I didn’t want to go over it again, to have to try to explain myself, or beg for forgiveness. I couldn’t bear to ever see that look of revulsion on his face again.
I had reached a point where I was starting to be able to live with being me, but it was so tenuous and fragile that I daren’t risk slipping back again.
But now he was here. Now he wassmilingand his arms were stuck in his pockets, not folded angrily forming a barrier between us. Now he was looking at me like he had in the moment he told me he loved me…
‘I have three more rooms to clean. But I could go for a walk after that?’
If anything, Daniel’s smile grew even wider. ‘I’ll help you.’
‘No, you won’t!’ Grandma called from where she was clearly hiding round the corner. ‘Me and your dad’ll sort the rooms. You go off and kiss and make up or whatever it is you need to do. We won’t expect you back until nightfall.’
‘Well,’ Mum retorted, from where she must have been lurking right beside Grandma. ‘There is a mountain of breakfast prep still to do, and the back stairs need a proper vacuum…’
‘Hi, Wendy, hi, Grandma, nice to… hear you,’ Daniel called.
‘She’s joking!’ Grandma called back. ‘You go on, now, off you go!’
‘I am not joking!’
They were still arguing when we slipped out of the door.
We walked the whole hundred yards or so to the far end of the garden, where I led Daniel to a bench hidden behind a wall of clambering roses.
‘I think we should talk before we do anything else,’ I said, eyes firmly fixed on the roses.
‘Right.’ Daniel took in a deep breath. He wasn’t smiling any more. ‘I have a speech planned, if that’s okay?’
I nodded, unable to do anything else.
‘I can’t really remember it any more, but I’ll try to give you the gist… I’m so, massively, overwhelmingly sorry for how I handled everything. I have regretted it every second since you left. Ican’t believeI let you go. You’d been beaten up and scared half to death, and instead of being there for you, I… froze. I can’t ever undo not racing to the hospital, I can’t ever be there for you when you needed me then, but I can promise to always be there if you ever need me again.’
‘Daniel… I think you had every right…’
‘No.’ He shook his head, vehemently. ‘No. What you said was true, Iknewyou. I know you. I was hurt and shocked that you’d hidden all that from me. I’ll admit that I was angry, and I felt betrayed. But once you’d gone, and I stopped being such an idiot and actually took a few minutes to think about it, I realised that I was angry you’d not told me. That you were going through this huge deal, and hadn’t felt able to trust me with it. You didn’t tell me because you thought I’d judge you, I’d think less of you and reject you for it. And I proved your fears right, didn’t I? I was a terrible boyfriend. I totally let you down in the worst possible way. I’m so sorry.’
‘I put you and Hope in danger. You should have been angry.’
‘No. Lucy was the danger. I putyouin danger because you didn’t feel like you could tell me.’
‘But I was Nora Sharp. I wrote nasty things about people for money.’
‘I also read the beautiful, uplifting things that Eleanor Sharpley wrote, remember? And I also read a whole load of Nora’s reviews. The ones that people didn’t bother to mention, because they’re decent and written with integrity. I also read the article you wrote last Saturday.’
‘Is that what made you come?’
‘It’s what made me brave enough to come. If you could do that, admit you’d done some awful things that you regretted, refuse to make excuses for it, and only say that from now on you were determined to do things better, it made me hope that maybe you’d allow me to do the same.’
‘I still don’t understand why you think you did anything wrong… Daniel, I need to know that you’re not trying to shove what I did to one side or sweep it under the carpet. I’m not a perfect person. I’m a long, long way from that. Not least, I have borderline approval addiction. The compulsion to make people like me has caused me to be dishonest with myself, and other people, and while I’m working on it, I can’t promise it won’t ever happen again. I’m really bad at getting up in the morning and I have a hideous, lumpy scar on the back of my leg.’
Daniel nodded, thoughtfully. ‘Okay. You may have noticed that I’m not the most emotionally intelligent of men. I am woefully bad at recognising and dealing with my own feelings, which means I can hurt the people I care about most. I also still push about a wheelbarrow of guilt and shame, and the need to somehow make things up to people who aren’t even alive any more. I have a frustrating tendency to try to do everything alone, in some warped need to prove myself to no one who even cares. I bury myself in work to avoid facing up to my problems, and I think that you are the most incredible, wonderful woman I have ever met.’ He paused. ‘I love you, flaws and failings and all.’
‘I love you, too.’
Daniel’s eyes sparkled. ‘So, perhaps for now we just need to agree that we forgive each other, and accept each other, as we are?’
‘That sounds like a good plan,’ I replied, my voice so soft I could barely hear it over the buzzing of the motorboats in the distance.
He coughed, scratched the back of his head, and looked up at me from under his brow. ‘I don’t want to suggest starting again, because we aren’t going to gloss over what happened, as if it didn’t matter. But I, for one, would very much like to restart what we had. I’ve had weeks to think about it, though. I understand if you need some time.’
