Dear Emmie,
I know you asked me to let you go. You said we can’t be friends, and I understand that. I don’t think I could ever spend time with you and not want more. But I couldn’t leave things the way they ended. Violet said I seemed angry with you. That’s not true. I was very, very angry with Ma. I was mad at Da for the secrets and lies. I was devastated that during what I’d thought was a perfect week, you’d been going through all that alone. I felt like a fool. Which made me furious at myself.
And all those things piling on top of each other stopped me from saying what I needed to that evening. Which is that I’m so sorry, for all of it. I’m sorry if for one moment you felt unwelcome here. As if your history, my family’s mistakes, meant you couldn’t stay.
What should have been the best adventure ended up a trial by Hawkins jury.
I don’t know what else to say, except that I have missed you every day since you left. Everything feels off without you. My sisters can’t bear my grumpiness any longer and have ordered me to do something about it.
I won’t ask you to come back, not if it risks you being hurt again.
If you don’t reply to this, I understand, and I won’t try to contact you again.
But I needed to tell you that I’m sorry.
And I meant everything in the treehouse.
I still do.
Pip
I dropped my head onto the glove compartment with an agonising groan.
‘When did he send that?’ Blessing asked, after I’d read the letter aloud.
I checked the date at the top. ‘August. About a month after I’d come home.’
‘Then it wasn’t a knee-jerk reaction. What are you going to do?’
‘Ugh. I’ve been working so hard at moving on.’
She gave me a side glance.
‘Okay. I’ve been starting to do a teensy bit better. And this doesn’t change anything, does it? He’s still there, I’m here. His mum hates me. I’m evil mainlander Nell’s daughter.’ I swallowed. ‘But it was kind of him to apologise. It’s nice to know he doesn’t blame me for any of it.’
‘No reply, then? Pressing on with option one?’
‘Option one.’
In the first week in December, we set out to another event, which Blessing had booked at the last minute and vaguely described as a family celebration. Due to my attention being on avoiding the potholes on an unpaved country lane, it was only as we reached the farm gates that I spotted the banner.
‘Is this a sick joke?’
‘Um,’ Blessing said. ‘They said to go around the side to the back field. Someone will be there to meet us.’
‘Okay, what I meant to say is, have you booked us a graduation party for the course where the man I’m trying my utmost to get over has just graduated from?’
The sign read:
Congratulations Agriculture Graduates
She squirmed in the passenger seat. ‘There are loads of different agriculture courses. Grad parties are a whole new potential revenue stream. This one will be full of hungry young farmers, so they paid extra. I couldn’t turn it down.’
‘What happened to us only doing bookings we’re both comfortable with?’
‘Sometimes comfort is overrated.’
I pulled up beside a large outbuilding and found the university website on my phone.
