She hated this side of him, or maybe it was more accurate to say she struggled with it. When he was hurt, he vanished inside himself in the same way Becky did. It was impossible to reach him. It was something she’d only discovered about him fairly recently. He dealt with his problems silently whereas she dealt with hers out loud.
“Do you need help?”
“Not unless you can do without one of these suitcases. I thought you said you were going to travel light.”
“This is light. I’ve left a lot of stuff behind.”
“Really? Because it feels like you’ve packed everything you own.”
She bristled. “It’s not all mine. Some of it is yours.”
“One bag.” He rested the box on the rest of the packing and winced as he rolled his shoulders. “One small bag is mine.”
“It’s Christmas. It’s hard to pack light at Christmas. What was I supposed to leave behind? The gifts?”
“Normally I go away with just hand luggage and I manage fine.” He picked up the box again. “Unless we can make maximum use of the space, it’s not going to fit. It’s a mathematical challenge.”
“Can I help?”
“No. It’s basically a giant puzzle, and you hate puzzles.” He stared at the box, then turned it onto its side and slotted it into the single space left. “The rest is going to have to go on the back seat and we just have to hope it doesn’t block the mirrors. Get back in the car, Rosie. The weather is arctic. There’s no sense in both of us freezing.”
He was telling her she had too much stuff and couldn’t pack a car. Normally she would have laughed and admitted it, but right now it felt like another blow to their increasingly bruised relationship.
She slunk back into the passenger seat feeling useless. Was there really a right and wrong way to pack a car? Why did it have to be a puzzle? What was wrong with just loading everything in haphazardly? That method worked for most people and it had worked perfectly well for her in the past. She was confident that if she’d been doing it, she would have crammed it all in somehow. And who on earth could go away for Christmas with just hand luggage? She couldn’t even fit her makeup in a bag the size of the one he’d packed.
But that exchange was further confirmation that Declan’smethodical, ordered approach was completely at odds with her more free and easy style.
They were so different. He changed his passwords regularly and had been horrified to discover that her password was almost always Rosie1. He’d installed a password manager for her and set up two-factor authentication wherever he could, which all sounded very secure and meant strangers were less likely to access her accounts, but most of the time Rosie couldn’t access them either. She just wanted her laptop to work—she wasn’t interested in the engineering behind it.
And they were different in the way they handled emotions. She’d never been able to sit with a problem. If something was wrong then she needed to talk it through. It was the way she solved things. And if people didn’t tell her how they were feeling, then her mind filled in the blanks.
Declan was more like Becky. He kept his thoughts inside, tucked away.
It had never bothered either of them before. If anything, their differences had been part of the attraction. Being with him calmed her overactive imagination and she liked to think he benefited from her more spontaneous nature. But today her spontaneous nature seemed to be a source of irritation, along with so many other things.
At what point had those differences become a problem?
No one had told her that marriage would be this hard. She’d imagined them sailing through the years on the same river of dizzy happiness that had characterized those first blissful months of their relationship. Everything about him had fascinated her. Everything about her had fascinated him. She’d never imagined them reaching a point where they were barely speaking.
Was he regretting marrying her?
Her mind raced forward, spinning worst-case scenarios.
She tried to remember when he’d last saidI love you. He didn’t say it that often, but that was because he wasn’t as emotionally open and demonstrative as her. The first time he’d ever said it she felt as if she’d won the lottery.
She tried to put the brakes on her unhelpful thinking. He hadn’tsaidhe was regretting their marriage, so she was not going to make that assumption. Like her sister, he didn’t talk about his feelings, whereas Rosie shared every one of her feelings, and although her family teased her about it she couldn’t help thinking that it was easier for everyone in the end. No one ever had to ask her how she was feeling because she usually told them within minutes of entering a room.
She slumped in her seat as he opened the back door of the car, letting in another blast of freezing air.
How were they going to get through the next week? She was hopeless at hiding things. Her family was going to know something was wrong the moment she walked through the door. She could hardly tell them that her marriage was crumbling after less than a year.
They should have taken more time to get to know each other before getting married, which was another reason she was keen to get home for Christmas. It seemed as if her brother was about to announce his engagement and she needed to talk to him. Urgently. She needed to warn him to take his time before fixing a date for the wedding. She needed to tell him that marriage changed everything and that it was best to go slow and take the time to get to know each other properly. She was a cautionary tale, although of course she wasn’t going to admit that. She couldn’t talk to anyone about this, which was an uncomfortable situation to be in.
It would have been nice to have a friendly message from her sister. She’d called her a few days before, but Becky had been at work and the call had gone to voicemail. And that was happening more and more frequently. Becky seemed to feel thatnow Rosie and Declan were married she should be giving them space and not intruding on these precious early days of their relationship. She seemed to be imagining Rosie swimming in a sea of pure happiness, and right now nothing could be further from the truth.
One good thing about going home was that she’d finally get to spend quality time with her sister.
She hadn’t heard from Becky since Jamie had sent that message to them all telling them he wanted to have a special celebration party before Christmas because he had something to tell them.
