Page 124 of Tears of Glass

“Oh here, I’ll show you.” Eli slips his phone out of his pocket and scrolls through some pictures until he finds one of the painting hanging on our lounge wall. Our. “She painted it for Pop’s house in Carcassonne. It’s beautiful isn’t it?”

Connie doesn’t look at the painting. She’s staring at Eli’s hand. “Looks like you wear more jewellery these days than just cufflinks. If only we’d known.” She makes a job of inspecting the ring I made.

“A gift.” Eli gives a small smile.

“Here,” Sienna cuts through the awkwardness. “I tried very hard this year.” She thrusts a packet at him and he tears at the cheap garish wrapping paper and pulls out a terrible tie. He laughs loudly.

“This is fantastic, so much worse than last years.”

It truly is terrible. Garish purple flowers and green foliage. Who would make that, and more importantly why? The price tag is still hanging from the label at the back. I assume it has been left there for a reason. Five hundred pounds for that hideous scrap of material?

The evening spins around me. A surreal twist of reality I can’t make sense of.

My dad is still looking at Eli’s ring. “You know, Faithy. It reminds me of the ring you made for Daniel all those years ago.”

I blush a scorching red and Eli lifts an eyebrow.

“No—” I stop myself from saying Dad. “I made that out of two twisted paperclips. This is different.”

“How quaint you made him a ring. Do you give them to all your boyfriends?” Connie’s shrill voice echoes around the room.

And then I know what’s going to happen. I can sense it. I watch it unravel as I stare at myself in the mirror. Stupid and ridiculous with my ink swirling on display. All my regrets, some the man once called my father even put there.

“Oh, Faith, doesn’t have boyfriends. She’s more of a love them and leave them kind,” he says.

I’m watching Connie’s face. She knows this. She’s an actress hell bent on an Oscar as she assumes innocence. “Oh really? How frightfully laissez-faire, have you left many in your wake, Faith?”

“Laissez-faire?” Dad snorts. “That’s one way of putting it. I’d say she’s more of a troubled youth with an overactive imagination.”

And that does it. I step up and shove him hard in the chest. “Don’t you dare laugh about what happened.”

He stares at me openly confused. He really doesn’t understand. He really doesn’t believe me. “Faith, just let it go. Look at where you are now, you don’t want that muck following you around. Just forget about it and we can all move on.”

I stare at him and then at Eli.

I can’t forget it. Same as I’ll never be able to say yes to Eli. Because everything that happened to me defines me down to my very core. From the inside out, I will never be free of it. Like Melanie Duncan, I will always have it in my heart. And then everyone will find out, and Eli will be known as the man who chose damaged goods. Or worse, believed the compulsive liar.

For a long moment, I meet his gaze and breathe the same air as him until my heart is aching and I want to crumple and never rise again.

He knows.

He knows what I’m going to do before I do it myself.

It’s there in the depths of his blues. His head shakes and he reaches out his hand. “Don’t.”

I back away from his touch. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“Faith.”

“No.” I hold my hand out. “I’m leaving.” I turn to my father. “The shop is Dan’s, and nothing you will do or say will change that. But I never want to see you again. Not in this lifetime and not in the next.”

The room is silent, but I don’t care. With my spine still ramrod straight, and my shoulders still back and regal, I walk from the room.

“Faith!” Eli calls but I can’t make myself stop.

Running is the only thing I know and this time I won’t be running back.

This was a dream. A wild moment of make-believe, but it doesn’t exist for women like me.