“Harry?”
I stared at him. “Did I tell you his name?”
“You mentioned it, but I was out in Liverpool last night and bumped into Sarah and her husband.”
“I’d forgotten you knew her.”
“They were at Tom’s birthday party last year, remember? She seemed angry with you. She told me you’d left home to be with your boss, but he’d dumped you.”
“He didn’t dump me!”
“He didn’t turn up and you never heard from him again. That sounds like you were dumped.”
“Well,” I said, my face smarting. “I saw him by chance yesterday and do you know what he said?”
Oliver frowned. “Oh God, you’re not going back to him, are you?”
“No. No, of course not. His wife’s having a baby. That’s why he stayed with her.”
“And they say romance is dead.” He shook his head. “You can do better than that, Ruby.”
I didn’t think I could, that was the trouble.
“He told me that he’d e-mailed me to tell me he couldn’t leave his wife,” I said. “I didn’t get the message. Tom had my iPad that day. I think he read Harry’s e-mail and deleted it before I could see it.”
“So Tom knew that you were being dumped?” He saw my face. “Sorry, I mean he knew that the guy you were seeing wasn’t going to leave home that night and yet he let you leave home without knowing that?”
“Yes, exactly that. He didn’t say a word. I noticed that he hadn’t asked whether I was leaving for someone else. I was glad at the time, of course, but afterward, when I thought about it, it did seem strange.”
“Do you wish you hadn’t left home?”
I thought about it for a while. “No,” I said slowly. “I wasn’t happy with Tom. And just when things were really bad, I met Harry. I knew that I needed to leave Tom. That was true whether Harry stayed with me or not.”
“Wow. I didn’t know any of that was going on.” He took a deep breath. “I always thought you’d leave Tom one day. I just didn’t think it would be like that.”
“You did?” I wondered whether he’d noticed the moods, the way I smiled less when I was with Tom, the way I’d tense up and find it hard to breathe at times. The way I came to life when I met Harry.
“Yes. I hoped you would.” When I looked at him, surprised, his face was pink. “To be honest, I thought we might get together sometime.” He must have seen my confusion. “You and me.”
I felt a moment of utter panic. I’d never thought of Oliver as anything more than a friend, but if I rejected him now, I’d be left with no one.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never thought about it.”
“We get on really well, Ruby. We could take things slowly. See how it goes.”
He leaned toward me and I thought he was going to kiss me. Just then my phone beeped. Automatically I glanced over at it.
“Okay,” he said. “I get it.” He jumped up. “Are you still hoping Harry will come back to you? You’re wasting your time.” He got into his car and drove off without another word. I stared after him. He had now joined that growing band of people to avoid.
I looked down at my phone. It was a message from Sarah.
Thanks very much for that, Ruby. Harry has told me there isn’t a future for me at Sheridan’s.
Immediately I was hot with anger. I replied, Don’t blame me! You lied to me. You said you’d given him my letter.
Within seconds another message appeared. You think he wanted your stupid letter? I told you, he read it and threw it in the bin.
I smarted at the thought of this and knew I’d never know the truth. Was Sarah lying to me, to hurt me? Or had Harry read the letter and just discarded it now that I wasn’t any use to him?
Sarah must have been really fired