‘To hell with my blog! I’ll tear it down. I’m done with it. I’m never going to post another entry again, I swear. I don’t want to! It means nothing, Charlie. Not any more. You and April are the only things I care about.’
He averts his gaze, unconvinced.
‘Charlie,’ I plead. ‘What about last night?’
He looks tortured as he returns his eyes to me and whispers, ‘I’m just a man, Bridget.’
He might as well have slapped me.
‘So you can have sex with me but you can’t fall in love with me?’ I’m fighting not to raise my voice.
‘Argh, Bridget, it was the anniversary of Nicki’s death only two weeks ago!’ he snaps with frustration. ‘Surely you get that it’s too soon for me to start something new.’
‘I understand, of course I do, but—’
He cuts me off. ‘It’s not that I don’t have feelings for you, because I do, andobviouslyI’m attracted to you, but I need space to come to terms with everything. The best thing for April and me is to go home to Cornwall and try to get back to normal.’
He has my heart in his fist and he’s squeezing.
I knew it was too soon for him. I knew nothing could –should– ever happen here in Thailand. But it did. And now I have to live with it. As mistakes go, this one is catastrophic.
‘You need to put your head down, too,’ he says softly as my eyes fill with tears. It hurts so much. ‘This book is due in less than three months. We owe it to Nicki to do it right – and her family, too. Let’s see how things stand next year.’
‘But April will change so much in the next few months! I don’t want to go that long without seeing her!’
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, quietly. ‘But it won’t do her any good if you just drop in on her from time to time. She needs stability in her life right now.’
I can tell by the look in his eyes that he’s resolute. Nothing I say will convince him. This is not our time.
I get up and walk out of the restaurant before I lose it.
They leave the next day, whereas I still have one more day to get through. It’s everything I can do not to cry as the boat draws away with April looking at me over her shoulder. I wave at her, and when she flops her little hand back and forth in an attempt to mimic my gesture, my heart shatters.
Whatever happens with Charlie, I know that I’ll do my best to pick myself up and glue back the pieces. I don’t believe that I’ll ever again love anyone else the way that I love him, but Iwilllive.
But, if I never see April again, it’ll break me.
Turns out it wasn’t a man who had the last piece of my heart, after all.
It was a baby girl.
Chapter 45
I’m a mess when I return to London, but I have to pull myself together and focus. I’m determined to do the very best job that I can with this book. I want to do it for April. I want to do it for Charlie. I want to do it for Valerie, Kate and Alain, too.
But, most of all, I want to do it for Nicki.
Idoowe her that much.
I spend long days at my writing desk, pouring my heart and soul into every single page. Marty comes over occasionally with bottles of wine and attempts to cheer me up, but I’m not much in the mood for socialising. She’s worried because she’s never seen me like this. My grief feels soul-deep, and I don’t know how I’ll ever recover.
Marty was both pensive and sympathetic when I told her about what happened in Thailand, but she understands that I have to prioritise my work right now so she doesn’t put pressure on me to talk too much about what I’m going through.
It’s hard to write about Thailand without thinking about Charlie and what happened there, but Kit’s pain feels real, because mine is, too, and I don’t hold back. I just hope that my emotion comes across to my – no,Nicki’s– readers.
Sometimes I call Fay, and Sara, too, when the pressure gets to me and I need help in finding my way through the trees. Fay usually encourages me to take a long walk or to read a book. Once, she even suggested I go and see a movie – anything to get me out of my head and unlock my writer’s block. ‘Beauty inspires beauty,’ she said. Music also helps to motivate me.
I’ve taken down the blog and have told Sara that I can’t write my book. She understood. After all, one day I was supposed to be writing about a marriage proposal from Elliot, so, when we broke up, she saw my happy ending flying right out of the window. I feel terrible for wasting so much of her time, but I couldn’t go back to it.
