Page 119 of The Spark

‘What do you reckon, Jamie – top down?’ Lara said, laughing.

I wanted to remind her the roads would be dangerously slippery after a long spell of no rain at all. I wanted to ask if she’d ever checked the tread on her tyres. But her words had stolen the voice from my throat.

The bad feeling persisted. I could feel it clinging like a creature to my back.

It was strange, when they left the house. Jamie and I kissed, and he put his arms around me. But oddly – for the first time ever – he seemed unable to say, I love you.

I convinced myself afterwards that, somehow, he’d known it was our last goodbye.

Which was why the call, when it came later that night, wasn’t even a surprise. Lara had lost control of the car on a corner of the ring road. Jamie hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt and had been flung through the windscreen, into the path of a delivery van. Lara escaped with only minor injuries.

He died that night. The love of my life, the man I thought I would live out my days with. I would never again get to hold him, share a smile with him, kiss him, make love to him. I remember the physicality of the shock I felt – or maybe it was fury. The force of my feelings reverberated through me for days afterwards. I felt like a human earthquake. I would shake uncontrollably, whenever I looked at his photo, or a pair of his jeans, or his empty side of our mattress. I spent hours over the ensuing days sitting in ill-advisedly hot baths, trying to sweat the convulsions from my body.

When Lara came to see me after the accident, I wouldn’t let her in the house. We faced each other, just once, on the doorstep. She still had nicks of dried blood on her face, and the vast purple petal of a bruise around one eye. Her skin was pale as candle wax, and she seemed unsteady on her feet, kept placing a hand on the brickwork for support.

‘I’m sorry, Neve.’ She was saying the words, but not even looking at me.

It took everything I had not to shove her backwards with both hands. ‘I asked you not to take him. I warned you about the weather, and you laughed at me.’

‘Neve.’ She was crying now. ‘It was an accident. It all happened so quickly—’

‘He knew,’ I said, my voice cracking. ‘Jamie knew something was going to happen, I could see it in his eyes.’

She moved out, after that. I think we both understood that we couldn’t live together any more. I stopped taking her calls, and eventually, she stopped making them.

I couldn’t face asking to view his body at the mortuary. The funeral was a family-only affair, and it was made clear I would not be welcome. I’d had to steal the items of his I’d wanted to keep before Chris swept through the house and cleared out all Jamie’s stuff, letting himself in with Jamie’s key without even asking me first.

Back then, I thought this was because they blamed me, somehow: Chris had said I was bad news all along, and now his youngest son was dead. But I realise now it must have been because they knew about Heather, and felt too ashamed to look me in the eye.

There was a police investigation, but Lara was never charged with anything. The conditions had been atrocious that night, and there was no evidence to suggest careless or dangerous driving. It was, they concluded, just a terrible accident. At the inquest, the coroner simply recorded Jamie had died from a road traffic collision.

I wasn’t completely wrong about that last ever look Jamie and I shared, though. Because it was a final goodbye. But not because he could foresee the accident. It was because he was leaving me for someone else, and he didn’t even have the guts to tell me.

I wish Lara had found a way to let me know sooner who Jamie really was. Because maybe then I’d have been able to forgive her, and we wouldn’t have lost so much time.

But we can’t undo the past. The world has moved on. Some people have died, others are dying.

And others have yet to really live.

And that’s what I intend to do now. I’m sorry Jamie died – I’ll always be sorry for that – but I refuse to waste another moment mourning him or chasing ghosts, dwelling on questions I will never have the answers to.

It turns out that – against all the odds – my mother was right. You can give your heart and soul to whoever you want, but very few people will actually be worthy of it. And now, at last, I know who that person is.

What I had with Jamie was magic while it lasted, but he never deserved me. And now – if it’s not too late – I finally get to be with someone who does.

Chapter 50.

Now

Christmas this year is different in a million ways to how I thought it would be. I guess in life there are never any guarantees. This time six weeks ago, would I have imagined I’d be single again? That Lara would be dying? That my mother would have found true love?

Lara invites me to spend Christmas Day at her mum’s house. ‘It’ll be just like old times,’ she says, and I can’t tell if she’s joking.

Because on some level, it will be. Then again, back then, there was never a Felix, or cancer, and Billy was always there to light up the room.

But when she asks, I don’t hesitate. ‘I’d love to,’ I say.

Now I know that she’s dying, it is all I can see when I look at her. The breathlessness and exhaustion. Her newly tiny frame. The drugs and the layers of clothing and her inability to take more than a few mouthfuls of food. Felix has to support her when she goes to the bathroom, and I wonder again how I managed to miss all of this for so long. Was she putting on a show of strength for my benefit, so I didn’t guess until she was ready? Or did I really just not notice?

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