Читать книгу Bring Me Back: The gripping Sunday Times bestseller now with an explosive new ending! - Б. Э. Пэрис, B Paris A - Страница 23

FOURTEEN

Before

Money never interested you, Layla, but even you were surprised when I admitted that in the seven years I’d worked in the city, I’d accumulated enough to last me a lifetime. To be really arrogant, when we left London for Devon, it wouldn’t have mattered if I never worked again – which was just as well because even the thought of it left me exhausted. At not quite thirty years old I was well and truly burnt out.

I knew that mentally I couldn’t not work for the rest of my life. What I wanted was to take a year out, concentrate on you, on us, and worry about the future later. But you’d become restless. I could tell you were beginning to feel caged, like a beautiful, wild animal. Sometimes you’d snap at me for no reason at all, although you were quick to apologise, as volatile in your temper as you were in your anger and frustrations.

A week before we were due to go skiing, you were invited by your ex-work colleagues at the wine bar to a girls’ weekend in London. You were so excited about it; you smiled more that day than you had for a while and it got under my skin. But I was too proud to ask you not to go. Instead, I took you to the station and waved you off on the train.

It was a long two days. I went for walks along the beach and in between, I tried to be the perfect boyfriend and painted the bathroom as a surprise for you. By the time Sunday evening came, I couldn’t wait for you to be back and I planned to take you straight to bed and stay there the whole of the next day. But when I met you at the station, you were so quiet, and my heart almost stopped, because I thought you were going to tell me that you wanted to go back to your old life in London. Instead, you clung to me and told me that you loved me, that you always wanted to be with me, and stay in our cottage forever. And realising how much you’d missed me, my heartbeat smoothed out, and I was glad I’d let you go.

The following week we left for Megève but once there, your mood didn’t improve. You had never skied before so I’d booked lessons for you each morning, convinced that a spirit like yours would love the mountains. But your heart wasn’t in it and I couldn’t hide my disappointment, or my fear, because it seemed that everything I said or did wasn’t right any more. I asked you if you were homesick or if you were missing Ellen and you dissolved into floods of tears and wouldn’t let me comfort you. There was a nervousness about you and I began to worry that I’d got it wrong, that you wanted to go back to London after all, and were psyching yourself up to tell me.

On the way home, we stopped off in Paris for dinner and as we walked along the Seine, back to where I parked the car, I drew you into my arms and told you how much I loved you. A part of me wished I’d brought the ring with me, a ring I’d planned to give you on your birthday because I could have proposed to you there and then instead of waiting. But my love seemed to make you uncomfortable, and my doubt grew.

As soon as we got back in the car, you started crying but when I asked you what the matter was, you wouldn’t tell me. In the end, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I pulled off the motorway into a picnic area and told you that we weren’t leaving until you told me what was wrong, that I couldn’t fix it if you didn’t talk.

Nothing had prepared me for what you said next. You didn’t tell me that you wanted to leave me and go back to London. Instead, you told me that during your weekend in London, you’d slept with somebody else.