Dimple takes a moment to consider her notebook. Her thick but elegant fingers flick through pages. For a fleeting moment, I want to be annoyed that she needs to check her notes, but then I remember that she has many other clients. It’s not fair for me to expect her to have everything committed to memory.
“You’ve never quite finished telling me what happened with George.”
Another unexpected blow. “I don’t like talking about it.”
She gives me a look that says,What do you think we’re here to do?, and I feel like burying her pen in her eye.
“Okay.” I sigh, steel myself. “What do you want to know?”
“Take me back to the moment you realized he was dangerous. I’d like us to follow the weeks leading up to ‘the Big Fallout’ you’ve alluded to. Can you do that for me?”
“Every time you ask me to revisit something I don’t want to, I end up feeling worse.”
She shrugs. “I don’t know how to help you if you hold things back from me.”
“And this? We have to go back to this?” A beat. “And how can I really trust you?”
She doesn’t answer, simply prods me for more. “Feel free to have a drink of water. Start in your own time.”
I do as instructed, shaking inside. As the water slides down my throat, I steady my nerves and prepare to talk about the worst day of my life.
24
Ex Number Three
George
It’s been barely a week since we got back home from our cottage trip, but I’ve been walking on eggshells the whole time. Easy way to make a week feel like a year. Not that George seems to notice any difference. I wonder what that says about me, about how small I’ve made myself around him.
He’s been in and out of the house for work, same as usual. When he comes home from the office there’s always a big smile and a kiss for me. It would be easy to convince myself that nothing really happened, that it was all in my imagination, but I know in my bones what he did to me.
It was a relief when he announced his weekend away with the boys, fishing. I should have been annoyed at the short notice, at the cavalier disregard for the film I’d mentioned I wanted us to see together—anything to get out of the house, to be perceived by public eyes, safe—but the relief was so complete that I simply said,Have a nice time. I didn’t even press him on who these “boys” were, despite his having nowhere near enough friends to amalgamate into an ensemble. Instead, my fingers were soon on the lightly cracked black screen of myphone, hesitant, dancing toward and just stopping before numbers on the dial pad. I was ashamed of how long it had been, of what the voices on the other end of the phone might say.
But of course, a brief dial tone and a little conversation later, it was all okay. How could it not be? And now Claire sits in front of me, tea steaming from the full belly of the round mug warming her hands as she looks at me, contemplating.
“Emily should be here soon,” I say for lack of other words. “She’s on her way.”
Claire’s nose wrinkles in distaste. Upset as I was at Emily for abandoning me on my birthday all those years ago, it seems Claire has held the grudge in a tighter grip on my behalf, as a sister is wont to do. We sit in silence for a moment.
“So are you going to tell me?” she asks.
“Tell you what?” It’s only in contrast with hers that I hear how thin my voice has become, how it seems to rattle inside of me.
“It’s been months, Natty.”
“I know.”
My thumbs preoccupy my attention for a moment. It’s as if by the time I look back up, I will have escaped Claire’s scrutiny. As if.
I think of the distant memory of Aunty Dev for a moment. Wonder if Mother let their friendship wither and die because she knew the reunion could be this painful.
“You look thin,” Claire says.
“I know.”
The next moments take me by surprise. She bursts into tears. Of the two of us, she has never been the crier, her bravery more real than my performances of it. A hand clasped over her mouth does little to stifle her sobs. Under normal circumstances, my arms would be aroundher shoulders, holding her close. But these circumstances are anything but normal, and the months that have stood between us feel like a yawning chasm with her feet planted on one side, and my feet treading crumbling rock on the other. I don’t know if she wants me to touch her, and that little uncertainty is a knife in my chest.
“Are you okay?” I manage to say, her sobs quietening.
