My heartrate leaps into a gallop.
Before I can answer, she says, "Jesus!" and pushes up off the grass and walks away for a few paces before turning around again. "I'm really angry. I'm not one hundred percent sure why, but I am and you just have to take it."
She kicks the bottom of my shoe. She doesn't do it hard. Then with a snarl, she marches to a nearby tree and picks up a fallen branch from the ground.
“Bess?”
She thwacks the branch against the tree and shouts the words, "I'm. So. Angry," with each swing. The branch is grey with age and shatters into shorter lengths with each blow.
With a yell, she hurls the remains of the branch as hard as she can into the grass and stands panting for several breaths. Then she storms back to stand above me. "I feel a tiny bit better," she growls and kicks my shoe again.
"Good."
“I think I’m just very overwhelmed, okay?”
“Okay.” Oh God. In two seconds I’m going to layer a whole new potentially explosive truth on top of everything else she’s having to deal with.
She sits back down beside me.
“Hey, um–”
"You write one hell of a love letter." She says it very matter-of-factly.
"Yes," I say very quietly and haveIt's easy when you mean itsitting on my tongue, when she says, "That kind of puts a whole new spin on it."
I mean, it does, but I have no idea of her interpretation of “a whole new spin”. Does she already know that I meant the sentiment behind them? Does she want me to mean it? Is she repulsed by the idea?
I get my answer when she laughs. "It makes it all sorts of weird."
My heart plummets. Despite knowing there was a good chance I wouldn’t get my ideal reaction, I hadn’t anticipated laughter.
Well.
I guess that settles that then. There’s no point in coming clean now.
"I mean..." Bess doesn't finish the sentence. She doesn't have to. An eighty-year-old, eccentric man writing beautiful love letters from someone you end up falling for is one thing. Your single, male best friend writing those same letters is quite another.
A skylark chatters from somewhere high above us.
I search it out in the overcast sky. The little black dot flutters against the clouds, holding its height and singing its heart out. It slowly descends back to earth. "I think I should go."
“I think that’s a good idea,” Bess answers as I stand.
And now, there's nothing for me to do but lick at the old wounds unreciprocated love creates. Whatever I thought happened at the auction was the stuff of misinterpretation and fancy. I've always suspected she didn't return my feelings, but hearing her laugh at the idea of us communicating as lovers is...another kind of devastating.
I walk away without saying goodbye.
Chapter forty-three
Bess
Iraisethebinocularsandspy Mr Kavanagh mowing his lawn, very much alive and energetic enough to push motorised blades through grass. To be honest, I never really entertained the thought his wife had chopped him into small parts and fertilised her roses with him, but two months is a long time not to have a presence at the end of my binoculars.
Taking a large sip of gin and tonic, I feel Ed's absence keenly and a sense of relief he's not here. I want him to roll his eyes and tell me just because I haven't seen Mr Kavanagh doesn't mean he hasn't been doing things out in the world when I'm not sitting up on the roof. And I want him to give me space to work out why I had not only a confusing reaction to him telling me he wrote the letters, but an extreme one at that.
I think I need a lot of space. As in fully capitalised and the size of a modest solar system A LOT of space.
Something big is unravelling inside me. I can feel it unspooling, the layers of haziness and murk ever so slowly thinning and receding. Underneath will be the raw truth and I'm absolutely terrified of what it will look like.
