Page 46 of Between the Lies

‘I lost my wife, Nina! There’s nothing else left for me to lose.’

‘You could’ve died!’ Nina yelled back. ‘He could’ve killed you.’

She’d expected his frown to fall away. Instead, Robert threw his head back and laughed like she was a stand-up comedian.

Goosebumps rose on her arms at the sound. Had he finally lost it?

‘You think I care?’ He snorted.

He should. Nina tried to find a reason. ‘If you die, how will you find justice for your wife?’

Her question was met with silence. Robert’s smile dissolved, his shoulders deflating. ‘I’ll die trying.’

Nina hadn’t ever been in a proper relationship, the kind you needed to make a marriage work. But she’d had a friend who… Nina cleared her throat. ‘I can’t have your death on my conscience. So I’ve decided to leave.’

‘Is that what you do, Nina? Run away when the going gets tough?’ Robert smiled, a curving of his lips that looked more feral than friendly.

Nina folded her arms. ‘You don’t know me, Robert. You don’t know anything about me.’

‘You ran away from your dead colleague, you ran away from me at the pub, you ran away from your own flat, and you’re doing the same thing now.’

‘I was trying to keep myself alive!’ Nina pressed her palm into her chest. ‘It takes guts to leave everything you’ve ever known behind. To leave the things that tell the story of your life behind.’

Robert tilted his head, a frown forming between his eyebrows again. ‘What about the people you have to say goodbye to?’

Nina’s shoulders deflated. Of course he’d asked about that. He believed in people even when reality stared him in the face. ‘People either let you down or leave. It only makes sense that you leave first.’

Robert plopped down on the sofa beside her, the false mirth and fight gone from his body. ‘Aye, they do leave.’

Nina let go of the sofa, and before she knew it, her hand had found Robert’s. ‘Before I… left India, I had a best friend. We dreamed of becoming famous journalists, travelling the world and ensuring we always reported facts; none of those fake panic-creating stories. We both got a job interview withThe Times, but my friend never turned up for hers. Turns out, her boyfriend proposed, and she went dress shopping that day. I was so angry at her.’

Robert gave Nina’s hand a squeeze.

Nina recalled that day like it had just happened. ‘I stormed to her place, yelling at her for her stupidity. And that… that idiot told me being a top journalist had beenmydream. That she wanted to be a homemaker. That her boyfriend would provide for her and their future family. I’d known her our entire lives. Of course I didn’t believe her. We had a vicious argument.’

Robert sighed. ‘You never made up?’

Nina let go of his hand and wrapped an arm around herself. ‘My boyfriend thought we’d argued because I also wanted to be a wife and mother. That my entire being had to be attached to him. My family was so happy about the idea. And I… I could see my future – trapped in a lifetime of sacrifices and compromises. I couldn’t do it. So I left. The first time is the hardest.’

‘You left the country?’

Nina stared at her fingers, her ever present rings in place – but not an engagement or wedding band on them. ‘If I’d stayed, it would’ve been another man. My family isn’t the most patriarchal or orthodox, but they’d still have looked at me like I was lacking in some way. Maybe even encouraged me to get married to the next loser who came their way.’

‘What do they think of your life here?’

Nina shrugged. ‘We haven’t spoken since I left.’

Robert gaped at her, and she left him to process that piece of information. She wasn’t a unicorn in that way. Many people were estranged from their families.

After a good minute, he tilted in his seat to face her. ‘Don’t you miss them? Hell, what about your best friend?’

‘Should I have stayed, like she did, to make them happy? The day I left, I made a choice to live my life to the fullest. And you, Robert, have a similar choice to make. But you’re just flushing this chance down the drain.’

CHAPTERTWENTY-TWO

Flushing his life down the drain? Who was she to tell him that? She’d run away from anything resembling an issue – or a commitment.

If you couldn’t commit, where could you be in your life? Drifting from one thing to another, alone…

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