“Too many things,” he says. “Firstly, Hannah, are we friends?”
I sink into my sofa, curl my legs underneath me. “Of course.”
“If I tell you I’m dating someone, is that weird?”
Yes, it bloody is. “No,” I say, but my heart hurts more than it did five minutes ago. “Tell me. What’s she like?”
“Um…” Davey starts. “It’s my ex-girlfriend, Charlotte.”
Evil-fucking-Charlotte, as Grant referred to her. I knew I remembered a Charlotte. “You’re back with your ex?” I query. “How’d that happen?”
We’re on opposite sides of the world. We can’t be together. I know that now. It hits me like a train. But I stare straight ahead, listen to the man I love but can’t ever have tell me about his new girlfriend.
“She’s…Charlotte. She’s just…here,” he says and I can’t read anything into this, but I do.
“Right place, right time,” I suggest.
“Something like that,” he says. “Are you still seeing the guy you told me about in your message?”
I cringe. “Yes, but I didn’t send that message to rub it in. I wanted you to know I was your friend, that I meant well, that I was happy—like you told me to be.”
Davey’s quiet and I resist asking if he’s still there.
“And are you?” he asks. “Happy?”
I think of George, running around Wanstead Flats on his own. He probably still hasn’t turned around to see I’m not there. “Yes,” I say and I leave it there.
“Good,” he says.
This could so easily be the end of the call, but I have so much I want to say, so much I need to do before he finishes things. Again.
“Davey,” I start.
“Yeah?” He sounds sad and I want to tell him I love him. I want to tell him yet again that I miss him. But that won’t do us any good. Not now. It’s too late. So I steel myself.
“How’s the treatment going? Not long until the end and then you’re free of it?”
“Yeah,” he says noncommittally.
“When’s the next one? Or the last one or…whatever?” I sound too pushy. I know that. I must rein it in, go in slowly.
“Tomorrow,” he says.
This is the test. This is the test of how much he trusts me, how much he values whatever it was we had all those months ago. If he tells me. My heart sinks as we descend steadily into silence. He’s not going to—
“I don’t want to do it,” he says.
I inhale slowly, exhale slowly. I feel I’ve duped him; that I’ve led him along a path he didn’t know he was walking.
“Why?” I ask.
Silence again and then I hear it…I think he’s crying. “It really hurts, Hannah.”
Tears I’ve kept in abeyance fill my eyes. “I’m so sorry,” I say. “I’m so sorry this happened to you.”
“It’s not your fault. We were supposed to be together,” he says suddenly. “I ruined that.”
“You didn’t,” I reply.
