‘Well, you – you weren’t very well, were you?’

‘No, I wasn’t very well, for a long time. I …’ he paused. ‘I think I’m a little better now,’ he finished quietly. ‘I’ve certainly paid the price, I hope.’

‘Do you live alone?’

‘Yasmin comes to see me. She stays for weeks at a time, quite often. So it’s not all bad.’

Yasmin. The stepsister he had loved so much.

Dalziel, my tragic friend. Born into such privilege and wealth, given everything except proper love. Left with nothing but an empty life. The iconoclast turned conformist.

‘It’s nice to see you,’ he said quietly. ‘It really is, Rose. The girl with the sad mouth.’

The voices rose and swelled below us as we sat in silence. I thought of that cold October night so long ago, of the two of us running laughing from Oxford’s cathedral, trailing champagne and pink feathers, without a care in the world.

After a while, I slipped my hand into his cold one and we sat some more. We had come full circle, it seemed.

Chapter Thirty-Nine
GLOUCESTERSHIRE,
SUMMER 2009

So heavenly love shall outdo hellish hate.

Paradise Lost, Milton

Summer came. Tractors traced lanes through the fields like finger-trails through sand. Rabbits sat, fat and free, birds rose in waves from the hedgerows beneath the sun.

We put the perfect house on the market. It was a beautiful family home, waiting for the right family. We just weren’t it. James went away on business: we didn’t talk, not really. It hung over us, but it wasn’t time – yet. Slowly I began to pack up.

A week or so after his release, I started to box up my books, and I found a copy of my university diary wedged between Coleridge and my Shakespeare’s Sonnets. I flicked through it, feeling unexpected tears flood my eyes. How much hope and how much expectation I’d had. How nearly it had ended in disaster.

‘Penny for them.’ James stood behind me. He’d arrived back from Paris that afternoon.

‘God you scared me.’ I turned quickly. He took the book from my hands; I pushed down the instinct to grab it straight back. Why did it matter if he read the ramblings of an eighteen-year-old, unsure whether she should carry on seeing him at all, secretly in love with his best friend? But James wasn’t interested in reading it anyway. He’d never really cared about my writing.

‘I’m sorry, Rose,’ he muttered, staring at the faded blue cover. It bore a yellow smiley-face sticker and my name doodled in biro round a badly drawn rose. ‘I’ve been an utter bastard. I’d –’ he looked up at me now – ‘I’d really love it if you could forgive me.’

‘For what exactly?’

‘For – everything.’ He gave the book back and slumped onto the sofa. ‘For hitting you, first and foremost.’

‘Oh.’

‘And for – for Kate.’