Reluctantly Home(33)

‘So,’ said Jez when they were sitting at the table opposite one another. ‘Long time no contact. Of any sort.’

He placed a heavy emphasis on his barbed words, but his tone seemed jocular enough. Pip searched his face for clues as to how his mind was working. It was true that she had barely said more than a handful of words to him since she’d left for university. She could have replied that they had just gone in different directions, but she knew it had been more of a concerted effort on her own part to separate them. Jez, like so many other things in her old life, just hadn’t fitted with her new environment, didn’t slot neatly into the amended version of herself. Did he know that? Looking at him now, Pip was horribly sure that he did.

‘I know. I’m sorry,’ she said, deciding in that moment to go for raw honesty. ‘I have no excuse. I went to London, got ideas above my station, came a cropper, and now I’m back with my tail between my legs.’

It felt so incredibly wrong to dismiss what she had done in these terms, but making light of it was generally the best way to prevent the conversation going in a direction that she wasn’t ready for.

Jez, however, appeared to be having none of her diversionary tactics. ‘I’m sorry about the accident,’ he said. ‘It’s crap and I have no idea how you’re coping with it. It must be hell.’

That was the closest anyone had come to summing up how things really were.

‘Thanks,’ she said.

‘And what’s it like being back?’ he asked.

‘Honestly?’ she asked. ‘It’s shit.’

He raised an eyebrow as if to say, ‘Thanks very much,’ and so she added, ‘No offence. Mum and Dad don’t know what to do, so they have decided to treat me as if I’m five. My hard-won stellar career is disintegrating with every week that goes by, and now the love of my life has decided that I’m not worth waiting for. And that’s on top of . . .’ She took a deep breath. ‘Well, that’s all on top of everything else I’m dealing with. So yes, it’s all pretty bad.’

There was a pause whilst Jez allowed what she had just said to settle on the table between them like dust from an explosion.

‘Could be worse,’ he said. ‘You could be dead.’

She might have replied that that would be preferable, but she knew he wouldn’t stand for any self-pity on her part, so instead she just nodded weakly.

‘So, what are you going to do?’ he asked her. ‘How are you going to fix it?’

The baldness of his question surprised her. In the whole time since the accident nobody, not even Dominic, had spoken to her so directly. Everyone else had pussyfooted around, talking in euphemisms and half-finished sentences as if, by not actually discussing the facts, they would somehow evaporate of their own accord. But Jez had known her forever. They had shared their first cigarette, their first stolen can of cider, their first kiss, and other firsts that she held close to her heart. And with that level of intimacy came the privilege of being able to cut out all the white noise and go straight to the pure ringing note at the situation’s heart.

‘I haven’t got a clue,’ she replied. ‘I have to get the flashbacks and the panics under control first. Then I can go home and get back to work, but I don’t know how long that will take. Plus, just to put a cherry on the top of the whole stinking pie, I’m now officially homeless because my ex-boyfriend has kicked me out of my flat. Technically his flat, to be fair, but still.’

Pip was surprised at how refreshing it was to express out loud what she was really thinking, instead of having to sugar-coat everything. When she spoke to her parents, she gilded every word. They were worried enough as it was, without her adding to their concerns by being overly candid.

‘Are they bad, the panics?’ Jez asked. He was looking directly at her, as if he were trying to judge the truth of her answer by what her eyes told him.

‘Bad enough,’ she said. ‘It’s the unpredictability that makes it so hard. I can go days and days without anything and then, bam, I’m right back where I started.’

Jez nodded as if he understood exactly. ‘My mate was in Iraq. He’s the same. It doesn’t matter what we say to him, about how it was a war, and that he was there to do a job, that shit happens. He just can’t deal with the guilt. They say it just takes time. Not sure how helpful that is, though.’

She shrugged, but then suddenly she didn’t want to think about herself and her problems any more.

‘Less of my doom and gloom,’ she said, trying to raise her face into a smile. ‘How about you? What have you been up to?’

‘Not nearly as much as you!’ he replied wryly. ‘I’m working on the farm, obviously. I love it, working outside. I thought for a bit that I should have gone to uni like everyone else, but I don’t think that now. And I’m as good as hitched.’

Waves of something that might have been jealousy washed over Pip. She didn’t want Jez or the life that he could offer, but the thought that he didn’t want her either snapped at her heart like a terrier.

‘Do I know her?’ she asked, although she really hoped that she didn’t.

Jez shook his head. ‘Teresa? I don’t think so. She manages one of the big hotels in town. She’s from Ipswich originally.’

‘And have you set a date?’ Pip asked lightly, hoping that her expression wasn’t giving away her odd sense of disappointment.