Page 31 of The Man Who Didn't Call
‘I hate to tell you this,’ she said, ‘but he read your messages three hours ago.’
‘Why hasn’t he written back?’ Rudi asked.
It was a good question.
‘I’m getting tired of your boyfriend, Sarah,’ Rudi said. ‘I think he’s a really horrible person.’
There was a long silence.
‘Let’s go down the meerkat tunnel,’ Jo said.
Rudi looked at me, and then at his precious meerkats, ten metres away – ten metres too far.
‘Go,’ I told him. ‘Go and be with your people. I’m fine.’
‘Just walk away, Sarah,’ Jo repeated, as her son scampered off. She sounded exhausted suddenly. ‘Life is too short to run around after someone who makes you miserable.’
She went to join Rudi. Tommy and I stared at the screen. Impulsively, I typed,Hello?
Seconds later Eddie’s picture dropped down next to the message. ‘That means he’s read it,’ Tommy said.
I won’t bite, I wrote.
Eddie read the message. And then – just like that – he went offline.
I stood up. I had to see him. Talk to him. I had todosomething. ‘Help,’ I said. ‘What do I do, Tommy? What do I do?’
After a beat, Tommy stood up and put his arm around my shoulders. If I closed my eyes, we could be back in 1997 at LAX, me crumpled against him in the arrivals hall, him carrying the keys for a huge, air-conditioned car, telling me everything would be OK.
‘Maybe his mum got really bad with her depression,’ I said desperately. ‘He told me she was on a downward spiral when I met him. Maybe it got really scary.’
‘Maybe,’ Tommy said quietly. ‘But, Harrington, if he was serious about you two, he’d still have sent a message. Explained. Asked you to give him a few weeks.’
I didn’t argue, because I couldn’t.
‘See if he replies,’ Tommy said, squeezing my shoulder. ‘But unless he does soon, and unless something really quite extraordinary has happened to him, I think you should consider very seriously whether or not you want to see him again. It’s not kind to have put you through this.’
Awkwardly, but with much tenderness, he kissed the side of my head. ‘Maybe Jo’s right,’ he said. ‘Maybe you do need to let go.’
My oldest friend had his arm around my shoulder. The man who’d helped me glue myself back together, all those years ago, who’d watched me lose everything and somehow rebuild my life. And now we were only a few short years from forty, and it was happening again.
‘Sheisright,’ I said dully. ‘You both are. I have to let go.’
And I meant it. The only problem was, I didn’t know how.
Chapter Fifteen
This is not just a broken heart, I thought, later that night. I was standing in Tommy and Zoe’s kitchen in my pyjamas, eating crisps.It’s more than that.
But what?
The accident?Is it something to do with the accident?
There were so many blanks in my memory of that awful day. Distance, or trauma, or perhaps the vast difference between my English and American lives had helped me block out a lot of what happened. And yet the feelings I was having now, I knew them. They were like bad old friends.
At 1.30 a.m. I decided to use this surfeit of energy to attempt some work. My colleagues had been too polite to say anything, but I knew I’d have someone on the phone if I didn’t process the backlog soon.
I got back into bed and opened my emails. And my brain – finally – ignited. I made big decisions; I made small decisions. I authorized spends and sent a report to our trustees. I checked our webmail folder, because nobody ever remembered to check it, and found an email from a little girl asking if some of our clowns could visit her twin sister, who was very sick in a hospital in San Diego.Of course!I wrote, forwarding the email to Reuben and Kate, my deputy.Send in the clowns! It’s a hospital we know! Let’s have our guys in there by Friday, please, team!
