Page 100 of The Spark

‘Even my sister what?’

‘Even your sister thinks there might be something in it.’

He shakes his head. ‘My sister thinks there might be something in those conspiracies about Elvis being alive.’

‘But she is a doctor. A scientist.’

He sighs now, like even the idea of loving me again is exhausting.

And love shouldn’t feel that way.

Still. I have to try. Just one more time. ‘If I can find someone who can back up what I’m saying, could we at least talk about it?’

He looks at me for a long moment, then says, ‘No, Neve.’ His eyes are varnished with tears now. I can tell he is fighting to hold it together.

Suddenly, I know what I have to do.

‘You’re right, about this being wrong,’ I realise, out loud. ‘Of course you can’t live like this. Why should you? And actually, neither can I.’

‘Neve—’

I get to my feet. ‘I’m going to... try to figure all this out.’

‘Hang on, that’s not good enough. Where the hell does that leave me?’

‘I just need some time.’

‘And I need clarity.’

I swallow. ‘Look, if you... meet someone in the meantime, or you decide you never want to see me again, that’s okay. I mean, not okay – that’s not what I want – but I’d understand. I’m not asking you to wait for me, Ash, because I actually don’t know if I’ll be able to get past this, or work it out. But I’m going to try. I promise.’

‘No. You need to answer me this – and... be truthful. Don’t just say what you think I want to hear.’

The space between us is a snowdrift of silence.

‘Do you love me? If you say yes, I’ll wait for you.’

My heart cracks apart even as I answer him. ‘I don’t know if it’s wholly you I love, or—’

‘Right.’ I watch him struggle to reply. ‘Well, at least I know where I stand.’

My eyes fill with fresh tears. ‘I’m just trying to be honest.’

‘First time for everything, I guess.’

Chapter 43.

‘What if you just faked it?’ Lara says, when we meet for Sunday lunch a few days later at a pub near her mum’s house. She’s just back from Rome, and we’ve spent the past half-hour looking through photos of her and Felix meandering around the world’s most romantic city.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, fake it till you make it. Tell Ash you’ve forgotten about Jamie, get back together, and then... over time, it gradually becomes true. Until you wake up one day and realise that what you have with Ash far surpasses what you ever had with Jamie. It’s got to happen one day. It’s practically science.’

I blink at her flippancy. If it was that easy, I’d have done it long ago. Thinking about Jamie all the time has been exhausting. It’s not what I want. But I don’t know how to stop.

She looks past me and out through the window, onto the roundabout and main road. Her face looks pinched and peaky in the wintery light. She seems on edge today. Not with me, necessarily. Just the world at large. She was brisk with the waiter earlier, which isn’t at all like the Lara I once knew. She’s never been into chastising people who can’t argue back: we’ve both worked in customer service jobs, and have experienced more than our fair share of being told off by people in salmon-coloured trousers complaining about their salads being cold.

I guess taking care of her mum must be getting to her more than I thought.

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