BooksBarbecue
Back Because She Loves Me
Chapters (50)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Dedication Page
  4. Contents
  5. One
  6. Two
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Eight
  13. Nine
  14. Ten
  15. Eleven
  16. Twelve
  17. Thirteen
  18. Fourteen
  19. Fifteen
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Ninteen
  24. Twenty
  25. Twenty-one
  26. Twenty-two
  27. Twenty-three
  28. Twenty-four
  29. Twenty-five
  30. Twenty-six
  31. Twenty-seven
  32. Twenty-eight
  33. Twenty-nine
  34. Thirty
  35. Thirty-one
  36. Thirty-two
  37. Thirty-three
  38. Thirty-four
  39. Thirty-five
  40. Thirty-six
  41. Thirty-seven
  42. Thirty-eight
  43. Thirty-nine
  44. Forty
  45. Forty-one
  46. Forty-two
  47. Epilogue
  48. Letter From the Author
  49. Acknowledgements
  50. About the Author

And yet. There was her jealousy. The explosion of fury and self-destruction the night I’d stayed over at Sasha’s. She had shown a violent side that night, even if it had been directed at herself. She could be confrontational. The very first time I’d been out with her, she’d started an argument in the pub. She definitely had a dark side, a wild aspect to her personality that made her do things that most other people wouldn’t do: like have sex in a freezing lake in the middle of winter. These were just the things I knew about. Because as Henry had said, all the weird stuff in my life had started after I met Charlie.

I vacillated. Could she have done it? As I grappled with the question, a voice inside my head shouted at me to stop. The word ‘love’ wasn’t strong enough for how I felt about her. I could hardly imagine life without her. So how could I entertain the notion that she was a killer? This notion was like a virus invading my bloodstream, and my love made antibodies that fought and rejected every negative thought.

I got up and made another coffee, leaned on the worktop – one of the many places in the flat that bore a ghostly imprint of our lovemaking – and waited for the kettle to boil.

What did I really know about Charlie? I hardly knew a thing about her past. She was cagey about her entire existence before she’d met me; was equally secretive about the parts of her life that didn’t involve me now. I’d never been to her place, though she told me it was because it made sense for her to come here, where we had privacy, no housemates listening outside the door.

I had never met any of her friends. But she hadn’t lived in London long, said she didn’t know anyone here.

I imagined myself in court again, a witness – for the prosecution! – explaining my relationship with Charlie. Would I look like a fool? The guy who doesn’t know anything about the woman he’s been sleeping with for the last two months, who he’s about to move in with. I tried to justify it to myself. It had been an insane rush, passionate, exciting, with no pause for reflection. Charlie had a talent for diverting me if I asked her anything. I had been concerned about it at first, about how little she gave away, but then I decided to let it go. All I really cared about was what she was like in the present, who she was when she was with me. There would, I had thought, be plenty of time for us to share stories about the past.