out if he’s single or not,’ she went on. ‘He’s been single for years, since before he left America – which means things never worked out with Camilla after all.’
‘It’s none of my business whether he’s single or not,’ I said.
‘Oh come on, Jess, you know you never got over him. This is your chance to get under him again.’
‘Gem, I know you’re over the moon about getting married and I’m delighted for you, but it doesn’t mean that you get to matchmake. Even if I am the last one left on the shelf.’ I smiled. After Caitlin got married the same year that she qualified as a nurse, Gemma and I had always had a running joke about who would be the first of us to get married. I was living with Dan then, so we always assumed it would be me. It’s funny how things work out. I never thought being the last one to get married would bother me as much as it did.
We had turned thirty the previous year and not long afterwards Mike asked Gemma to marry him. Now we were thirty-one, Gemma’s wedding just a few weeks away, and I couldn’t deny that something had shifted – a feeling that I’d forgotten something, or something was missing. I wanted what Gemma had, what Caitlin had. I denied it of course, because I never thought it mattered to me. Since the day Rupert Tremayne walked away from me I hadn’t believed I cared. It turned out it mattered a lot – I was just too scared to admit it.
Gemma leaned towards me with a wink. ‘You must have seen the way he’s looking at you,’ she whispered. ‘It’s still there, isn’t it? That spark between you two?’
I didn’t say anything, unwilling to admit how seeing him again after all these years was making me feel.
‘Come on,’ Gemma said, heading back towards the bar again. ‘Once more unto the breach.’
‘Can you give me a minute?’ I asked. ‘I’ll be out soon.
Being near him again was bringing it all back, his thigh pressing against mine, the way he held his pint glass, the way he smiled. I didn’t want it brought back. I couldn’t face it.
Because Gemma was right – I never did get over him.
When I came back into the bar, Gemma was trying to organise everybody to go to a nightclub with her. This was the most disorganised hen weekend I’d ever been to. Usually every minute of every day is micromanaged, from private Pilates lessons to shooting parties. But Gemma wasn’t one for timetables and agendas. She had announced that she wanted a weekend in York and off we all went without a plan, accompanied by some of her work colleagues. At least it took the pressure off Caitlin and me to organise anything specific.
I pulled Gemma to one side.
‘If you’re all moving on, I’m going to go back to the hotel,’ I said quietly. I didn’t want anyone else to know, to bring up the past, to fuss. I watched her brow furrow, her face suddenly serious and sober.
‘Are you feeling ill again?’ she asked. ‘I don’t want …’
‘I’m fine, honestly,’ I interrupted. ‘Just tired that’s all.’
‘Where are you staying?’ I heard Rupert ask. I wondered how long he’d been standing there, how much of the conversation he’d heard.
‘The posh hotel near York Minster,’ Gemma replied. I didn’t think it was any of Rupert’s business where I was staying.
‘It’s called the Minster,’ Rupert deadpanned, trying not to smile.
‘That’s the one!’
‘I’ll walk you back,’ he said, turning to me.
‘I’m fine. I can walk back to the hotel on my own.’
‘I know you can,’ he said, quietly. ‘But I’d like to walk with you.’
My stomach flipped.
‘I’d rather he walked with you too,’ Gemma said. ‘So that’s settled.’ As Gemma wandered off to organise a taxi, her veil slipping to one side again, he caught my eye and raised his eyebrows.
‘That’s settled.’ Rupert smiled.
‘I suppose it is,’ I replied. Gemma always was the bossy one.
‘Shall we?’ he asked, gesturing towards the door. As we began to walk away from the pub, he was so close to me I wanted to reach out and touch him, to draw him towards me, but I knew I shouldn’t. As if he could read my mind he held out his arm to me and I slipped my hand into the crook of his elbow. It felt so natural, exactly the way we’d walked together years ago. I’m not sure who pulled who closer, but it felt as though neither of us could resist the warmth of each other’s bodies. It felt as though we’d been waiting ten years for this moment.
‘It’s been a long time, Jessie,’ he said quietly.
‘Ten years in September,’ I replied. I wasn’t going to tell him that I knew the exact number of months, days, even hours since I’d watched him walk away from me at Heathrow on that unusually hot morning. ‘How long have you been back?’ I asked instead, before I was dragged back to that summer. I wasn’t ready to talk about the past yet.
‘Nearly three years.’
‘And you never got in touch?’ I asked.
He stopped walking then, so suddenly that a group of drunk students almost fell over us. One of them recognised him and started calling his name but he didn’t acknowledge them. Instead, he looked down at me, his gaze so intense it almost made me want to look away.
‘I didn’t think you’d want me to,’ he said.
I didn’t know how to reply to that. While Rupert had always been in the back of my mind, I had never really considered what it would be like to have him back in my life. But now all I could think of was the last three years and how we could have been seeing each other every day.
‘Besides,’ he said, looking away and starting to walk again. ‘You’re a hard woman to track down.’
That was true. And for him to know that meant he must have looked, probably more than once. I didn’t have social media or a website or a blog. There were no photos of me online. You wouldn’t find a thing – unless you knew who to look for, of course. Typing in ‘Jessica Clarke’ wouldn’t turn up much on me – that I knew.
The reason you won’t find me online is because I write for a living under a secret pen name. If you search for that name, you’ll find all sorts of things but none of them link back to me. I’ve been careful about that. I don’t even have a personal Facebook account anymore.
‘You could have looked for me,’ he said when he realised I wasn’t going to rise to the bait and tell him why I was so hard to track down. ‘I’m all over the internet.’
Again, true.
