Page 59 of A Manny for Christmas

I laugh nervously, because the truth is that I broke Kate’s heart a couple of months ago. She was gorgeous, but I feel less guilty about it than I should.

‘I called it a day with someone a while back,’ I tell her. ‘Kate. She was lovely. She worked—works—at WaterAid, too.’

‘And…’ she prompts.

I shift, uncomfortable. ‘And we dated for a couple of years. But as you said—it wasn’t like it was with you. It was relaxed. Fun. It was nice to have someone to be close to out there. But then she started wanting to make plans about the future, about having a family, and—’

‘I think I can guess the rest,’ she says tightly.

‘I was straight with her the whole time.’ I can hear the defensiveness in my tone. ‘It wasn’t a great love, at the end of the day. Not at my end, anyway. She’s better off without me.’

Molly sucks in a breath through her teeth. ‘Poor girl. I can’t imagine how heartbroken she must be.’ She holds my gaze. ‘You, Max Rutherford, have never been an easy man to walk away from.’

‘You say that. But you managed it.’ I aim for amused, lighthearted. But I suspect what comes out sounds more like bitterness.

She considers. ‘I did. Technically. I got myself away from you. Put physical distance between us.’ She pauses, her forehead creasing between her eyes. ‘But you’ll never know how close I came to failing at that particular challenge.’

I still. ‘What do you mean, Mol?’

Her hand drifts up as if she’s beseeching me, before it crashes to the sofa in defeat. ‘Come on. You know how difficult I found it to walk away. God, I nearly called you so many bloody times. I wrote you so many texts I never sent. Because I missed youso fucking much, and nothing about cutting you out of my life felt right.

‘In the end, I deleted you from my phone contacts, even though I knew your number off my heart. Obviously. But it made it slightly less easy to drunk dial you, or sober dial you, even. So what might have seemed like a clean break at my end was anything but.’

I rub a hand over my face. ‘Jesus Christ, Mol.’

‘I know,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you.’

‘No. You should have. Look, I was the same. I nearly packed a bag so many times. Nearly went to find you. But unless I was willing to give you what you wanted, I knew it would be unfair to you if I showed up. Not just unfair, plain disrespectful. So I applied to some NGOs in Africa instead. I knew I couldn’t stay at the cottage without you.’

She scoffs bitterly. ‘Does it make me a horrible person that I’m glad you suffered too?’

I laugh, equally bitterly. ‘No. It makes you human. But just because we didn’t make it, doesn’t mean our relationship wasn’t a success while it lasted.’

‘It’s like that poem,’ she says, her forehead screwing up in concentration. ‘The Jack Gilbert one.’

‘I’m not familiar.’

‘Something about Icarus, about how, just because he fell, it didn’t mean he didn’t fly. Didn’t mean he didn’t triumph, even briefly.’

I pause, digesting her words and making a mental note to look the poem up as soon as I get back to my room. ‘I like that,’ I tell her. ‘We did ourselves proud. And it all worked out. For you, at least.’

She scrunches up her nose and takes a sip of champagne. ‘Kind of.’

‘Kind of. Sounds like your taste in men went downhill after me, but at least he could come up with the goods.’

She laughs so hard she practically snorts out her champagne.

‘Yeah. At least he was good for something.’

I’m going to be good for everything you need, sweetheart, I tell her silently.

All of it.

21

MOLLY

Walking away from Max after a conversation likethatis a wrench. Leaving the gorgeous, festive warmth of the living room and heading alone to my bedroom, which is fucking freezing, feels symbolic of leaving the cosy glow of our conversation.

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