Splintered Memory - By Natascha Holloway Page 0,69
accident. Even the way that they’d always sit together changed. You know how he’d normally always sit and bend one of his legs, so that whichever knee was nearest to her was upright in the air so that she could lean against it and wrap her arm around it?” He asked, and Claire nodded again.
“Well after the accident they didn’t sit like that. Everything changed. She wouldn’t go near him,” Rich said; “and when he did gravitate towards her you could feel the tension in the air.”
“I didn’t know,” Claire said guilty.
“No, you didn’t. If you had Claire, you of all people would have found it as strange to watch as I did. What was worse was that Matt couldn’t talk about it. Not even to me. He just worked and spent time with Charlie. But the more time he spent with her, the more distant he became with the rest of us. We were losing both of them,” Rich said; “and it really freaked Bex out.”
“How did it affect her?” Claire asked barely containing the impulse to roll her eyes. It was typical Bex to want to make a melodrama out of something that had no affect whatsoever on her life.
“Come on,” Rich said urging her to see reason. “We’ve all grown up around this perfect relationship. We’ve set it as the benchmark. The only thing the two of them ever argued about before the accident was you. Seeing their relationship falling apart wasn’t particularly nice to be around. What was worse was that it made you question everything about yourself, and your relationships as well. What if it happened to me? Would people be able to stay around me, still recognise parts of myself that I couldn’t? What if it happened to Bex? How would I cope? Would I be able to stay with her?”
“Would you have left Bex?” Claire asked sounding a little shocked that Rich had contemplated doing this if he and Bex had been in Matt and Charlie’s position.
“Yeah, I think I would,” Rich said honestly; “and I told Matt the same thing. Six months is a long time to be with someone who can’t remember anything about you, or a life you shared together. Matt was becoming a shadow of himself, but do you know what’s awful? Do you know what keeps me awake at night feeling endlessly guilty?”
Claire shook her head.
“I chose Matt over Charlie. I picked sides. I could see that being with her was killing him. The situation was eating away at him, at his soul, and it seemed to me that we’d already lost Charlie. She wasn’t dead, but she wasn’t the Charlie that we’d all known. So I told him that I’d leave her if I was in his shoes, but knowing that it’s probably what I said to him that led him to go home and end things with her keeps me awake at night. The idea that I’m the kind of person that abandons friends when they need me the most,” he said sounding choked; “makes it kind of hard to sleep.”
“I know all about abandoning friends,” Claire said; “and I know all about being kept awake by it.”
“Matt’s never told me what happened at the end before Charlie left, but I honestly thought them being apart would help him. But how wrong was I?” He asked rhetorically. “After she went Matt completely fell apart. I hadn’t realised, but his whole life had been about Charlie. I don’t think he actually knew how to get a long in a world where she wasn’t a part of it. He started drinking heavily, and he started prescribing himself pills to take. He stayed out most nights, and he slept with woman after woman. You wouldn’t have recognised him. I didn’t. His life was a shambles, and like her or not Emily stepped in and saved him.”
“Saved him? What literally speaking, like from an overdose or something?” Claire asked.
“No,” Rich said; “but I don’t doubt that it would’ve come to that. I think he hit a point where that’s what he wanted, but Emily got involved before it came to that. Thank God. She also stuck by him when he treated her like shit, and she protected his medical career by all accounts. She got him into rehab, and she got him clean. I know what you’re thinking by the way, why didn’t I help? But he wouldn’t let me Claire. Nick and Ben came up to stay to try