I sniggered softly. ‘Just thinking about Julian.’
‘Ahh.’ He pretended to pull away, making me laugh.
‘Not like that – come back to me.’
He faced me again, eyes creased at the corners and a slight smile on his lips. My breath caught at how beautiful he was.
Come back to me.The words called to me, a siren’s song. Is that what I wanted, for Tommy to come back to me?
Yes.The voice inside my head was decisive and clear.
But how? The thing that had driven us apart remained – I’d just lived it out in real time. Reality intruded, coiling cold and tight within me.
‘Well, that’s not about Julian,’ he said, his eyes narrowing as he watched me intently. ‘You seem sad.’ He reached for my cheek, caressing it lightly with the back of his fingers. ‘Why are you sad?’
I chewed on my lower lip. Tell him the real reason and spark the conversation we’d been avoiding, or brush it off and enjoy the rest of our time together? But that would have been the coward’s way out. And I wasn’t a coward.
I sat up, holding the duvet to my chest one-handed and looking straight ahead.
‘Ally?’
Well, in for a penny, in for a pound, I told myself. If we were going to have this conversation – which waslongoverdue – then I had to go back to the beginning. The beginning of the end.
‘When you got the job – this one, as an investigator or whatever you are – why didn’t you… I don’t know…tellme? Don’t you think we’d still be together if you’d justtoldme – I mean, sworn me to secrecy, obviously, but… you let it come between us.’
I was surprised at how measured I sounded, but a version of this questionhadbeen brewing for a decade. I might’ve only just learnedwhathad driven that wedge between us, but I’d chewed it over plenty of times. And there was something cathartic about finally saying it out loud.
‘Oh, right.’
Now Tommy sat up, also pulling the duvet to his chest and there we were, side by side, legs stretched out and both staring straight ahead, our fingers still laced beneath the covers.
A stifling cloud of tension descended, making it difficult to breathe. But I didn’t speak, didn’t so much astwitch, as the thorniest question I’d ever asked anyone hung in the air between us.
Seconds passed, perhaps minutes, then he finally spoke.
‘I suppose the short answer isimmaturity.’
‘And the long answer?’ I snapped, irritated by his glibness. Didn’t he know I needed more? So much more.
He cleared his throat, but I still didn’t look at him, sensing that if I did he’d retreat. If he needed more time to order his thoughts, then he could have it. It might be our only chance to discuss this properly, and I wanted the truth.
‘Sorry, Ally, but I think that’s the long answer as well,’ he said eventually. I glanced over and he was looking at me, his face set in a frown. He wasn’t being glib; he was being truthful. I gave his hand a squeeze and a small smile appeared for half a second then disappeared. He looked away, then licked his lips.
‘After my first assignment – and I really did go to Peru, like I said – but afterwards, when I came home, you were this… thistether. To reality, I mean. And you have to understand that my work… It felt surreal doing what I was doing – thrilling, but also surreal. Especially that first year. But I had you and you were real. You were my home. And in a way, there became two of me – Tommy when I was home with you, and Tom when I was on assignment.’
‘Tom the spy,’ I said, looking straight ahead again.
‘More or less.’
‘And which one was you – therealyou?’
‘They both were, Ally. That’s the thing, you see. I convinced myself I could live both lives. The thrill of the job – travelling someplace new, joining a team, starting a fresh assignment – and the comfort of returning home to London, to my wife.’
I’d figured it was something along those lines, all the times I’d asked myselfwhy. He’d compartmentalised to make the separation easier. But I had never considered that it was deliberate – that he’d consciously separated his two lives, taking what he wanted from me, from our marriage, without any regard for the impact onme.
And it hit me as I sat there. I’d always recognised the hurt and the sadness… even the longing, which reared its head on occasion, leading to teary bouts of eating too much chocolate and binge-watchingFriends.
But I had nevertrulydealt with the deep-seated anger I’d been lugging around all those years. Until that moment. Because Tommy’s explanation unleashed a fury that had been dormant for years.
