The Reunion (23 page)

I adore you, Nat. You are for me, and I’m for you.

With love, always

Andrew

JEN LAY ON
her back, staring up at the ceiling, listening to the sound of the storm blowing itself out, the creaking of beams and floorboards as the house, having weathered another tempest, settled itself. She imagined that it must feel weary, the way she did – she felt as though she’d run a marathon, climbed a mountain. She longed for sleep, but she knew it wasn’t coming, not with her mind running over and over the events of the past twenty-four hours, the wreckage of the reunion.

In the final analysis, the weekend could, it was safe to say, be termed a disaster. A fractious beginning, a vicious fight in the middle and – who knew what end? She didn’t hold out much hope for a joyous reconciliation when Andrew and Lilah came back. If they managed to make it back at all. She could only hope and pray that they ploughed the road on Sundays.

Still, she hadn’t been lying when she told Dan she was glad he’d come. Maybe she shouldn’t have thrown them all together as she had, that was foolish, but she didn’t regret inviting them, being able to tell Andrew about the baby, laughing on the living-room floor with Nat, talking to Dan, him holding her hand by the fire.

There was a soft tap at her door and Dan appeared, as though conjured up by her imagination.

‘You sleeping, Jen?’

‘Not yet. Come in.’

He shuffled in slowly, holding his phone out in front of him to light the way.

‘I blew out all the candles save one,’ he said. ‘I’ll take it to bed with me.’

‘OK. Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine, yeah.’

‘Are you still nervous?’

‘No. What do you mean?’

Even in the dark, she could tell his face was colouring. She smiled to herself. ‘Oh, nothing. I thought you were a bit jumpy earlier.’

‘Yeah, all right. I have an over-active imagination.’ He squeezed her leg through the blanket.

‘I know you do. I find this place creepy, too, don’t worry. I’ve had many a night lying here in the dark, too terrified to move because I’m convinced I can hear someone moving around downstairs, nails scraping at the window…’

‘Jesus, don’t. I’ve got to sleep out in the barn, remember?’

Jen giggled. ‘Sorry. But it does feel… I don’t know. It’s really stupid.’

‘What is?’

‘You know I don’t hold any truck with the supernatural. I don’t believe in God, I think that once we’re gone, we’re gone, but still. This place, there’s something about it. I feel him here.’

‘That makes sense. This place
is
Conor somehow. There’s so much of him in it, every beam, every board, the table in the kitchen…’

‘It’s true. Also, if he was going to haunt anyone, it would be you and me, wouldn’t it?’ She tried to keep her voice light. Dan didn’t reply, he just squeezed her leg again, moving a little further up the bed, so that he was sitting level with her hips. She propped herself up on her pillows, so that she could look him in the eye.

‘Have you spoken to your girlfriend?’ she asked him. For some reason Jen didn’t want to say her name.

Dan shook his head. ‘You didn’t reply to any of my letters,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It was the guilt, wasn’t it? Was it just the guilt? Or was it more than that? Christ. I can’t believe I’m asking you this.’ He gave a low little laugh. ‘For years, years after it happened, I wondered. I just wanted to know, I was desperate to know, whether there was ever going to be a chance or whether I should just forget about you. I couldn’t forget about you.’

‘I’m sorry, Dan, I’m sorry.’

‘You should have replied to my letters, Jen. Even if it was just to put me out of my misery…’ He was leaning over her, their faces almost touching, their lips almost touching.

‘I betrayed him,’ she said softly.

‘He didn’t know.’

‘I knew. And I can’t ever be certain whether…’ She broke off.

Dan leaned in closer, kissed her lips. She closed her eyes and breathed him in. His arms were around her waist, pulling her body into his. ‘I just want a chance,’ he said. ‘We never had a chance.’

Jen wavered, caught between the temptation to give in to him and the certain knowledge that it would be a huge, confusing mistake. Gently, she pulled away from him. Her rational side dominated.

‘I… this… you…’ She was rational, she’d just lost the power to construct full sentences.

‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t be sorry.’ She smiled at him, traced her thumb down the side of his face, across his lips. ‘I don’t think you really want this, Dan.’

‘I do, believe me, I do.’

‘Right now, maybe. But I can’t really act on right now any longer. I’m going to be a mother. I’m almost forty. At some point I have to start acting like a grown-up.’

‘But, I do too,’ Dan said. ‘That’s what I want, too.’

‘Really? You want to leave your beautiful German film star and start a life with me and my baby in genteel English suburbia?’

‘I… I… Does it have to be suburbia?’ he asked. Jen laughed. ‘I want a family,’ Dan said. ‘I don’t care where we live.’

‘Dan, I know you do, I know you’ve always wanted that, but… you can’t just give up everything you have, for an idea of family, for a child that isn’t yours, for someone you hardly know any longer.’

‘I know you.’

His expression was so earnest – he meant it, this declaration, it was heartfelt. But it was also Dan; he was a romantic, he allowed himself to get carried away. And it was tempting to go along with him, to allow him to carry her away too. Only she’d done that once before, and it hadn’t ended well, not for anyone. She had to be the sensible one this time.

‘Yesterday you were in love with your girlfriend,’ Jen pointed out. ‘You talked about how she inspired you, how she made you feel…’

‘She won’t be family. It’s not like that with us. She doesn’t want kids, she doesn’t want to settle down…’ There was a note of desperation in his voice, real longing.

‘And you do all of a sudden? When did you decide this? This afternoon?’

Dan’s shoulders slumped. ‘You know that’s what I’ve always wanted, what I really wanted,’ he said. She heard pain in his voice, anger. He got to his feet and turned to leave.

‘Dan, don’t go. Please, just wait a minute.’

‘It’s fine,’ he said, and just like that his voice was light again, all earnestness and emotion gone. They might as well have been talking about the weather, or what time he wanted breakfast. ‘Sleep well, Jen.’

It was hours before she fell asleep and when she did she dreamed she was lost in the wood behind the house. Night was falling and she was afraid, and the only way to find the path out was to follow a trail of blood.

Fragments of letters from Jen to Dan, never sent

10 March 1996

You are in my head and I can’t get rid of you. Why won’t you go away? I think I am in love with you. How can I be, when I love him so much? It makes no sense, none of it.

12 April 1996

I’m sorry for the silence. I want desperately for us to be able to talk again, to be normal again, to be friends again. I miss you, Dan. I don’t even know how you feel, whether you’re sad or angry, whether you care at all. I know that there’s no chance I’m going to send this letter, I’m too much of a coward and I’m scared of what you’ll say. Still, writing the words down makes me feel better.

4 January 1997

I can never come back. I cannot see you, I cannot look at you and not think about what I did to him, and when I think about what I did, my throat closes up and I cannot breathe.

I hope you are happy, my boy. Lost boy. Now I’m lost too.

THE COFFEE WAS
rich and sweet and delicious, the pain au chocolat still warm, the chocolate inside gooey and unctuous. Lilah was ravenous. ‘I can’t believe how much I’ve eaten this weekend,’ she said through a mouthful of wonderfully light, flaky pastry. ‘I must have put on half a stone.’

Andrew raised an eyebrow. ‘You could stand to gain a few pounds, Lilah.’

‘At my age, darling, everything you gain you keep.’

‘I am your age, Lilah. And you may have noticed that I’ve been gaining and keeping for quite some time.’

Lilah grinned. ‘You’re still gorgeous,’ she said, waving at Madame Caron to top up her coffee cup.

Lilah was feeling remarkably chipper given everything that had happened yesterday: the booze, the fight, the blizzard, the crash, more booze… Still. It had been a wonderful end to the evening. It was almost, she thought, worth all the drama that went before it, making up with Andrew in front of the fire. It was only now that she was with him that she realised how much she’d missed him, how much he’d been missing from her life. How much he still meant to her.

She wasn’t sure he felt the same, though. He was distracted, constantly looking out of the window at the snow which lay thick and undisturbed on the road outside.

‘Doesn’t look like we’ll be getting back to the house any time soon, does it?’ Lilah asked cheerfully.

He shook his head. ‘Nat’s going to be so upset.’

Lilah shrugged. ‘Nothing we can do about it now, is there? Do you want the last pain au chocolat?’ He shook his head. ‘Don’t worry so much, Drew. It’ll be fine. In any case, this whole thing was kind of her fault, you know.’

‘Mmm-hmm.’ He wasn’t going to be drawn on that.

‘It’ll be OK. I’ll tell her nothing happened.’ She bit her lower lip and gave him a wink.

‘Lilah.’

‘I will! And she’ll believe me. I’ll be very convincing. You know how convincing I can be.’ She fluttered her eyelashes, her mouth arranged into a demure pout.

‘Stop that.’

She giggled. ‘Oh, lighten up. She’ll be so happy to see you again, alive and in one piece, she’s not going to worry about one night in a hotel room with me.’

Andrew rolled his eyes at her. ‘Oh, yeah. She’s going to forget all about it.’ He sipped his coffee. ‘I don’t know what you’re so cheerful about anyway. What about Zac? Don’t you think he’ll be upset about the fact you just spent the night with your ex?’

Lilah laughed, loud and long. ‘Drew, darling, I’m really sorry but I just don’t think Zac sees you as much of a threat.’

Andrew smiled ruefully. ‘No. I remember the days when I had a six-pack like that. There weren’t many blokes I was worried about then either.’

‘Sweetheart, you never had a six-pack like that.’

‘Cheers, Lilah. You’re making me feel so much better.’

Monsieur Caron approached their table, beaming at Lilah, his arms slightly outstretched as though he intended to give her a hug.

‘Bonjour les anglais! Comment ç va? Vous avez bien dormi?’ He winked at Andrew, the subtext clear: if I was in bed with her, I wouldn’t get much sleep either.

‘Oui, oui, très bien,’ Andrew said, his French making him sound remarkably like Del Boy.

‘Bon. You are… not staying one more night?’

‘We might do,’ Lilah said brightly. ‘It depends.’

‘Depends?’

‘Will it be possible to get back up – up this road, I mean, to Madame de Chassagny’s house – today?’

‘Ah, oui. They ’ave the… ’ow you say? Chasse neige?’

‘Snow plough?’

‘Yes, yes, this is it. It will go maybe at lunch time? Maybe later. They will take you, if you wish. I can ask them.’

The expression of relief on Andrew’s face spoke volumes.

‘OK. I call the man, I ask ’im to take you.’

‘That would be fantastic, thank you so much.’

Lilah pouted. ‘I was quite looking forward to another night here, away from all the drama.’ She shrugged. ‘Although I suppose it will be nice to have clean underwear. What shall we do in the meantime then? While we’re waiting for the snow plough, I mean? You want to go back to bed?’

27 February 1993

Hi Mum,

Thank you, thank you! I adore the dress – and Armani! You’re so sweet. I shall be the best-dressed girl in the college bar. Well, I already am the best-dressed girl in the college bar, obviously (there is a woeful tendency towards jeans and Docs round here), but I’ll be even better dressed now.