The Pieces of You and Me. Rachel Burton

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СКАЧАТЬ on the book, my agent had the idea to put it out under a pen name so I didn’t feel pressured to do interviews or book signings. Over the last three years CJ Rose had become quite the enigma. I sometimes wondered if it was the mystery that sold the books rather than the writing.

      Rupert smiled at me. ‘Does that mean I’m someone who matters?’ he asked.

      And then the ice was broken and the awkwardness seemed to disappear. We sat on the bench and talked and talked while the twilight turned to night around us and the sounds of Gemma’s wedding reception continued in the background. He asked about my books and I told him how I came up with the idea of a detective novel set in Ancient Greece one rainy Sunday afternoon in Highgate and how, once I started thinking about it, I couldn’t stop. I told him about my agent and how she’d signed me on the strength of my first three chapters and I told him about the long agonising wait for a publisher. We laughed to discover that our books were published by different imprints of the same publisher. All these years and neither of us had known.

      We talked about people we used to know in Cambridge and what they were doing now. I told him about Caitlin’s family and Gemma’s husband and he told me that his best friend John was still in Cambridge, married with three children and a job in IT that Rupert didn’t understand; that they met for a beer whenever Rupert went back to visit his parents, which I guessed wasn’t very often. He didn’t talk about his parents at all.

      ‘Tell me something I couldn’t possibly know,’ I said.

      He paused for a moment. ‘Mine’s nowhere near as good as yours,’ he said.

      ‘Tell me anyway.’

      ‘Do you remember Dan Kelly?’

      I felt my stomach drop. What could he possibly know about Dan Kelly?

      ‘Of course I remember him,’ I said.

      ‘Well, did you know that he’s a regular photographer for National Geographic now? That camera that always hung around his neck came in useful in the end.’

      ‘That’s amazing! Good for him,’ I replied. I had a strange need to stand up for Dan. There was a bitterness in the way Rupert spoke and I wasn’t sure why. I knew Dan had never heard from Rupert again after he left for America – it was as though Rupert had severed connection with everyone when he boarded that plane – but I’d never known if he and Dan had fallen out before he left.

      ‘So you didn’t know?’

      I shook my head. But of course I already knew – I knew he’d gone to India on an assignment for National Geographic five years ago. I was there when he got the gig. I was there when he told me he was going to turn it down to stay in London to look after me. And I was there when he left – it was me who persuaded him to go.

      ‘Did you and Dan not stay in touch?’ Rupert asked.

      ‘For a while,’ I replied. It wasn’t quite a lie.

      ‘I guess everything changed after Ed died,’ he said, finally acknowledging my father’s death.

      I’d forgotten that Rupert called my father Ed. As I recall he was the only person who ever got away with it. Even Mum called him Edward. But Rupert was the son my dad never had, just as Dad was the father Rupert wished he’d had. I had never given enough thought, over the years, to how much Dad’s death affected Rupert; that perhaps he only left because he couldn’t cope with staying.

      ‘We should go back inside,’ I said. ‘People will wonder where we’ve got to.’

      Rupert seemed to snap out of the reverie he was in then. He turned to me and grinned.

      ‘Really?’ he said.

      ‘I’m meant to be here for Gemma, not catching up with old flames!’

      ‘Old flames?’ he replied, raising an eyebrow. ‘Is that what I am?’

      ‘I don’t know what you are, Rupert,’ I said quietly. ‘I never expected to see you again.’

      We stood up then, an awkward silence descending where there had been nostalgic chat. Rupert looked at his watch.

      ‘I should probably leave if I’m going to catch the last train,’ he said.

      ‘You’re not staying?’ I felt strangely disappointed at this.

      He shook his head. ‘I never expected this either, Jessie,’ he said. ‘But I hope you’ll let me see you again.’

      ‘I don’t know …’ I began. I didn’t know why I was reluctant. There was so much that we hadn’t said.

      ‘Can we swap numbers this time at least?’ he asked. ‘Just in case.’

      I smiled and nodded as he reached towards me to take his phone out of the pocket of his jacket that still hung from my shoulders. I gave him my number and he tapped it into his phone. Then he typed something else and I heard my phone beep from inside the clutch bag that still rested on the arm of the bench we’d been sitting on.

      ‘Now you have my number too,’ he said.

      I reached for my bag but he touched my arm.

      ‘Read it later,’ he said. ‘And I’ll leave it up to you to call. I hope you do, but if you don’t want to for any reason, I understand.’

      I slipped his jacket off my shoulders and handed it back to him. ‘You’re sure you can’t stay any longer?’ I asked.

      He slung his jacket over his arm and glanced away from me. ‘I should go,’ he said.

      When he looked back at me, when his eyes met mine, I felt myself slipping – hovering undecidedly. He used to be everything I ever wanted. I knew now that kind of contentment could never be laid at the feet of another person, but was Mum right? Was he still someone I wanted to spend time with?

      As he looked at me he closed the gap between us, his hand on my lower back, drawing me towards him. He was so close, just as he used to be.

      ‘Jessie,’ he whispered. He bent his head towards me, his lips so close I could feel the warmth of his breath. ‘Have you ever wondered “what if?”’

      My breath caught in my throat. Part of me wanted to turn away but I couldn’t. Because I had wondered ‘what if?’ – I’d been wondering for the best part of a decade. I’d been wondering as I tried to forget Rupert. I’d even been wondering as I fell in love with someone else. I’d never thought that Rupert had wondered ‘what if?’ as well.

      But here he was standing with me in his arms and even though I knew that neither of us were being honest with each other, that both of us had stories to tell, I couldn’t turn away.

      When his lips found mine, it felt as though time stood still for a moment, as though the last decade hadn’t happened and we were standing by the River Cam, the centre of each other’s worlds again. As he kissed me, I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him close, kissing him back. It felt as though nothing had changed. I was kissing Rupert Tremayne and it was glorious.

      … The summer after our GCSEs everything changed. When you came home СКАЧАТЬ