‘Well, you were sometimes, I suppose,’ he eventually agreed.
‘Of course I was.’ I smiled to hide my kick of discomfort. ‘And it was especially decent of you to come and put yourself through that ordeal when we weren’t even married or in a serious relationship, when you weren’t even in love with me…’
‘Hey, I was in love with you,’ he interrupted, in a wounded tone.
‘You weren’t,’ I reminded him.
‘I was.’
‘Luke,’ I pointed out, ‘I’m not giving out to you here, but you told everyone in my therapy group that you never loved me.
‘I have witnesses,’ I added, with a stab at humour.
‘Oh God, I did, didn’t I?’ he said, rubbing his stubble in a gesture that I recognized from another life. ‘I did, of course.’
He turned an urgent look on me. ‘I shouldn’t have said it, but I was angry, Rachel, I was very angry with you. For the way you’d treated me, and for the way you’d treated yourself.’
I swallowed. It still hurt to hear him say such a thing. Nice to know he had loved me once, I thought.
‘Weird, isn’t it?’ Luke said thoughtfully. ‘How time changes things. One day I’m raging with you, next thing it’s more than a year later and I’m not pissed-off anymore.’
Thank God, I thought with shuddering relief.
‘Even though I was angry, of course I loved you!’ he declared earnestly. ‘Do you think I’d fly three thousand miles to sit in a spooky room with a crowd of weirdos and trash you if I didn’t love you?’
We both burst out laughing.
‘You trashed me a lot,’ I said. ‘So you must have really loved me.’
‘Oh, I did.’ He nodded ironically. ‘I did.’
Suddenly the mood had shifted upwards.
I asked after Gaz and the lads. Which led us seamlessly into a series of ‘Do you remember?’s. ‘Remember the day of Gaz’s tattoo?’ ‘Wasn’t it hilarious the way it got infected afterwards?’ ‘Remember the time we made popcorn and set the kitchen on fire?’ ‘And Joey had stolen the fire extinguisher from work?’ ‘Wasn’t it so handy?’ ‘I’d forgotten about that.’ ‘I’d forgotten about it too, until now.’
There was a bit of tentative arm-touching as we jogged each other’s memories. Delicious, bittersweet, a faint echo of other contact.
When we’d done enough reminiscing, I wheeled out my recent achievements like a child showing off her birthday presents.
‘I haven’t had a drink or a drug for a year and four months,’ I boasted.
‘Fair play to you, Rachel.’ Luke smiled with admiration.
I pulsated with pleasure.
‘And I’m going to un-i-ver-sit-y,’ I spelt out slowly, for maximum effect, ‘in October.’
That nearly floored him.
‘Are you really?’ He goggled.
‘Oh yes.’ I grinned. ‘To do psychology.’
‘Fuck me!’ he exclaimed.
We both ignored the flirt-opportunity afforded by that remark. Things were different from the way they’d been two years before. Very different indeed.
‘Next you’ll be telling me you’re getting married,’ he said, ‘for the transformation to be complete.’
I smiled. The very thought!
‘Are you?’ he asked, when we’d sat in silence for a while.
‘Am I what?’
‘Getting married.’
‘For God’s sake, don’t be mad,’ I tisked.
‘Haven’t you met any nice lads in Ireland?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Plenty of eejits,’ I added. ‘But no nice lads.’
He laughed, his teeth white, his aura dangerous. My insides flipped.
‘You always made me laugh,’ he said.
‘And not just when I took my clothes off?’ I quipped.
I shouldn’t have. His eyes kind of lit up and clouded over simultaneously. Memories and sensations came racing back. I could almost smell the way his skin used to smell when we were in bed together. The good mood was instantly dispelled. The tension back in force, accompanied by sadness and colossal, awful regret. In that moment I hated myself for being an addict, for ruining what might have been a great relationship. The grief I felt was mirrored in Luke’s eyes.
We looked at each other, then had to look away. I’d thought that the day in the Cloisters was the deathknell of the relationship, but it wasn’t. It was only happening now.
‘Rachel,’ Luke said awkwardly, ‘I just want to say that you’re not to feel guilty anymore about me.’
I shrugged miserably.
‘Would it sound really corny if I said that I forgive you?’ he asked sheepishly.
‘Of course not,’ I said earnestly. ‘I want you to forgive me.’
‘You know,’ he said kindly, ‘you weren’t that bad.’
‘Wasn’t I?’ I asked.
‘Not always,’ he said. ‘And on a good day, there was no one better than you.
‘No one,’ he repeated gently, kindly, ‘ever.’
‘Honestly?’ I whispered. His unexpected tenderness made me weepy.
‘I mean it,’ he whispered back. ‘Don’t you remember?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But I wasn’t sure if I’d imagined it, what with me being off my face all the time and everything. So it was good with us sometimes?’
‘Lots of times,’ he said. Both of us were barely moving, even the air had stopped circulating around us.
A tear rolled smoothly down my cheek. ‘Sorry,’ I said, wiping it away. ‘But I didn’t think you’d be nice to me.’
‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ he asked in genuine surprise. ‘I am nice.’
Of course, he was. He was a nice man, once upon a time he’d been my nice man. A rush of loss momentarily withered me.
‘I wasn’t expecting to feel so sad,’ I said.
‘I was.’
‘Were you?’ I was very surprised. ‘Just out of interest, why did you agree to meet me?’
‘I was curious, I wanted to see if you’d changed. And I missed you,’ he added jokily.
‘And have I? Changed?’ I asked, skipping over the jokey tone.