He comes round to my side of the table and we share an awkward hug. ‘I hope that for you too, Erin. I hope you can find a guy who’ll look after you the way you’ll look after him. You deserve that.’
CHAPTER EIGHTY
Present Day
Autumn disappears in a blur, and it isn’t long before Christmas is looming. I continue to live with my mother and Emir, although I start looking for somewhere of my own. I work part-time doing basic admin tasks for my mum that I could have done in my sleep in my previous life as a house manager for very wealthy clients, but that’s actually a positive rather than negative. It gives my brain something to do without taxing it too hard.
I still try to get my head around how my life imploded so spectacularly, but I can’t quite bring myself to regret falling and hitting my head in the hotel garden. Yes, I lost my relationship, the future I’d planned out in colour-coded, tabbed and highlighted detail, but that future was an illusion. I have a feeling it would have all gone sideways within a decade if I’d married Simon. No, as much as it hurts, it’s better this way. To be honest, I’m not even sure if it’s Simon I miss, but the idea of love and belonging I projected into my future with him.
It’s been almost three months since I left Heron’s Quay. Gil hasn’t messaged me other than those first few times. He’s respecting my silence by giving me his. So why do I feel disappointed?Why do I check my notifications for something that never arrives?
I think about him all the time, especially late at night when sleep is hard to find. I wish I could walk up those metal stairs and see the stars from his roof, feel his reassuring presence as I pour out my heart.
Sometimes, I even want to pick up my phone and message him.
I miss him.
I think I may be falling in love with him.
But that’s just the problem, isn’t it? IthinkI’m falling.
But how do I know if it’s real? And if it is, what do I do about it?
It’s been more than nine months since my accident and most of my rehabilitation appointments have either ended or will soon move into regular check-up mode. I’m doing well. But I worry these big emotions I’m feeling are just another side-effect from my brain having bounced around inside my skull. I worry that neurons have created wonky connections as they’ve tried to heal themselves, tricking me into thinking and feeling things I shouldn’t.
I could contact Gil, I know that. But I’m afraid to do that, too. I have a feeling if I see him in the flesh, I’ll just get even more confused, and that won’t help me make a rational, sensible decision.
What I need is something solid I can build a foundation on. Facts and figures, dates and times … Words on the page. Those are what I need. If only …
I hold my breath.
How about words on a screen? I have those. Our messages.
What I really want to do is start right back at the beginning and read everything through in order. I’ve changed phones since then, so I’ve no idea if older messages will still be visible if I scroll all the way back, but when I try it, they’re there. However, they only go back as far as the February five years ago.
Oh. Of course they do. He told me when I came back on Valentine’s Day that he’d got a new number. I tap my way out of that message thread into the list of chats and scroll further down. Near the bottom, I find another thread entitled ‘Simon’, one attached to his old number. The number Gil must have messaged me from. I click on it.
Oh my goodness. There are hundreds of messages. Thousands.
I take a moment to steady myself, grab a lungful of soothing air, and then I scroll back to the autumn of five years ago, find where I mention landing in the Bahamas, and begin to read.
CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE
Present Day
The messages start off chatty, silly, sometimes a little cheesy. I can tell it’s Simon who wrote these. They have his tone and vocabulary, the same sense of humour. There are multiple messages every day for the first few weeks and then they slowly peter out.
I see the pattern now. This is exactly how communication went with Simon when I was at Heron’s Quay. The first few weeks were full of enthusiastic, chatty messages but by the time I left, I had that same feeling he was pulling away.
Now I come to think of it, he was the same running up to the wedding. I’d noticed he wasn’t always messaging me back or that his answers were short and to the point, but I just put it down to us both being busy and stressed. The clues were there. I just didn’t give them enough attention.
I turn back to the thread of messages and check the dates. As October turned into November, he ghosted me completely. But good old Erin didn’t give up. Reading it all back now, I’m asking twenty-three-year-old me why she bothered. It’s clear he’s lost interest. I would judge Past Erin for being pathetic if I couldn’t see how worried she was about him.She might be an idiot, but she’s got a good heart, that girl.
I sigh as I scroll through the one-sided conversation. When Anjali was cross with me once, she told me I treated people as my personal projects. Maybe that’s why Simon seemed so appealing back then. I could swoop in and fix him. Of course, now I know it wasn’t just grief eating him up, but guilt. There’s no way I would have been so persistent if I’d known the truth. I probably wouldn’t have messaged him at all.
I scroll down to reveal more messages. There it is … finally, he answers again.
Is this the moment when the identity switches? I double check the date. November. From what Simon said when we met for coffee, that seems about right. This could be it.
