‘Please, Abby, talk to me,’ said Nick, trotting to catch up with her. ‘We owe each other that.’

‘I owe you nothing,’ she replied, not even looking at him, surprised at the venom in her voice, a venom she hadn’t thought she was capable of possessing.

She willed herself to stay calm. She had to do this. She had to remain mature and composed; businesslike, she decided quickly. Yes, she should see this as a professional conversation. As if she were phoning the photo lab to order a set of silver gelatin prints or arranging a venue for the exhibition.

‘Did you get the flowers?’

‘Thank you,’ she said, finally stopping in the middle of the pavement.

‘Six years. Twelve years really. Twelve years of being together.’

She nodded tightly, thinking back to that hot, lazy summer after their first year at Glasgow University. Exams were finished and a group of her friends had arranged to go to Glastonbury. Glastonbury! She still couldn’t quite believe she had agreed to go. Quiet, sensible Abby Bradley, whose CD collection consisted of rom-com soundtracks and whose sole drug consumption over her first third of university life was a quarter of an e during Freshers’ Week.

But after months of studying hard and working almost every holiday and weekend, Abby was determined to have some fun, and being the organised sort had prepared accordingly. A pink and white floral tent had been purchased from Millets, waterproofs borrowed from more outdoorsy friends. She’d bought a flask, spare socks, and a camping stove, only becoming mildly anxious when her flatmates had stuffed a packet of Rizlas and a box of condoms in her rucksack. She knew they were right. She had to prepare for all eventualities.

She’d met Nick Gordon within an hour of getting to Worthy Farm. He was another Glasgow University student, from Leeds, a friend of a friend of her housemate’s, and had turned up to Glastonbury without a tent. It had been stolen at Central station, he’d explained to his adoring audience of new female friends, most of whom immediately offered their sexy, witty new acquaintance a place in their own tent for the weekend.

Later Abby found herself alone with him. Her friends and his had disappeared to see some band she had never even heard of, and she lost track of time as she drank cider, talked and laughed with him, surprised at how much they had in common, thrilled that such a good-looking guy with that dry, northern sense of humour, was paying her so much attention.

‘Why did you come to Glastonbury without a tent?’ she asked him, as they walked away from the people and the noise.

‘Couldn’t waste my ticket,’ he replied. They found a spot on the outskirts of the farm overlooking the Somerset Hills and the Pyramid Stage in the far distance.

‘I’d have thought it was fate telling me not to go.’ She smiled, taking slow sips of warm cider, thinking how content she was just sitting there with him.

‘I don’t know. I think fate did bring me to Glastonbury this year,’ he said before he kissed her.

She couldn’t really remember being apart from him after that. Nick made her a better version of herself. A happier, more spontaneous Abby than the girl who had left her home town of Portree on the Isle of Skye.

They travelled back to Glasgow together, found a flat, moved in with each other for their second year, and if Abby thought it had been a rushed and rash decision, she needn’t have worried. They understood one another. Their relationship was easy, the sex was great and they never ran out of conversation. They decamped to London after graduation, bought a flat, not even contemplating the idea of living apart, and got engaged at twenty-five, the first of their friends to do so. Nick didn’t have to ask anyone for Abby’s hand in marriage. Abby had no family. No one close, no one who really cared. So there at the altar of the remote St Agatha’s Church in Yorkshire, six years after the Glastonbury weekend when they had met, Nick Gordon became her husband, her family, her everything.

‘Should we walk to the Serpentine?’

‘Fine,’ she said as she watched the muscles in his face relax.

They threaded their way through the people and traffic of South Kensington to the open green space of Hyde Park.

‘How are you?’ he asked, rubbing the sweep of stubble on his chin.

‘You mean how has the fallout from my husband’s infidelity been?’

‘I don’t know how many times I have to say I’m sorry, Abs,’ he said, pushing the dark tufts of hair anxiously from his forehead.

‘Say it again,’ she said sharply.

There was an awkward silence.

‘I love you so much, Abby.’

‘I think you’ve shown me exactly how much you love me.’

‘And I miss you.’

She didn’t want to tell him how much she missed him too. How she had never felt more lonely than that first night she had slept in an empty bed. And the six weeks since had seemed like an eternity, days bleeding into one, endless hours of feeling hollow and broken. It was as if she was locked into a suffocating twilight, like some Arctic winter’s day when the sun never rose and the thought of ever feeling warmth on her face felt impossibly distant. She missed him too. More than anything. But she wasn’t prepared to admit that now.

‘I was thinking, maybe we could go away for a couple of days. I rang Babington House, and they have a

room next weekend. I thought we could go and talk.’

Tags: Tasmina Perry Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net