Splintered Memory - By Natascha Holloway Page 0,92

her more than that. She’d saved him from himself when he’d been at his lowest, and she’d been by his side every day since then.

As the realities of the decisions that he needed to make, ran through his head like a series of headlines on the bottom of a live news report. He knew that he didn’t need Claire to see his vulnerabilities. Whatever reaction he gave her he knew that she would feed it back to Charlie, and he couldn’t bear the thought of Charlie thinking that he’d chosen Emily over her.

Matt knew that he needed to react so differently from anything that Claire could have been expecting from him, that he could be confident that she’d never tell Charlie what had been said between them. He never wanted Charlie to know that he was giving up a second chance to be with her, and he felt sure that if he could be cold, callous, and uncaring enough, then he could be certain that Claire would never tell Charlie that he knew the truth about her memory.

He knew what he had to do, and he’d deal with the ramification of his own emotions afterwards. He took out the divorce papers that he’d been sent and he signed them, and as he’d expected Claire had reacted angrily. Yet he’d refused to bite, even when she thrown Rich’s name at him, and when she’d stormed out of his office he knew that she’d never tell Charlie the truth. Once she’d gone though he felt tears stinging in his eyes and a numbness settle in his heart, but he knew that this feeling would pass and that later it’d be replaced with pain.

This was the most desperate that he’d been for drugs since Rich’s wedding, and he fought the urge to find something to take or to write a script for himself. He knew that he needed to talk to someone, but unlike all the other times when he’d felt like this and he’d turned to Emily he knew that this time he couldn’t do that. Right now, Emily was just about the last person in the world that he wanted to see.

He took off his white coat, and grabbed his black jacket that was hanging on the back of his door. He had to talk to someone or else he knew that he’d find something to take, and as he walked down the corridor he took his mobile out of his pocket and dialled the only number that he could think of.

“Rich? You in? Really need to talk to you if you are.” Matt said by way of message on Rich and Bex’s answer phone, hoping that they were in and just screening their calls as he knew they did.

“Matt?” Bex asked.

“Is Rich in?” He asked.

“Yeah,” she said; “he’s just in the kitchen making a cup of tea. Hang on he’ll be in in a minute.”

“Tell him I’m coming round,” Matt said hanging up and increasing the speed of his strides.

***

“What’s the emergency?” Rich asked as he opened the door to Matt.

“I don’t know where to start,” Matt said as he walked straight down the hall and into the kitchen.

“Tea,” Rich said.

“Got anything stronger?” Matt asked.

Rich pulled out two bottles of beer from the fridge.

“I just had a visit from Claire at the hospital,” Matt said flatly.

Rich nearly choked on his beer and coughed. “Oh yeah, what did she want?” He asked nervously.

“To talk about Charlie,” Matt said. Yet he was eyeing Rich suspiciously. He always knew when Rich was hiding something, and right now he could see that Rich was hiding something. He looked as guilty now as he had when they’d been sixteen, and he’d turned up at Matt’s house to tell him that he’d asked Charlie to go to the cinema with him on a date.

“What about Charlie?” Rich asked trying to sound surprised but sounding more interrogatory.

“I think you know,” Matt said suddenly feeling like he was the last one to find out a secret just as he had been back then.

“What did Claire say?” Rich asked apprehensively.

Matt knew that Rich was in on it instantly, and he said accusatorially; “I think you already know what she said.”

“We agreed not to tell you. We thought it was for the best,” Rich said defensively.

“The best for who?” Matt demanded.

“For you,” Rich said.

“How do you know what’s best for me?” Matt asked loudly as Bex came into the kitchen to see what was going on, and what was causing