The Pieces of You and Me Read online

  ‘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.

  3

  RUPERT

  He had dreamed of bumping into her again for years, of being given a second chance. He had always imagined them picking up where they left off, his life suddenly more joyful and fulfilled because of her presence. But when that second chance had presented itself to him he’d been overcome by fear – fear that she hadn’t been thinking about him, fear that she wouldn’t still be interested ten years down the line; what sane woman would? He had come across as awkward and aloof, and then he’d just walked away without a word, without asking for her number, without even saying goodbye.

  It had been nothing like he had imagined and he wondered if that was why he had never tried harder to find her, knowing deep down that if he did, it would leave him disappointed.

  Rupert bent down to clip his dog’s lead on to his harness. He’d never really considered himself a dog person until Captain came into his life. He didn’t know how he would have coped with the loneliness he felt in York without Captain.

  It was a cold day for June, even for Yorkshire. The sky was blue but the wind blowing off the river made him long for the hot summers of Massachusetts. Jess was all he’d been able to think about since he’d realised who she was in the pub the previous evening. That and what a terrible impression he must have made on her. She had looked so glamorous and he had been dressed in scruffy jeans and an old jumper. At least he’d moved on from the football shirts of his youth.

  He’d known she was at the bar long before she’d spotted him. He’d been sitting in his usual corner with a couple of colleagues – another uneventful Saturday night at the end of another uneventful week. There were times when Rupert wondered if his life was just passing him by, if work had completely taken over and all he would be remembered for were a few dry academic books that nobody read. Even his parents didn’t seem interested in his career anymore.

  ‘Here’s trouble!’ Rupert’s friend, Chris, had said to him with a wink and a nudge as the hen party arrived in the pub. He’d felt the energy change around him and it was Gemma he recognised first, her laugh, her exuberance – she’d always been a perfect counterfoil to Jess’s quiet homebody demeanour. It had taken him a moment to recognise the slim brunette with the red lipstick and the green eyes. It couldn’t be her, could it? But then she’d smiled at something Gemma had said and he had known. Nobody else could light up a room with their smile like that.

  His initial instinct had been to run. He’d been waiting years for this opportunity, but how could he see it through? Real life was never like your imagination. What if she was dismissive? What if she was still angry? Worse, what if she didn’t recognise him?

  He’d realised that Chris was still talking to him and he’d forced himself to look away from her. He had smiled tightly, a smile that could be interpreted as disapproval of this gaggle of drunk women who had disturbed his Saturday night. And then Chris had said something that had made him laugh – he couldn’t even remember what it was now – and when he had looked up Gemma was staring at him, her eyebrows raised. He’d seen Jess whisper something to her and the next thing he had known, Gemma was calling him over.

  He should have run when he had the chance.

  ‘You know them?’ Chris had asked eagerly. Poor single Chris – always looking for the woman who would change his life. Rupert hadn’t replied. He had already been talking to Gemma, teasing her about her hen night outfit as though they’d seen each other yesterday. All his awareness had been on Jess though, just as it ever was.

  He’d managed to avoid talking to her directly for most of the evening, answering the questions Gemma shot at him instead as he’d felt the press of Jess’s thigh against his and tried to ignore how that made him feel. Later, while Jess was in the loo, he’d answered more personal questions from Gemma. He had found himself asking a few questions as well. He’d wondered if Jess was avoiding him.

  When Gemma had insisted that he walk Jes
s back to the hotel, his stomach fizzed. It had felt as though it was his one chance. But he had blown that chance. When she’d slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow, when he’d pulled her closer, it had felt as though a decade had slipped away, as though they were back where they started and he had never boarded that flight to America all those years ago. So why had he gone and walked away from her again?

  Possibly because he wouldn’t have known which version of the truth to tell her – because she was bound to want to know why he was back. He hadn’t been sure if he could lie to her and he hadn’t been sure if he could tell her the truth.

  As Rupert opened his front door and allowed Captain to drag him out on his morning walk, he told himself that walking away again had been the best thing he could have done, for both of them.

  4

  JESS

  ‘Are you angry with me?’ my mother asked.

  ‘Of course I’m not angry with you, Mum,’ I replied. ‘I am wondering why you didn’t tell me though.’

  We were in the garden of my mother’s flat in Highgate. She had moved out of Cambridge after I graduated from university, after my father died, moving to London to be nearer to me. We always had a need to be near each other since Dad died; Mum had been an only child too and she wanted to keep what family she had close. It had worked out well for both of us in the end.

  My mother, Caro Jefferson, was a poet. She lived quietly on her not-insubstantial royalties and my father’s even less insubstantial life insurance payout. She got involved with community projects in Highgate, wrote for the local magazine, helped organise the costumes for the pantomime, that kind of thing. She was happy there – who wouldn’t be? Highgate is beautiful.

  It felt as though we’d looked at a thousand flats in north London before we came across this one, but as soon as we saw it, Mum knew it was the right one. I had started working at The Ham & High then – the newspaper for Hampstead and Highgate – and was living with Dan on Kentish Town Road. Mum’s flat was just far enough away for me to not feel Mum was on top of me, but near enough for us to go round whenever we were hungry. Cadet journalists and inexperienced photographers don’t earn very much.

  Mum’s flat was the lower ground floor of a converted Georgian terrace. The flat itself was a little dark but the French doors in the kitchen opened out onto a beautiful garden where Mum could indulge in her other great love – breeding roses.

  We were in her rose garden the morning after I got back from York, Mum pruning away as I sat nearby enjoying the early morning sun. I’d been hesitatingly telling her about seeing Rupert again. She’d known he was back in the UK but hadn’t told me.

  ‘I hadn’t wanted to upset you, darling,’ Mum said as she delicately pruned her precious roses. ‘It took you so long to get over him, I thought it was best left in the past.’

  ‘I’m surprised,’ I replied. ‘A romantic like you. I’d have thought you would have been scheming to get us back together!’ I grinned at her, but her face was serious.

  ‘There’s nothing romantic about what happened. Have you any idea what it felt like to watch you hurting like that?’

  What could I say to that? My mother thought it had taken a long time for me to get over Rupert. I know now that I never did.

  ‘How did you know he was back?’ I asked.

  ‘His mother told me. We’re still in touch – I think she probably hears from me more often than she hears from her son though. They were never a close family, were they? He always seemed to prefer our house to his.’

  A memory flashed in my head then of us doing our homework at my mum’s big kitchen table together, heads down over our books, kicking each other with our toes under the table. I hadn’t realised that Mum still kept in touch with Rupert’s parents. She returned to Cambridge now and again, but I hadn’t been back since she moved to London. I’d avoided Cambridge since Rupert left.

  ‘His sister is a doctor now,’ I said. ‘She lives in Sydney.’

  Mum nodded. She already knew that too.

  ‘How did you feel about seeing him again?’ she asked. It was impossible not to notice the look of concern on her face. I knew she was worried about me. Mum knew better than anyone how ill I had been and she had been concerned about me going on Gemma’s hen weekend at all, thinking it might be too much for me. When I had first got ill, I’d left my job at the newspaper and moved into Mum’s spare room. I’d never got around to moving out again. I hadn’t been able to summon up the energy if I’m honest, so I turned the spare room into a bedroom-cum-study and I started writing a book about Ancient Greece, not knowing where it would take me at the time.

  I didn’t know how I felt about seeing Rupert again. Part of me was regretting not talking to him more, not asking for a phone number or if he wanted to meet for a coffee before I went back to London. But part of me thought there was too much pain and heartache, too much left unsaid, to simply pick up where we left off.

  ‘It was lovely to see him,’ I said, not really answering Mum’s question at all.

  ‘I sense a but,’ my mother replied, putting down her secateurs and coming to sit next to me. She tilted her head up towards the sun and pushed her sunglasses up her nose. Sometimes she looked like a film star.

  ‘I never expected to see him again,’ I said. ‘I’d finally stopped thinking about him. It was a shock.’

  Mum reached over to pat my hand. ‘Of course it was a shock,’ she said. ‘Did you talk about seeing each other again?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Why not?’ she asked.

  ‘There was so much I felt I couldn’t tell him,’ I replied. ‘About what happened, about how ill I was, about Dan, about still living here with you.’

  ‘Living with your mother is nothing to be ashamed about. Why did you feel you couldn’t tell him?’

  Mum had a habit of always getting straight to the point.

  ‘He’s achieved so much,’ I replied. ‘He’s top of his field and I’ve achieved virtually nothing. We both had so much potential …’

  ‘You’ve had two books published,’ my mother interrupted. ‘Both of which sold well, and you’ve just signed a contract for two more.’

  I knew I was making excuses and pretending that it hadn’t felt right seeing Rupert again. The truth was I hadn’t had the courage to take the opportunity and neither had he. But that didn’t mean I hadn’t been thinking about him constantly since I’d seen him, thinking about the past, about what could have been.

  *

  Later, when I was lying in bed unable to sleep, I found my eyes wandering in the dark to the top of the wardrobe where I could just make out the shapes of the two plastic boxes up there. One box contained all the diaries and journals I’d kept since I was seven years old, the other was full of photographs. Everything that was in those two boxes was so tied up with Rupert, with my father and with everything that happened the summer after we graduated that I hadn’t been able to bring myself to look at them for years.

  Until tonight.

  I turned on the bedside light and got out of bed, dragging a chair over to the wardrobe so I could stand on it and pull the boxes off. It was a struggle to do it quietly but I didn’t want to wake Mum. I didn’t want her asking questions.

  I could still remember the long hot summer of 2003 when Rupert and I were seventeen, the summer I first met Dan. I could still remember the sound of Gemma and Caitlin bickering and the sensation of the sun on my skin as Rupert, Dan, Camilla and I lay by the river. I could still feel the coolness of the water as we swam lazily in the river in the afternoons and the feeling of Rupert’s hand in mine. I could still remember the way Camilla used to look at him, the way she would touch his arm or his knee when she talked to him.

  Camilla and I were at school together, but we were never close. Sometimes she’d turn up with Gemma and Caitlin; sometimes she’d seek us out on her own. I knew it wasn’t me she came to see though – I knew it was Rupert and I was glad of Dan that summer. He was Rupert’s
friend but he always felt like my ally. I can still remember the sense of inevitability I felt when he and I went to London together and Rupert and Camilla stayed in Cambridge.

  So many memories, but the one thing I could never remember, no matter how hard I tried, was the sound of my father’s voice. However tightly I had tried to hold on to it, it had faded over the years.

  My memories, like most nostalgia trips, were rose-tinted. I’d almost forgotten how angry I used to feel whenever Camilla touched Rupert. That underlying sense of jealousy and rivalry that I felt back then had melted into adulthood and an understanding of the complexities of life, of the shades of grey – teenagers seem to have an almost over developed sense of black and white, of right and wrong.

  It seemed that things hadn’t worked out between Rupert and Camilla after all but I wasn’t sure that changed anything. The past has gone and the years in between have been too long and too full of difficulties for the reunion Gemma seemed to think Rupert and I deserved.

  Haven’t they?

  I sat down on the floor next to the boxes and pushed the one with the photographs away. I wasn’t ready for that yet. I opened the box containing the journals and found the first one and I started reading.

  … A few days after we turned seven, my grandmother died.

  At her funeral I cried big fat tears. I hated that I couldn’t stop them from falling in front of everyone. I hated that I couldn’t be stronger for my mum. You stood beside me in your school uniform, your jaw set stoically – a baby version of the way you set your jaw later whenever anyone disagreed with you.

  You refused to go to school that morning, insisting on being at the funeral, on being with me even though your parents didn’t want you to. They told you that you were too young to go but you said you were twelve hours older than me and you came anyway. Halfway through the service, when I thought my tears would never stop and Dad had run out of tissues, I felt your hand slip into mine, hot and sticky and reminding me that you were there. Everything would always be all right as long as you were there. You may only have been twelve hours older than me but you always understood the world better than I ever did.