The Pieces of You and Me. Rachel Burton

      ‘I’m fine, honestly,’ I interrupted. ‘Just tired that’s all.’

      ‘Where are you staying?’ I heard Rupert ask. I wondered how long he’d been standing there, how much of the conversation he’d heard.

      ‘The posh hotel near York Minster,’ Gemma replied. I didn’t think it was any of Rupert’s business where I was staying.

      ‘It’s called the Minster,’ Rupert deadpanned, trying not to smile.

      ‘That’s the one!’

      ‘I’ll walk you back,’ he said, turning to me.

      ‘I’m fine. I can walk back to the hotel on my own.’

      ‘I know you can,’ he said, quietly. ‘But I’d like to walk with you.’

      My stomach flipped.

      ‘I’d rather he walked with you too,’ Gemma said. ‘So that’s settled.’ As Gemma wandered off to organise a taxi, her veil slipping to one side again, he caught my eye and raised his eyebrows.

      ‘That’s settled.’ Rupert smiled.

      ‘I suppose it is,’ I replied. Gemma always was the bossy one.

      ‘Shall we?’ he asked, gesturing towards the door. As we began to walk away from the pub, he was so close to me I wanted to reach out and touch him, to draw him towards me, but I knew I shouldn’t. As if he could read my mind he held out his arm to me and I slipped my hand into the crook of his elbow. It felt so natural, exactly the way we’d walked together years ago. I’m not sure who pulled who closer, but it felt as though neither of us could resist the warmth of each other’s bodies. It felt as though we’d been waiting ten years for this moment.

      ‘It’s been a long time, Jessie,’ he said quietly.

      ‘Ten years in September,’ I replied. I wasn’t going to tell him that I knew the exact number of months, days, even hours since I’d watched him walk away from me at Heathrow on that unusually hot morning. ‘How long have you been back?’ I asked instead, before I was dragged back to that summer. I wasn’t ready to talk about the past yet.

      ‘Nearly three years.’

      ‘And you never got in touch?’ I asked.

      He stopped walking then, so suddenly that a group of drunk students almost fell over us. One of them recognised him and started calling his name but he didn’t acknowledge them. Instead, he looked down at me, his gaze so intense it almost made me want to look away.

      ‘I didn’t think you’d want me to,’ he said.

      I didn’t know how to reply to that. While Rupert had always been in the back of my mind, I had never really considered what it would be like to have him back in my life. But now all I could think of was the last three years and how we could have been seeing each other every day.

      ‘Besides,’ he said, looking away and starting to walk again. ‘You’re a hard woman to track down.’

      That was true. And for him to know that meant he must have looked, probably more than once. I didn’t have social media or a website or a blog. There were no photos of me online. You wouldn’t find a thing – unless you knew who to look for, of course. Typing in ‘Jessica Clarke’ wouldn’t turn up much on me – that I knew.

      The reason you won’t find me online is because I write for a living under a secret pen name. If you search for that name, you’ll find all sorts of things but none of them link back to me. I’ve been careful about that. I don’t even have a personal Facebook account anymore.

      ‘You could have looked for me,’ he said when he realised I wasn’t going to rise to the bait and tell him why I was so hard to track down. ‘I’m all over the internet.’

      Again, true. His academic success was known near and far, but I’d stopped looking years ago. I didn’t think I’d typed ‘Dr Rupert Tremayne’ into a search engine since my first book was published.

      ‘How’s your mum?’ he asked instead, changing the subject.

      ‘She’s good,’ I replied, glad to be on more neutral territory. ‘She’s just published her tenth poetry collection, which is weirder than ever. I see her every day.’ I left out the fact that I see her every day because I live with her. ‘She sold up in Cambridge not long after Dad died and bought a flat in Highgate.’ Neither of us acknowledged that Dad had died just before Rupert left, but the words hung in the air between us.

      ‘It must be nice to have her close by,’ he said. He didn’t say anything about my dad. I used to think that Dad’s death was the catalyst for Rupert leaving. I used to think that if Dad had survived everything would have stayed the same. But I know now that life doesn’t work that way – nothing lasts forever. Even if Rupert had stayed, how would we have survived after everything that happened? Was that why his father sent him away? To protect him? Was that the real reason he went? I wanted to say something but I didn’t know how. Maybe it didn’t matter anymore.

      ‘And your mum and dad?’ I asked instead. ‘How are they?’

      ‘The same. Still in the house in Cambridge, still not really getting on.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘Mel’s a doctor now though, lives in Sydney.’

      I nodded, not really caring where his sister was or what she was doing. I barely knew Melissa – she was only three years older than us but it felt as though she came from a different planet. I don’t think I spoke more than a handful of words with her in all the time I knew her. I do remember the conversation I overheard her having with Rupert just before he left though.

      We turned the corner in silence, neither of us knowing what else to say. Nothing could change the past and perhaps there wasn’t anything that could bring us back together again either. Perhaps you only got one shot in life, and if you messed it up – which we did, spectacularly – you didn’t get another.

      York Minster was in front of us suddenly – the Gothic cathedral could be seen from all over the city and looked spectacular, especially at night, illuminated against the darkness.

      ‘I’ve seen it nearly every day for the last three years,’ Rupert said, staring up at its splendour. ‘And it still takes my breath away.’

      I didn’t say anything. I just stood and watched him as he looked at the Minster. I wondered if this was just a one-off meeting, a moment in time when our paths crossed temporarily, or if it was something more. And I wondered if we were standing here outside the Minster to put off making that decision.

      We crossed the road and stood outside my hotel. He let go of my arm and placed his hands on my shoulders. I looked up at him – I could hear him breathing.

      ‘I hope everything worked out well for you,’ he said.

      ‘You too,’ I replied. It felt like an inadequate response but I didn’t know how to tell him that nothing had worked out how I’d expected it to or that I struggled every single day but that despite all of that everything had turned out better than I could have imagined. Apart from one thing.

      He shrugged ruefully and looked as though he was going to say something else, but he stopped, his hands still on my shoulders.

      ‘It’s been amazing to see you, Jessie,’ he said. It sounded final as though at any moment our paths would unravel and we’d each go our separate ways again. I wanted to bottle this moment and keep it forever.

      And then he lowered his hands and smiled again before turning around. For the second time in my life I watched Rupert Tremayne walk away from me.

      He hadn’t said goodbye and I tried not to think too much about how that made me feel. I’d spent ten years wondering what it would be like to see him again. I hadn’t expected such disappointment.