Page 25 of Rewrite the Stars
‘Look, I’m always on the end of the phone so talk to me when you want to, no matter what time of day or night,’ he says, clutching at straws like I am. ‘We can meet up once we know Matthew is on the mend and see where we are then, OK? We don’t have to give up just yet, do we?’
I look up at the ceiling.
‘No,’ I say, as my heart sears in pain. ‘Not yet.’
Not yet.But I know that day will come very soon with so much against us. How can I possibly pile any more pain on Matthew? I would never forgive myself.
I look at the clock on the wall ahead of me. It’s after nine in the evening, reminding me we’ve been here for four hours now. The longest four hours of my entire life.
‘Stay strong, Charlie Taylor,’ Tom whispers. ‘You’re made of solid stuff. You’re going to be fine and so is Matthew, I just know it. I’m here for you, always, even if it’s just someone to vent to when you feel like it. Look, I’d better go. Please know I’m thinking of you constantly, every second, and I mean that. I’m going nowhere. I’ll be there for you always, no matter what.’
I grip the phone. I don’t want him to hang up. I don’t want to go back in there and hear what I’m going to hear from the doctors. I don’t want to just vent to Tom when I need to, I want to be with him just like we were yesterday, so close, so at home, making plans and celebrating our second chance of being together.
‘Thank you, Tom,’ I whisper, unable to hide my sobbing now. ‘I’ll be in touch, OK?’
‘Yes,’ he says, trying to be strong. ‘We’ll chat again really soon. I’m here for you, always, Charlie. I mean that.’
And I so want to believe him, but deep in the back of my broken, muddled, loved-up mind is the knowledge that me and Tom Farley will never be simple. In fact, after today, I fear we might never, ever make it happen at all.
Chapter Six
Dublin, March 2016
There are days, when I sit here in my classroom, staring out at the spring sunshine spilling onto the daffodils and snowdrops in the school garden, that I wonder how on earth nine weeks have passed since I said goodbye to Tom Farley.
We tried so hard to keep it going, but no matter how much we tried to disguise it or deny it, the enormity of Matthew’s brush with death was like an elephant in the room and we just couldn’t get past it.
‘Go away somewhere for a few days, just the two of you,’ said Emily, forever our cheerleader. She knew I was crazy about Tom and how long I’d pined for him, but no matter how much I tried, I just couldn’t lay my guilt to rest. I needed to be near Matthew, morning, noon and night when I wasn’t working, and soon Tom felt like he was only adding more pressure to my already messed-up mind.
‘When Matthew gets better, maybe you’ll get round to clearing the air with him once and for all,’ he said to me one day when I managed to escape from the hospital. ‘You’re breaking my heart, Charlie. I can’t watch you suffer like this. You have to stop blaming yourself. Stop blaming us.’
But I couldn’t, and so when Tom was offered the opportunity to audition for a band in London, I knew I couldn’t for one second hold him back.
‘Come with me, please,’ he begged me when we were lying in bed one Sunday morning in late January. ‘We’ll rent somewhere small and take every gig that comes our way. Maybe you could ask for a career break from school? I know someone who took six months out to travel and they kept the job open so when they—’
I must admit that my gut instinct was to just pack up and go, to follow my heart and live a life in London with the man I love, doing what we both love, living a life that I know is true to my soul, but the decision was out of my hands.
Another decision to stay or go – this time I wasn’t taking any chances.
‘Oh Tom, I would love to go with you more than anything, but I can’t, not yet,’ I told him, watching as I broke his heart once and for all. ‘I can’t leave, not for a long time. But who knows, maybe I could follow you when things get better here?’
Matthew had by now come out of the critical stage but still had a mountain to climb and it was consuming all of our lives. We’d worked out a rota between the six of us – Mam, Dad, me, Emily, Kevin and Martin – which meant that we could make sure he was never alone, even if at times he didn’t know we were there at all. New words and phrases like ‘blunt trauma’, ‘haematoma’, and ‘axonal damage’ flood our everyday vocabulary while we lean on doctors who we now know by first name.
Emily thought I was mad not to take up Tom’s offer.
‘You’re only a few hours away for goodness’ sake,’ she told me. ‘You can’t carry this burden around forever, Charlotte. You’ve punished yourself enough. Go with Tom! Go and try it out and we will all still be here if you ever want to come back. Sometimes you have to make decisions for yourself. You want to go, right?’
I nodded, crying as always when I thought of Tom leaving.
‘Then go!’ she said. ‘Matthew will understand eventually. You can’t let what happened to him define the rest of your life. His feelings have done that for long enough already.’
But I couldn’t do it. My own guilty conscience was in battle with my breaking heart, and my conscience won.
Tom and I spent our last day together in Howth where we walked the Bog Linn loop with its spectacular views, grabbed some lunch at the artisan market and sat on the grass looking out at the famous Bailey lighthouse. It was a quiet day compared to the joy we felt when we last visited this part of County Dublin, but a gentle acknowledgement to what we both knew could have been had circumstances not piled up against us.
‘I’m going to miss you so badly,’ he said to me, out of the blue, as we sat with the wind in our hair and the sea at our feet. ‘Please say you’ll come and visit soon.’
I turned to him and gently touched his beautiful face with the back of my hand.
