Conviction(25)

I take a sip of my wine. “It’s not him, I know it’s not him.” Sophie tilts her head to the side and nods at me slowly. “Don’t look at me like that, Soph. I know we were young, I know it was a long time ago and I know he did what he did.” I take another gulp of my wine, my mouth feeling incredibly dry. “And just like I know all of that to be true, I know that Conner’s not dead. I would know.”

She studies me for a bit, sipping on her wine. “Have you ever spoken to him since that night? I know we’ve never really spoken about it, but have you ever had any contact with him, whatsoever?”

I shake my head, my eyes stinging with tears. Even after all these years, the hurt and rejection I felt back then is still painful. I’ve just never understood why he did what he did. Perhaps if I’d been given an explanation, some answers, I would’ve been able to move on.

“No, the last time I spoke to him was when I got to your house that morning and called to tell him I was going shopping with you.” I chew on the inside of my cheek. “Pearce said he tried calling him a few times from the hospital, but he never answered.”

Sophie takes a large gulp of her wine. I shrug my shoulders, my nose stinging at the tears that desperately want to escape. “I wrote him a couple of letters and gave them to Josh to give to him while he was inside, but I never heard a word back, not a single word.” I make a little noise as I speak and try not to cry. A tear finally wins the battle that I’ve been fighting to fall and plops from my eye onto my left cheek. I swipe it away, angry at myself for getting upset about something that happened so long ago. Angry that I’m so upset that something bad may have happened to someone that probably hasn’t given me a second thought these past fifteen years, who has probably forgotten that I even exist.

“Josh never told me, that you’d given him letters I mean.”

I lean toward our wine glasses with the bottle in my hand and top them up. They’re big glasses, meant for red really, but we use them for white, something that continuously pisses my husband off, like the world will end because I’ve used the wrong glass.

I drain the bottle into the glasses, take another gulp and say, “Yeah, I gave them to him but we never really spoke about it afterwards. I couldn’t face Josh back then. Couldn’t face him telling me anything about Conner, well, him not telling me anything was really the problem. Every time I saw your brother, I was so hopeful, desperate in fact, that he might have a message for me, that in the end it was a lot less painful to just avoid him. So, yeah, anyway, I never heard back from him and I’ve never tried to make contact since.”

We sit in silence for a few minutes and sip on our wine. The television is still muted and the scenes being shown are fans of Shift standing in front of the hotel they’re staying at. They are holding onto each other and crying. Sophie’s phone chimes as it receives a text message and my stomach has another little dance party inside my belly. I keep my eyes on the telly and notice that the banner along the bottom of the screen is displaying a message that states that the band and their management will be holding a press conference at three p.m., Chicago time. I instantly reach for my phone on the coffee table to work out what time that will be in the UK.

“They’re holding a press conference at about eight o’clock tonight our time,” Sophie states.

I put my phone back down and let out a long breath.

“You doing all right, Neen, honestly?”

I’m closer to Sophie than I am any of my family members. As ashamed as I should be, but I’m actually not, of the fact that I love her more than my parents or brother.

We work together five days a week and we have dinner together at least once a week. I visit her mum more than I visit my own, but she has no idea about the world of hurt I’ve lived with these past fifteen years. She has no idea about the deal I did with my brother to get the loan to buy our first salon, and she has no idea how desperately I was trying to make my marriage work. I burst into tears and she’s at my side in an instant.

“Oh Nina, come on babe. Let’s not get too upset till we know what’s going on.”

I shake my head while wiping my eyes with the back of my hand.

“I don’t know why I care, Soph. I really wish I didn’t give a shit. He left me… he left me at the worst possible moment in my life. After everything we’d planned, after everything he had promised me, he just left me.” I gulp on my drink and almost choke on my words, my sobs and my wine. “He left me lying in that hospital bed and went out to sell drugs with his brother. I just wish I knew why, Soph? I just wish I knew what happened between me speaking to him that morning and him doing what he did that night…” I pause for a few seconds and try and draw a breath. The wine has hit me already, and I’m feeling light headed and emotional.

“Has Josh never said anything? Never mentioned that Conner had told him how he ended up with Miles that night?” She tucks her legs underneath her and sits back into the corner of the sofa.

“The only thing he ever asked was where we were that night. My mum had already told me that she’d told him, we all went to a function at some hotel, so I just stuck with that story.”

Sophie’s mum, Jen, had come to the hospital that night and held me while I cried myself to sleep. I’d never even told my own mother about my stay in the hospital and I probably never would.