‘Where are you?’ His voice sounds raw.
‘I’ve left,’ I reply dully.
‘You’vewhat?’ he asks with shock.
‘I had to go.’
‘You’veleft?’
I’m staring out the window, looking, not seeing, unable to find the right words.
Because there aren’t any.
‘What thefuck?’ He’s baffled, wounded, angry.
‘It’s for the best,’ I murmur, resorting to Beca’s words, seeing as I can’t find my own.
‘But you— You—’ Now he’s the one who’s speechless. ‘I can’t believe you’d just go,’ he says, stunned. ‘That you’d leave me when I need you most.’
This comment pierces through the numbness for thebriefest, brightest of seconds. And then my head detaches from my heart and delivers the words I need to say to make it stop.
‘After what you and your family have put me through? I’m done. It’s over. Give Beca a call, I’m sure she’ll console you. I never want to see any of you ever again.’
I end the call and a trembling begins in my hands and moves to my chest and suddenly I’m shaking so violently that I feel as though my body is about to shut down.
With the greatest will in the world, I harness my emotions and wrestle them under control, tamping them down, down, down, until they’re buried deep under six feet of soil.
I move through the week in a daze, buying a cheap car for commuting to and from my new job, hunting out somewhere to live and eventually settling on a tiny apartment in Evesham, about twenty-five minutes from Hidcote. My new boss, Lottie, is pleased to hear that I can start work earlier than expected, but it takes every ounce of strength I have left to put my best foot forward and make a good first impression.
After all these years, I’m finally living on my own, but the solitude is both a blessing and a curse, giving me too much time to think.
When thoughts of Ash surface, I choke them to death so I can get through another day.
But at night, my mind is left unbound and my nightmares are maddening, unhinged, causing me to wake in a cold sweat with a pounding heart.
Eventually the walls holding back the dam of emotions begin to crack, and when they finally break apart in a deafening roar, I go to another place entirely. I have never felt more alone.
I don’t hear from Ash, and I don’t reach out to him either. But one night, when I’ve been drinking too much and I’m raw with pain and longing, I look him up online. The headline that greets me chills me to my bones.
The Honourable Ashton Berkeley and the Honourable Rebecca Brampton announce their engagement.
I’m too shocked and breathless to cry. I’ve only been gone a few weeks.
But it’s what I need to accept that I must close the book on our final chapter.
Over the next few months, stone by stone, I build back those walls, wrestle my mind under control, even at night, and begin to make Evesham my home. I find solace within the stunning Arts and Crafts-inspired gardens of Hidcote, and after another quiet Christmas on my own, I decide to take control of my loneliness and make it a choice, rather than something that has happened to me.
Swapping out my smartphone for a cheap Nokia that I’ll use only for emergencies, I pledge to living a simpler life. I listen to the radio and read more books. I give up social media and watching the news. I commit to moving onwards and upwards and embracing the chance I’ve been given.
Eventually I begin to feel better. I still avoid thinking about Ash and the way I left – I’m not sure I’ll ever find peacewhere he and Berkeley Hall are concerned – but that’s a problem for another day, and maybe even another counsellor. Whether or not he was coerced into marrying Beca to save the sawmill, cottages and cabin, or whether he chose to marry his best friend of his own accord, I don’t know. And at the end of the day, it really doesn’t matter. He’s where he needs to be, doing his own thing. And I’m here, doing mine.
Part Three
CHAPTER THIRTY
I’m in one of the Red Borders, deadheading fiery red dahlias – ‘Bishop of Auckland’ and ‘Grenadier’. It’s the last Friday in September and my little robin friend is back again. Yesterday he hung around as I was weeding in Mrs Winthrop’s Garden and taking cuttings of the blue and yellowsalvias. The day before, I saw him when I was hedge-cutting on the Long Walk and collecting seeds from the blue globe thistles growing in the Old Garden. And now he’s perching on the giant leaf of a red banana plant, chirping.
Maybe it’s not the same bird, but I like to think it is.
