by Maggie Fox
The main street through Carleton was lined with stone cottages. Each and every one of them now had a real tree outside, either standing in a pot on the pavement or fixed with brackets to the upper storey of the house. Every tree was lit with plain white lights. No garish blue, reds or yellows. Just simple, elegant, white lights. The only other thing dressing the branches was a dusting of snow.
“It is.” Zane swallowed. “And so are you.”
She turned to look at him. Properly look at him. Saying nothing.
He held his breath. A voice in his head was slowly chanting: Kiss her. Kiss her.
Kiss her now, you idiot.
“Thanks.” She stepped away from him.
In that split second, the moment was lost.
He followed her; catching hold of her arm again and they trudged on through the snow until they reached the steps up to her flat. When she tried to release her arm he shook his head. “No, these steps are lethal in this snow and ice; I’ll walk you right to your door.”
At the door she pushed back the hood of her coat. “Thanks for getting me home in one piece.”
Zane nodded. He was still unsure what was happening between the two of them. But the words were out of his mouth before he had time to think about it.
“I don’t suppose you’d fancy going for a drink sometime?”
Faith looked uneasy as she tried to fit her key in the lock whilst still wearing gloves. He gently took the key from her and unlocked the door.
It took her a few seconds to reply. As though she’d really thought carefully about her answer. “I don’t think so, Zane, no thanks. I’m sorry. I miss you. I miss us. But no.”
“Why does the answer have to be a no then?” he asked.
“I miss us. But I need some explanations as to why I went from feeling like everything was perfect between us to having you freeze me out of your life, all in a matter of a few hours.”
“I said. It was work. Things are crazy at the Centre. It wouldn’t have been fair.”
She shook her head. “You found time for us before. What changed?” She fixed him with a determined glare.
“It was just one of those things. I’m sorry.” He shrugged.
Faith pushed the door open and stepped inside her flat, unzipping her coat and running a hand through her hair. “How do I know it won’t happen again? How do I know you won’t suddenly decide you need space or whatever and you just push me away again, like you did before?” She sighed. “I’m sorry, Zane. I thought we were great together. I thought we had something amazing. But I guess you felt otherwise, and you won’t tell me why, or the truth about what went on. So maybe we should leave things the way they are.”
He leaned against the door-frame. “Why did you invite me to the party tonight?”
Faith tugged her coat down her arms and hung it on a peg near the door.
“I don’t know,” she said looking confused. “I wanted you to be there. Thought you should be there. I suppose I wanted to see you. I wanted to invite you.”
“And that’s all? You just wanted to invite me to the party? Nothing else?”
Faith shook her head. “I don’t know. Zane, I don’t know what’s going on with you. Things are brilliant, better than brilliant, between us – and then, after the camping trip, you suddenly freeze me out. But you’re obviously not happy with the idea of me being with anyone else. You were annoyed about me going to the cinema with Matt. You practically pushed Andy out of the way when he came over to talk to me at the café after the tourism meeting. Yet you don’t want to be with me yourself.”
He met her gaze. “You didn’t look very happy when you saw me dancing with Sally tonight at the party. Not that I wanted to dance with her,” he added hastily. “She kind of hijacked me. I’m sorry. I didn’t do it to annoy you. I’m not playing games. Look, I admit I made a mistake. I should have explained things better when I cooled things off between us. I’m so sorry.”
They were still standing in the doorway. The snow swirled around them. Obviously she wasn’t going to invite him in.
“I don’t understand why though, Zane. What happened?”
He stared at the floor. “It’s complicated.”
“I can live with complicated. I just want you to tell me the truth. I need you to be honest with me.”
He looked at her. “Then we might be able to get back together? Is that what you’re saying?”
She nodded. “We might be able to try.”
Zane pushed himself away from the doorframe and stepped back, a gust of wind and swirl of snow buffeting him. “What if you don’t like the truth? Have you thought about that? What if the truth actually finishes us off for good?”
Concern filled Faith’s eyes. “How do you mean? You’re not married too, are you?”
He shook his head. “No. I’m not married.”
“Then what?”
“Can I come in? I think it’s time I tried to explain a few things.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Faith stepped back to let Zane into her flat. “OK, so let’s talk.”
Zane pulled off his jacket and bent down to remove his snow-covered boots.
“Right. I’ll try to explain. I wanted to tell you before, but…”
She nodded encouragingly. “Go on.”
He looked worried, she thought – like someone about to face the executioner. What could he possibly have to say to her that would make him look so anxious? Now he was pacing the floor, avoiding looking at her.
“Zane, can you sit down a minute? You’re making me feel on edge.” She perched on the sofa, her whole body tingling with nerves, as he continued to pace back and forth across the carpet. “What on earth is wrong? Please, just tell me.” She patted the sofa next to her. “Come and sit down.”
He stopped pacing, nodded and rubbed a hand to the back of his neck.
“OK. Here goes.” He sat at the opposite end of the sofa. “I cooled things off between us after the camping trip because during that time we spent together, I realised something.”
He stared at the floor, his fingers fiddling nervously with the leather bracelet on his wrist.
“I realised you’re the one,” he continued. “To say I love you doesn’t even begin to describe the way I feel about you. And that terrifies me. I panicked. I suppose some kind of self-preservation kicked in. It was as though I needed to get out of our relationship to try to keep my sanity.”
He was saying he loved her so much that he had to leave her? What on earth did that mean? Faith’s stomach was a jangle of anxiety and nerves. “Why does being in a serious relationship make you feel that way?” she asked gently.
“It’s a long story.”
He closed his eyes, as if collecting his thoughts. “Stuff happened in the last few years. It changed me.”
He paused, took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
Faith could see he was finding it difficult to tell her all this, struggling for the right words. “What kind of stuff?” she prompted.
He opened his eyes, but still didn’t look at her. She wanted to reach out to him, but his whole body language was so tense that she sensed it would be the last thing he wanted at this particular moment.
“When I told you my parents were divorced,” he began, “well, I didn’t tell you everything. They split up because my mum admitted she’d been having an affair with an old boyfriend of hers. A guy she’d met at a school reunion. It had been going on for almost six years. She said she wanted a divorce so she could be with this other guy.”
This time Faith ignored the rigid set of his body, the whole leave-me-alone stance, and went with her instincts. She eased her way across the sofa towards him and placed a hand on his thigh. He glanced at her briefly; seeming surprised at her gesture, and then went back to staring at his hands.
“I’m so sorry, Zane,” she said. “I can’t even begin to understand what that must have felt like.”
“It gets worse,” he said, his voice barely more th
an a whisper.
Faith now knew that he’d reached the point of no return. He had to carry on, he had to let it all out, however painful it might be.
“Go on. You can tell me anything,” she said, placing a hand on top of his.
He slowly nodded before continuing.
“My dad said he honestly had no idea all of this had been going on. Whether that was true or not, I don’t know. Perhaps, on some level, he’d suspected, but didn’t want to face up to it – as though if he ignored it, it would go away. He was devastated when she confessed. As soon as Becca and I found out we tried to help them sort things out, but Mum was adamant she was leaving. I remember her packing all her stuff while Becca tried to plead with her to stay, maybe try counselling or something. I sat in the other room in silence with my dad while he drank whisky.”
He paused as though he was working out what to say next, choosing his words carefully.
“Mum left that night, moved in with this guy. Bex and I took it in turns to stay with Dad for a while, keep an eye on him. He was such a mess, it was horrible to see him like that. He just drank all the time, didn’t sleep or eat. We tried to get him to see a doctor or a therapist, someone he could talk it all through with, because he wouldn’t open up to either of us.”
Faith slipped an arm around his shoulders, pulling him close. She wanted to try, in some part, to ease his obvious pain and discomfort.
“What happened?” she asked.
Zane said nothing, his eyes closed. For a moment Faith wondered if he’d actually heard her.
“Zane?” she prompted gently.
Zane still didn’t open his eyes.
Eventually he spoke.
“He tried to commit suicide.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Faith felt sick.
She tried to pull Zane closer, wanting to hold him. But he didn’t respond. He wouldn’t let her.
“After my mum left,” he continued, “Dad eventually started to improve. He said he wanted to get away and have some space, said he felt as though Becca and I were smothering him. We weren’t sure it was a good idea, but in the end we found a compromise. He agreed to go and stay with his sister and her husband up in Northumberland. They ran a farm, so there’d always be someone around to keep an eye on him. Two days after he arrived up there, we got a call from our aunt saying he’d gone climbing and had a serious fall. But he was a good, experienced climber, so we knew straight away that it wasn’t an accident. We went up there to the hospital, and were told he’d left a suicide note in his car when he’d gone climbing.”
Faith breathed. “I’m so, so sorry.”
He nodded, his head bowed.
She got to her feet. “Can I get you something to drink? Coffee? Something stronger?” She desperately wanted to do something for him, anything that might help him, however small or trivial.
“Something stronger, thanks.” He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter what.”
Fetching two glasses and an already-open bottle of wine from the kitchen, she poured the drink into the glasses and handed one to him. She noticed his hand was trembling as he took the glass from her. He knocked most of its contents back in one go.
She took a sip of her own drink, giving him a moment to compose himself before she dared to ask, “What happened after that?”
“Eventually we found out he was going to be OK. A few days later I went to see my mum. It was all her fault. She’d done this to him. Almost destroyed him.”
He pushed a hand through his hair and then looked up at Faith, the pain staring out of his eyes.
“I mean,” he demanded, “how could she do that to him? To all of us? Live a lie for six years, pretending everything was OK? When all the time she was…”
He let the words hang in the air for a few moments.
“Anyway,” he pushed on, “I rang her and said I wanted to meet up. She was at this guy’s flat. I went round there and told her what had happened to Dad. She looked guilty, said she was horrified, kept telling me how sorry she was. We started arguing. Then the door opened and the guy she was living with walked in. He started defending her, saying they loved each other and wanted to be together. I totally lost it and hit him. She was shouting at me to stop but I didn’t. I don’t do stuff like that, but I just flipped and laid into him. I suppose I blamed him for breaking up my parents’ marriage and ripping our family apart. But I know it wasn’t just his fault, it was hers too.”
He stopped talking and chewed on his bottom lip.
“She obviously thought more of him than she did of us. He never defended himself. Whether it was because he felt guilty, or he didn’t want to get in her bad books by hitting me, I don’t know. I didn’t care.” He drank the rest of the wine. “And then…”
Faith watched him, feeling his anguish, wanting to comfort him.
“Then what?”
He put the glass on the table, his hand still shaking.
“She said it was all my fault.”
“What?” Faith gasped. “I don’t understand.”
How could a mother say something like that to her son? How could she try to push the blame back at Zane?
But he added, in a voice so low that she could barely hear him: “And she was right.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Faith eventually found her voice again.
“How can she possible say all this was your fault?”
Zane rested his elbows on his knees and wrung his hands.
“She said she never would have married my dad if she hadn’t found out she was pregnant with me. The guy she’d been having an affair with, he’d been her boyfriend at school, and back then they’d had a row and split up. She started dating my dad soon after, probably on the rebound, and then she got pregnant. They got married. She knew my dad loved her and it made sense. Apparently she did grow to love him, as if that makes any difference now, but this other guy was always the one for her.”
“At the end of the day, I was the reason why my parents got married. Nothing can change that. Mum didn’t really love Dad, and she wouldn’t have married him if she hadn’t been expecting me. I was the reason they got married, and she spent all those years with a man she shouldn’t have. And she was right. It was my fault. I was the reason they married and, in the same way, I was the reason they broke up. The reason she never loved him enough, the reason she ended up cheating on him. The reason she almost destroyed him.”
Faith rested a hand on top of his.
“You can’t take the blame for that on yourself, Zane. You never asked to be born. They were adults, it was their decision.”
“Yeah, a decision forced by my existence.”
For the first time he looked at her properly, staring deep into her eyes.
“Do you want another drink?”
He nodded. “Thanks.” He reached for the empty glass and handed it to Faith as she got to her feet. She smiled at him, a tentative everything-will-be-OK kind of smile.
He managed a half-smile back, and then slumped against the cushions of the sofa. It was as though everything he’d said in the last ten minutes had left him completely exhausted.
She opened another bottle of wine, handed him his drink and wondered where she should sit. She wanted to show her support, offer him some comfort, but was still unsure if he wanted those things from her at the moment. She decided to sit next to him, placing a hand on his thigh again. They sat in silence and she didn’t encourage him to speak, just let him sip his drink.
Eventually he spoke again.
“Becca was amazing. She was the strong one in all of it. I don’t think I was much help. Once it was all sorted and he was on the mend and getting counselling, things slowly started to improve. I took the route of burying myself in my work in Austria, not facing up to things. When I was at my lowest point, Matt found out about that charity trek to the North Pole, the one I told you about when we went on our first walk and had that picnic. Matt convinced me to sign up and do the trek with him. It wa
s a way of getting a focus back, I guess. Something to concentrate on, a challenge, a distraction, and the chance to get to do something worthwhile for charity at the same time. Twenty degrees below freezing, a howling gale and a blizzard, sleeping in a tent in the middle of nothing. That kind of thing really draws everything out of you.”
He rubbed a hand across his chin.
“Anyway,” he went on, “obviously the divorce was a few years ago now, but it’s only fairly recently that my dad has got his life back on track. After he was released from hospital he went to stay at my aunt’s again for a while, and had regular psychotherapy and counselling. He lives with Helene now near Edinburgh. But I told you that, didn’t I? When they came to the launch day.”
Faith nodded. “Yes you told me. He seemed lovely.”
“He teaches climbing at the big indoor centre just outside Edinburgh,” Zane added. “Did I say that too? The main thing is that I think he’s finally happy again.”
For a few moments he said nothing. Faith didn’t force the issue. She could see that he was finding it difficult to rake up all these memories.
“And your mum?” she eventually asked. “Where is she now? Have you spoken to her since you argued?”
“Lives in London. She married the guy. Colin. Needless to say none of us went to the wedding. I haven’t spoken to her. Sometimes I wish I could forgive her for what she did.”
He let out a long sigh.
“I know I should want my parents to be happy, even if that means they’re better off without each other in their lives. I’m pleased for my dad, Helene is great for him. Becca says Mum is happy with Colin. I can’t seem to find it in me though, not yet anyway, not sure if I ever will, to be happy for her. I miss her, and yet part of me hates her at the same time. Bex told me, years later, that she’d managed to get Dad to talk to her about it all a little bit. She asked if he did know, whether he had any suspicions about the affair. He insisted that he didn’t. So maybe she’d managed to hide it all that well. Maybe she was that good an actress.”