Page 68 of A Cornish Love Story
‘You know we only have one chance at this, right?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ Ethan said again.
‘But you’re not fine right now. And it’s not just that you’ve been up all night and interviewed under caution and been in a cell when you should have been with us. You’re putting on a brave face for me, and I don’t want you to do that. I don’t want any of this to have happened.’
‘You thinkIdo? You think I want to have missed our last night at the house? A chance to celebrate everything? You think I wanted to end up at the police station in Truro? I couldn’t just leave her there, could I?’
‘You should have got your mum and dad involved!Got them to take responsibility for once. I hate that they leave it to you, that you don’t stand up to them!’
‘Oh, and you do?’ Ethan’s eyes were blazing. ‘You stand up to your mum when she stops you going out, makes you get her pills, or take her to her trial appointments while she’s smoking weed and ruining it for herself? I don’t see you standing up to her, Georgie. What if, when it comes to it, she stops you from going to university?’
‘She’s ill!’
‘And Sarah’s miserable. She’s ill too, basically, and she’s my family. I’m not just leaving her.’ He hung his head, the fight going out of him. He picked Connor the cuddly turtle off my desk and squeezed him.
My tears were falling faster, Ethan’s accusations and mine swirling in my head. He was right about Mum, but I loved her, and I knew that he loved Sarah too, but it felt so different to me. ‘You need to put yourself first, or you’ll never get to do what you want. All your dreams will just be gone.’
‘Yeah, well.’ He let Connor drop to the bed. ‘Some things matter more than a stupid dream that isn’t going to happen anyway.’
‘What?’ I swallowed. ‘You’re going to achieve yours. Out of all of us, you’re the one who’s going to do it. You’re going to qualify as an architect and then you’re going to come back here and turn Tyller Klos into something magnificent. You’re going to give it a new life.’
‘That was always a fantasy. It’s never going to happen.’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘I need to go home.’ He stood up. ‘Dad’s expecting me.’
‘Is he proud of you for doing this? For taking the blame?’
‘I need to go, Georgie.’
‘And what about us?’
He stopped in the doorway, turning to look at me. ‘Whataboutus?’
I didn’t know how to say all the things I was feeling. It had been bad enough when he’d abandoned me to cover for Sarah, but the thought that he was prepared to abandon his principles, his own future, for someone who probably wouldn’t even be grateful – who might not change her destructive ways – was crushing. ‘I just never thought you would do something like this,’ I told him. ‘I didn’t … I don’t know if you’re who I thought you were.’
I wasn’t sure how I’d meant it to come out, but the moment I said it I knew I couldn’t take it back. I saw it hit: how he suddenly looked even more devastated. I took a step towards him, but he folded his arms, putting a barrier between us. ‘Probably better you realise that now,’ he said. ‘Better that I let go of that dream as well, do it all in one night.’ He turned away from me, and I saw him swallow. ‘Bye, Georgie.’
I could have said something. I could have called him back, told him we could survive it all, but I didn’t. It was as much an answer as if I’d spoken. He hovered for a second in the hallway outside my room, waitingfor me to give him another chance, but I kept quiet. I didn’t even say goodbye, and he ducked his head in understanding.
Ethan walked down the stairs and out of my front door, just as the sun was peeking above the hills, dusting Alperwick with the golden promise of another perfect summer’s day.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Now
The bed was far too comfortable. After my and Ethan’s intense disco shower (where I discovered that one, the speakers worked in the shower cubicle, pumping our Lifehouse song to us clearly over the spray, two, he had got even better at working the angles that made us fit perfectly together – perhaps because this shower was so much bigger than mine – and three, he still loved them scalding hot), we wrapped ourselves in the oversized fluffy bath sheets, supposedly only for display purposes and getting a lot more than they bargained for, and fell back on the bed. At some point, we replaced the towels for the duvet and bedspread, and I snuggled into him again.
Just before we’d drifted off, he’d looked down at me, eyelids already fluttering, voice thick, and said, ‘I’vemissed you so much, George. I didn’t realize how empty my life was without you. How pointless.’ But then he was asleep, and I didn’t have the chance to respond, even if I’d known what to say.
At first, I wasn’t sure what had woken me.
The room was cast in a blue tinge, and I looked for the source of the ethereal light. It was coming from the window, where the moon had slid out of view, but it seemed to surround me, too. I glanced up, and through the last wisps of sleep, I realized I was looking at the stars, the sky surrounding them a breathtaking, pre-dawn blue. The skylight was open, and the effect was more magical than I could have imagined: take the glow-in-the-dark stars from childhood ceilings, turn the wow factor all the way up, and you might be halfway to understanding what I was lying beneath. For several seconds I just stared, trying and failing to pick out constellations, and then, slowly, it sank in. If the skylights were open, did that mean the rest of the house was, too?
I looked at Ethan. He was lying on his stomach, his head turned towards me, resting on his bent arm. His eyelashes were inky feathers, his hair tousled, his breaths soft and relaxed. He looked peaceful, and I was reluctant to wake him. Part of me wanted to stay in this bubble, just the two of us, but I reminded myself that it wasn’t real, it had been forced on us, and the longer we were trapped here, the more the worry and irritation would fester between us.
I heard a buzz, something familiar but quiet, andsaw that Ethan’s phone was vibrating on the bedside table. I picked it up, because if it was making noises, then surely there was a signal now, and Panic Room Mode really was over.
