course!’ He opened his blue-green eyes wide. ‘Because if anything, it should have been the other way round! You were the one who broke things off and moved back here to live with an old boyfriend, after all.’
‘I did what?’ I gasped.
‘Come on, Chloe!’ His eyes took on a sudden stormier hue. ‘When I hotfooted it back to the university to find you at the start of the new term, your ex-roommate told me all about it.’
‘Rachel told you that I’d gone back to an old boyfriend?’ I repeated incredulously.
‘Yes.’ He got up and walked over to the fire, where he stood gazing down into the flames, his back to me. ‘It’s strange, but even then I couldn’t believe you’d do that to me, until she showed me part of a letter you’d sent her and there it was in your own handwriting.’
‘Saw what?’ I asked numbly. ‘What did it say?’
‘Oh, I remember every word! You said you weren’t coming back, because once you’d met up again with your old boyfriend, you realised you loved him and couldn’t bear to leave him again. His name was—’
He broke off and turned suddenly to look at me, his eyes widening.
‘Jake,’ I finished quietly. ‘My baby half-brother – that’s who I couldn’t bear to leave.’
I felt tears welling up in my eyes and slowly spilling, but I didn’t brush them away, just sat and looked at him.
‘Oh God,’ he said quietly, ‘Poppy told me you’d brought him up and I never made the connection. So, you mean there was no other man?’
‘No, there was just Jake. I realised as soon as I got home how much he’d missed me and that I couldn’t bear to leave him again.’ I looked at Raffy, trying to find a way of explaining the situation so he would understand.
‘My mother neglected him – she was forever off with a new lover – but I had the mad idea that perhaps if I wasn’t around to take over whenever she wanted me to, if I went away to university, she’d be forced into being a proper mother. But it didn’t work out like that, because the second I set out for home at the end of that first term, she dumped Jake with Zillah and took off.’
‘But couldn’t Zillah look after him?’
‘No, Zillah loved him but she isn’t good with babies – she’d forget him for hours and then when she remembered, feed him all the wrong things and drop fag ash over him. Besides, I felt really guilty that I’d hardly given Jake a thought once I’d met you, and he’d needed me. I explained everything in the letter I sent you, but you obviously didn’t read it.’
His head had been bent over his clasped hands, his long black hair hiding his face, but now he looked up quickly. ‘I didn’t get any letter!’
‘It was enclosed with the one to Rachel. She was supposed to give it to you when you turned up…And I was quite sure you would turn up,’ I added painfully.
‘I did, the very first chance I got. But Rachel never gave me the letter and she only showed me that bit of the one you sent her, to go with her story.’
‘So you just believed all her lies?’
‘I – well, it was in your writing,’ he said defensively, ‘and she was very convincing.’
‘So convincing that you never stopped to think if that was the sort of cruel thing I would do? Or tried to find out if it was the truth?’
My tears had dried and for a moment I felt filled with white-hot rage: for Raffy’s credulity and stupidity, for Rachel’s duplicity and callousness, and for all the lost years of my teens and twenties, which I’d devoted to Jake.
But I quickly caught myself up on that last thought: I might sometimes have resented Jake’s claims on me, but it didn’t mean I didn’t love him. I’d do it again if I had to.
Raffy sighed. ‘No, I suppose I was so mad I wasn’t thinking straight and anyway, I didn’t see why she would tell me lies.’
‘Because she always fancied you,’ I said. ‘She saw her chance and took it.’
‘But what about you?’ he asked, suddenly rallying. ‘Didn’t you wonder why I never wrote or turned up?’
‘Not after she told me she’d given you my letter and you hadn’t even bothered to read it. And by the way, she said you jumped straight into bed with her, and I don’t expect that bit was a lie?’
He looked shamefaced. ‘No, I got blind drunk in the students’ union bar and then she…consoled me. I regretted it next day. Never went back. Went to hell in a handbasket, in fact,’ he said soberly. ‘What a fool I was!’
‘I still can’t believe you thought I would ask another person to tell you something like that – you must have known I loved you! And for weeks I kept expecting you to turn up, until I got Rachel’s letter. And after that the papers were full of all the things you and the rest of Mortal Ruin were up to, so I knew you’d completely forgotten about me.’
‘But I hadn’t! Lord knows, I tried, but you were forever coming back to haunt me.’ He sat down again and, leaning forward, took my hands in a warm, firm grasp. ‘It took God to make me see just what effects my actions had on other people, and turn me outwards, instead of in. I found it a hard struggle to truly forgive you in my heart for what I thought you’d done to me, but I always hoped you were happy and it had turned out well for you.’
‘That’s more than I managed for you, because I never forgave you at all! Whenever one of your damned songs reminded me of you, my thoughts were about ninety per cent cocoa solids.’
‘I’m guessing they were pretty bitter, then?’
‘I think you could say that, with a dash of hot chilli on the side. My opinion of you was that you were a cheap forastero blend and I was probably right!’
‘Thanks,’ he said drily. ‘But I’m truly sorry if things haven’t worked out for you. I always pictured you married and with children when I thought of you and—’
He broke off: perhaps something in my expression warned him not to go there.
‘I nearly got married, but it didn’t work out, and then I had Jake to bring up. I feel I’ve done my bit in the motherhood and relationship stakes, so now I’m concentrating on my business.’
I suddenly realised that he was still holding my hands between his and it felt as if some powerful current was passing between us…until I snatched them away.
‘But Felix mentioned that your ex-fiancé has turned up again, so maybe you won’t always feel that way?’ he suggested.
‘David’s just a friend these days, that’s all,’ I said shortly. ‘Felix gets the daftest ideas.’
‘Right,’ Raffy said, and got up. ‘Look, Chloe, what’s happened, happened, and I can’t change that. But I’m so very sorry and I hope eventually that you’ll find it in your heart to forgive me for unintentionally hurting you so much, just
