Splintered Memory - By Natascha Holloway Page 0,85
Charlie couldn’t even remember his name, and she was mortified by what she’d done.
She pulled the sheet from off the bed, and she wrapped it tightly around her naked body and walked into the living room. There were traces of white powder all over the coffee table, and there were discarded bottles of tequila next to the sofa. Charlie felt vomit rise up in her throat, and she choked it back before heading quickly into the kitchen to get some water.
Charlie sipped at the water slowly, and leant back against the cupboards. She tried to remember the previous night, but as it came back to her in horrifying flashes she wished it would stop. She could remember the cocaine, the shot drinking, more cocaine, more shot drinking, and then finally Adam’s colleague kissing her and her pushing him away.
She remembered coming back to the flat, and she remembered more cocaine followed by more shots of tequila. She remembered stumbling to bed, and turning around to see that Adam’s colleague had followed her in. She could recall him kissing her, and she remembered reciprocating. She then had a mortifying recollection of stripping naked, before climbing astride this stranger as he clumsily fumbled her body with his hands and lips. The memory made her flinch, and the awkwardness of the encounter made her feel embarrassed to her core.
Charlie crept into her room, and she grabbed some clothes before going into the bathroom to change. Once she was dressed, she headed outside and walked down the hill towards the Starbucks on the high street. She knew that she could wait there for Claire to let her know when the coast was clear.
This is not what she’d wanted she thought. This wasn’t how she’d wanted to move on. She was looking for a new man to start a new chapter of her life with, not a meaningless one night stand that she’d regret as soon as she woke up the next day.
Claire
She felt guilty over Charlie’s one night stand, and she felt guilty for her recent underhand behaviour. Whilst she had been encouraging Charlie to go out on dates to her face, she’d been deliberately setting her up with guys that she’d known that Charlie wouldn’t like. It wasn’t that she was being spiteful, it was just that she was wanted Charlie to realise that men like Matt weren’t easy to find. Mostly she’d wanted Charlie to realise that instead of looking for someone new in her life, she should have been fighting for the someone that she already had in her life.
Claire had tried to be supportive in Charlie’s plan to start afresh, but that had been before the wedding. She’d also agreed to both Rich and Charlie that she wouldn’t tell Matt about Charlie’s memory. Yet that again had been before the wedding. The wedding had changed everything.
Rich may have managed to convince her that Matt had moved on, and he may have managed to persuade her that Matt was happy, but he’d had no control over what she’d seen for herself at the wedding. She’d seen the way that Matt had looked for Charlie throughout the day and night, and how he’d tracked her with his eyes when he’d known where she was.
Claire had also watched him with Emily, and whilst she’d accept that he hadn’t shown any signs of being unhappy he and Emily hadn’t looked like loves young dream either. Well Matt hadn’t.
She’d been so busy watching Matt throughout the day that she’d neglected Adam awfully, but she honestly hadn’t cared. She’d been mesmerised by how Matt had barely been able to keep his eyes off their table, and how he’d had to force himself to look at Emily and not Charlie. When he’d been making his speech, and waiting for the laughter in the room to die down, she’d noticed that he hadn’t been able to keep from looking across at Charlie to see if he was making her laugh. It was clear to her that nothing at all had changed. As had always been the way with Matt, when Charlie was around no one else in the world seemed to exist.
When she’d made the decision to confront him at the end of the reception, she’d known that she was going to tell him about Charlie’s memory. The one flaw in her plan though had been the fact that she hadn’t realised that she hadn’t been the only person observing someone that day.