‘There’s nothing youcansay.’
I sip my coffee. I bought it ages ago. It’s cold now. Hers must be too, but Liv sips it all the same.
I’m going to cut to the chase. ‘I wanted to find out how you felt about seeing Ben again.’
Liv inhales, exhales long and slow. ‘Why are you asking that?’
‘Aury mentioned that she’d love the four of us to be friends again. The way it used to be.’
‘It can never be that,’ Liv says.
‘It could be, if you wanted it to be.’
‘So I’m the problem?’ Liv protests.
‘No, I didn’t say that.’
‘You implied it.’
Well, this isn’t going well, is it?‘That’s not what I meant at all,’ I reply softly. ‘I thought: it’s been nearly three years since the accident. To err is human, to forgive is divine,’ I go on, quoting a phrase I heard my dad say once.
Liv rolls her eyes. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Just show up, if Aury tries to organise something where Ben would also be present.’
‘Like a showdown?’
‘No, like a gathering, or a dinner. I don’t know.’
‘I don’t know, either, Ollie. Ben nearly killed me.’
‘Itwasan accident.’
‘Maybe,’ Liv says. ‘Maybe not.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Ben wasn’t in control. He was angry.’
‘At what?’ I say warily. This is news to me.
‘What do you think he was angry about? Aurora had just broken up with him. You were texting her. He felt – low, abandoned, friendless, betrayed.’
Deep down I knew this. His mental state wasn’t good then.
‘And you hate him for feeling that and driving into the back of a car? You knew how badly Ben was doing and yet …’Whoa, I can’t say the rest of that sentence if I want to get out of this coffee shop alive.
‘And yet …?’ Liv queries and then finishes for me. ‘And yet I got in the car with him?’
I squirm again.God, I’m a coward sometimes.
‘Yes, I got in the car with him. For all the reasons he was sad, I was sad too. My friend had left, my boyfriend was texting her and was angry at me for being drunk with Ben at a party. It was a horrible mess. I wanted to make you jealous.’
‘By doing what?’
‘By going off with Ben.’
‘To Tesco?’ I query.
