‘What do you mean?’ I ask, confused.
‘I mean, if I hadn’t flirted with her, she’d have still been with her friends when it happened. If I hadn’t encouraged her, she wouldn’t have been in that street. She wouldn’t have been in that place, at that time, and she wouldn’t be—’
‘Dead? Is that what you think? If she’d only been anywhere except that particular spot, she could have survived. That if you and she hadn’t snuck off down that side street, everything could have been different.’
He nods, and meets my eyes.
‘I know,’ he says. ‘You said something similar recently, about wondering if I’d not been buying your ring, whether I’d have been okay. I felt terrible when you said that, because I knew exactly what you meant. I’m so sorry.’
I feel some of the anger slither out of me, like a snake crawling off to find a new place to hide. I know how that feeling of guilt can affect you over time – even if you spend years telling yourself it’s nonsense.
‘I did feel that. I felt like it was somehow my fault, Harry. I thought if you’d just stayed with me, you’d have been fine. If I’d said no, don’t leave me here at this restaurant on my own, please stay – you could have been fine. Truth is you were kind of getting on my nerves, and I wanted to be on my own for a bit. I’ve felt like crap about that for so long now. So, yes, I do understand.’
‘Oh God,’ he says, voice raw with genuine anguish. ‘What a fucking mess everything is!’
Harry rarely swears, but this does seem an appropriate moment to do it. He reaches out a hand across the table, and I stare at it. I am not quite ready to accept that gesture and his fingers curl up and move away, rejected.
‘I’m sorry, Elena, for so many things – but especially for that. Especially when I wasn’t even buying a bloody ring! You’ve carried that for all this time, and it wasn’t even a real thing …’
‘None of it is, though, Harry, is it? The guilt. For either of us. If you’d stayed with me you could have been crushed by the church when it came down. If you’d stayed with me, we could both have died. If Greta had stayed by the fountain, she could have died just like her friend Beth did. She could have ended up in a coma like Shelley did. She could have been killed, like so many of the others. We both carry guilt – because we survived, and so many others didn’t. But the truth is there is nothing we could have done differently that night. Nothing. It’s what we do now that counts.’
He nods and I see a gleam of moisture in his eyes, a sheen of tears I’ve not seen for so many years.
‘I didn’t want to hurt you,’ he says, ‘when we were talking, last time? When I told you about the ring. I considered telling you about Greta, but I didn’t want to hurt you. To be brutally honest, she was dead, and I didn’t think it would ever come out – so I just decided it would be cruel to hurt you like that. That I’d be doing it more to clear my conscience than anything else, that it wouldn’t be fair. Sometimes we keep secrets for the best of reasons, don’t we?’
I nod, and chew my lip. He’s right, of course. We do. Minutes ago, when I was sitting here waiting for him to turn up, I was so angry, and so hurt. Hurt about Greta, hurt about the past, but also stung by what I saw at Alison’s house. What shook me so much.
At Alison’s house, I saw Harry as a dad. I saw Harry at the heart of a family. I saw Harry with something that I never gave him – children. I saw his warmth, and his energy, and his patience. The kind of father he could have been, even though he never showed me any signs of wanting to be one. Even though I never pushed for children of our own.
We have hurt each other so much, this man and I. We have hurt each other in a thousand tiny ways, hidden so much, and we have done it for long enough. The time for secrets has passed.
‘After the earthquake,’ I say, taking a gulp of wine, ‘it was chaotic. You were in a coma, and then once you were woken up, it was … well, like it was.’
He nods, but I see he is confused at this change of subject.
‘We had to concentrate on you, and getting you home, and then on rehab. And there was something back then that I never told you, Harry. Something that I should have done – but I wanted to protect you. Wanted to keep you safe from any more pain – you were suffering enough.’
‘What is it, Elena?’ he replies, meeting my eyes. I feel strangely nervous, wound tight, as though the words still do not want to come out of my mouth. As though I have kept this to myself for so long, I have lost the ability to talk about it.
‘I was pregnant,’ I say simply.
‘What? When? How?’
I smile gently. ‘The usual way, I imagine, Harry. I didn’t know, at the time. I didn’t know until after. I didn’t know until the doctor told me I’d lost it. That the baby didn’t survive.’
He is silent, his forehead creased by a frown as he processes the information.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asks.
‘I couldn’t, Harry, not then. You … you weren’t well enough to handle it.’
He nods. ‘I think you’re right. I’d like to disagree, and say you should have told me, that I could have helped you … but you’re right. I was in too dark a place to deal with it, and I wouldn’t have reacted in the way I should. But later – why not later? Years have passed, and you’ve still never told me. You’ve dealt with this on your own for so long!’
‘Well, like you said earlier – it’s complicated. There always seemed to be something else going on, for such a long time. And … I don’t know. The longer I left it the harder it became. We settled into our life, our routine, and you were doing so well, and I was all right, and … I’m sorry. It was your baby as well.’
He reaches across the table, and takes both my hands in his. This time I let him. I need the comfort, and so does he.
‘I’m sorry too, Elena. Sorry that you lost it. Sorry that I wasn’t there for you. Sorry for so much … and I’m sad. Terribly sad. I know it’s not what either of us had planned, but still … a baby. Our baby. Maybe everything would have been different …’
