‘That’s understandable,’ I said. ‘It must have been a great shock.’
He nodded again, but didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. The shock was written all over his face.
He took another deep breath, cleared his throat and pinched the bridge of his nose.
‘Now, Emily D’Arcy?’ he began.
I nodded.
‘Obviously I’ve looked at your CV. It’s been a while since you worked directly with the general public, but your qualifications seem to be in order. This is a very busy practice, we rely on people who can work well, and under pressure at times. We value good organisational skills – how can you sell yourself to us?’
I had rehearsed my answer carefully. ‘I’m hard working and diligent. Yes, the last few years have been spent helping people remotely, but I believe if you can deal with sometimes irate callers, while timed and on script, you can deal with almost anything. I also like to think my age is an asset in circumstances such as these. I bring a certain maturity and appreciation of what being a good team player means with me.’
He nodded, looked down at the sheet in front of him and back up at me. He sighed, and I clenched and released my hands by my side to ease the tension creeping through my body.
‘And your last job? Why did you leave?’
I tried to keep my face non-expressive. Now was not the time for an exaggerated eye roll or badly timed grimace. ‘I craved working directly with the public again. Doing something to help people. I found CallSolutions wasn’t really offering me a challenge anymore. I decided to take a leap of faith. I mean, you never really know what’s ahead of you, do you? And I thought I could stay there and continue to feel uninspired and demotivated or I could push myself into making a change by making a big gesture and hoping it paid off. So I quit – and I took a chance because sometimes in life, you just have to take chances.’
I knew I was being horribly, terribly manipulative. I had anticipated this question because I’m not totally stupid, and I had decided to play on the recent tragedy in Owen Scott’s life, which may just have focused his mind on the whole ‘life is too short’ thing. I was playing dirty, but my intentions were from a good place.
It was almost imperceptible but I saw something in Owen’s eyes after my answer. Something that made his features soften, his face look less worn, his handsomeness creep up on me a bit more.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I know this must be a very difficult time for everyone here and it can’t be easy having someone come in to take over a job that was previously held by someone you all clearly held in such very high esteem. I can’t imagine how you are all feeling right now – but if you give me a chance, I promise you won’t regret it.’
I was surprised to find I actually meant what I was saying. Even more surprised to feel a lump form in my throat and tears spring to my eyes. I hadn’t cried since Rose Grahame died. I didn’t think I had a right – even though what I had seen had been traumatic and awful and sometimes when I woke in the night I could still see her eyes staring right at me.
But there, sitting across from Owen – noting that small, tiny change in his demeanour – the softness in his gaze, the realisation that I really, really did want and need to change my life hit me. That, far from this being just a speech I was giving to earn me a job where Rose had been happy, I realised this was a place I could be happy. I willed the tears to stay where they were. I took a slow breath in, and then, shuddering just lightly, I exhaled.
Owen was looking at me. I wasn’t actually sure if he had spoken after my emotional outburst or if he was, like me, wondering what on earth to say next.
‘I’m sorry,’ I muttered, reaching for my bag.
‘For what?’ he said, looking genuinely baffled.
‘For getting a little emotional,’ I lied. ‘It was unprofessional of me.’
But what I really wanted to say was that I was sorry that it was me, and not Rose, who was sat in front of him. That I was sorry she, and not me, had died.
‘We’re all a little emotional around here these days,’ he said softly, a small, comforting smile playing on his lips. ‘We get the whole life is short thing. And we get that some people need second chances.’
*
Second Chances. I almost wrote a blog called that. A secret blog that I wanted to start when it all went wrong. It would be private, anonymous. It would be a therapy of sorts. No one would need to know about it. Not even Maud. Maud would have thought it was a spectacularly bad idea. It would have made her worry. I didn’t want to worry her anymore.
That’s maybe why I decided against it, in the end. That and the fear that things always get out. We share too much, you know. All of us. Even those of us who swear we don’t. We let it out in our behaviour. What we like. What we don’t. The pages we follow. The clothes we wear in our pictures. Our inspirational quotes. Our lack of inspirational quotes. The music we share. The things we write when we’re tired. Or emotional. Or drunk.
The life we let people see. The life we let ourselves believe. It’s strange how we can convince ourselves our Facebook life is our actual life – because we want it so desperately to be. I did anyway.
I found my Facebook life, where things were good and glossed over, very difficult to let go of when it all ended because I knew people – who I had perhaps done my best to make jealous – would enjoy some sort of Schadenfreude when it all went tits up.
That expression flashed through my brain again. No one to blame but myself.
I had been too open. Believed too much in sharing. Believed the world to be a good place. Believed people had the same motives as I had. I had believed in the power of love. I had believed I could make him love me as much as I loved him. That I could change him. No, not change – fix. Heal. Heal him with love.
I tolerated so much because I believed, in my heart and in my soul, that Ben Cullen was a good person. A damaged soul. A bit battered, but I could soften his rough edges. I could love him into being the person I knew he was beneath his thorny, gruff exterior.
Beneath the outburst – the angry ranting, the occasional hand to my left cheek, the pinching of skin, twisting it so it turned white, blanched of blood, before his grip loosened and the purple of a bruise started. Upper arms. Upper thighs. Hidden bruises from a misunderstood man. He was hurting too; I was sure of it. Even when his anger shifted gear – when he became lazy about making sure the bruises could be hidden so easily, or when his tongue loosened a little too much in company. Not that we kept much company. We enjoyed ‘another cosy night in together’ too much – well, according to my Facebook posts we did.
But I loved him. I did. I adored him. I wanted so badly to make it better for him, for both of us. I believed with all my heart that I could.
Then I got a message on Facebook from someone I didn’t know. Someone who had a picture of the man I so smugly, desperately, passionately, soulmate-ingly loved with his tongue down another woman’s throat and his hand up her skirt. If there was any doubt it was him, the second picture, one which showed his face twisted in orgasmic ecstasy as the object of his affections knelt in front of him, did away with all of that.
I knew the shirt he was wearing. I had bought it for him for Christmas. The last Christmas we were together. The first Christmas we had been an engaged couple.
He had betrayed me. My soulmate. The man who I had tried to help. Who I had let take his rage out on me in the hope that one day he would be spent of it all. But he had betrayed and humiliated me – although I knew the worst of the humiliation was still to come when the news spread. When people started talking. Leaving ‘supportive’ messages on my Facebook page. Inspirational quotes. Songs. When I unpublished the dream wedding Pinterest board and the beautifully filtered Instagram pictures of us walking