I can’t stay sitting any longer—even if I know I’m going to be rubbish. “Can I have a go?” I ask Dom.
He holds out the bowl. “Of course.”
I pull back my arm and throw my orange in the air, as high as I can. And I don’t do too badly.
Everyone cheers.
When I get back from taking my sisters to the airport, Theo’s sitting on the patio with a bottle of wine and two empty glasses.
“How was it?” he asks.
“Fine, thanks. I was sad to see them go, but Gloria says visitors are like fish: three days and they go off.”
Theo laughs.
There’s a pause.
He runs a hand over his stubble. “Callum and Mabel are putting Archie to bed.”
“Oh, brill,” I reply. “But where did that come from?”
He shrugs. “I asked them and they said yes.”
There’s another pause.
“I thought you and I could use some time on our own,” he says. “I thought we could go up to the castle and watch the sunset.”
I smile. “I’d like that.”
Once we’ve climbed up and are sitting on the wall, Theo fills our glasses with wine. We look out at the sunset, its palette of pinks and oranges giving our skin a golden tinge.
“I just want to reiterate that I’m sorry about the other day,” Theo says. “I should have defended you to Kate. Putting up with her interfering can’t have been easy for you.”
“No, but I’m sorry for laying into you,” I say, resting my wine on the wall. “I know it hasn’t been easy for you either. And I do know you’re not ashamed of me. I’ve no idea why I said that. I think I was just frightened.”
Theo rests his wine next to mine. “Of what?”
“I don’t know …” But I do: I just don’t want to say it.
Theo must sense that I’m holding back—he must sense I’m still frightened—because he reaches out and hugs me. I nestle into his embrace and squeeze him tightly.
“Don’t leave me,” I let slip. “Please don’t leave me.”
Theo kisses my head gently. “Is that what this is about? Is that what you’re frightened of?”
“I think so,” I confess. “It’s just that everybody leaves me.”
Theo kisses my head again. “Well, that may have been true in the past. But I promise I’ve no intention of leaving you.”
I remember Ian’s line: “Just because something’s been your story for a long time doesn’t mean it has to be forever.”
For once, I can imagine myself believing it.
I pull Theo tighter. “I love you, Theo.”
“I love you too, Ads. Please don’t ever doubt it again.”
My mind jumps back to the first time Theo told me he loved me. He didn’t do it with any fanfare or grand gesture; he just told me one perfectly ordinary morning, while we were in bed. But I knew what a significant moment it must be for him and that it must be the first time he’d said it—or at least to a man. Just like it had been for Wilf, it was the happiest moment of my life and a tear had slipped from my eye and onto the pillow. But, unlike Wilf—or at least unlike anything he’d said in the letter—part of me hadn’t let myself fully believe it. Part of me had doubted it from the start.
