No Other Love Page 4

  ‘Right? So what’s the problem?’

  Without looking at him, Sophie could tell Lee had absolutely no idea what he’d done.

  ‘The problem is that she was never meant to see it.’

  ‘So… why did you write it?’

  ‘Because I’m stupid,’ Sophie snapped, before taking a breath and calming herself down again. ‘It was supposed to be cathartic?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Cathartic. It was for my own benefit. A way of letting out all of the things I wish I’d said, all the feelings and emotions I’ve carried around with me for years. To put it down on paper, like the way some people keep a diary.’

  ‘Why didn’t you write it in your diary then?’

  Sophie gritted her teeth. ‘Because I haven’t got a bloody diary, otherwise I would have, wouldn’t I?’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ Lee said, hands held up defensively. ‘Was it bad?’ he asked after a few moments of thought. ‘Did you call her names?’

  ‘No, I didn’t call her any names,’ Sophie said, ‘at least I don’t think I did.’ She sat up and twisted her lips to the side, trying to remember through the alcoholic fog that was clouding her memory of the night before.

  Try as she might, Sophie couldn’t remember word for word what she had written. It had all come out in one long stream of consciousness, like a volcano exploding then lava flowing down the sides.

  Sophie could remember saying the blame was Alison’s and that the events of her birthday finally broke things between them, but that was it. She didn’t get the feeling that she’d been overly harsh towards her, but in truth, she just didn’t know for sure.

  Sophie buried her face in her hands. ‘Oh, God, she’s going to see everything I wrote.’

  ‘But you said you can’t remember what you wrote. You might’ve been nice,’ Lee said unhelpfully.

  ‘I just wrote a letter while I was half-drunk—’

  Lee coughed.

  ‘—all right, while I was pissed, to the woman who dumped me with a three-line note and hadn’t spoken to me until last night. Would you have written nice things?’

  ‘Well, no,’ Lee said.

  ‘There you go then,’ she said, turning to face him, ‘it’s little short of a disaster. She’ll go batshit crazy on me.’

  ‘She always was a bit of a hothead.’

  ‘No, she wasn’t.’

  ‘I know.’ Lee grinned. ‘I was just trying to make you feel better.’

  ‘How does—oh never mind, look, whatever you were cooking must be ready by now, right?’

  Lee leapt out of his seat like a gazelle being chased by a lion and dashed for the kitchen. ‘My Bearnaise sauce will be split, oh buggering hell,’ he yelled as he disappeared through the doorway.

  Shit, shit, shit. Sophie tried to calm the million and one thoughts racing around her mind. How the hell am I going to face her when I go to work?

  Unfortunately, Alison worked five minutes from Sophie’s office, and Sophie knew once she received the letter, Alison would be round in a shot to defend herself. Sophie had neither the energy nor the desire to deal with any more drama.

  ‘I’ve got to get away,’ Sophie said quietly, the first shoots of a plan emerging in her still foggy brain.

  ***

  Sophie stared at her empty plate of Eggs Benedict with a sauce that Lee had rescued just in time. She had her ear to her phone and the green shoots had, during breakfast, sprouted into a fully-fledged plan.

  ‘Hi, Sue, yeah, I’m good thanks. Listen, something’s come up so I’m going to have to leave you in the lurch for a while.’

  There was the faint sound of a concerned voice on the other end of the phone as Sue ran through a list of guesses as to what had happened.

  ‘No, no, nothing wrong with me. I just got some family news, you know, and I have to go back home for a while.’

  Sue started up again, only this time Sophie cut her short. She hated lying to her but there was no way she was going back to work until the dust settled.

  ‘No, nothing as bad as that, but bad enough that I need to be there. I’ve got my laptop with me so I can still do some work from there, but I just need you to step up for the presentations we’ve got planned. Is that okay?’

  Sue’s voice sounded less concerned now as she assured her the office would be in safe hands.

  ‘Okay, Sue, thanks, I’ll be in touch early next week when I know a bit more. Hopefully, I won’t need to be away more than a couple of weeks. Thanks again.’

  Sue said goodbye and Sophie cut the call. Then she breathed a sigh of relief.

  ‘She bought it then?’ Lee asked.

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘I mean that cock and bull story you just told so you don’t have to see Alison. You don’t think it would be better to face up to it and get it over and done with?’

  Sophie turned to face Lee.

  ‘Like you did, you mean? You hid behind the sofa when Gordon, or whatever his name was, came looking for you. You made me tell him I’d never heard of you.’

  ‘His name was Graham, and I was looking for something on the floor.’ Lee wouldn’t meet Sophie’s eyes.

  ‘Yeah, right. You’re just as keen to avoid conflict as I am, so stop moralising and help me pack. I want to get out of here ASAP.’

  ‘I’m not touching your knickers,’ Lee said, his arms folded across his chest.

  ‘Okay, Okay. God. You pack my jeans and tops and I’ll look after the underwear department and shoes.’

  ‘Not fair, you know how much I love shoes.’ Lee pouted dramatically.

  ‘Underwear and shoes go hand in hand,’ Sophie said with her hands out.

  ‘Oh, all right. Jeans and tops it is.’ Lee stomped off in the direction of Sophie’s bedroom.

  ‘Thought so.’

  Half an hour later, she was packed, and an Uber was on the way to pick her up and take her to the station.

  ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ Lee asked, holding her arms.

  ‘Certain. I just can’t face Alison right now.’

  ‘Then,’ Lee reached over and pecked her cheek, ‘I hope it works out for you. I’ll look after the place and keep it nice while you’re away. Keep in touch, and if I can help in any way, you only have to ask, right?’

  Sophie nodded, suddenly feeling a well of affection for Lee, despite him dropping her right in it.

  ‘Oh, and don’t forget to pick up the post on your way out. It’s on the side table in the hall.’

  The sound of the doorbell buzzing broke the parting mood.

  ‘I’ll see you, Lee.’

  ‘Yeah, bye. Be good.’

  Sophie headed out into the hallway, buzzed on the intercom to say she’d be right down and was almost out of the door before she remembered to pick up the post. She dashed out of the door clutching it in her hand.

  In the back of the Uber, she flicked through her mail.

  ‘Crap, crap, bill, crap,’ she commentated. When she was two thirds through, she stopped at a letter with a handwritten address. Dropping the bills on the seat beside her, she ran her finger under the flap on the envelope then slowly slid the letter out.

  Sophie opened up the letter just as the Uber pulled up at the railway station, and only had time to read the heading before she paid the driver and headed towards the concourse, the letter pertaining to a school reunion momentarily forgotten and tucked into her back pocket.

  Chapter Six

  ‘Mum, I don’t mind, honestly. Just text me a list of what you need, and I’ll shoot into town and get them for you. You’ve got enough on your plate worrying about Dad. It’ll give me an excuse to have a wander ’round the old place.’

  Amber kept her hands under the table as she worked her way through a quarter of the absolutely immense breakfast her mother had cooked for her.

  Back home in New York, breakfast was generally a bagel on the go. Here, after three days of being back in her childhood home, with the relentlessly huge portions of foo
d her mother prepared daily, Amber could already feel a little tightness around the waist of her jeans. Another few weeks and she’d need a whole new wardrobe.

  A trip to the supermarket for more supplies, not only would give her a break from the culinary onslaught, it would also give her a break from the constant questions her mother, in all good heart, had bombarded her with since she had arrived.

  Her health?

  Her love life?

  Her job?

  Her home?

  It was worse than using a dating app with the same unending questions, an experience she was all too familiar with.

  Sex in the City it was not.

  Sniff out the crazy more like.

  ‘Okay, well you finish your breakfast and I’ll write a list out. I don’t like using my phone for that kind of thing. Your father says, “you never know who’s hacking into it” whatever that means, so I’ll write it out old school.’

  Amber forked a mouthful of rapidly cooling fried mushrooms into her mouth, trying not to laugh at the idea that anyone would be interested in her mother’s shopping list of household staples.

  By the time she sneaked into the kitchen while her mum’s back was turned, and scraped what was left of her breakfast into the bin, rinsed her plate, and loaded it into the dishwasher, her mum had scribbled out a barely legible list and left it on the table with a small pile of bank notes.

  With her mum upstairs, frantically cleaning the already spotless house in readiness for her dad’s scheduled return from hospital the next day, she shouted a cheery, ‘see you later’ up the stairs and headed out into the street.

  Sophie opted to take the once a day village bus service into town rather than call for a taxi. She’d ridden that same bus into town so many times as a teenager that it was something she was actually looking forward to.

  By the time the bus was halfway into town, Amber had got used to the vague smell of diesel that permeated every seat, but she was soon regretting her choice of sitting at the back.

  Sitting directly in front of her, two women discussed their friend’s prolapse in grim and unending detail, while an old man had wisely taken up residence right at the front, closest to the door and hopefully out of hearing range.

  Other than an occasional new barn, the countryside they drove through—distant green rolling hills, almost neatly trimmed hedgerows, and fields with occasional forlorn looking livestock chewing the cud—was unchanged from what she remembered. The advance of the town’s suburbs was more of a surprise. She hadn’t realised it had grown so much in the ten years she’d been away. Featureless, uninspiring housing estates soon took over from verdant nature, and for the rest of the journey, the depressingly urban took firmly over from the joyously rural until the bus repeated its rumble and hiss and stopped at the bus station.

  She waited for the few other passengers to get off then stepped off herself and headed in the direction of the shops.

  Her mum had given her strict instructions on which one of the several supermarkets in the town she was to visit, and Amber didn’t need the lecture and look of disappointment she might receive if she’d gone for the wrong one, so Waitrose it was.

  She had just about reached the trolley shed, marvelling that the town’s traditional architecture had seemingly mostly avoided the developers, when someone hopped in front of her to grab a trolley of her own.

  Amber gawped for a moment. She would know that dark hair anywhere, having studied it at close quarters and fantasised about gripping her hand into it in the height of passion for months after she vanished.

  Without thinking, Amber blurted out a name she hadn’t said aloud in years.

  ‘Sophie?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Sophie pulled out the trolley she’d grabbed and swung around, barely missing ramming it into Amber’s leg. Those gorgeous green eyes looked back at Amber without recognition.

  ‘It’s me. Amber. Grange school sixth form?’

  Amber couldn’t avoid seeing the hint of pink rising in Sophie’s face and a slight look of panic flash across her features.

  ‘Amber?’ Sophie said, open-mouthed. ‘Jesus, you look… so different. I would never have recognised you.’

  Amber smiled. ‘You look exactly the same... I mean that in a good way…’ Amber added quickly.

  Silence.

  Sophie glanced furtively around before backing out of the trolley shed to let someone else get in.

  ‘So what’re you doing here? Do you live here now?’

  ‘No. I’m staying up here at my mum’s house while she’s on a six-week cruise. I needed to get—’ Sophie stopped talking for a few moments, clearly trying not to say too much. ‘I just needed a break, you know?’

  Amber nodded, wondering quite what Sophie might need a break from.

  ‘Where’re you living?’ Sophie asked after a couple of moments of uncomfortable silence.

  ‘New York,’ Amber said.

  ‘Wow. That’s a long way away.’

  ‘Tell me about it. I’m still getting over the jet lag.’

  ‘So why are you here? You haven’t come all this way for the school reunion, have you?’

  ‘No. My dad had a heart attack,’ Amber said, ‘so I came over to help my mum look after him. He’s due out tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh no, I’m so sorry to hear that. I’m glad he’s okay.’

  ‘Me too.’

  Amber managed a smile but every moment she stood there, looking at Sophie, those old familiar feelings seeped back into her body and mind. The longing she’d felt when Sophie suddenly vanished. The desire to kiss her again and much, much more.

  A few minutes in her company and there it all was, just as intense as it had ever been when she was the young, slightly geeky teenager she’d been back then. Not that she would ever let on how she felt. Never in a million years!

  ‘So, are you going?’ Sophie suddenly asked.

  ‘No, I’m standing here talking to you,’ Amber said, puzzled by the question.

  Sophie laughed. ‘No, I mean are you going to the reunion?’

  ‘Ohh. Sorry I thought you meant…’ Amber pointed her thumb over her shoulder at the supermarket. ‘I don’t know to be honest. I haven’t had much time to think about it since I’ve been back, what with dad and everything. You?’

  Sophie shrugged. ‘Not sure. Listen, while we’re here, do you fancy grabbing a coffee or something? We could rehash old times?’

  Why? was the first thought that sprang to mind. Why would she ever want to go over a painful period in her life, with the person who, admittedly inadvertently, had caused that pain.

  ‘I can’t I’m afraid,’ Amber said, trying to maintain her poise. ‘I have to get back and help my mum. She’s spring cleaning ready for when my dad come’s home tomorrow.’

  Sophie looked a little surprised but nodded anyway.

  ‘Sure, I understand. Well, it was good to see you. Maybe we’ll bump into each other again.’

  ‘Maybe. It’s not like there’s a massive population here.’

  ‘Unlike New York.’

  ‘That’s a given,’ Amber said, anxiously changing the note in her hand from left to right and back again.

  ‘Well, I guess I’ll see you around then.’

  And with that, Sophie was gone, headed into the supermarket, leaving Amber to stare after her as if she was a mirage.

  Amber remained rooted to the spot, unable to put one foot in front of the other. She felt dazed. Like the wind had been knocked out of her. It had all been so sudden. Sophie’s reappearance in her life. She was the last person Amber expected to see.

  To add to the mounting confusion, Amber didn’t know whether she was happy about this or not. Knowing that the woman who she had been totally smitten with as a teenager was now a grown woman and back in their hometown.

  Amber started to walk after realising she was blocking people’s way. She bypassed the supermarket Sophie had gone into, lest they bump into each other again, and went to the one further ahead.


  Their conversation ran through her mind. It had been brief to say the least. She had so much that she’d wanted to ask but had been unable to find her voice. Amber had reverted back to that tongue-tied teenager all over again, despite the fact that she had left that person behind years ago.

  The one question that still burnt in her mind was the one Sophie asked about the school reunion.

  Did Amber really want to revisit hell? And to go willingly at that? No. There were too many hurtful memories hidden behind those seemingly innocent school gates. Besides, the last thing she wanted was to reopen the gaping hole that had been left inside her when Sophie disappeared before.

  The best thing she could do was to stay as far away from Sophie as she could, and try and let the memories fade. She had four weeks before she had to return to New York. It wouldn’t be that hard. And once the ocean was between them again, guaranteeing her heart a safety net, she could slip back into her old ways.

  Loving Sophie from afar.

  Chapter Seven

  Sophie waited until she was safely ensconced behind the closed doors of her home before she allowed the growing sense of wild emotion to overcome her. The regrets of the past still often tore at her heart, but when they did, she closed them down in an instant to avoid the pain.

  Amber was here! Amber, who Sophie had lost contact with when her parents had decided to divorce. Amber, the first girl she’d ever kissed. The girl who had stolen her heart, but she had been too scared to admit it. Amber, the girl she had rejected, though it killed her to do so.

  The past was so far away now, yet it somehow felt like yesterday to Sophie.

  She had managed to adjust to a new life with her dad, and soon after, Eve, her selfie- and insta-obsessed stepmother. Each day that passed, she promised herself that she’d get in touch with Amber and make amends. Explain why she’d pushed her away. Why she’d treated her so badly. But as time wore on, the less courage she had to do so. In the end, Sophie realised Amber would be better off without such a cowardly person in her life. Someone who couldn’t or wouldn’t fully accept her sexuality until she started university. By then, Sophie decided it was too late to make things right with Amber, so she vowed never to hurt another woman in her life ever again. It was probably why she put up with so much of Alison’s crap. Unable to process her thoughts any longer, she called the only person she knew who could talk her down from the edge she was teetering on.