The letters were unread. They’d been returned unopened to her mother’s house, but she’d kept on writing them. That was the point. She’d kept on writing.
With them was another little bundle of letters, addressed to her at home in Kit’s untidy writing. Only a few, five, maybe six, sent while she was still at school. She didn’t need to open those: she knew exactly what was inside. She knew them off by heart.
For a moment Gina considered putting the whole lot in the shredder, already full of two files of old bills she’d despatched the previous night. As soon as she imagined the precious letters mingled with the bills from E.ON something inside her lurched like the last-minute grab at the edge of a cliff. No. She’d carted these letters from one house to the next, hiding them in their envelope in her sock drawer, then her locked filing cabinet, but now – in this great sorting-out of her life – what was she supposed to do with them?
Give them to Kit, said a voice in her head. He’s the only person who can throw them out.
She bit a hangnail but didn’t notice the sting. Gina had seen Kit only once since the accident. That meeting hadn’t turned out the way she’d hoped. If it were possible, it had actually made things worse.
She stuffed all the letters back into the envelope, and as she put it back into the box, she saw the shoebox with Stuart’s letters in it, along with some keepsakes from their early days: a train ticket from their first date, a menu from a posh London restaurant from their second anniversary, some conkers. The conkers reminded her of a trip Stuart had taken her out on after one of her chemo sessions. He’d been gentle, protective, not letting her touch anything in case of infection. He’d picked up every single conker she’d asked for.
She held it in her hand, and squeezed it tight. Until she’d seen the conkers, Gina had nearly forgotten that. It had been a different sort of romance from what she’d felt for Kit, but still.
Gina slipped them all into a plain white envelope, wrote ‘old letters for you to throw away if you want’ and shoved them into the box between the speakers.
Then she hesitated. Was that the right thing to do? Stuart would just throw them out: he wouldn’t want Bryony to see their old tenderness. And they were her letters, sent by him, read by her. Weren’t they as much a part of her as Stuart?
She pushed her knuckles into her eyes. Was she doing what Naomi thought Stuart was doing – deliberately keeping in touch because there was still something there?
Gina put the envelope of letters back where it had been in the box. Maybe she would give the letters back to Stuart. But not yet, not in anger.
It was nearly nine o’clock. She made herself a pot of tea in the kitchen, listening to the faint sounds of Longhampton’s Friday night ramping up in the street below. It sounded fun . . . No, it sounded exhausting. And messy. Gina felt a sense of peace descend on her and the flat, and for a second, she was glad she had the place to herself. An unread Marian Keyes novel she’d found in a box, a pot of tea and a long hot bath. No need to make conversation, or force herself to go out to prove she wasn’t past it, or ignore irritations. And a whole weekend stretching out ahead of her.
As she passed her list of a hundred things, Gina took the marker pen off the top of the box and added, ‘16’. Then she paused. What was it exactly? Her sofa? Her books? Her pot of tea? What was the object making this feel so right? She frowned. All of it was a bit floaty and she wanted to be specific.
She wrote ‘16. My reading sofa’, but that wasn’t quite it. It niggled at her for the rest of the evening, until she got up, crossed it out, and wrote ‘Friday nights in’.
Chapter Seven
ITEM: a letter from Stuart
Longhampton District Hospital, June 2008
Dear Gina,
This is the longest afternoon of my life. When you come round, our life will have changed, and I know there is a long road to go down until you’re back to normal, but one thing that will never change is us. I will be right beside you on that road, holding your hand whatever happens, because you’re the most amazing, funny, beautiful person I’ve ever met, and my life is so much better since you shared yours with me.
With all my love, Stu x
Oxford, June 1997
It’s nearly quarter to four in the morning and Gina knows she should be asleep but there’s no way she can sleep now. It’s not because she’s drunk – though she is, a bit – it’s because there’s so much to take in that her brain won’t stop, like a camera whirring and whirring, trying to press each image into her imagination for ever.
And also because she’s intensely happy, so happy that she’s scared she might never be this happy again. She needs to absorb every second so she’ll never be able to look back and regret missing some of it.
It’s what they say, isn’t it? The happiest days of your life. That’s now. Right now. Concentrate.
Gina glances at Kit, stretched out next to her in a secluded corner of the college rose gardens, his starched evening shirt open down to the fourth button to reveal the pale skin at the top of his chest, the first wirier strands of the hair that leads down his flat stomach in a fine line. She’s used to seeing him in T-shirts, or jeans and boots, but he looks surprisingly right in black tie too, more rakish, more grown-up.
She looks away because thinking about the warm golden skin under the fine cotton shirt makes her tingle. Her pencil moves quickly over the back of her ball programme, taking in the careless arm thrown over his face, shading his eyes against the light, the lanky stretch of his leg. Gina can’t quite get Kit’s boyish energy right, the glow about him that makes her want to laugh because he’s so perfect. It’s not a perfection that can last. It’s like a flower or a glass of champagne. The thought makes her panicky, in a dizzy, drunken way.
Kit always seems to know what she’s doing, even with his eyes closed. He moves his arm, catching hers, caressing the soft inside with his thumb. ‘You’re allowed to grab five minutes’ sleep before breakfast, you know.’
‘Only lightweights do that.’ She’d heard someone else say it as they were winding their way from one of the Persian tents, and liked the sound of it. Like the hired ballgown she’s wearing tonight, Gina likes the feel of her borrowed personality: this Gina is smarter, more confident, less conscious of her mock results, which she suspects might be ‘disappointing’ on account of all the hours and hours she’s spent on the phone to Kit over the past months. Or writing to Kit. Planning how to sneak off to meet Kit in Oxford.
Gina and Naomi are supposed to be visiting Shaun, Naomi’s brother, again for more investigation of their Oxford applications, but the reality is that Gina is here at the Commem Ball with Kit, and Naomi is somewhere else in Oxford, doing something else, Gina’s not sure what.
Kit offered to get Naomi a ball ticket too, as a chaperone, but Naomi declined. ‘I’ve seen enough of you two mooching around like a pair of hipster cows,’ she informed them. ‘I’m not forking out a hundred quid to see you do it in black tie.’
The moon’s white and round, though the sky around it is already light. It never crosses Gina’s mind to be worried about being alone with Kit. Normally she’s the worrying type but not with him. There’s an old-fashioned honour about him, despite his worldly bohemian attitude, a decency that she knows her mum and Terry would love, if they knew about him, which, as yet, they don’t. But they will. Soon.
And so they’ve had this amazing night, just them in their own Brideshead bubble. Kit introduced her to his friends, who seem nice; she’d met a few of them before on the two times she’d got away to be here with Kit (talking, talking, talking). But they’d drifted off, and Kit and Gina were left alone to wander round this funfair of candyfloss and tents, piles of oysters and pyramids of blowsy lilies, rooms with string quartets and swing bands. It feels magical, as if she’s stepped out of her boring world into a trippy fantasy – one that she might even be able to stay in. It stirs up a funny churning in Gina’s stomach that’s half excitement, half fear.
‘This is the most incredible night of my life,’ she says, without thinking.
‘So far.’ Kit doesn’t open his eyes; he’s had Finals, followed by ten days of parties. He’s shattered. Then he opens one eye, amused. ‘I mean, your life so far, not tonight so far. Did that sound sleazy?’
‘It didn’t.’ Although now you mention it, Gina thinks, and shivers.
‘Are you having a good time?’ He sounds as if he’s making himself talk to stay awake.
‘The best.’
‘Come down here and just shut your eyes for a bit. We’ll go for breakfast when the big clock up there . . .’ he waves vaguely in the direction of the quad clock without opening his eyes ‘. . . strikes the quarter-hour.’
‘OK.’ Gina isn’t tired but she snuggles down next to him anyway, mainly to feel the warmth of his body on her bare back and shoulders.
They lie like that for a bit, listening to the sounds of the ball winding down in the distance, smelling the crushed flowers on the morning air. Kit’s arms go heavy round her, and she feels more awake than ever. Physically, they’ve gone – she blushes, thinking about it – quite far, but they’ve never actually slept together. He’s surprisingly gentlemanly about that. She thinks sleeping with Kit, literally sleeping, would be even more intimate than making love. Waking up with him, seeing his chest rise and fall, his eyelids flicker.
Sounds float up from the disco tent, a summer tune Gina decides will always now remind her of tonight. ‘You’re Not Alone’ by Olive.
‘This song? Will always remind me of tonight,’ says Kit, as if he can read her mind. ‘Of you.’
Gina smiles to herself and wriggles into his body. Sleepily, he responds, and then less sleepily. She feels something pressing into the small of her back, against the bones of her corseted bodice, and stops. Somehow his erection feels much more dangerous through the formal wool of his trousers than through his jeans.
She wriggles further, more deliberately, surprised at her own boldness, and Kit’s hands begin to move where they’re resting on her leg, shifting the net of her petticoat against her bare thigh. Gina reaches backwards, running her own hand up the length of his leg. She can feel the long muscle under the scratchy fabric. Strong, warm. They lie like that for a while, stroking and moving, but saying nothing, until Kit’s breath becomes urgent, and he stops.
We’re going to do this, she thinks, looking up at the round white moon with a top-of-the-rollercoaster thrill. It all feels right.
‘Gina,’ he whispers in her ear, pulling a long strand of dark hair out of the way, so his lips are right up against her skin. His breath is warm and champagne-sour, and he smells intoxicatingly familiar. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes,’ she whispers back.
Kit pauses a second, as if giving her a chance to change her mind, and she pulls him awkwardly, wanting to show him that she really does want this, kicking off her shoe and sliding her bare leg beneath his. Kit rolls over onto his side, and their eyes lock for a long moment, his beautiful face framed against the sunrise-streaked sky above. Gina thinks of John Donne, but not about her A-level set texts.
Now she understands. This is what love feels like.
He gazes at her in wonder, and Gina feels beautiful for the first time in her life. Special and beautiful and powerful and completely safe. It’s like flying.
‘I love you, Gina,’ whispers Kit, ‘I could look at you for the rest of my life. And still never want to look away.’
Then he leans down and kisses her hard, his mouth sweet and hungry on hers, and everything else is lost in a rush of heat and darkness and the damp, sharp smell of crushed grass and wool and early morning roses.
The dog-rescue shop opposite Gina’s new flat was getting the lion’s share of her unwanted items, particularly heavy things like books and small furniture: it was nearest, and crucially, it was open at 8.00 a.m.
The shop’s routine was now a marker in her own morning timetable. From her bathroom window, where she was usually brushing her teeth at 7.50 a.m. (shower: 7.40 a.m.; vitamins and Tamoxifen, 7.49 a.m., toothbrush, 7.50 a.m.), Gina could see the manager arrive with her dog. The stiff-legged Border collie sat patiently at the woman’s feet as she unlocked the door, sniffed politely at any bags left at the entrance, then padded into the shop behind her. Sometimes it reappeared in the window where it watched for customers. It sat so still that Gina had assumed for a while it was a stuffed toy.
By her third donation drop-off, she’d learned that the collie was called Gem, the manager, who also ran the rescue kennels, was Rachel, and the older helper, Jean, couldn’t get going in the morning without a good strong cup of coffee and a bacon sandwich. They all looked forward to Gina’s donations as they were, according to Jean, ‘a better quality of item’.
‘Ooh, lovely, thank you, dear,’ Jean said on Monday morning, not bothering to hide her nosiness when Gina heaved two bags of untouched paperback novels onto the counter. ‘More books! It makes a change from the usual, what you bring in. Doesn’t it, Rachel?’
Rachel looked up from unpacking a donation bag of nylon headscarves and hats. ‘It certainly does. Although we also like your lovely chinaware and antique candlesticks. Hint, hint.’
‘I’ve given up book groups,’ said Gina, watching with relief as Jean unpacked her pile of unfinished Booker Prize shortlisted novels. ‘It feels like a weight’s lifted from my shoulders. Call me a philistine, but I’ve decided life is too short for a fourth attempt at Ulysses.’
Rachel pushed her thick black fringe out of her eyes and laughed. ‘Life’s too short for my first attempt. I’m saving it for my old age.’
‘You wouldn’t believe what we’ve been getting recently. Perfectly respectable types who come in all prim and proper until you unpack their bag and it’s full of . . .’ Jean pulled a shocked face ‘. . . filth. Mind, they dash in and out pretty quickly, but I still know. I couldn’t meet Mrs Nixon’s eye at WI last week. Her poor Arthur . . .’
‘Now then, Jean.’ Rachel looked askance, but winked at Gina. ‘Don’t pretend you don’t read them round the back!’
Gina smiled, but then had a moment of horror as she realised that the various charity-shop volunteers along the high street were probably building up five different pictures of her from the contents of her donation bags. Without thinking, she’d been directing different things to different shops: heavy books and small furniture here, home accessories to the Hospice at Home with the big display window, clothes to the Breast Cancer Care shop, who had more imaginatively dressed dummies.
As she left the shop for her office, Gina wondered what they made of her once she’d gone. If people analysed the bags like fortune-tellers, it was all in reverse: they’d be constructing her personality from books she’d never got round to reading. From clothes she’d never found the right occasion for.
She slowed down as something in the Hospice at Home window caught her eye. Out of all the charity shops in town, Hospice at Home had the best displays: it was dressed to look like a 1960s-inspired bedroom, and on top of a Perspex bedside table there was a beautiful silver bedside lamp, with a huge round metal shade.
That looks gorgeous, thought Gina. I wonder how much they want for it?
She was crossing the road to see, when she abruptly remembered that it was, in fact, hers. It was the touch-operated bedside light from the master bedroom at Dryden Road, and had gone straight from the packing crate to the GIVE AWAY box: Gina hadn’t been able to look at it without hearing the tap tap tap of Stuart turning it down to read his cycling magazines in bed, rather than talk to her, and then the tap tap as he turned it off to slide over in the bed without making contact with her body.
She didn’t hear any of that now. Weirdly, it just looked like a very expensive touch lamp, one that would work perfectly in the small spare bedroom of her flat.
Gina glanced at the ticket and winced. Twenty pounds? It had been a lot more than that, five times that, even in the sale.
She coul
d remember the day she and Stuart had bought it, at Heal’s on Tottenham Court Road in London. It had been a surprise weekend away for her twenty-sixth birthday; Gina found she liked London a lot more when she didn’t have to live there. Stuart had booked the most romantic boutique hotel he could find, and they’d giggled about the hand-knitted hot-water-bottle covers – what sort of honeymoon hotel needed bed-warmers? Hotels seemed to bring out the best in their relationship: Stuart had handed over his credit card in Heal’s while he was still in a dazed good mood brought on by a very late lie-in.
It’s a nice lamp, Gina thought. Buying it was more vivid in her memory than the weekend away; she wanted it back. That couldn’t be right. Could it?
A woman appeared in the shop window to rearrange the display and caught Gina looking at the lamp. She raised her eyebrows jokingly and pointed at it but Gina shook her head with a sad smile. It wasn’t coming back into her house. Let someone else get the benefit of its designer curves. Better that Hospice at Home got their twenty quid for it, before Stuart remembered they’d bought it and demanded it back.
At quarter past ten there was a knock on Gina’s office door, and Sara, the wedding planner, stuck her blonde head in. ‘Brought you a bit of cake,’ she said, putting a plate on top of the filing cabinet. It had a chunk of salmon pink and white sponge on it. ‘Had a naughty box of wedding-cake samples, and if it stays in my office I’ll eat the lot.’
‘Thanks!’ said Gina. ‘That’s really kind of you.’
Sara raised her mug of coffee; it was a glitzy silver one of Gina’s that never looked right with just tea in it. ‘Meant to say thanks for the new mugs. To be fair, I was getting a bit depressed with David’s Inland Revenue freebies. Who wants to be reminded of last year’s tax deadline on their tea break, eh?’
‘How’d you know they were mine?’ Gina asked, still conscious of the charity-shop character-analysis issue.