He fetches a green bottle from a cabinet, and despite my distress I still register that it is Glenfiddich, not an Irish single malt. He’s gone full native. He holds it up to me in question, and I nod. He glugs a generous dollop into each of our mugs. It’s probably a terrible idea, but I need the boost too.
He drinks some down, then leans forward towards me. Thank God there’s a table between us, because I still feel that connection – that pull. How the heck has it survived all these years? Is it possible for love to hibernate, to be cryogenically frozen? To be paused?
No, I tell myself. This isn’t love. This is a combination of shock and confusion and the cumulative stresses and excitements of the last few days. A lot has happened in a short amount of time, and I am running on adrenaline.
‘I think,’ he says slowly, carefully measuring out each syllable. ‘That neither of us seems to have the full picture of whathappened. Did you or did you not go around to my house and tell my folks it was over between us?’
‘Stop sounding like a barrister!’ I say, feeling defensive. ‘And no, your honour, I did not! You want to know what happened to me? I got that message from you, about an hour before I was due to leave. I read it, and my whole world fell to pieces. I was sitting on my bed crying my eyes out, trying to think of what to say to you – how to reply to that – when my dad walked in. He took one look at me, and grabbed my phone. He read the message, and shook his head, and said: “Well, at last he’s acting like a grown-up.” Then he told me he had something to show me. Something that had been dropped off at ours, through the letterbox.’
Rory is all ears now, a small frown marring his brow as I tell my tale.
‘What was it?’ he urges, some of the sharp edge gone from his voice.
‘It was a note. One sheet of paper, folded up. Your handwriting – and don’t tell me it wasn’t, Rory, because I could recognise it by then, after all the… exchanges we’d had.’
Cards, letters, love poems. One of the many sketches he’d done of me one day we sat in the park, drawing each other. Romantic tokens, kept in a wooden box at the bottom of my wardrobe. Keepsakes that were thankfully gone by the time I recovered enough to look for them – my parents were nothing if not efficient in the aftermath of it all.
‘Okay, Jane. I believe you. What did the note say?’
‘Not much,’ I reply bitterly. ‘It seemed I wasn’t worth a lot of your time. It said – and honestly, I think this is a direct quote, it was burned into my brain – it said: “I’m sorry, but I have to do this. I love you, but I can’t carry on this way. I hope you understand and that one day you can forgive me. It’s for the best.” And there were three kisses. Kisses! I remember that most of all…’
‘Fuck,’ he mutters, his jaw working, his eyes staring off into the distance.
‘Well. Yes. That sums it up. When your message landed, I wasn’t sure I could believe it – I was still planning on coming to find you, trying to convince you you were wrong. To beg you to stay with me, I suppose. But my dad kept my phone, and when I saw that note… well. Even I had to admit it was over. And I never really knew why. That’s eaten away at me over the years, you know? How you could go from being this man who was wildly in love with me to this boy who just… threw me away…’
I’m crying now, and I don’t even care. So what if I am? I’m allowed to be upset at the way he treated me. I was a baby, and he stomped all over me. What I didn’t quite expect was for him to be crying too.
‘Oh God,’ he says, voice jagged and raw. ‘It was them. It was our parents. They did this…’
‘What?’ I ask, frowning. ‘They did what?’
‘They arranged it all. How did they know, though? How did they find out what we were planning?’
I stare at him, seeing the wheels turn in his mind. I’m not quite sure what’s led him to this conclusion, but I do have some experience these days.
‘Teenagers are sneaky,’ I say, gesturing upstairs with my eyes. ‘But they’re never quite as clever as they think they are. I suppose back then, too, there weren’t as many ways to be secretive… no smartphones, for a start. I guess we thought we were being super-spies, but parents – mums in particular – have a way of knowing when their kid is up to something. A kind of radar. Maybe… maybe they did figure it out. I suppose having a rucksack of clothes under my bed wasn’t exactly stealth behaviour, and you always had Callum around… but why does this matter? What do our parents have to do with anything? What are you saying exactly, Rory?’
Even to my own ears I sound shrill by the end of that sentence, and he glances at me sympathetically. His eyes are right on mine, and I feel like a spider trapped in a web. I can’t look away, much as I want to. He wipes away his tears, and visibly tries to pull himself together.
‘I’m still figuring it all out. It was a long time ago…’
‘It was. But I still remember every single moment.’
‘Me too, Jane,’ he says, not unkindly. ‘Me too. And I did write that note – but not to you. That was the note I left for my family. I put it under my pillow for them to find when we were long gone. And the message… I remember, that day, I had a right go at Callum. I thought he’d robbed my phone, you know what a little gobshite he was…’
I laugh despite myself. He really was, forever getting into trouble. ‘What does he do now?’ I ask.
‘Spinal surgeon in Sydney.’
‘No way!’
‘Yes way,’ he says, a hint of a smile curling his lips. ‘He had a turnaround, and no mistake. But that day, I thought he’d taken it – and maybe now I realise it wasn’t him. The poor wee sod was innocent all along. It was them… it was Mum and Dad. They sent you that message, Jane, and they must have erased it afterwards. Your parents had to have been in on it – it’s too much of a coincidence that your dad walked into your room and confiscated your phone just after you’d got it. They finally found something that united them.’
He’s staring at me as he speaks, and the roam of his eyes on my face is almost as intimate as his touch. Could he be right? Could it have been a ploy, a dastardly plan to tear us apart? It’s the only thing that makes sense – because I sure as hell never went round to see his mother and father to tell them I was finishing things. Even if I had wanted to end it, they were the lastpeople on earth I’d have talked to. And yet they must have sold it to him, convincingly enough that he believed them.
I suppose, after waiting for me all night, then hearing that, and then finding I’d left the country… the evidence must have stacked up. Just like it did with me, and the message, and the note.
I feel so many things at once right then. Sadness at all we went through. Anger at my now-dead parents, who I will never be able to ask.
