Always and Only You

Chapter Seventy-Seven

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

Present Day

‘Oh my God, Erin. What’s the matter?’

I fall into Anjali’s arms almost before she finishes opening the door. I am a sobbing, blubbering mess, and she practically has to carry me down the hallway and into the living room of her shared house.

‘I … I …’ I have no idea how to start, mainly because I have no idea which man I’m crying hardest about, or whether it’s just extreme frustration that I’m crying about either of them in the first place. ‘All … m–men are … b–bastards,’ I finally manage.

‘Ain’t that the truth? Apart from Lars, of course,’ she adds hurriedly, but I can’t be cross about that. I picked him for her.

She leads me to the sofa, makes me sit down, hands me a box of tissues, then waits patiently while I mop myself up. ‘What’s going on? Last I heard, you were in Cornwall with Gil.’

‘Devon,’ I snuffle. ‘And I came home early, because—’ I break off, not even knowing how I can explain it.

‘In that case, why aren’t you at the flat with Simon?’

I have to control my breathing to stop myself from crying. ‘It’s off … The wedding is off.’

She instantly pulls me into a fierce hug. ‘No! Oh, my God, Erin … What happened?’

I clamp everything down – lips, eyelids, jaw – in an effort to stop the Vesuvius inside from exploding. I have got to get a grip of myself. It takes me close to a minute, but eventually I pull back and wipe my eyes, try to smile.

‘No …’ Anjali says, narrowing her eyes at me. ‘Don’t do that.’

‘Do what?’

‘Stuff it all down and paste a sparkly ‘Erin’ grin on top so everyone thinks you’re okay when you’re not.’

She knows I do that, too? Crap. ‘But I want to be okay.’

She shakes her head and smiles at me as if I’m a naughty but adorable schoolchild. I’m about to bristle when I realize it must be like looking in a mirror. How many times have I given Anjali that look? Suddenly, I’m ashamed of myself. Not only am I a total mess, but I’m a patronizing bitch, too.

‘And don’t do that either,’ she adds. ‘Sometimes, in fact, most times, I needed to hear what you had to tell me.’

I sit very still, aware I must be giving my thoughts away just by breathing. I feel raw, as if my skin has been peeled back and all I am is a bundle of exposed nerve endings. I have no idea what to do next. My usual options – pretence, self-loathing – have been snatched away from me.

‘You don’t have to deal with everything on your own, Erin. I’m here. I’ve always been here.’

I sniff loudly. ‘I know that.’ At least I do now.

‘So I am going to run you a bath, and then I’m going to make you a giant cup of hot chocolate while we watch Pride and Prejudice , and then, when you are ready, you are going to tell me what this is all about.’

I nod, giving her a wobbly smile. It feels nice to be told what to do. ‘How did you get to be so wise and wonderful?’ I ask as she gets up to head for the bathroom.

She grins at me as she reaches the door. ‘Learned from the best, didn’t I?’

* * *

After we’ve watched the whole of the Netherfield Ball, I mute the TV and turn to Anjali. ‘Okay. I think I’m ready’

She nods encouragingly.

‘But it might be easier if you ask me questions, because seriously, I have no idea where to start.’

She stares at the ceiling for a second or two. ‘Okay, let’s start with the big one … Why is the wedding off?’

‘Because he’s been lying to me for the last five years.’ And then I recount, as precisely as I can, the conversation I had with Simon earlier today about his part in Megan’s death.

‘Do you think there’s any way back from this?’ she asks when I’ve finished. ‘Would you even want there to be?’

I study the paused image of Lizzy Bennet looking a bit peeved on the TV screen. ‘No. I don’t think there’s any coming back from it. I don’t remember saying this to Simon on the night I had my accident, but I told him I didn’t even know him, and I feel that way now. Our entire relationship has been based on lies.’

Anjali nods. ‘Let me play devil’s advocate here … He lied to you about something that happened before you were properly together. It doesn’t change who he is, does it? He’s still the same man you’ve loved for years.’

I shake my head. ‘I’m not sure about that either. Because that wasn’t the only thing he was lying about.’ And I tell her what I found out about it not being Simon who was messaging me while I was away in the Bahamas that first season, and something strikes me, something I’d been too upset to figure out earlier. ‘Simon must have known. He knew Gil had his old phone. He knew he wasn’t messaging me, so when I came back and talked about all the things I thought I’d discussed with him in those messages, he had to have worked out at some point things weren’t adding up. And I’ve even told him, multiple times, that those messages made me fall in love with him. I mean, I came home and we slept together for the first time on the back of the romantic high I was on. He took advantage of that.’

Anjali pulls a face. ‘Putting it like that, it does sound pretty sleazy.’

‘The weird thing is, I don’t think Simon is evil. I just think he’s lazy. He didn’t put the work in to woo me. Gil did, but Simon wanted to reap the benefits.’

Anjali’s expression becomes pained.

‘What?’ I say.

She blows out a breath. ‘Well, Lars said a couple of things recently I found quite surprising.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like you and Simon had fizzled out a couple of months after you got together. He thought you’d broken up. But then you came back to surprise Simon for Valentine’s Day, and Lars thought you both decided to give things another go.’

I take a moment to absorb this information. It kind of makes sense … It would explain why Simon wasn’t messaging me the same time Gil was, why he was practically ghosting me for a while and then everything seemed to get back on track.

‘That’s not all,’ Anjali says, biting her lip. ‘Lars also said there may have been other girls during that time. Nothing serious, but other girls, all the same.’

I must be numb now, overloaded with too much information, because I receive this calmly. ‘It was a mirage, wasn’t it, my relationship with Simon? I thought it was one thing, and really, it was something completely different. The sad thing is, it was an illusion I created myself.’

‘I think you’re being a little hard on yourself there, babe.’

I shake my head. ‘Of course, I had Simon’s help. But the signs were there now I think about it. I just chose to ignore them, too invested in finding my Prince Charming to give them air. Oh God … my mother was right!’ I shoot a fierce look at my best friend. ‘But don’t you dare tell her!’

Anjali shakes her head vehemently.

I stare at the blank wall as more of the puzzle pieces fall into place. ‘On some level I knew it all, didn’t I? My subconscious was trying to warn me, sending me those dreams where my groom had no face, where he was a man I didn’t know or recognize … And I ignored every one of them.’

‘Even I would have said you were being overdramatic if you’d called off your wedding because of a dream,’ Anjali says.

‘I know. I still wish I’d taken it all on board. I suppose I just badly wanted to believe that someone loved me that much.’

‘The person who wrote the messages?’

I nod.

‘That person still exists, you know.’

‘Only in my head, Anj. Yes, there’s a thread of truth in that story, but I cooked up the rest of it myself too. I can’t be trusted when it comes to men at the moment. I really can’t.’

I close my eyes, suddenly feeling very tired. It’s an effort to open them again. ‘Did you see it? Did you think Simon was the same person I did?’

Anjali takes a sip of her hot chocolate and repositions herself on the sofa. ‘I suppose I always saw Simon as a bit too cocky for his own good but like you say, it doesn’t mean he was bad.’

‘But it also doesn’t mean he didn’t do bad things … He let me believe it was Gil who’d given Megan the ket, who’d let her wander off into the park without stopping her. It’s the whole reason I didn’t like Gil after that summer.’ I sigh. ‘It seems Simon’s not the only man I thought I knew but didn’t and, oh boy, how I didn’t …’

‘Which leads us to why you came shooting back up to London early, I guess?’

I nod. But if I was confused about Gil before, I’m doubly so now. How much do I tell Anjali? I can’t really explain everything that went on with Gil without sharing what happened inside my head when I was in a coma, and she’s going to think I’m unhinged.

But I feel so much lighter for having shared what I have already. She’s right. I carry too much on my own, too scared of what other people will think of me if I say everything I’m thinking and feeling. However, if there’s one thing I know after tonight, it’s that Anjali has my back.

‘Okay,’ I say, looking her in the eye. ‘Stay with me for this next bit … It’s going to get a bit weird, but I promise it’ll all make sense in the end.’ And then I take a deep breath and tell her about what happened, starting with standing outside the church doors on the afternoon of the wedding that never actually took place.