The Other Us: the RONA winning perfect second chance romance to curl up with. Fiona Harper

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СКАЧАТЬ keeps staring at the darkness in front of him. Was he like this before? I wonder. If he was, I didn’t notice it. I remember the night being balmy and warm, the lapping of the gentle river waves romantic.

      Just when I think he’s chickened out, he sucks in a breath and turns to me. We’ve been still for so long it makes me jump, and that makes him smile. The serious look he’s been wearing for the last ten minutes vanishes.

      He reaches for my hands and I swallow.

      ‘You know how I feel about you …’ he says softly.

      My heart can’t help cracking a little at his words. How can you love and hate a person at the same time? I want to slap him across the face, hard enough to make my fingers sting, but I also want to kiss him.

      ‘… and I know that we’re young and everyone is going to say this is a bad idea, but I can’t imagine my life without you in it.’

      I still don’t say anything. Partly because I have no response, but partly because I’m realising I really can imagine my life without Dan in it. It’s been something I’d been doing even before this strange experience happened to me, after all. I just hadn’t expected my wishing to make it real or, at least, the possibility of it real. Dan, however, takes my silence for agreement and he carries on.

      My heart stops. Just for a beat. Because as he draws his next breath I know exactly what words are about to come out of his mouth, and I still don’t know what my answer will be.

      ‘Maggie,’ he says, and his voice catches on the last syllable, ‘will you marry me?’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

      I stare back at Dan. His face is full of hope. Hope, I realise, that neither of us have left for our marriage back in our other life. A hole rips open inside me, deep and long. How can this man – the man who looks at me with such tenderness and worship – have turned into the one who’s sneaking around behind my back, who’s let slide all the promises he’s been holding so faithfully for the last twenty-four years?

      I don’t have an answer for him. Not the one he wants, anyway. Not the one I gave him last time. ‘I don’t know,’ I finally stammer, and then I watch all that hope melt away and turn to confusion.

      ‘Don’t you love me?’

      I nod. ‘Yes … no … I don’t know.’ And then I begin to cry.

      He scoops me into his arms and holds me tight. I can tell he’s staring over my shoulder, asking the night sky what went wrong. I know he’s hurting and confused, that his instinct was to back off and protect himself, but the fact he’s chosen not to do that, to comfort me instead, just makes me cling on to him all the harder.

      ‘What’s wrong?’ he whispers. ‘You haven’t been right, not for the last couple of weeks.’

      I let myself mould against him, just for a moment, and then I lift my eyes and look at him. I shake my head as the tears fall. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, and then I find I can’t stop. I say it over and over and over.

      ‘No,’ he replies and silences my litany with a kiss. ‘I got ahead of myself. It’s too soon.’

      I shake my head, because I know in another version of our lives it wouldn’t be too soon. The problem is, I’m not sure I want that reality any more, even though the thought of losing him suddenly seems much bigger and more final than I ever realised.

      It’ll be like him dying.

      Because I won’t just grieve him the way I would if we’d split up when I was twenty-one. I’ll grieve for all the extra years we’ve had that he’ll never know about – the way he looked when Sophie was born, as if he could burst with pride and love for the both of us. How nervous he was on our wedding night. Even silly little things like that cup of tea he always brings me when he gets home from work.

      That Dan won’t ever exist in this world, and I feel the loss of him like a physical pain in my chest.

      He hasn’t got a hanky, so he uses the cuff of his shirt sleeve to dry my tears.

      It’s not you, it’s me, I want to say, but I’m aware it sounds over-used, even in this decade, so I don’t. Or maybe it’s us. The us we will become. I’m setting us free from that, from the boredom and the simmering resentment. From the disappointment of knowing that even though we once thought we could be everything to each other, we clearly can’t.

      By silent agreement we walk back towards the High Street, heading for the bus stop. When we reach my flat, I open the front door that leads into the communal hallway of our converted Victorian house, but Dan doesn’t cross the threshold with me.

      ‘Aren’t you coming in?’

      He shakes his head.

      ‘This doesn’t mean I’m breaking up with you,’ I say. ‘Just that I need time to think. You’re right – we are both so young, we need to be sure this is the right thing. For both of us.’ I stop then, because I know that I’m lying, that as much as I’m pretending nothing’s changed, there’s been a seismic shift in our relationship.

      He shrugs and looks at his shoes. ‘I know that. It’s just that … I need time alone. I need time to think too.’

      I would have accepted that without a doubt once upon a time. After all, it’s a perfectly natural response for someone whose proposal of marriage has not been as enthusiastically received as it was delivered – especially for a man like Dan, who likes to lick his wounds in private.

      ‘Where are you going to go?’

      Another pause. I can almost hear him thinking his response over.

      ‘I dunno. Just for a walk, I expect.’

      Totally understandable. And I would have believed him, I really would, if when he looked at me he hadn’t worn that same expression he always used in our future life, the one that accompanies his oh-so-innocent declaration that he’s off down the pub with a long-lost mate who is actually having a second honeymoon in Prague.

CHAPTER TWELVE

      The flat is empty and I sit down on the sofa in the dark. The ugly sunburst clock above the electric fire ticks.

      I did it. But I don’t know whether to feel sorry or relieved.

      I don’t know what to do now. This is the first time since I’ve been living this crazy … whatever it is … that I’ve veered completely off script. I was still friends with Becca, still doing my uni course, still with Dan. But now I haven’t just amended a bit of dialogue, skipped a scene or fudged a bit of stage direction; I’ve completely changed the ending.

      I think about that night – the other night like this. The two realities couldn’t be more different. In that one I was laughing, happy, full of hope. In this one I’m just … numb. And wondering why my almost-fiancé is lying to me about where he’s going.

      I shiver as I recall the look on Dan’s face.

      I thought the fibs, the СКАЧАТЬ