Page 41 of Date with Destiny

All I want to do now is go home – the home that isn’t even my home – get into bed, and cry. I hate that life is supposed to go on.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I spend the next two days in bed.

I tell everyone I’m feeling ill, and I just lie there, thinking about everything that’s been happening and trying to ignore the world. I just want to be alone and embrace my solitary misery. But of course I can’t even have that. Not when I’m living in Celeste Bretherton’s house. She is in and out on a constant rotation, bringing me soup, plying me with Strepsils and/or Anadin Extra, asking me questions about how I’m feeling. It’s endless and well meant, but all I want is peace.

It all feels like too much; it’s overflowing and overwhelming. I feel like I am too soft and life is too hard. I revel in my grossness and stink; unshowered and unchanged.

And of course, that is whenheturns up.

‘Are you feeling well enough for a visitor?’ Celeste asks from my bedroom doorway.

‘Not really.’ I don’t even look up, flicking idly through my phone. I assume it’s Myfanwy. She’s already dropped off three tins of Roses and a carrier bag of Quality Streets. I suspectit’s all Christmas leftovers from last year but I’ll still eat them for sure. It’s all very generous and kind, but I definitely don’t need any more.

‘I think you should see him,’ Celeste needles and at that, I do look up.

‘Him?’

‘I’ll send him in,’ she grins excitedly. ‘Brush your hair.’

I sit up, suddenly electrified. Whichhimcould it be? I leap out of bed and grab the deodorant, spraying myself head to toe. Yanking a brush through my hair, I pull out more than I detangle, squeaking in pain, just in time for the man I was supposed to marry to enter my teen bedroom.

‘Daniel,’ I breathe out and for some reason my first feeling is… disappointment. I’ve wanted to see him so badly since the split – and in some ways even more since the funeral. I think maybe I’d imagined this moment so often, I thought it would be more dramatic than this. I thought it would be ground-breaking and earth-shattering.Morethan him just turning up in my bedroom, with me here in my pyjamas, the odour of Quality Street coming out of my pores, and a poster of Robert Pattinson still glowering balefully from the wall.

‘Hi Ginny,’ he says shyly and I blink back. Hearing him say my name feels so strange. But then, this whole thing is off-the-charts strange. He looks unfamiliar too. He’s grown a beard in the month since Diane’s funeral. I’ve never seen him with facial hair before. He’s always been so clean-shaven, I wasn’t sure he could even grow one.

‘What are you… what are youdoinghere?’ I finally get out, suddenly so aware of my own filth.

He doesn’t reply immediately, though I don’t think I expected him to.

‘Can I…’ he looks around the room for a chair and finds none available. Instead he gestures to the end of the bed, where Celeste has left a pile of folded-up clean washing. She wanted to put it away for me and I had to literally beg her not to. ‘Can I sit down?’

I nod dumbly, shame at the state of everything radiating off me. He must think this is all about him; that all these months later I am still a shell – a wreck – from our break-up. And honestly, it’s only, like, 80 per cent of why I’m a wreck.

He sits heavily and I do the same, the space between us on the bed suddenly very significant. We sit in silence for a full minute. I don’t want to be the first to speak. I’ve already asked the only question I have.

I’ve had so many questions since he left me –so many questions– and I couldn’t ask any of them at the funeral. It wasn’t the right time, even if he’d been willing to stay more than six minutes. Those questions took over my life for weeks, filling up my brain and overflowing in every direction. Why did he do it? Why didn’t he talk to me? How long had he been feeling this way? Why couldn’t he tell me? Did he mean anything he ever said? Did he ever plan to marry me? Why did he leave like that? Was our whole relationship a sham? Was there someone else? Did I ever really know the real him? Where did he go when he left? What do his familyand friends think? Do they blame me? Was it my fault? Was it Celeste’s fault? Why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why why.

It was the word of the day, week, month, for such a long time.

But, I realize suddenly, that voice has quietened down in recent weeks. Sure, I’ve still been sad, so very sad, about what happened, but the questions have dried up. And now I don’t really want to ask Daniel any of them – or anything else.

At last he clears his throat.

‘Firstly,’ he begins, and I notice his hands are shaking a little. ‘I need to say how sorry I am.’

A sort of numbness creeps over me as he speaks. Sorry.Sorry. I’ve wanted to hear that word from him, but I don’t know how I feel about it now. It feels a bit nothingy, a bit hollow. It doesn’t feel like enough.

‘I know it’s probably too little, too late,’ he says now in a rush. ‘I’ve wanted to say it so many times, I’ve wanted toseeyou so many times, and then when I came to the funeral, I ended up chickening out and running away.’ He hangs his head. ‘I’m sorry for that, too. I was scared of the conversation with you, but also terrified of seeing your family and how much they must all hate me.’ He looks down at his hands. ‘I kept wanting to message you. I’d start a text, but then I couldn’t ever figure out what to say or how to put it.’ He looks up at me now, his eyes beseeching, pleading with meto understand. I stay silent. He continues after a few seconds. ‘But in the end, my cowardice wasn’t enough to keep me away. I needed to see you.’

His words make my chest tighten.Needed?

‘I’ve missed you so much, Gin,’ he adds, looking at me in his familiar Daniel way. ‘What I did was the worst thing I’ve ever done, to anyone, ever. I regret it so much.’

He regrets it? He wants to… no, I can’t even think it.

He moves closer on the bed. ‘Please say you can find a way to forgive me?’ I look away and he reaches for my hand, his voice now almost a whisper. ‘I just got so, so, so scared. And I didn’t see it coming, it hit me out of nowhere. We were planning the wedding and – hey, do you remember when you got back from the hen do and you were saying all that stuff about how out of hand everything had gotten? You said Celeste had expanded the guestlist again and you were just so exhausted and beaten down by it?’

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