‘You know what he did.’
‘I mean recently. Since you got back together again.’
Lily thought about it for a moment, racked her brains and riffled through her memory. And then frowned. ‘Well, nothing, I guess.’ The opposite, in fact. He’d gone so far out of his way to show her that she could trust him that he was practically in another country.
‘Right. I see. So basically Kit made one lousy, brief mistake five years ago and you’re still punishing him for it?’
‘I’m not.’
‘Then what are you doing?’
‘The only thing I can,’ said Lily, reiterating the mantra that had kept her more or less upright this last fortnight. ‘Being sensible. Protecting myself. Surviving.’
‘And how’s that working out?’
‘Not brilliantly,’ she had to admit. ‘But what else do you suggest?’
‘A good long look in the mirror.’
Lily shuddered. ‘I did that earlier. Got quite a fright.’
‘Look deeper.’
Lily took a sip of wine and sighed. ‘What are you getting at, Zoe? And no more cryptic stuff because my brain really can’t take it at the moment.’
‘What I mean is that you weren’t exactly fault free in what happened all those years ago, were you?’
‘I know that.’
‘Yet when he suggested trying again Kit trusted that you’d have changed, didn’t he? So why can’t you trust that he has? Seems to me that’s not very fair.’
Lily opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again because for one thing here was the waiter with their fish and chips and for another she didn’t know what to say to that. Still hadn’t figured out an answer by the time the waiter had brought cutlery and condiments and had then retreated.
‘And actually,’ continued Zoe, picking up the ketchup and squeezing a dollop on the side of her plate, ‘if anyone’s had their trust broken it seems to me that it’s Kit, because from your description of the way things were going before you broke up it sounds like, unlike him, you haven’t changed at all.’
Zoe dipped a chip in the ketchup and popped it in her mouth while all Lily could do was stare at her. ‘What?’
‘You’ve been doing that tortoise thing again, haven’t you?’
‘What tortoise thing?’
‘The pulling yourself into your shell and hiding while life and its problems go on around you.’
At her sister’s bluntness Lily bristled. ‘If that was what I was doing, and I’m not saying it was, don’t you think it would be understandable? Don’t you think some kind of self-defence would be normal?’
‘There’s no “if” about it,’ said Zoe. ‘You have been doing that, and, self-defence or not, it’s a mistake. One you’re consciously making.’
Lily looked at her sister in frustration, because Zoe might be all loved-up at the moment, but did she really think it was that simple? Could she really not see how hard it had been for her to end their relationship? How heartbroken she was by what she’d had to do? Did Zoe really think she’d made a mistake by wanting to protect herself from the kind of pain that had torn her apart once before?
Had she really not changed at all?
‘I can’t just tell myself to trust him and, hey, that’s that,’ she said, beginning to feel a bit confused because she’d been so convinced she had changed.
‘Why not?’
‘Because it doesn’t work like that.’
‘Yes, it does.’