He turns to her. ‘I’m just …’ He scrapes a hand over his jaw. There are dark shadows under his eyes.
‘Tired?’ she suggests. She doesn’t remember much of Chloe’s funeral, only little snippets. She remembers her mum, unable to get through it, sobbing as she fled the room. She remembers her dad trying to give a speech, having to be supported by the celebrant, who finished it for him. She remembers the looks she got, people feeling sorry for her. Kids her age not knowing what to say to her. Mostly she remembers feeling so, so tired.
‘Yeah,’ Ash agrees. ‘I’m knackered.’
‘Want to take a break? Go for a walk or something?’
He glances back to the café, to the people still milling around in there, eating sausage rolls, the ultimate comfort food.
‘I think they’ll manage,’ she says. ‘Everyone should be giving you what you need today, not the other way around.’
He blows out a breath. ‘Yeah. Yeah, okay.’
They walk away from the café and along one of the woodland paths. She sees a squirrel scurrying up a nearby tree, listens to the crunch of gravel under their feet.
‘It was a beautiful ceremony,’ she says quietly.
He glances down at her. ‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I don’t know what he would’ve wanted,’ he admits. ‘But I figured outside, in amongst the trees … I didn’t want him shut away somewhere,’ he says again.
‘I get that,’ Lissa says quietly. ‘And it’s a lovely place.’
‘I should have asked everyone to wear bright colours,’ he says with a frown. ‘He would have liked that.’
Lissa shakes her head. ‘I don’t think there are any shoulds with something like this.’
But Ash says, ‘We should have talked about it.’ For the first time today, she hears a trace of bitterness. ‘But I think we were both pretending it wasn’t happening. And I just assumed I’d have years left with him. Even though I should have known, after Mum …’ He swallows that sentence, looking away from Lissa as if to hide his face.
She takes his hand, squeezes it. He keeps hold of it as they walk.
They find a fallen tree trunk in a clearing, and Ash moves to it, perching there. Still holding his hand, Lissa sits next to him. In the distance, she can hear a dog barking, a child squealing with laughter.
‘Will you talk to me about something else?’ Ash asks abruptly. ‘Distract me for a bit? All day I’ve been talking about him and I just … My head hurts,’ he admits.
She can see the effort it’s taking to hold it together. She wonders if he’s let himself cry, and whether he’s done that alone, behind closed doors. She wishes she could have been there for him – wishes she hadn’t closed him off so completely.
‘Sure,’ she says. ‘What do you want to talk about?’
‘Anything. What have you been up to since we …’
She does her best not to wince. She knew this would come up, but was hoping not to talk about it right after his dad’s funeral. But there’s no way of ignoring it now that it has. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she murmurs, ‘about the way I ran out on you.’
‘Yeah.’ He scrapes a hand over the stubble on his jaw. ‘I mean, it wasn’t ideal. Was it … That night, I thought you …’
‘I did,’ Lissa says firmly, guessing enough. ‘Ash, no, it was nothing to do with you. I wanted that night. I wantedyou.’ She still thinks about it. On the nights she’s not plagued by nightmares, she wakes craving him.
‘I know it doesn’t make sense,’ she says. ‘I know I’m acting crazy. But can you try to believe me when I say it has nothing to do with my feelings for you?’ She frowns. ‘Or rather, it’sbecauseof my feelings for you. Because I don’t want you to get hurt.’
He looks at her then, eyes reflecting the sunlight. ‘Surely that’s my decision to make?’
She bites her lip. ‘You can only make a decision with all the facts.’ And he doesn’t have them, does he? Hecan’thave them – not unless he somehow remembers too. And if he remembered, he would get it without her needing to tell him.
He looks at her for a long moment, then sighs. ‘I don’t think I can do this, Liss.’
‘Do what?’
