When she returned, she reached for a mug of coffee and carried it around the bed, sitting with her back against the headboard. She sipped slowly, waiting for Wyatt. He’d been quiet since she’d returned, but now he made a few murmurs into the phone. ‘OK, Mum. Speak soon.’
He ended the call and placed his phone face down on the bedside cabinet. He slumped back against the headboard, seeming to deflate. Edith tensed. This didn’t feel good. Where had the happy, relaxed atmosphere gone? The contentment she’d been enjoying before his phone rang?
‘What’s up?’ she said, sounding more upbeat than she felt. ‘Don’t you want your coffee?’
He hesitated, his frown deepening, his eyes flickering with something unreadable.
‘Wyatt?’ She searched his face for a clue, for some reassurance, but found only blankness, suggesting he had already gone far away in his head.
A deep chill settled over her, and she swallowed hard, the coffee turning bitter in her mouth and churning in her stomach.
‘Wyatt?’ Touching his arm, she hoped to bring him back to her, but she knew it was already too late. Something in that phone call changed everything.
He blinked as if snapping out of a trance, then moved to swing his legs over the side of the bed. Now, with his back to her, she saw him sigh, and he leant over, burying his face in his hands.When he sat up again, he tilted his body so she could see his profile. But he didn’t meet her eyes.
‘I’m so sorry, Edith. I need to go.’
Her heart stuttered. ‘W-what?’
‘I need to go. I’m sorry.’ He stood up and started getting dressed.
Edith shuffled under the duvet, pulled it up to her chin and gripped the edge of it tight.
How is this happening again?
Inside, a scream gurgled, low in her belly where it roiled around like the sea in a cave. Right now, it was trapped, and she swallowed hard to keep it there, but she knew it would need to emerge as soon as Wyatt was gone.
When he was dressed, he held out his hands. ‘I really am sorry. I thought I was OK to do this. I thought I could… could make this up to you but…’ He picked up his phone and gestured at it as if it had the answers to why he’d turned cold towards her. ‘But then my mother phoned and just… reminded me why I’m not… why I can’t…’ He rubbed his forehead with an air of confusion. ‘Please believe me, Edith, I am so very sorry.’
She glanced at him, but seeing him standing there fully dressed, excusing his behaviour made her sadness turn to rage, and she muttered, ‘Go! Please… just…Go!’
Her voice was thick with pain. She saw him falter, but then buried her face in the duvet so she wouldn’t have to look at him.
‘Edith?’ There was distress in his voice too, but she couldn’t be there for him right now because her heart was breaking. If shelooked up at him again and saw his pain, it would undo her, so she kept her face buried in the duvet. ‘I… I’ll go.’
She heard him leaving the room and, a while after that, the front door closing.
When the gate outside clinked shut, she dropped the duvet and rolled onto her side. Her hand found the place where his body had been, and she ran her palm over it, felt the imprint of his body and then pressed her face against the sheet.
It smelt of him.
Her pain roared inside and exploded from her in a noise that sounded like a wounded animal.
And then she started to cry — deep, heaving sobs that felt like they would never end.
She didn’t know how long she’d been there, but when she sat up again, the light in her bedroom had changed and she could hear the rattle of a delivery van on the cobbles outside. Her tears had stopped eventually, and now she felt hollow, like she’d emptied out everything she had to give.
She had two choices: surrender to the pain, or get up, get dressed and carry on. It wasn’t like she couldn’t pull herself together. After all, she’d done it before, and this time she was older and wiser. The last word mocked her.Wisershe had not been, letting that man into her heart again, but at least it had ended before it had really begun. They’d had one last night together, and she would view it as a final farewell rather than a mistake.
There was no time for regrets and no energy to waste. She was a grown woman, and she would damn well act like one.
Standing up, she went to the window and opened the curtains wide then pushed up the sash window. The fresh sea air gushed into the room, and she gulped it down, grateful for its cleansing salty tang.
Returning to the bed, she stripped off the duvet cover, the sheets, and pillowcases, then stomped downstairs with them and stuffed them into the washing machine. She would clean all traces of Wyatt from her home just as she would cleanse all traces of him from her heart and mind.
This time around, Wyatt would be no more than a whisper of a memory.
Just like the trace of a contrail left from a plane, he would soon disappear back to his city life and Edith could get back to normality. She would revel in the security of knowing that no man would ever be able to get close to breaking her heart again.
