Page 58 of Pictures of Him

‘I think, like his father, he has a fatal tendency to overreact.’

‘Oh my God.’

‘I’ve known him since he was eight years old, Catherine. And I know what he’s capable of. He takes things to heart, he dwells on them. We need to be careful. You know Lucian has never forgiven his mother for being unfaithful to his father. He hates her. And I think it would be the same with us. I think it might push him over the edge.’

Jack didn’t tell me to leave you; that was my own doing. But I knew as I swept up my things from your room, all those points of familiarity so heartbreaking to me now – your easel in the middle of the room, your chest of drawers with yesterday’s twin mugs of coffee on top – that I had to leave and never return; I had to protect you from yourself. I grabbed as many of my things as I could find; I scrawledthat horrible note in your sketchpad:I’ve changed my mind. I can’t do this. I can’t see you any more.

I took a scarf of yours too, a blue one that still held your sharp, citrusy smell. Did you know? Did you ever miss that scarf?

Jack came out of the kitchen as I wrenched open the front door, clasping my clothes and your scarf to my chest.

‘Catherine?’

His voice was low, quiet, perhaps trying to instil some calm in me, but I didn’t turn around.

‘We made a mistake when we were drunk. It happens. No one ever needs to know about this.’

I ran all the way back to the house in St Paul’s, feeling the real pain in my body now and remembering the grittier details of our pairing. Jack’s face above me, the things he said, the things he wanted us to do.

Liv was coming out of the front door as I arrived.

‘Jesus Christ,’ she said when she saw me. Crying, shaking. She took me back inside, sat down beside me on her bed.

‘What’s happened?’

I looked at my dearest friend and I had no words, not even to her. Just the start of a dark, toxic shame that would wrap me in silence.Believe that if it makes you feel better: Jack’s words burnt onto my soul.

‘I’ve broken up with Lucian,’ I told her. ‘And I’m going home.’

Four months before: Catherine

Liv is staying in the Pink Room, a rose-themed bedroom that is almost absurdly feminine and bears his uncle’s decorating traits, I’d say. The walls are papered in a pattern of dark red roses, the dressing table wears a pale pink skirt; even the bedspreads are pink, vintage and flower-sprigged. Needless to say, she loves it.

Neither of us says a word while she unpacks her suitcase, hanging up a gold dress (for her) on the wardrobe door and a navy-blue one (for me) on top of it. Once Mary has arrived with a tea tray – silver teapot, china cups that are paper-thin, gilt handles – we sit opposite each other on the twin beds.

‘You know Harry called me earlier today. Asked me to persuade you to stay tonight. He sounded kind of angsty about it.’

‘Harry wants us to have the same happy ending as him and Ling. But obviously that’s not possible.’

‘Because of Sam and the kids?’

‘Of course. What else?’

‘You love Lucian. I know you do.’

I nod but cannot speak. There is a real pain in my chest,actual pain, not metaphorical, like the murmurs of a heart attack.

‘I think it’s the same for him.’

‘Oh Liv, I think so too. We can’t talk about it, not yet, but it’s there between us all the time. Neither of us was expecting a second chance.’

‘But that’s exactly it, don’t you see? Thisisyour second chance, and by leaving now, you’re running away again. You’re doing the same thing you did all those years ago.’

‘Hardly the same, Liv. I’m married with kids.’

Liv looks at me and says nothing, but it’s all there written in her face. I know exactly what she’s thinking. She thinks – or rather she suspects – I’m hiding something. And of course she is right. The real reason for my desertion of you was quickly shrouded by news of my mother’s terminal illness. ‘Stage four, darling,’ a new language for me to learn. In those paralysing months between her life and her death, there was room for nothing else.

Now Liv leans forward. She takes my hand.

---