Page 4 of You Were Always the One

But this is motherhood and my heart bursts with love. For all the chaos, I wouldn’t change it for the world.

2

RIGGS

After meeting Holly again in Covent Garden, I can’t get her out of my head. I mean, I should be over her. For fuck’s sake, eighteen years have passed since we saw each other last. We’re older, wiser. Our lives have order in them. Partners built into them. No one but a fool would risk jeopardising that.

I list the reasons I shouldn’t be feeling like this. For starters, Holly’s husband and two kids; I have lovely Emma, who chooses that precise moment to come into my study. With her long fair hair loose and her face bare of makeup, she looks younger than her thirty-four years as she puts a mug of coffee on my desk.

‘You working?’ she asks.

‘’Fraid so.’ I’m a writer, and my next deadline is at the forefront of my mind. But it’s like my thoughts are stagnating, meaning this book isn’t going brilliantly, when I can’t afford for it not to go spectacularly well.

‘I’ll leave you to it. I’m going to work in an hour.’ Emma works as cabin crew for a short-haul airline.

‘Yeah.’ I’d forgotten. ‘You’re night-stopping, aren’t you?’

‘That’s tomorrow. Hurghada, remember?’ She goes to the door. ‘You could come with me, Rigby. We’d have twenty-four hours there. It might do us good to get away.’

Emma always calls me Rigby, Riggs apparently reminding her of a colt with an undescended testicle. I googled it, once – turns out it’s true. When Emma and I were first together, I went everywhere I could with her. But over the last year, two years, things haven’t been so good between us. And going away together, even for one night, would make it all the more glaringly obvious. ‘I think we both know you’d have more fun without me,’ I say gently. ‘And right now, I think my time is probably better spent working on this.’

She shrugs. ‘Whatever.’ She looks at me, a little strangely. ‘When I’m back, I think we should talk.’

Her words leave an ominous feeling and for a moment, I wonder if Emma has sensed the ghost of Holly between us. It was nothing, I tell myself. A fleeting moment between two people who used to be something to each other. But Holly’s married. I’m married. We have our homes and families; our separate lives.

But even without seeing Holly yesterday, Emma and I are tumbling through open skies, our parachutes failing to open, our marriage in freefall. Dissent giving way to the kind of silence that comes from avoiding yet another row, symptomatic of the emotional breakdown between us.

Sitting there, I sigh. I still can’t pinpoint when things changed. I mean, nothing catastrophic has happened – as far as I’m aware. But not everyone is destined to be together forever. Maybe we shouldn’t have married. Maybe there was never enough between us; maybe ours is one of those time-limited relationships in which, over the years, love fades gently; in which divorce is just a conversation away.

It leaves me heavy hearted. There’s no question that seeing Holly again, now of all times, has unsettled me. Leaning back in my chair, I sigh. Eighteen years ago, I thought Holly and I would always be together. Back in our twenties, for three years, we were inseparable. Young enough to live in the moment, to feel that rush of excitement, of lust, to fall madly, headlong in love, we were also old enough to know how real it was.

In the simplest terms, we matched, Holly and I. Wore the same faded denim and skinny T-shirts; had windswept, sun-lightened hair. Loved to live fast, to lie under the stars, share our wildest dreams with each other.

You’re my north star, Riggs, I remember her saying to me once, her eyes sparkling in the moonlight. Always there. My light in the darkness. Showing me the way home.

It was how I felt about her, too. There was this thing we both felt, that home wasn’t a place. It was each other. But then, suddenly it was over between us – all the more shocking because I hadn’t seen it coming. I still remember what she said that last day, not looking at me, almost as though it was herself she was convincing.

I’m not sure we want the same things any more. Maybe there’s more, Riggs – for both of us.

I remember blinking at her, the searing pain I felt as my heart broke. When we already had everything I’d ever wanted, I didn’t understand how she could want more. I was shocked into silence, and by the time I’d thought of all the reasons she was wrong, I knew there wasn’t anything I could say. She had that Holly look on her face she always had when she’d made up her mind about something.

Do you love me? I remember how desperate I felt. How I’d always believed I knew her heart.

She wouldn’t meet my eyes. It isn’t that simple, she kept saying. We’re not kids, Riggs. Maybe we need to grow up. I want a family, but you’re not ready. Caveated with that killer line. Maybe love isn’t enough.

Love was everything – I firmly believed that. I still do. But her decision was made. My biggest mistake was not telling her how wrong she was; letting her walk away. Even now, I still feel that – even since Emma came into my life; I’ve always had the sense that there’s unfinished business between us. Guilt washes over me. Taken to its logical conclusion, it means I made another mistake, marrying Emma when I still love Holly.

Oh fuck. I still love Holly.

You’re an idiot, I tell myself. You don’t love her. Not in that way, at least. Nor was marrying Emma a mistake. I fell in love with her. Holly and I were over a long time ago. I was allowed another chance at happiness.

Needing to clear my head, I get up. Going to the bottom of the stairs, I call up to my wife. ‘I’m going for a run.’

She appears at the top of the stairs, as sexy as the day I met her in her airline uniform, when I’d had a few beers on my way back from a skiing trip. ‘I thought you were writing.’

I say the first thing that comes into my head. ‘I’m waiting to hear back from my editor about something.’

Emma’s makeup is immaculate, her hair beautifully pinned up. ‘Don’t wait up. I’m on a double – Edinburgh followed by Palma. I probably won’t be back much before midnight.’