the evening, answering the questions Gemma shot at him instead as he’d felt the press of Jess’s thigh against his and tried to ignore how that made him feel. Later, while Jess was in the loo, he’d answered more personal questions from Gemma. He had found himself asking a few questions as well. He’d wondered if Jess was avoiding him.
When Gemma had insisted that he walk Jess back to the hotel, his stomach fizzed. It had felt as though it was his one chance. But he had blown that chance. When she’d slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow, when he’d pulled her closer, it had felt as though a decade had slipped away, as though they were back where they started and he had never boarded that flight to America all those years ago. So why had he gone and walked away from her again?
Possibly because he wouldn’t have known which version of the truth to tell her – because she was bound to want to know why he was back. He hadn’t been sure if he could lie to her and he hadn’t been sure if he could tell her the truth.
As Rupert opened his front door and allowed Captain to drag him out on his morning walk, he told himself that walking away again had been the best thing he could have done, for both of them.
‘Are you angry with me?’ my mother asked.
‘Of course I’m not angry with you, Mum,’ I replied. ‘I am wondering why you didn’t tell me though.’
We were in the garden of my mother’s flat in Highgate. She had moved out of Cambridge after I graduated from university, after my father died, moving to London to be nearer to me. We always had a need to be near each other since Dad died; Mum had been an only child too and she wanted to keep what family she had close. It had worked out well for both of us in the end.
My mother, Caro Jefferson, was a poet. She lived quietly on her not-insubstantial royalties and my father’s even less insubstantial life insurance payout. She got involved with community projects in Highgate, wrote for the local magazine, helped organise the costumes for the pantomime, that kind of thing. She was happy there – who wouldn’t be? Highgate is beautiful.
It felt as though we’d looked at a thousand flats in north London before we came across this one, but as soon as we saw it, Mum knew it was the right one. I had started working at The Ham & High then – the newspaper for Hampstead and Highgate – and was living with Dan on Kentish Town Road. Mum’s flat was just far enough away for me to not feel Mum was on top of me, but near enough for us to go round whenever we were hungry. Cadet journalists and inexperienced photographers don’t earn very much.
Mum’s flat was the lower ground floor of a converted Georgian terrace. The flat itself was a little dark but the French doors in the kitchen opened out onto a beautiful garden where Mum could indulge in her other great love – breeding roses.
We were in her rose garden the morning after I got back from York, Mum pruning away as I sat nearby enjoying the early morning sun. I’d been hesitatingly telling her about seeing Rupert again. She’d known he was back in the UK but hadn’t told me.
‘I hadn’t wanted to upset you, darling,’ Mum said as she delicately pruned her precious roses. ‘It took you so long to get over him, I thought it was best left in the past.’
‘I’m surprised,’ I replied. ‘A romantic like you. I’d have thought you would have been scheming to get us back together!’ I grinned at her, but her face was serious.
‘There’s nothing romantic about what happened. Have you any idea what it felt like to watch you hurting like that?’
What could I say to that? My mother thought it had taken a long time for me to get over Rupert. I know now that I never did.
‘How did you know he was back?’ I asked.
‘His mother told me. We’re still in touch – I think she probably hears from me more often than she hears from her son though. They were never a close family, were they? He always seemed to prefer our house to his.’
A memory flashed in my head then of us doing our homework at my mum’s big kitchen table together, heads down over our books, kicking each other with our toes under the table. I hadn’t realised that Mum still kept in touch with Rupert’s parents. She returned to Cambridge now and again, but I hadn’t been back since she moved to London. I’d avoided Cambridge since Rupert left.
‘His sister is a doctor now,’ I said. ‘She lives in Sydney.’
Mum nodded. She already knew that too.
‘How did you feel about seeing him again?’ she asked. It was impossible not to notice the look of concern on her face. I knew she was worried about me. Mum knew better than anyone how ill I had been and she had been concerned about me going on Gemma’s hen weekend at all, thinking it might be too much for me. When I had first got ill, I’d left my job at the newspaper and moved into Mum’s spare room. I’d never got around to moving out again. I hadn’t been able to summon up the energy if I’m honest, so I turned the spare room into a bedroom-cum-study and I started writing a book about Ancient Greece, not knowing where it would take me at the time.
I didn’t know how I felt about seeing Rupert again. Part of me was regretting not talking to him more, not asking for a phone number or if he wanted to meet for a coffee before I went back to London. But part of me thought there was too much pain and heartache, too much left unsaid, to simply pick up where we left off.
‘It was lovely to see him,’ I said, not really answering Mum’s question at all.
‘I sense a but,’ my mother replied, putting down her secateurs and coming to sit next to me. She tilted her head up towards the sun and pushed her sunglasses up her nose. Sometimes she looked like a film star.
‘I never expected to see him again,’ I said. ‘I’d finally stopped thinking about him. It was a shock.’
Mum reached over to pat my hand. ‘Of course it was a shock,’ she said. ‘Did you talk about seeing each other again?’
I shook my head.
‘Why not?’ she asked.
‘There was so much I felt I couldn’t tell him,’ I replied. ‘About what happened, about how ill I was, about Dan, about still living here with you.’
‘Living with your mother is nothing to be ashamed about. Why did you feel you couldn’t tell him?’
Mum had a habit of always getting straight to the point.
‘He’s achieved so much,’ I replied. ‘He’s top of his field and I’ve achieved virtually nothing. We both had so much potential …’
‘You’ve had two books published,’ my mother interrupted. ‘Both of which sold well, and you’ve just signed a contract for two more.’
I knew I was making excuses and pretending that it hadn’t felt right seeing Rupert again. The truth was I hadn’t had the courage to take the opportunity and neither had he. But that didn’t mean I hadn’t been thinking about him constantly since I’d seen
