After the first couple of days, when all my messages to Sadie go unread and unanswered, I stop messaging. I, of all people,understand the need to isolate and lick your wounds. I cut my entire family off for the better part of two years after Jess died. So I give her the space she clearly needs.
For the first time in my life, I can’t wait for a dig to end. I’m just going through the motions. All the while stewing in guilt and fear and anger and regret.
Chapter Forty-Four
Sadie
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Bella, in nothing but her underwear, leaps off the lounge to hug me, almost spilling her very large glass of wine in the process. So this is what she does when I’m not here. Watches rom-coms in her underwear. “You’re not supposed to be back for another month.”
“I …” is all I get out before the howling starts.
Half an hour, a glass of wine and the better part of a box of tissues later, I’ve finally reached the end of my tale.
“That bitch.” Bella is incensed on my behalf. “I hope she finds an ancient, cursed object and dies a nasty death from boils and a rotting vajayjay.”
That sounds nice. If only ancient curses were real and not a figment of Hollywood’s imagination.
“I’m so angry. With Riley. With Jennifer. With Ethan. But most of all, with myself. I knew what a risk I was taking. Whatwas I thinking?” It’s all still too raw, and I’m too jetlagged and heartsore to be rational.
“I’m guessing you weren’t thinking. You were feeling,” Bella responds gently.
“I have no business feeling. Certainly not for Ethan.”
“I suspect it might be too late for that, sweetie.” Her words, and her kindness, get the tears starting again.
“I know. Which is why I’m so angry at myself. I should know better than to let my heart run away with me. To expect more from any man than protecting their own self-interests. Because no sooner had I let him in, started to trust him, than bam! I’m smacked upside the head.”
“You never know. He said he’ll fix it. Maybe he will.” Bella pours me another glass of wine, which I gulp down. Drowning my sorrows is exactly what I need.
“I don’t see how. The damage has been done. Everyone will know about it by now. There’s no way I can go back to uni. I’ve become my mother!” I wail.
Bella holds me through another round of crying, and when I finally start to calm down, she wisely changes direction.
“So, this ma’at thing Ashraf mentioned … what is it again?” She tops up my wine with the last of the bottle.
“That’swhat you’ve focused on?”
“Well, yes. Because ma’at seems like it could be positive. Order being restored is good, right?”
Against all odds, I laugh. Only Bella would be able to get a laugh out of me right now.
“It seems my destiny is to drop out of my PhD and spend the rest of my life pulling beers at the local, remembering those couple of perfect weeks when I might actually have had the chance at the career I’d always dreamed of.”
“Could be worse,” she muses.
I raise my eyebrows in disbelief.
“You could be a small-minded, jealous and spiteful harpy. You could be Riley Hall.”
I snort a humourless laugh. Yeah, as shitty as it is, I guess I’ll take that deal.
I take to my bed like a heroine in a Victorian melodrama.
When I don’t respond to his messages over the first few days after I left the boat, Ethan has the good grace not to get in touch. The Cambridge boys and Garret all send me messages of support. They’re careful not to mention the dig. Other than to say Riley is having a pretty tough time. Boo hoo.
I don’t respond to any of them. I can’t. Because right now, I’d sound like a bitter and angry woman. And falling for my professor is as much like my mother as I can bear to be.
After three days in the foetal position, I straighten myself out, wash myself off and message the manager at the pub I was working at before I left for the dig. He has plenty of shifts to give me, and I take everything on offer, which will leave me no time or energy for wallowing.
