‘How can you know that?’
‘Because this time whenever you’re scared or vulnerable, or whenever you think something’s overwhelming you, tell me and I’ll be there.’
‘I wish you were here now,’ she said quietly.
‘So do I. But I’ll be back tomorrow morning and we can spend the rest of the weekend making up.’
‘I can’t wait.’ For a moment neither of them spoke. Then she said, ‘Kit?’
‘What?’
‘I love you.’
‘I love you too, sweet pea. Deeply. I always have, always will. Even when you’re throwing glasses at me and issuing unreasonable ultimatums.’
‘So are we OK?’
The faint tremor in her voice cut him to the quick and at that moment he knew that he’d do everything in his power to make sure of it. ‘Of course we are.’
THIRTEEN
But they weren’t OK. At least Lily wasn’t.
At first she’d clutched onto Kit’s reassurance that they were fine as if it were a lifeline, and had buried the tiny bubble of doubt somewhere deep inside where it wouldn’t bother her.
Which hadn’t been all that hard because when he’d got back from Rome everything had been so lovely. After a weekend spent making up as promised, he’d announced that he was going to cut back on work and delegate as much as he could. With the extra time, if she was amenable to the idea, he was going to woo her.
Lily had been very amenable to the idea, and had adored the dates, the dinners and the two minibreaks he’d taken her on. He’d poured every drop of spare energy into them and she’d fallen more and more in love with him every day that had passed.
Which made the fact that the doubt she tried to get rid of kept bubbling away all the more frustrating.
And she did try. Really hard. She tried to focus on the present, on the relationship she and Kit had now and the many, many positives of that. She told herself not to look too far into the future and simply to take one day at a time, as he’d suggested all those weeks ago when they’d been on that island.
But to her despair she kept slipping back into the past. She kept dwelling on the latter stages of their marriage and reliving all the pain and hurt that she’d suffered.
She didn’t know why she did it. She certainly didn’t want to. Most of the time she wanted to reach right inside her head and yank out all the thoughts and doubts and fears churning around inside. But she couldn’t seem to help it.
Just as she couldn’t seem to help the horrible, insidious, burning desire to check Kit’s phone whenever he left it unattended. Or the almost irresistible temptation to casually open up his inbox and take a look at his emails whenever he was away from his laptop. Especially after the rare occasion he hadn’t been able to delegate and had had to go away.
She hated it. Hated the way suspicion was slowly creeping into everything she did and everything she felt when it came to Kit. She hated the fact that she knew it was happening yet couldn’t seem to stop it however much she told herself that they were fine, that things were going great.
Because the truth was things weren’t going so great and it was all her fault. As she’d dreaded, she was handling the things that were going on in her head and in her heart really badly. Most of the time she wasn’t handling them at all.
Kit was trying his best. In addition to the attention he lavished on her and the way he kept her up to date of everything he was doing and everyone he was seeing he kept sitting her down and asking her what was wrong, telling her that he wasn’t going anywhere so she might as well spit it out. But she had the feeling they could have spent a week in the same room with him endlessly attempting to get her to talk and still she wouldn’t have been able to explain.
She didn’t know what was wrong. She didn’t know how much longer she could stand the emotional distance that was beginning to stretch between the two of them. Didn’t know what to do about it. Didn’t know what would happen if she confronted it. Didn’t want to think about what it might mean for them.
From time to time she
caught him looking at her. Worriedly, sadly, frequently frustratedly, and she couldn’t blame him because the expression in his eyes reflected how she felt. Their relationship was slowly imploding and she couldn’t seem to do a thing to stop it, and it was breaking her heart.
By the time Zoe’s hen night came around, Lily was so low, so confused and so adrift that she really wasn’t in the mood for partying. But what could she do? She wasn’t going to back out. What with Zoe’s practically non-existent circle of friends, she and Dan’s sister, Celia, were the only guests, and she wasn’t going to dampen her sister’s happiness with her doubts and unhappiness.
So as the trio walked down the stairs into the basement lounge bar in Notting Hill, Lily plastered on a smile, and when the waitress asked what they’d like to drink she ordered a margarita.
Then another.
And another.