“What?”
She could see the scorn on his face. “It’s over, Adam.”
“I heard what you said. What the hell are you talking about? Are you seriously ending it because I didn’t come on holiday with you?”
Even now he thought it was about that. He saw everything in isolation whether it was work or their relationship and Rachel had come to realise that was always going to be the case. He didn’t see how lots of small disappointments could mount up and become the precipice that their relationship was teetering on the edge of.
“It’s not just about this. It’s the latest in a long list of times when I haven’t been your top priority and this time it really mattered. I can’t be an afterthought. I deserve more than that. And I deserve more than finding out you’ve been seeing someone else while I’ve been away.”
Even over Skype, Rachel could see him turn pale and she held her breath waiting for his response.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he began, “I would never cheat on you, Rach.”
“Anna called and said she saw you with someone in that new bar off Seven Dials.”
“It was just someone from work. It was just a kiss, Rach, that’s all, I was drunk. It didn’t mean anything.”
But it meant everything. It meant that all the times he’d been late home he could have been with someone else. It was just a kissthistime.
At that moment, once she knew that what Anna had seen was more than harmless flirting, her overriding reason for breaking up with him was that he was a cheat because she knew that wasn’t something she could ever get over.
“That’s it, Adam. Itisover. It’s not just because you didn’t come over, it was lots of things but now it’s because you cheated on me.”
“A kiss isn’t cheating! It was a mistake and it was the first and last time, I promise.”
“Do you know what? I don’t need this. I deserve to be with someone who thinks I’m worth being with. Not someone who’s there if they’ve got nothing else to do. I need someone I can depend on and it’s not you, Adam. I couldn’t see it before but now…”
“You can’t do it like this, Rach, it’s not fair. Wait until you come home and we’ll talk about it. Once you get home you’ll feel differently, get some perspective back…”
“I have plenty of perspective and it took being away for me to get it.”
“Rach, that’s so unfair,” he whined. “You love working hard just as much as I do. You know that’s why I couldn’t come. I tied up the Scramble deal on the Saturday when I would have been in Iceland. What should I have done? If I’d come, I’d have been walking away from that bonus that’s taken a year of hard work.”
“Other people manage to have time off, Adam. This was a long-standing arrangement and it was just a weekend. The deal could have happened on Friday or Monday if you’d wanted it to. You let your job dictate your whole life and that means it dictates mine too and it’s not fair.”
“Look, Rach, Jim has asked me to go into business with him and I’m going to hand in my notice at Grainger Jones. Things can be better between us. I can be my own boss and things will be different, I promise.”
“It won’t make any difference because no one tells you to be like this, it’s all you. Being your own boss won’t change anything as far as our relationship goes.” She knew she was right. If anything, he’d be working even more hours if he was trying to launch a new business.
“Whatever you’re feeling now it’s not real, being away has made you forget how great things were between us before you left.”
“I would have said that too but now all I remember is me waiting at home for you to come in, then instead getting a late-night call or sometimes only a text to say you were going to stay in town, apparently with clients but who knows? I realise now I had no idea what was going on.”
He had his head in his hands and didn’t attempt to tell her she was wrong. That told her everything.
“The past three weeks have shown me there’s more to life than work and it’s shown me a different side to you. There are amazing things out there that we never make time to see and being together and seeing them, that’s what life’s about. I wanted to show you that at the weekend but you’re not going to be that person, Adam. I don’t think youcanbe and I knew that when you didn’t come.”
“So, it was some sort of test and I failed it,” he said bitterly.
“No, it wasn’t. But everything made sense and I’m so sorry to be doing it like this, so sorry, Adam, but I have to. I can’t wait until I get home. I love you but really, I mean it. It’s over,” she said gently.
His eyes had been lowered while she was talking and now he looked into the camera again, she could see that they were full of tears. They sat in silence for what felt like minutes because there was nothing else to say. Rachel ended the call and shut down her laptop.
She lay back on the bed and a sob engulfed her. She pressed her hands to her face, trying to muffle the wail that she could hear was coming from her but she was powerless to stop. The relief she’d known would come was there, and she clung to its frail presence as she grieved for her and Adam. It was almost a physical pain, overwhelming but cathartic at the same time.
22
RACHEL SPENT THE next day arranging and labelling the stockroom shelving, tidying and cable-tying all the cables for the computers, till and phones and building the IKEA furniture so that it was together before Nick left the following day just in case she needed help with anything before he left. She’d also started sticking the corporate vinyl on the walls, a job which she looked forward to but which gave her palpitations in case she got a bubble underneath.
