Page 106 of The Last Train Home
‘Has it?’ he says.
I want to shake the restraint out of him. ‘Yes, just say it,’ I command. ‘Get it over and done with. Say what you’re thinking.’
‘I can’t fucking stand it!’ Tom explodes. ‘How can you bear this? How could he do that to you? How could he behave like that? I never understood how you two ended up together. The whole thing totally threw me.’
I’m not sure if I’m supposed to actually answer this or not. ‘I liked him. I fell in love with him.’
‘Fine. Whatever.’
I frown. ‘I did.’
‘If you say so.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You honed in on each other because of me.’
I laugh and then realise Tom’s serious. ‘That’s a bit vain,’ I say. ‘And that’s not fair.’
‘I reckon Sean knew I really liked you, and he went for you, regardless. He violated whatever code there was, whatever level of friendship we had; he downgraded us massively when he started dating you.’
‘You two weren’t even talking by then,’ I retort. ‘You and Iweren’t even talking by then. As I recall, you and I almost slept together and then we stopped talking. And then you had a baby, and you became the star-billing in your own shit-show.’ I can’t stop the meanness.
‘You think I don’t know that?’ he says. ‘And so … what? Then you decide to go off with my friend? After what happened between us, that’s a huge betrayal, all round. Was there really no one else in London you could have chosen? Did you choose each other specifically to fuck me off?’
‘How dare you!’ I shout. I liked Tom better when he was being restrained.
But he’s still going. ‘And then you come to my house the night of your leaving party and tell me you’re in love with me, and then you run away and you don’t answer your phone. I rang and I rang, and I messaged you and when I got a foreign dial tone I knew you’d gone with Sean, and then you disappeared entirely. You changed your number and you never even told me.’
‘You were with Samantha. You had a baby together. What else was I going to do?’
‘Wait. You could have waited. Even five fucking minutes. You could have waited for me to work out what the hell was going on. Instead you ran away.’
‘I had to run away. I told you I loved you, and you said it back! It was going to ruin everything.’
‘Of course I said it back. I meant it!’
I shake my head. I’m crying. I want to go home. Tom runs his hand through his hair, exhales and then rips kitchen roll from the dispenser and hands it to me.
I’m silent, and so is he.
I wipe my eyes with the scratchy kitchen paper. ‘You should get some proper tissues in here for when people break down in tears in your kitchen.’
‘You’re the only person who cries in my kitchen.’
I feel a huge pull inside me. The baby. What’s happening to the baby? I lift my eyes to Tom in horror and he springs towards me, swearing. He knows something’s happened.
I look down in shock at the pool of liquid forming on the floor by my feet. All I can do is cry, ‘What’s happening?’
Chapter 65
Tom
I walk back into the room, where Abbie’s dressed in a hospital gown and is holding onto the edge of the bed with gritted teeth. The midwives have been drifting in and out for the last few hours as her contractions have sped up. She’s a terrible patient. They want to check how dilated she is, and it took every negotiation tactic they had to get her to lie down, so they could look.
She winced when they checked. I winced when they checked, but I held onto her hand tightly and she held onto mine.
And now she’s practically refusing to lie down to let them assess her again.
