Page 73 of When The Night Falls

Omw to Alex. Join?

Instead of replying, I opened Alexander’s message.

Andy’s coming over. You should come. I’m sure he’s going to complain about Chloe, and you’re much better than I am at putting him in his place

Groaning, I halted to reply to Alex.

You’ll have to manage on your own. I’ve got dinner plans with the fam. Just tell him he’s being an idiot. He knows it’s true, deep down

Poor Chloe. I truly pitied her.

Over the years, both Alexander and I had grown to regard her as a sister; she wasn’t just Andy’s girlfriend to us. Because of that, we had taken her side in the aftermath of their split. Besides, we both knew it was only a matter of time before Andy would come crawling back to her, because his love for her was undying. Their issues weren’t based on a lack of love, but rather on a difference of opinion on how to proceed in the future.

Chloe desperately wanted to conceive, and she was growing short on time. Four years ago, she had been diagnosed with endometriosis, which was a condition that could affect her fertility. The older she got, the slimmer her chances of conceiving would become. Like Andy and Alex, she was twenty-nine now, and she had waited a whole decade for Andy to become mature enough to be a father. The trouble was that Andy still didn’t feel ready. The idea of children frightened him. He had voiced concerns about whether he was fit for the role at all and frequently hid behind the excuse that he wanted to focus on his career for a while longer, which – understandably – Chloe had grown impatient with.

All she demanded was a clear answer – did he want to have children anytime soon? If he didn’t, he had to let her go. But Andy did want children. He had told me several times. He just wasn’t quite sure he was fit for fatherhood at this point in his life.

It was quite the dilemma, but I was convinced Andy was overthinking it. As soon as he held his baby in his arms, he would settle into being a father without trouble.

A message came in from Francesca then, and I was reminded that I still hadn’t replied to her last text.

Sorry if this seems clingy, but are we meeting tomorrow or not? I’d like to know so that I can make other plans if we’re not x

‘Fuck,’ I muttered and resumed walking. I had marked her text as read, something I always did because I favoured transparency, but now it had cost me the time I otherwise could have spent contemplating her offer. I would have to reply soon.

I wondered if Kate knew about us. We hadn’t spoken all that much since the end of our relationship five years ago. As I thought about it, I couldn’t remember having spoken to her at all during the past year. She lived in Lancaster now with her new boyfriend, whose name was Matthew – an engineer like her.

Kate and I had met during my final year at Cambridge. We were only bed partners when I first met Francesca – Kate’s best friend from childhood. It wasn’t until I was about to move back to London to complete the LPC LLM at the University of Law that Kate and I agreed to try a relationship.

At first, things were stable between us, and I often went back to Cambridge to visit her. But, as time went on, my career demanded more and more of my time. In the end, our relationship fell apart, but I hadn’t tried to save it either.

Following our split, I hadn’t thought I would meet Francesca again, and I certainly hadn’t imagined that I would ever end up in bed with her – I had never found her interesting.

Then, by some coincidence, I encountered her at Disrepute a few weeks before I first met Cara. Violet was there as well, but she left early to meet Clive – a man she was currently seeing unofficially and had yet to make up her mind about.

Nevertheless, Violet’s departure that night made way for Francesca and me to rekindle our past friendship. She told me she had recently split from the boyfriend she’d had when I was with Kate – Oliver, who I had met a few times – and that she had plans to move from Southampton to London in the near future.

As the evening progressed, she found the courage to ask me out on a date, but I was hesitant to accept. Though Kate and I were no longer together, I still had tremendous respect for her, so I would never think of courting one of her closest friends, and I especially wouldn’t when knowing I had completely broken her heart. It would only have rubbed salt into the wound, and I wanted to avoid that.

But when I asked Francesca if she still kept in touch with Kate, she explained that they had drifted apart and were no longer close, so I didn’t see any harm in going on a date with her.

I didn’t expect much from it, but it turned out to be endurable, and I even went so far as to end it with her in my bed. As she recovered beside me, her naked body damp with sweat, she confessed to lusting after me even while I was with Kate and she with Oliver, and that she had been infatuated with me back then.

The news upset me at first because I did not appreciate the disloyalty it implied toward Kate, but upon remembering that she was no longer part of our lives, I put it out of my mind. Besides, Francesca had never acted on it, and I could hardly hold her human errors against her. We were all guilty of having thoughts and feelings that would be considered immoral if acted upon, but that was the critical distinction – they required the act in order to be punished as immoral.

We had met six more times since then because – and it was an awful thing to admit – her presence in my life had become a matter of convenience for sexual purposes. Though she wasn’t the brightest, she was a pleasant person – she could even be funny sometimes – and she was capable of arousing me, so I had seen no reason to end it. Recently, however, I had sensed that her attachment was becoming stronger than I was comfortable with. While she was perfectly charming, I didn’t want to pursue a romantic relationship with her, because our chemistry had never been effortless. Unlike Cara, she didn’t fascinate me in the slightest, and I considered initial fascination a requirement when it came to my romantic endeavours.

There I went again. Cara, Cara, Cara – as if I hadn’t a life of my own, as if she was the only person worth my attention in the entire world.

I now compared every potential candidate to her. She had become the standard I sought, and nothing else would suffice. I no longer enjoyed Violet’s moans of pleasure because they weren’t Cara’s, and I seemed unable to admire Francesca’s beauty because it wasn’t Cara’s.

The reality of that angered me to the extent that I acted on emotion and replied to Francesca that I would be delighted to see her tomorrow. Foolish in my misery, I hoped I could fill the void that Cara had left behind with the attention of other women.

I was desperate to regain control because Cara’s presence in my life made me feel powerless. In her audience, it was like I no longer reigned over my own mind, much less my body, and if there was one thing that frightened me above all, it was to be rendered powerless.

And yet, despite this, I experienced an incessant need to see her again. It was entirely compulsive; I couldn’t seem to resist it no matter how hard I tried.

Dinner couldn’t happen soon enough.

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