Page 98 of It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas
I grabbed the bottle from her and took my own swig. ‘You knewwhatwould happen?’
‘That you’d want to move back, even though there’s nothing left there for either of us any more.’
‘How do you know what’s there if you never look?’ I challenged, the harsh burn of the vodka emboldening me.
Elle sighed. ‘There’s no need for me to look. My life is here.’
‘And I respect that. But I’m a separate entity to you; I can make my own choices.’
Elle scoffed and flopped down on the sofa, but I kept talking.
‘You’ve honestly never been tempted to return?’
She shook her head. ‘Me and Scarnbrook are done, for good.’
‘Tell me why, Elle. I’ve never understood why you hated it there so much.’
Elle sighed, curling her legs underneath her and tucking herself into the corner of the sofa.
‘A ton of shit went down before I met you, Mally. Did you never wonder why my dad wasn’t on the scene when we moved next door?’
‘I always figured you’d tell me when you were ready but, well, you never did.’
‘That’s typical of you, though, isn’t it? You wait for things to happentoyou, instead of making things happen for yourself.’
‘Ouch.’
‘Am I right, though?’
‘Perhaps. But we’re very different people. Not everyone has ambition and drive built into them. Some of us are happy to stay smaller.’
‘Yeah, well, I’m not prepared to stay small. I want to be as big as possible. I wanted to show him –Dad– he’d made the wrong choice.’
‘That he shouldn’t have left you and your mum?’
‘He didn’t just randomly leave us, Mally. We found out he had a whole other family. Another partner, two kids, a mortgage, package holidays overseas when we thought he was away for work – the whole shebang.’
‘Fuck. Fuck!’
‘Yep. And when Mum found out, she didn’t even give him an ultimatum. She just let him leave us. She allowed herself to be made small by him. And I promised myself I’d never reduce myself to that, for anyone. So there’s my villain origin story. Satisfied?’
‘Of course I’m not “satisfied”, Elle. And you’re not a “villain”, for fuck’s sake: you’re just a messed-up human, like the rest of us. All this stuff you’ve been dealing with is huge. I’m so sorry you’ve been carrying all of this for so long. Does Rory know?’
‘Yeah, he knows.’
‘Good.’
‘And I didwantto tell you, so many times. But it was just easier for me not to.’
‘Sometimes the easiest choice isn’t the best choice, is it?’
‘I guess not.’
‘It wasn’t easy for me to go back to Scarnbrook, you know. In many ways, it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.’
‘So why did you want to go?’
I collapsed onto the sofa next to her. ‘For closure, maybe? I dunno. It just felt like the right thing to do after all this time.’
