The Party Crasher(20)

  It took me a long time to realize he wasn’t coming. A stupidly, mortifyingly long time. I’d arrived early, jittery but exhilarated, wearing new underwear and a new dress and the tiny diamond candle. I had wine ready, tea lights, a rug, music, and even a cake. At first, when he didn’t arrive, I wasn’t concerned. I swigged my wine and let my anticipation happily build.

      After half an hour, I sent him a photo of my candle charm, but there was no reply. So I sent another, and got no reply to that, either, which is when I started to worry. Abandoning all restraint, I sent him a series of cheery texts, wondering if he’d forgotten the date? The arrangement? Everything we talked about? Then, slightly more desperately: Was he OK???

  Then I started to panic. I’d been sitting there for nearly an hour. Joe’s not the naturally late type. I started to catastrophize. He was dead. Knocked down on his way to our reunion, still holding a bunch of flowers. Or kidnapped. Or at the very least trapped under heavy furniture.

  Which is my only defense for what I did next, which was to go round to his mother’s house. Oh God. The memory still makes me cringe. Tottering up Isobel Murran’s path, almost hyperventilating with worry, tears brimming in my eyes, jamming my desperate finger on the bell.

  I don’t know what I’d hoped for. Some happy, heartwarming scene in which it turned out Joe had been delayed by rescuing a kitten stuck up a tree.

  Instead, Isobel opened the door in her toweling dressing gown. She’d been in the bath. The shame.

  “Effie!” she exclaimed. “You’re back!”

  But I was too frazzled even to return her smile.

  I gabbled out my fears, and her surprise turned to alarm. She instantly fetched her phone, sent a text, and a few seconds later watched the reply come in.

      It was her expression that confirmed to me the dark, unthinkable suspicion that had been lurking the whole way along. She looked embarrassed. Troubled. Pained. And, worst of all, pitying.

  “Effie…he’s fine,” she said softly, her whole face creased up, as though she could hardly bear to deliver the news that her son was not in fact dead or trapped under heavy furniture.

  “Right,” I said, feeling nauseous. “Right. Sorry. I…I understand.”

  The full enormity hadn’t hit me yet, but I had to get away. My legs were already stumbling backward…but then I paused a moment.

  “Please don’t tell anyone,” I begged, my voice husky. “Don’t tell my family. Mimi. Bean. They don’t know I’m here. Don’t tell, Isobel. Please.”

  By now tears were streaming down my face, and Isobel looked nearly as distraught as I did as she muttered, “He needs to talk to you. I don’t know what…I can’t understand what…Effie, come in. Let me give you a cup of tea. A drink.”

  But I just shook my head mutely and backed away. I had to find somewhere dark and private, to digest the nightmare that seemed to be happening.

  The worst thing was that I still had hope; I couldn’t help myself. It was the phone call half an hour later that finished me off. Joe rang. He apologized. He said he was sorry, about a hundred times. He told me he’d treated me badly, about a hundred times. He told me there was no excuse, about a hundred times.

      What he didn’t tell me was why. Every time I asked why, he said he was sorry. I couldn’t get past his blank, impenetrable wall of apology. But apology didn’t help me.

  My distress turned to fury and I demanded a meeting—“it’s the least you owe me”—and so we had a dismal coffee the following day. But it was like talking to a witness in a court case. I didn’t even know where my warm, witty, loving Joe had gone.

  In hollow tones he said he hadn’t met anyone new, but he didn’t think he could commit. He’d panicked. He hadn’t meant to hurt me, although he realized that he had hurt me. If he said, “I can’t even explain it myself, Effie,” once, he said it about six thousand times, his gaze fixed on the far wall.

  You can take a guy to a coffee shop, but you can’t make him bare his soul. In the end we were going round and round in circles and I gave up, weary and defeated.

  “Well, it’s lucky you only gave me the Smallest Diamond in the World,” I said as a savage parting shot. “I didn’t mind too much when I chucked it in the bin.”

  It was a childish thing to say and I saw Joe flinch, but I didn’t care. In fact, it felt good.

  Which is why, that Christmas, when I was fairly sure I might bump into Joe, I did another childish thing that I knew would make him flinch. I hooked up with Humph Pelham-Taylor, our local aristo.

  Humph lives five miles away from Nutworth and he’s properly posh. Family tree, checked shirts, old nanny still living with them, that kind of thing. He’d pursued me endlessly at school—I hadn’t been interested, obviously—but now here was my chance to get revenge on Joe.

      I mean, it kind of worked. When I turned up to that year’s carol service, arm in arm with Humph, wearing a spectacular fake-fur hat, Joe did look pretty flabbergasted. And when I loudly exclaimed, “Humph, darling, you’re hilarious!” I saw Joe double-take in disbelief. (To be fair, I saw quite a few people double-take in disbelief. Including Bean.)