"I've been doing it since I was twelve," she says at last. Quietly. "Leaving. I've done it to jobs. I did it to two head chefs who wanted to promote me. I did it to a woman in London who genuinely loved me, and I have never once allowed myself to think about her name." She looks at me. "I got very good at it. It's the thing I'm best at, after cooking. You get out first, and then it doesn't count as being left."
"So I'm just another—"
"No." Fast. Fierce. "No.That's what I'm trying to tell you. That's why it's so bad. Because with everybody else, itworked.And with you it didn't work at all — I said the worst thing I could think of, the very worst thing I had, and you went to your room and rang Sophie to find out whether I was eating."
I look away.
"Don't," I say.
"You rang Sophie to find out whether I'd had mydinner, Iris."
"Shut up."
"You deserve—" she starts.
"Stop." I'm across the room before I know I've moved. "Stop telling me what I deserve and ask me what I want."
Cat's mouth closes.
"Ask me," I say.
"What do you want?"
And the answer is so obvious it's nearly funny. It has been obvious since the night I got out of a car in the dark and found a woman on a terrace in an apron, looking at me like a problem she fully intended to solve.
"You," I say. "This. The bad mattress and the good view and that appalling goat. I want to argue with you about the distillery schedule and lose. I want to get old here. I want to be buried out in that field beside Marguerite and Hélène with my name on the same stone as yours." My voice goes. "I want every single thing you're too frightened to let yourself have. That's what I want.That's what I've wanted since roughly week two — and it wasn't a phase then, either."
Cat kisses me.
It is not a good kiss. It's desperate and messy and we're both crying and at one point I get an elbow somewhere, and it is, without any competition whatsoever, the best kiss of my life. She holds on like I might be taken off her. I hold on just as hard. And we stand in the middle of a spare bedroom sobbing into each other's mouths like the pair of disaster gay clichés we have apparently become.
"I'm sorry," she gasps when we finally break apart. "I'm so sorry. I love you."
"I know. I love you too." I rest my forehead against hers. "I'm still angry."
"You should be."
"I'm going to be angry for a while, Cat. You don't get to say a thing like that and be forgiven in an evening."
"No."
"And you're going to have to actuallystay.Not tonight — tonight's easy. I mean when it's boring. When it's a wet Tuesday and nothing's happening and there's nobody watching." I open my eyes. "That's the part you have to do."
"I know."
"Can you?"
"I don't know," she says.
It's the most honest thing she's said all night, and it's the only answer I would have believed.
"But I'm not leaving," she says. "And I'll tell you when I want to."
I think that might be better than a promise.
Later, in the kitchen, with the kettle on and both of us wrung out and neither of us willing to be more than an arm's length from the other:
"My mother emailed me," I say.
