Page 118 of The Spark

I find her on Instagram. She’s married, two kids, is a paramedic now. A willowy, ash-blonde beauty, she still looks about twenty, even though she must be in her thirties. When she’s not in uniform, she favours photos of herself wearing pastel colours against pastel backdrops. There are lots of shots of her standing next to flower arches. She lives in a nice part of London, judging by the many images of particularly wide and leafy sections of the Thames.

I stare at her frozen-in-time smile, astonished afresh to remember that Jamie loved her and not me. What did he promise her? What did she believe? What did she know about me? Does she ever think about him?

My fingers hover over my keypad. That tiny, electrical impulse to reconnect to a past life is still sparking somewhere inside me. I could send Heather a message, start a conversation, uncover the truth.

And then I force myself to take a breath, close my eyes, think of Lara.

Grab love with both hands and don’t let go. It’s too late for me, but it isn’t for you. Don’t waste another second.

What the hell am I doing?

I shut the laptop. It’s finally time to stop looking back.

I owe that much to Lara, and to myself.

Chapter 49.

Then

It was a wild storm, that night. A violent August thunderstorm brought on by days of crackling heat.

Lara had just passed her driving test, and – for reasons known only to himself – her dad had congratulated her with an old sports car he’d bought cheap from a mate instead of a card that said Well Done.

It was a miracle she’d even been insured – a staggering error of judgement that was for ever being affirmed by her growing tally of near-misses. The bodywork got a new dent every time she went out. One night, she accelerated too hard out of a bend and ended up in a hedge.

But she seemed to think it was amusing. I guess the more you survive, the less scary things feel. But I was afraid she would hurt herself, or worse. A fear so dark, I couldn’t even voice it out loud.

Jamie was still interning in London, but he and his parents were in Norwich for the weekend. It was his grandmother’s eightieth birthday, and the four of them were going out for one of those big-deal dinners at a swanky restaurant. I’d been fortunate enough to secure a second internship with Kelley Lane that summer – but I was also working at the pub down the road again and had a shift, so I couldn’t make it. Not that I was entirely sure I’d have been invited anyway.

The rain was savage that night, so forceful it made us pause for breath just watching it. A relentless, liquid whipping of the trees, pavements, rooftops. We had a leak in the flat roof of our bathroom which had already filled three buckets. The weather was so bad, the wait for a cab was nearly ninety minutes.

Jamie had been at our house all day, working on an A&L brief – concept plans for an intergenerational housing project – and had lost track of time. Already stressed, he was growing increasingly flush-cheeked and agitated, his panic always disproportionate whenever his father was involved. ‘I’m so late. Dad’s going to hit the roof. I’ve got four missed calls from him already.’ He turned to Lara. ‘I’ll never get a cab. Will you give me a lift?’

‘Sure,’ Lara said, no breath of hesitation. Any opportunity to jump in that car.

The rain was belting the windows so hard I was half expecting the glass to give way. I could hear the rush of the leak in the bathroom, the vicious crack of thunder close by. I had a bad feeling, one I couldn’t put words to.

‘Wait for a cab,’ I said. ‘Or get the bus. You can’t drive in this.’

Lara laughed. ‘You are such a square about my car, Neve.’

‘Well, you do keep crashing into things.’

‘More fun that way.’ She winked at me and jangled her keys. ‘Come on then, posh boy.’

‘Jamie,’ I said, trying to make eye contact with him, to communicate my fear.

‘Relax,’ he replied. But he wouldn’t meet my eye.

It was the first time he and Lara had ever been a team against me. ‘Well, please drive slowly,’ I implored.

As if on cue, lightning sliced through the sky.

Lara did something then that she’d never done before. She rolled her eyes, looked at Jamie then back at me, and said, ‘All right, Mum. Chill out.’

She’d never mocked me before, ever. Had never tried to make me feel small.

I became suddenly speechless, hot with humiliation.

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