Page 71 of The Spark

‘It’s me who should be feeling that way, not you.’

‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Of course,’ I say.

‘Were you... thinking about him, when you were with me?’

I know he means in bed. Thankfully, this is easy to answer. ‘God, no.’

I can’t deny there were fleeting points when Jamie drifted into my mind in those moments. But they were only ever transient. Scraps of unbidden memory, half-seconds at most, by no means some kind of enduring fantasy.

Ash frowns, looking past me towards the cluster of people at the bar. But I can see only him: the brush of his collar against his neck, the splay of his legs on the bar stool, the turn of his wrist as he lifts his glass.

‘It’s been hard for me,’ he says. ‘To trust again. Since Tabitha.’

I wonder if perhaps Tabitha called Ash by the wrong name once, too. If that was his first clue to her affair. He says he stumbled across a thread of messages buried deep in her WhatsApp, but maybe she made the same mistake I did, and he felt too crushed to tell me.

The thought that I’m effectively putting him through that again makes me feel sick.

‘I promise,’ I say, ‘nothing like that will ever happen again.’

‘I mean, it can’t,’ he says, meeting my eye. ‘I’m sure you can understand that.’

‘Of course I do,’ I assure him, softly.

Ash sips his cocktail. It is something dark, rich with walnuts and rum. ‘I mean, ultimately, I want to be with you, Neve.’

Without warning, a few tears spill down my cheeks.

‘Hey,’ he says, softening, leaning forward to wipe my face with his thumb, the tenderness with which he does so making my stomach swim. ‘Don’t get upset. I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to be an arsehole. I don’t want to make you feel bad.’

I shake my head, because what I’m actually feeling is a mess of remorse and relief.

‘The stupid thing is, I get it, Neve. Weirdly enough, I do understand. And I want to move past this.’ He leans into me then, puts a hand to my face and kisses me, tentatively. ‘If that’s what you want. Which is why I need to ask you—’ He breaks off, punches out a breath, looks down at where our legs are now nudged tightly together.

I stare at him, unable to imagine what he might be about to say.

‘Before all this happened, I booked... a trip for us. It was going to be a surprise.’

‘A trip?’ I say softly.

‘Yeah. I asked Parveen to help arrange it all with Kelley. A long weekend in September. I thought... we could go to Amsterdam. I mean, you have the guidebook at home but you’ve never been, and you haven’t had a holiday in way too long either, so I thought... Well, I wanted to surprise you.’

A surge of conflicting emotions. Amsterdam. Amsterdam. ‘That’s . . . that’s . . .’

He stares down at his half-finished cocktail, lets out an uneasy laugh. ‘Anyway. Parveen asked me today if we were still planning on going, and... I knew straight away that I wanted to. That I do want to. That... actually I’d love to just get past what’s happened and put it behind us.’

Despite everything that Amsterdam means to me, my heart goes into orbit. ‘I’d love to,’ I say, kissing him back. ‘I’d love to go away with you.’

Our houses are pretty much equidistant from the bar, but without discussion, we find ourselves walking back to mine. Above our heads, the sky rumbles, and I realise a storm is coming.

I try not to think about rain. The way it always feels like it’s hammering on my heart.

Back at the house, we head wordlessly upstairs, turning to each other in the dark heat of the bedroom. Next to the fireplace, he drops to his knees, pushing my dress up and my underwear down, gripping me from behind. Beyond the window, the storm finally breaks, the rain hitting the glass as hard as hail. I try to let what we’re doing drown out the sound of it. I reach out for something to hold on to, swiping through empty air until my fingers find the top of the fire surround. I cling to cold metal as he draws me to a precipice, again and again. My eyes roll back. My limbs go weak. My blood becomes a rush of repeating pleasure. But the whole time, I am biting my lip, so I don’t say something I can’t take back.

Chapter 31.

Over the next few weeks, I resolve to put Jamie firmly out of my mind. But whenever I catch sight of the Amsterdam guidebook on my shelf at home, it seems to wink at me, like an old message on an answerphone, drawing me back to the moment he gave it to me. It’s starting to unsettle me, that memory. As is the prospect of Amsterdam at all. Just the fact Ash picked it too.

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