‘Oh myGod,’ Amy said, through gritted teeth. ‘That isnotwhat happened.’
‘Perhaps not quite,’ Sam said, ‘but the break-upisthe reason you’re back here, isn’t it? According to him, you did a moonlight flit after you refused his proposal. He says it was a power play designed to make him chase you– to make him beg to have you back on whatever terms you wanted.’
He grimaced, obviously disgusted at the idea, then went on before Amy could gather her wits to explain herself. ‘The fact that you said nothing about ever having so much as dated him,andthe fact that the role you accepted up here is hardly your dream job … Well. It all makes me wonder if he’s right.’
Amy felt as if she was drowning. She was sinking under the weight of this absurd nonsense, yet was unable to shrug it off and come up for air because it sounded horribly plausible.
‘He’s a fantasist!’ Amy yelled, almost desperately. ‘I’ve done my best to completely ignore him since coming back to Rowton– I certainly didn’t come here with any intention of provoking him to follow me. Trust me, that’s the last thing I wanted. And honestly, I can’t believe you’d give his version of events the time of day! You can’t seriously think I’m the sort of person who’d behave like that?’
‘It’s shit, isn’t it?’ Sam said fiercely. ‘Having someone think the worst of you when the evidence they have to go on is so flimsy– when their judgement’s clearly impaired by their own preconceptions.’
His eyes had lost the guarded look they’d worn for most of the day. Their chocolate-coloured irises blazed with heat, and Amy quailed as he looked at her.
‘Maybe you arethat sort of person,’ said Sam bitterly. ‘Maybe you always were. Maybe this is the second time you’ve messed around with my feelings to achieve some end I never understood.’
‘What?’ Amy shouted, her fury swelling. ‘Me, mess around withyourfeelings? That’s …’ She struggled, completely at a loss– unable to fully process the irony of this idea. ‘That’sridiculous.’
‘Is it? You’ve blown hot and cold with me constantly since coming home. One day everything’s fine between us– we’re practically kissing in my office– and then the next it’s like you’ve remembered you’re contractually obliged to hate me. I should have known better than to get swept up in all this again.’
He looked desolate– his shoulders slack and his head hanging low.
‘All what?’ Amy yelled, staring at him in disbelief.
‘Allthis!’ Sam bellowed, gesturing wildly at the two of them, then at the gap between their bodies. ‘Please.Don’tdo me the discourtesy of pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about.’
‘I certainly don’t know what you’re referring to when you say I’ve messed around with your feelings deliberately, that I haveformfor it,’ Amy said angrily. ‘If I’ve struggled to understand a few things– to get some information straight over the past few months– then I’m sorry. But I’ve never, in my whole life, set out to toy with anyone’s emotions on purpose.’
‘What about Hari’s?’ Sam demanded.
‘Oh my God,’ Amy breathed, glancing up at the sky as if pleading for divine intervention. ‘What thefuckhas Hari got to do with anything? Why are you bringing him into this? It’s painful and unnecessary.’
‘I always wondered whether you kissed me that night for the sake of making him jealous,’ Sam said simply. ‘If your charming ex is to be believed, teenage me might have been on to something.’
Amy’s voice died in her throat. She couldn’t form words, let alone sentences.
‘You didn’t tell Hari about us,’ Sam went on. ‘You said you would but I know you didn’t. Were you going to let him just see us together at Mike’s party? Wind him up a bit so he’d finally tell you himself how he felt?’
He sighed, holding his head in his hands and clawing at his dark gold hair. ‘I should have told him the truth. My best friend died not knowing I’d betrayed him by trying to steal the girl he was in love with. The girl that I wasalso, very inconveniently, in love with.’
Amy’s eyes had grown so wide she worried they might fall out of her head. She was enraged, elated and completely confused.
‘Youkissedmethat night,’ she said after what felt like a lifetime of silence. ‘Don’t you think that pokes rather a large hole in this theory of me as some kind of arch manipulator?’
It was a good point, but it was incomplete– a half-truth. Even now she couldn’t bring herself to be honest: to say that while he had initiated the kissing, she’d been desperate for him to do so.
‘I know that,’ Sam said wearily. ‘But this is what you do, isn’t it? Get so far beneath people’s skin that they can’tnotkiss you. Or follow you halfway up the country.’
Fleetingly, Amy was reminded of what Meg had said the previous Sunday– her implication that Sam needed,wantedsomeone who was capable of moving him like this.
‘And what about what you do? Ordon’tdo?’ she said. ‘You dropped me like a stone after Hari died! It was like … like you couldn’t be arsed with me when I was grieving. You only wanted sparky Amy, not sad Amy– or at the very least you wanted stiff upper-lipped Amy. I saw you actuallyhidefrom me once, you know– duck behind a wall so you wouldn’t have to face me.’
She was shouting at him now, tearful and angry and out of control. ‘Have you any idea how it felt? To have let myself get close to you that night– to have let myself open up– and then to beignored? To be reduced, again, to being the geeky girl the village golden boy wasn’t interested in … and to have lost my best– myonly– friend too?’
‘That’s not how I remember things, Amy,’ Sam put in. ‘You were grief-stricken over Hari, and seeing the depth of your sorrowbrokeme. It proved beyond all doubt that he was the one you really wanted– just like everyone had always said. On top of that, I missed him myselfandI’d betrayed him days before he died. I was eaten up with guilt. And never, not once, did you try to contact me. I’d put my cards on the table! I’d told you I had feelings for you. You said nothing. Even when Hari died, you saidnothing.’
Amy felt like she’d been backed into a very tight corner– the same one Philippa had hinted might be worth exploring during their lunch date. Now she was there, though, she wanted out.
‘What did you want me to say?!’ she demanded, irate. ‘That you were the centre of my universe? That I couldn’t live without you? Did you need me to join your official fan club, like all the other girls in our year group, wear an “I Heart Sam” T-shirt under my clothes?’
