To Love and Be Loved(30)

She ignored him. ‘I feel so stupid. I thought you were someone different, someone I could open up to. I‘ve told you everything, painted a picture of the life I wanted, and now I wish I hadn’t. I thought I could trust you. I believed you, I thought we were on the same page, but turns out we weren’t even reading the same book.’ A fresh batch of tears gathered and she did nothing to stem them.

He looked at her and again his mouth flapped as he tried to form the words that might make everything a bit better. Had such words existed.

‘I never wanted to hurt you, Merrin. You are fantastic and I don’t deserve you.’

‘Damn right you don’t.’ Her voice was reedy.

‘My mother, she’s . . .’

‘Don’t embarrass yourself by laying this at your mother’s door!’ She faced him fully, allowing him for the first time to see her face and the distress seeping from her. She saw his eyes momentarily crinkle, as if he were disturbed by the sight. ‘You’re not a child. You are a grown-up, able to make your own decisions.’

‘I wish it were that simple.’ He gave an ironic snort of laughter. ‘But it isn’t. My parents pay my salary, insure my car, own my car, pay my credit card.’ He bit his lip. ‘She asked me what I would do if they withdrew their support and’ – he shook his head – ‘it threw me. I mean . . . what would I do?’

His words landed like a punch to her stomach. He had chosen money over her. ‘The fact that you even have to ask that question and are so clueless makes me cringe. I knew you were gifted so much, but I actually admired how hard you worked and how determined you were to make your own mark, but I was wrong.’ She thought of the times when money had been tight and her mum and dad had pulled together to paper over the cracks, fill the gaps, plug the shortfall – but always, always, together. The fact that Digby had seemingly fallen apart at the mere suggestion of a lack of funding was proof that Digby and she had never been on the strong foundation she had imagined. It was a lie – all of it was a lie. ‘If you loved me in the way that you need to when you marry someone, then none of what your parents threatened would be an issue.’

‘I guess you’re right.’ He answered quickly enough to launch a dagger of rejection that this time landed squarely in her breast. She looked down, not for the first time that day, to see if she could see any injury. Her chest heaved as sobs continued to build inside her. Her distress was evident and she wished she had better control of it, wanting to talk calmly, but with her hurt causing pain to every fibre of her being, there was very little she could do about it.

‘Why . . . why did you wait until today to change your mind? All the weeks leading up to this, all the times we talked about our future and you had a chance to say you weren’t happy, or that you’d changed your mind. We sat there with Reverend Pimm and agreed to always communicate! There were so many opportunities for us to figure stuff out, or at least for you to let me down with my dignity intact. Why let me get ready and arrive at the church like . . . like an idiot?’ The situation became more monstrous as she voiced it. And with the protective layer of doubt, the cushion of hope that had meant it might not be the end fully slipped from her mind and, finally, shock subsided, nudged out by the beginnings of fury.

‘I didn’t know quite how strongly she felt and I never thought they’d cut me off.’ His answer was vanilla, weak and irritating because of it. She had been put aside for the promise of money and in that moment she despised him for his lack of backbone, hating his voice, everything about him.

‘You really are the worst kind of human being,’ she fired.

‘I feel it!’

‘Good! I’ve put everything on hold for so long, working part-time jobs and waiting for my life to start because of all we planned, all your promises. You told me not to go full-time in any one job where I might have a chance of working my way up the ladder, you said it was because we’d make plans together, that we might travel, that there might be a place for me at Mortimer’s, that we’d have a baby, build a life, a home! God, I am an idiot!’

She pushed her palms into her face and rubbed away the never-ending stream of tears. ‘I actually feel sorry for you, Digby.’ She stood and wiped the grass from her legs, before slipping the narrow engagement ring from her finger, the ring given to her in lieu of the engagement ring he had promised her: his grandmother’s ring, which had never materialised. ‘Here’s the ring you decided was better because your gran’s ring was “old-fashioned”. Was that the truth or another lie? Did you simply not want me to have it? Maybe your mother decided I wasn’t worthy of it?’

The way he blinked told her this was in fact the case and she wanted to hurl the meaningless band of gold into the ocean. Not that she had cared, not really, but now it was just another clue to the sorry ending to their story. As she gave it back to him, his hand, she noted, was shaking as much as hers.

‘I do,’ she pressed. ‘I feel sorry for you, Digby, because I would have been wonderful to you. I meant every word I said, even if you didn’t, and I would have worked hard to make you happy. But now I can’t even stand to look at you, and that’s a shame for you, I think, to have fallen so far in my view.’

His expression was one of anguish; it seemed that her words had hit home and this brought her an ounce of satisfaction.