Page 32 of Rewrite the Stars
‘She looks likeyou! She’s like your long-lost twin!’ she says, taking the magazine from my clutches and pointing out the similarities. ‘I mean,lookat her hair! Long, bleached blonde, big chunky plaits like you wear sometimes!Lookat her frame – she’s tiny like you are!Lookat her—’
‘Clothes,’ I say, and then I lean my head in my hands onto the worktop in the kitchen and let out a deep sigh. ‘She’s in a dress exactly like something I would wear. Oh Tom!’
Emily folds the magazine back into her handbag, guessing it probably wouldn’t be the best idea to leave it around for me to examine any further.
I busy myself by filling the chrome kettle, which Jack and I chose after I moved in here with him a month ago, then I push my hair back from my face, run my hands under the cold tap and dab my cheeks to cool the flush I feel.
‘He isn’t over you, Charlotte,’ Emily whispers from behind me. ‘His latest girlfriend looks exactly like you! That could have been you.’
It could have been me. Itshouldhave been me if I’d given our love more of a chance. Whatever happened to my big New Year resolution that time when I pledged to take more risks? He waited for me for longer than I even expected him to and now we’re living in polar opposite worlds. I’m going one way, he is going the other.
‘When did you last hear from him?’ asks Emily.
I look out onto the leafy green views of Merrion Square, one of Dublin’s largest and grandest Georgian gardens, where I can see in the distance the famous statue of Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde leaning so dramatically back on a huge stone.
I love this view, but I hate myself for hurting right now. I haven’t felt hurt over Tom in months and months now, yet even though it makes me sad to see him with his new girlfriend, it also makes me so happy and proud to see him enjoying success he would never have had if he’d hung around Dublin to be with me.
‘I knew that he …’ I gasp. ‘I knew he had a new band called Blind Generation and that they’d signed with Sony or some other big name. I knew from checking Google, but then I stopped looking because I couldn’t bear to see him get on with his life without me. I’m so pleased for him, Emily. I’m happy for him, but it’s hard to look at that photo, sorry.’
I feel Emily’s arm around my waist. She leans her head on my shoulder.
‘If you can’t be with him, and it upsets you in any way, you did the right thing to block anything to do with him,’ she says to me. ‘Gosh, I knew I shouldn’t have shown you that stupid picture. Me and my big mouth! Has he been in touch with you at all?’
I look up at the ceiling and breathe out.
‘He messages me sometimes,’ I confess to my sister. Her face drops in shock. ‘Not every day or every week, not even once a month, but justsometimes.’
‘Oh dear,’ says Emily.
‘Just as a friend, but I’ve asked him not to,’ I plead with her. ‘I’ve told him about Jack and how we’ve moved in together, but sometimes, I guess when he’s had a drink or is feeling lonely after a gig, he sends me a late-night message that just smashes me into pieces. Why does he still have this effect on me, Emily? Why?’
Emily turns me round to face her, folds her arms and tilts her chin up just like our dad always does when he’s getting it tough emotionally or is going to make a point.
‘Because leaving each other or being apart was never a choice you made of your own free will, neither of you,’ she tells me emphatically. ‘You didn’t want to see him go to London and he didn’t want to go without you, Charlotte. Your feelings were never in your own control. You made a decision, not for you, but for others, and sometimes that happens in life. Do you still feel for him? If you do, you need to do the right thing by Jack and let him go, darling.’
Her words, although soft and subtle in tone, hit me like a freight train and I lose my breath for a second.
‘I can’t do that,’ I say, shaking my head again.
I think of how far Jack and I have come, of how no one on earth makes me feel as safe as he does when he wraps his strong arms around me. I think of some of the road trips we have taken together, how we’ve laughed at the silliest things, how excited he gets when I tell him about the kids at school and how much we lean on each other as we talk about our day when things don’t go as planned. I think of him asking me to move in when I was already living out of a drawer here most of the time anyhow, and how excited we were when we shopped for bits and bobs to make this place ‘ours’ more than ‘his’. I think of how I’ve moved on in my heart and mind so much and how I’ve healed by being with someone as tender, loving and strong as Jack. I would never throw all that away.
‘I love Jack,’ I tell my sister. ‘We have a great life here in this apartment and I’ve met some of my dearest friends through him. I couldn’t just up and leave.’
I think of Sophie Darling in particular who I’ve become so close to. We have everything in common, even if our upbringings were poles apart. She’s a former professional dancer, a violinist, and oozes creativity. She lost her only sister to a sudden illness when she was a teenager and has never got over it, so she understands exactly the ties I have with my family since Matthew’s accident.
I’ve created a very full life with Jack. We have the full package.
‘I can’t throw this all away for some whimsical idea of a life with Tom that I don’t even know is real any more,’ I whisper.
Emily takes two cups from the frosted-glass cupboard, pops a teabag into each and fills them with steaming hot water from the kettle as I stare out through the sash windows again.
‘If it wasn’t real, you wouldn’t react like that over seeing a photo of him in a magazine, would you?’ she says. She hands me a cup after squeezing out the teabag and adding a dash of milk. ‘And he wouldn’t be still texting you when he’s drunk or lonely or both.’
I know she has a point.
‘Just saying,’ she continues, ‘but if I thought Kevin reacted in any way over a picture of an ex, I’d be having second thoughts about our relationship. I’d much rather he let me go than go on living a lie.’
I hold the cup with both hands, blow into it then take a soothing drink that warms me and settles my insides.
