned upon him that if she had been there the lights would have been on and when he went into the bedroom and saw her side of the wardrobe empty he knew she’d gone for good.
A feeling of utter desolation swept through him and he had to fight more than he’d ever fought in his life not to open a bottle of whiskey and pour it down his throat. The pain inside his chest was unbearable and he felt like choking with the hurt as he wiped away the tears from his eyes. Crawling into bed he knew that, because it was well after midnight, if he opened the bottle now he’d never get to Yorkshire in the morning. And after all, it was the devil in the bottle that had cost him his Kate and even though he knew the bedding had been changed since she’d left he was sure he could still smell her and he cried himself to sleep.
“Maybe I should have said more in the email to leave the door open for us to talk and I was huffy…” he said to Luke when they were sitting side by side on the top of the hillside they’d climbed.
The scenery was breath-taking and rugged and he thought of how much Kate would have loved it.
“Christ, I don’t know mate,” Luke said as a slight mist settled in around them and his fine rimmed glasses covered in tiny droplets. “Bloody women, they’re a complete mystery to me.”
Tim smiled at his friend’s thin craggy face and remembered the first sight of him when he’d arrived outside his cottage that morning. He’d hardly changed a bit in the last year and they’d awkwardly hugged and clapped each other heartily on the back. He felt safe here with Luke almost as if he’d have the answer to all his problems and after a huge Sunday lunch in the local pub they’d set out walking. It was his usual well-worn path Luke told him because although his new job was going swimmingly there weren’t any other guys his own age in the town, and he still missed London dreadfully.
“Couldn’t you get a transfer back?” Tim asked, which he knew was selfish but he’d give anything at the moment to have Luke back in London with him. “I mean, even if it would be taking a step back down the ladder for a while at least you’d be happier?”
Luke grinned. “Don’t tempt me,” he said. “I’ve been playing it around in my head for the last few weeks, and then when you asked to come up I was so happy just with the thought of seeing a friendly face.”
“Luke, if you’re that fed up you need to ask yourself if the jobs really worth it?”
Brushing bits