Instead I stood. ‘I should probably get home.’
‘I’m sorry Erin. I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable.’ He patted the log beside him. ‘Please stay a bit longer.’
Reluctantly, I lowered myself back down, making sure there was plenty of distance between us. I clasped my hands in my lap, closed to him. This wasn’t going as planned. I opened my mouth to explain again why this was a bad idea.
‘What if you told Greg you were helping me?’ Adam said before I managed to say a word.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you’re a music therapist, right?’
‘Sort of.’
‘Well anyway. You work with people with memory problems and music, and I have amnesia. So what if you told him I was back, and that you had agreed to help me? That way you’re not lying so there’s no need to feel guilty.’
I stared at him. It would be the easiest thing in the world to say yes. But Adam must have been as aware as I was that it was more complicated than that.
‘But—’ I started, but Adam interrupted me.
‘I know what you’re going to say. That there’s too much between us for that.’ I gave a small nod. ‘But we can keep it strictly professional.’ He stopped, threaded his fingers together. ‘I just – I don’t want to stop spending time with you, Erin. Seeing you has been the only thing that’s given me any pleasure at all since the accident, since I got back.’ He looked up at me pleadingly. ‘Please?’
I sighed heavily. ‘Adam, I really want to say yes. With all my heart. But you don’t know Greg, and because you can’t remember anything at all, you don’t know how much he hates you.’
‘Hehatesme? Good God, what did I do to him?’
I sighed again. ‘It wasn’t what you did to him. It was what you did to me. Plus the fact that you even existed.’ I hesitated, unwilling to reveal Greg’s weakness. ‘He spent the first few years of our relationship – of our marriage even – terrified that you were going to turn up and ruin everything, that I’d choose you over him every time and that he’d lose me.’
The wind blew between us, but there was no other sound for a few moments as Adam took in what I’d told him. Then he gave a slow nod.
‘And would you?’
‘Would I what?’
‘Would you choose me?’
The trees closed in around me, the ground rose up and the air stilled and for a moment I was suspended, between before and after, my mind filled with the life Greg and I had built together and the pain on his face last night when I’d been unable to give him an answer to his question about renewing our vows.
‘I don’t know.’
It was partly the truth. Because my heart told me I absolutely would choose him, even now, even after all these years. But my head told me otherwise.
‘Okay.’
I looked away, but could still feel his eyes boring into me, and I turned back to meet his gaze. The air between us felt charged; it crackled and sparked and for a moment it felt inevitable that we would end up together. Everything tipped, became blurred… and then Adam moved, shifting slightly along the log away from me and the world sprang back into sharp focus again. My head pounded.
‘Promise me you’ll at least think about it?’ he whispered. ‘About helping me?’
‘I promise.’
The trouble was, I knew my decision was already made.
22
NOW
Shed Seven: ‘Chasing Rainbows’
‘I don’t fucking believe it.’ Greg’s voice wobbled wildly, and he sat down heavily on the bed. I perched uneasily beside him and placed my hand on his thigh but he whipped it away.
