‘I remember.’ Hamish grins. ‘Always such purpose, even when we were basically kids. You had goals, and ambition, and you were going to fulfil your dreams.’
‘You make it sound like I was a woman on a mission,’ I laugh.
‘You were,’ he replies. ‘It was hot as hell, actually.’
‘Was it?’ I’m flustered.
‘Yeah, man. You knew what you wanted and you were going to go get it. That was damn sexy.’
I look down at my tray of food, mind whirring.
‘We haven’t talked about the elephant in the room,’ I say after a while.
‘Ah. You’re talking about the fact that I never got in touch, right?’
I nod, too overwhelmed to use actual words. I feel like we’re on the cusp of something big here. This whole flight has been leading up to this moment. I have no clue what he’s going to say, or whether it’s going to open up the opportunity to discuss us, properly. I’m on an emotional precipice, about to free-dive.
‘Mate,’ he exhales, and honestly I am starting to wonder how I managed to forget all about it the first time around. It’s so annoying!
Hamish then proceeds to take a painful amount of time to say anything else. He polishes off his tray of unidentified vegetable noodles, he munches his way through his bread and butter. He demolishes the Tim Tam and sips his way through a plastic cup filled with red wine. By the time he’s finished eating, I’m quietly wondering if he’s totally forgotten about what we’d been talking about.
Maybe now is the time for a caffeine tablet, after all?
‘Nee,’ he finally says, briefly squeezing my hand. ‘I am sorry about that.’
I still can’t speak and there’s a very pregnant pause while I wait for him to elaborate.
I wait some more.
Nothing. He offers up nothing. What do I do? Pretend to be easy-breezy and not at all bothered about the fact that he ghosted me all those years ago? And that, a decade on, he has offered up one solitary apology with no explanation? Because I am not easy-breezy about it. That period in time still stings, and it’s had ripple effects on the way I’ve led my life ever since.
Or do I probe him further? The Nina who wasn’t stuck in a time loop and facing an eternal Monday would probably have brushed this under the carpet but I realize now that I can’t dothat. I feel like I’ve come so far to get to this point, and if I don’t seize my chance to get some answers then I’ll be doing my future self a huge disservice. Plus I’ll be really cross with myself, and I do not need to add self-loathing to what is already quite a long list of troubles.
‘Why didn’t you get in touch?’ I ask in a small voice. ‘We’d agreed that you’d let me know how it all went, hadn’t we? And I thought you were coming back.’
A year. That was all it was meant to be. We’d broken up so Hamish could go do his thing in Australia but I felt pretty sure that we’d get back together when he came home.
No, more than that. We’d actually said it would happen. We’d had an entire conversation about it at Heathrow Terminal Two on the day he left.
Hamish’s brow furrows and he looks genuinely sorry.
‘I was coming back, that was always the plan. But the minute I landed, I felt like I’d been gifted a fresh start at life. And I just love shiny new things.’
I frown at this. ‘Did you meet someone else?’
‘Oh no, not straight away anyway. I was single for a good few weeks after I landed.’
A good fewweeks? Excuse me, please? I was pining away for him for months after he left. Months! Years, maybe? I was left spiralling, questioning so much about myself. What had happened, how did it all go so wrong? What did I do wrong?
Hamish gives my hand another squeeze.
‘Don’t blame yourself, Nee.’
‘What?!’ I blurt.
‘At the end of the day I just decided to focus my energies on me. I was my priority back then. We can spend so long worrying about others when really, the most important relationship we need to nurture in this life is the one with ourselves.’
Hamish presses his hands together and I fight the temptation to slap them apart.
