‘After six months I was still ill,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t get out of bed for longer than a few minutes without my legs feeling weak. I couldn’t concentrate on anything, couldn’t read, couldn’t watch TV. I was so frustrated. I had to hand in my notice at work. The worst thing was the pain. I had so much joint and muscle pain that sometimes I’d cry all day. It stopped me sleeping. I haven’t slept well since I got ill except …’ I paused.
‘Except what?’ Rupert asked quietly, speaking for the first time. His arm was still around my waist.
‘The night I stayed with you,’ I said. ‘I slept so well that night.’
He smiled then, and pulled me towards him, resting his chin on the top of my head.
‘I wish you’d told me,’ he said.
‘I was just so scared you’d leave.’
‘I would never do that to you. You must know that.’
‘You left before.’
‘Jessie, this is nothing like before,’ he said, as he held me against him. I could feel the vibrations of his voice in his chest. ‘I was a bloody idiot not to stay and fight for you.’
‘I wish you’d been here,’ I said. I didn’t want him to feel guilty, I didn’t want to blame him, but I did need to voice my feelings.
He didn’t say anything for a while. I just sat there listening to him breathing.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said eventually. ‘I should have been here.’
‘No,’ I replied, pulling away a little. ‘You have nothing to be sorry about. What’s done is done and you’re here now.’
‘I am,’ he said. ‘Always. But I do need to ask you something?’
‘About Dan?’ I replied. I’d known this was coming.
He nodded, his eyes flicking away from me for a moment. ‘I’m assuming you were living with him when this happened.’
‘Yes, I was,’ I said. ‘And please don’t think badly of him. He couldn’t cope with looking after me. I don’t blame him. I don’t think it would have been any different the other way around.’
Rupert didn’t say anything.
‘When I moved in with Mum it was just meant to be temporary, to give him a break and to help me get better. But he got the National Geographic job and went to India. I haven’t seen or heard from him since.’
‘I still can’t believe he left you for a job,’ he said. I could hear the frustration in his voice. Once again I didn’t point out the irony.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I made him leave. He wanted to stay, to turn down the offer, but I wasn’t going to let him give up his dreams on my account.’
Rupert didn’t say anything and I watched him take a deep breath as though he was trying to let something go.
‘If we’re going to do this,’ I said. ‘We need to leave Dan and Camilla in the past.’
He turned to me and started asking other questions, about my books and how I’d managed to write them when I was so ill. I told him about the book idea that came to me in the second year of my illness, by which time I was just about able to get up and dressed without having to go straight back to bed. I told him how the idea wouldn’t leave me alone and I started writing notes on an old A4 pad I found in Mum’s study. Eventually I got out my laptop for the first time in eighteen months and wrote the opening paragraph.
‘I was only able to write about three hundred words a day, but over time three hundred words becomes a book in the end,’ I said, smiling at the memory. Writing my first book while being so ill was one of the things I’m most proud of. It’s also the thing that saved me in so many ways. Falling down the rabbit hole of my imaginary world every day took my mind off my illness and, although I didn’t tell him this, it took my mind off Rupert too – because after Dan left I’d found myself thinking about Rupert again, wondering where he was.
I did tell him how much harder my second book was to write. ‘I was on a deadline for that one and I overdid it to get it finished on time.’
‘Couldn’t you have asked for an extension?’ Rupert asked.
I laughed. ‘Me, admitting I needed help? Are you kidding?’
He smiled beside me. He knew me as well as he knew himself. He knew we’d both always strived to be the best and to never ask for help – except reluctantly from each other. I think we’d both learned what a waste of time that had been over the years.
‘In the end I had to admit I couldn’t do it again,’ I explained. ‘I had a major relapse at the beginning of last year after handing in that second book. Which is why there is a bit of a wait for the third one.’
‘But it’s out soon?’
‘September,’ I said. ‘And hopefully I can hand in the fourth by the end of the summer.’
‘Is this why you write under a pen name?’ he asked. ‘To hide your illness?’
‘Not to hide it exactly, but to be able to set boundaries. I don’t feel able to do public appearances or seminars or conferences. It takes most of my energy just to write the books!’
He pulled me towards him again. ‘You’re incredible,’ he said softly, into my hair. ‘How did you cope with it all?’
‘Mum and Gemma were amazing. So were Caitlin and her family.’
‘I wish I’d known, I wish I could have helped in some way.’ When I looked up at him, he had a strange faraway look in his eye as though he was remembering where he’d been when I got ill and when I relapsed. I realised then that when I got ill for the second time, after my second book, he was already back in the country.
‘I’m not going anywhere, Jessie,’ he said. ‘You do believe me, don’t you?’
‘I’m scared,’ I admitted. ‘I’m scared to let myself be happy, and I’m scared to believe this is happening. I’ve worked so hard to try to get better, to try to get over you and to move on from Dan, to try to make a life for myself. I know it doesn’t seem like much of a life – to you it must seem so boring.’
‘A life with you, however that life might pan out, is very far from boring.’
‘I feel like fate has been keeping us apart for years.’ Too late I remembered how much he hated it when I talked about fate. He didn’t believe in it, and it always annoyed him that I did.
‘There’s no such thing as fate, Jessie. We are all responsible for our own happiness. We all have free will. The only thing that’s kept us apart is us. Well, me mostly. Do you want this to happen?’
I knew then that I did want this to happen, that despite my fear and reservations I wanted this second chance more than anything. Somewhere in the back of my mind, even during the time I was with Dan, I’d been thinking about this moment for ten years, dreaming of him coming back to pick up where we left off. I never thought for a moment it would happen and, even though we both carried so much baggage now, in so many ways it felt the same. But it also felt like a dream, something that only happened in books, like the moment when Captain Wentworth wrote the letter to Anne Elliot.
Later that evening when Mum was out at one of her committees – one at Highgate Cemetery I think – we went to bed together, allowing ourselves to get lost in each other again, knowing now that we knew everything about each other we were meant to know. At first he was hesitant, scared he would hurt me and concerned that he had hurt me the weekend before, but afterwards when we lay in each other’s arms I felt something shift. This was how things were now. Rupert and I were together again. Part of me was still scared but Rupert had always told me to face my fears and go for my dreams.
SEPTEMBER 2017
23
RUPERT
He had been scared, before he told her, that the truth would push them apart. He had thought that when he told her what happened to him at Harvard she wouldn’t want to be with him. He had already known she had been more ill than she’d admitted and he wondered if it would be too much for her. But all the while she had been scared of the same thing.
He hadn’t dared to imagine that being honest with each other would bring them closer together, closer than they’d ever been. Once they had both told each ot
her everything it felt as though a weight had been lifted. As the summer progressed and they spent more and more time together everything felt exactly as it had done and some days it felt even better. There were moments when Rupert had to remember it wasn’t a dream. After all, he had been thinking about this for a decade.
If he stopped to think about it too much, the speed at which they slipped back into being inseparable was alarmingly fast. In those moments when he did stop to think, part of him worried. One thing Jess hadn’t told him when she talked about her illness was that she could relapse again. Before he had left that weekend to return to York, Caro had taken him to one side and held his hand in the way that she had done when he was a boy and he’d had another row with his father, and she had reiterated that point to him.
‘Jess could get that ill again,’ she’d said. ‘And you need to be sure that you can cope with that.’
At the time he’d thought he could cope with anything if he could just have Jess back. But when he really thought about it he wasn’t so sure. The best thing he could do, he thought, was to look after her so that she didn’t relapse.
He understood what Jess meant when she spoke about never getting back to ‘normal’. She knew she would never be the same person she was before she got ill, just as he knew he would never be the same as he had been before his breakdown. Understanding that about each other might be all they needed, not only to accept each other’s challenges, but also to accept themselves. The whirlwind nature of their rekindled relationship was part of this acceptance. It felt more normal than anything he had ever known – it was almost enough to make him believe in fate.
They barely spent a night apart that summer. Jess came to York and Rupert took her to his favourite pubs and restaurants, for evening walks along the river with Captain, for picnics in Museum Gardens, relishing the fact he finally had somebody to share all of this with. In stolen moments they finished their books, heads bent over their laptops, and handed them in to their respective agents. Rupert felt better than he had in months. He felt alive and, more importantly, he felt happy. Jess told him that she felt the same.
But as the summer grew to a close and the beginning of the academic year at York University loomed closer on Rupert’s horizon he couldn’t bear for it to end. He knew that once he went back to teaching in October he would have less time to be with Jess, less time to travel to London to see her and Caro and Gemma and Caitlin. He knew that these recent halcyon days, that had felt like the summer before their A levels, were almost over and he had to decide what he wanted next.
What he wanted was to be with Jess properly and so he needed to ask her something that would change both of their lives forever.
‘You want me to move to York with you?’ Jess exclaimed when he asked her.
‘If I could see any way of moving to London to be with you, I’d do it,’ he replied. ‘But I really need this job, so I was wondering if you would like to come to York and live with me for a while and see if you could work there. Would you consider leaving London behind to give this a go?’
‘To live in your tiny Lilliputian house?’ she asked, but she was smiling when she said it.
He nodded. ‘At first,’ he said. ‘But maybe we could find a bigger house together.’
‘The house doesn’t matter,’ she said, throwing her arms around his neck. ‘Absolutely yes, I’d love to come to York to live with you!’
‘You’re sure?’ He was surprised. He had thought it would take more persuading.
‘Of course I’m sure, Rupert,’ she replied. ‘I want to start my life again. I don’t want to live with Mum forever. I want to start our life together.’
He grinned as he held her against him, unable to believe this was happening, unable to believe how lucky he felt.
Caitlin and Gemma were equally excited. Gemma particularly had been a ball of uncontrollable excitement ever since she’d come back from her honeymoon to discover he and Jess were back together.
‘Didn’t I tell you?’ she said to anyone who would listen. ‘Didn’t I tell you Jess would move to York? Next she’ll be married – you wait!’
Whilst there was much excitement about the move to York, Rupert knew Gemma was going to miss Jess. He’d overheard her talking about it one night and, although Jess had assured her that everything would be all right, that they wouldn’t lose touch, Rupert was worried Jess would miss her friends, that she might be lonely.
‘You are sure about this, aren’t you?’ he asked. ‘I don’t want you to do anything you’re not sure about.’
‘One hundred per cent,’ she replied. ‘I’m not moving to the moon. We can come to London whenever we want and when we’ve got a bigger house Gemma and Mike can visit us.’
‘Of course,’ he said, kissing the top of her head. ‘Anytime.’
He also knew that Caro had her reservations about the move. He understood why. He knew that she had her doubts about his ability to look after Jess if she became ill again. He had his own doubts about that too.
‘Promise me you’ll phone me if you’re at all worried,’ she said. ‘Jess is stubborn and she won’t tell you herself if she gets her old symptoms back. You’ll need to keep an eye on her.’
He promised he would, of course, but he didn’t want them to have that kind of relationship. He wanted Jess to feel that she could tell him anything, no matter how bad it was. He wanted them to be able to deal with things as a team and he really wanted to show Caro he was capable of that.
‘I know you’re going to miss her,’ he said.
‘I am,’ Caro replied. ‘But probably not as much as you have missed each other over the years.’
As late summer moved into early autumn, Jess moved to York and started to get to know her new home – the soft northern accents, the rolling hills, the cooler weather, the rain. She moved her belongings into his house, squeezing them into the tiny corners, and he promised her again they would look for somewhere bigger to live. It wasn’t until she was there that he realised his house wasn’t big enough for both of them and Captain.
‘There is something else,’ he said one evening towards the end of September.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘My parents would like to see you. I told them about us, about you moving to York, and they’ve invited us to Cambridge. Caro too.’
Jess groaned audibly at that. ‘Do we have to? Can’t we just ignore them?’
‘I wish.’ And he did honestly wish he could. He thought of the pressure they’d put on him over the years, all the times he’d done things he didn’t necessarily want to do, all the striving and all the hard work just to please them. But it still wasn’t enough. It was never enough. He was thirty-one years old and he still jumped when they told him too.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘We’re not fifteen anymore. We need to make amends with all of the past, including your parents.’
Rupert wrinkled his nose. He didn’t know if he’d ever fully make amends with his parents.
‘Can I ask you something?’ she said.
‘Of course, anything.’
‘Did you never ask your mum about me? You must have known she was still friends with my mum?’
‘I had no idea until I saw you again. Mum never mentioned you or Caro, not that I’ve seen her much over the years.’
‘Did you keep in touch with Gemma after you left?’ Jess asked then. That took him by surprise.
‘How did you know?’ he asked.
‘Oh, just a feeling I had. She always swore you didn’t but she’s also a terrible liar.’
‘Was that what you wanted to ask?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘What I wanted to ask was why? Why did you stay in touch with her and never get in touch with me again?’
‘We only stayed in touch for a while – about eighteen months. But I knew Gemma worked at Kew and I’d been thinking about calling her for a couple of years before I met you again.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
‘Because th
e only reason I had to get back in touch with her was to find out where you were and I was scared you wouldn’t be interested. I thought that you’d be married with kids, that you’d be happy without me. I thought it was too late. I thought I’d missed my opportunity to tell you how I felt and I didn’t want to ruin your life like I’d ruined my own.’
‘And yet here we are.’
‘Ruining each other’s lives.’
‘I wouldn’t have it any other way,’ she said.
… After I told you that I couldn’t come to America with you, I think I expected you to stay in Cambridge. I thought you would do the right thing. I thought you would stay with me and Mum, that we would get through this together just as we always had.
But you didn’t change your mind. You understood why I couldn’t come with you but by then you were determined to go, to get out of Cambridge, to try to run away from your pain. I tried to tell you it didn’t work like that, but you didn’t listen. Or if you did listen, you weren’t willing to stand up to your family and refuse to go to Harvard.
Instead you thought we could make it work long distance. You wanted to get married, just as we’d planned, to make that commitment to each other. You couldn’t see that for me everything changed when my father died, that nothing was ever going to be the same again. Besides, now I knew that Camilla was going to Harvard too. How were we ever going to work out? You swore you hadn’t known, but all I could see, if we got married, was an expensive trans-Atlantic divorce a year down the line.
‘Let’s see where we are next summer,’ I said. I wasn’t sure I meant that though. I think part of me had already decided what to do.
You started to shut down on me after that. For those last few weeks before you left you spent more time with John than you did with me. I still had my flat-share in London that summer. Mum insisted I stay and try to get on with my life, to do the post-graduate journalism course I’d got onto. She said it was what my dad would have wanted. She was already talking about selling the house. You went to Arsenal matches with John without telling me that you were in London while I drank too much coffee in the Turkish coffee shop at the bottom of Kentish Town Road and went to art exhibitions with Dan when I wasn’t looking after Mum.
The Pieces of You and Me Page 12