‘Gabe?’ I called, shoving the front door closed with my hip as the heavy grocery bags slid to the floor from my now purpling fingers.
‘Faith, you’re back…’ Gabe leaned over the glass railing overlooking the two-storey living room, his hair still wild from our marathon last night.
‘You bet your Gibson guitar, I am, baby!’ I chimed as he rushed down the stairs to help and I leaned in to kiss his luscious mouth while chucking off my sandals that were full of sand and grass.
‘Please don’t tell me you climbed all the way up the path again,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you drive?’
‘Because the views are worth the effort.’ Especially on a gloriously sunny day like this, the south-west coastal path was like paradise, especially in this part in south Cornwall.
‘I stopped by Cornish Born and Bread to get you your favourite blueberry muffins. Let me just put the kettle on and I’ll be with you in a jiffy.’
‘Wait, Faith…’ he said, tugging gently on my hand. ‘Come and sit down a minute, will you?’
I obeyed instantly, my knees turning to rubber. I knew that look. That was his bad news look.
‘Oh God, is someone ill? My sister? One of the kids? I left my mobile here—’ They were all I had now, besides him.
‘Your family’s fine,’ he reassured me, his hands on my elbows almost as if to keep me from jumping to my feet.
‘Then what is it?’
He ran a hand through his blond hair, taking a deep breath. ‘I don’t know how to tell you this, Faith, but… I’ve met someone else. Please don’t hate me.’
Any second he was going to laugh and say, ‘Fooled you, you silly sausage!’ But he didn’t. Instead, he looked at me while he joined his hands as if in prayer, exactly the same way he did at the end of his concerts when he played ‘Impossibly You’, the most beautiful song he’d ever written for me. I sat still, my mind numb and my lungs frozen in a sudden permafrost.
‘But… but… up until last night…’
And just like that, even if I hadn’t even been born yet, I saw my father on the night he left my mother. I saw her bawling, begging him, and him pushing her away, telling her he was already married. How betrayed and abandoned she must have felt! I didn’t want to bawl like she had. But all the same, tears fell hot on my cheeks as I struggled to understand. And I’d thought that buying this house would have been, in a sense, a way of vindicating my poor mum.
Because Gabe and I weren’t like my parents. We were happy even with each other’s faults. Where Gabe had tendencies to live the life of a rock star to its fullest by being scatterbrained and a spendthrift, I kept him on the straight and narrow. Where I was insecure, he reminded me about my qualities, assuring me I would never have to doubt myself – or his love for me. Until a moment ago, we had been ‘Indelible’, just like another one of the songs he’d written for me. So how had this happened all of a sudden? How could he go from loving me one minute, to leaving me the very next?
This was my own mother’s trauma all over again, and, by a strange twist of fate, in the very same house.
‘S-someone else?’ I repeated.
‘Yes.’
‘B-but how? Why?’
He sighed as if to say Where do I begin? Which was insane. I was the one who put up with a lot of nonsense from him – not vice versa. And then he shrugged. ‘You’ve done nothing wrong, Faith. I just… Jesus, this is so hard – I just need someone less staid, less sentimental. Someone less dependent on me, is all.’
‘Less dependent?’ I knew it. I knew that pouring out my heart to him about my childhood was more than he could take. But then, if I didn’t tell him, my fiancé, who was I ever going to tell?
‘I mean emotionally independent. Someone more proactive.’
‘More proactive?’ I dashed a hand across my eyes. ‘I started my own design company at twenty-four. Despite my childhood. I have six people working for me. I don’t take a penny of your money. Who is she? Someone you’ve met on tour?’
His eyes shot to mine, and then down to his hands. ‘It’s Vanessa…’
‘Vanessa?’ Which meant nothing to me, because I only knew one Vanessa who was a cross between Courtney Love and Paris Hilton. And then I saw it on his face. ‘You do mean Vanessa… Chatsbury, my professional nemesis…’
‘Yes…’
The one who has made it her life’s goal to steal all my clients and who took a picture of me at the design awards ceremony when my skirt split open. She’d even posted it on Instagram with the caption Half-arsed creativity, to boot.
‘But… you know all that she’s done to me…’
Gabe sighed. ‘She’s driven. That doesn’t make her a bad person.’
‘No, it makes her a regular Florence Nightingale,’ I blubbered, covering my face with both my hands. When had all this happened?
‘Come on, Faith. You must have felt something between us wasn’t right anymore?’
‘You mean like last night?’ I bawled through my fingers.
How was I supposed to have felt it, when he said he couldn’t get enough of me? It was all my fault for loving him too much. Just like my mum had loved my dad. And where had that got her, if not into clinical depression and alcoholism, leading to her death? But that wasn’t going to happen to me. I was not my mother, despite my own teenage struggles with alcoholism, which I’d overcome. I would never go down again.
I shot to my feet and dragged the shopping to the counter, fumbling for the muffins, which I shoved into my handbag.
‘Faith, please don’t hate me…’ he whispered, coming to stand behind me.
‘These,’ I bawled, ‘are coming with me.’ There. Let him buy his own blasted blueberry muffins. ‘If you want some, go and face Karen and the rest of Perrancombe and tell them what an absolute heartless arse you are, because I’m out of here!’
He hung his head, stuffing his hands into his pockets. ‘Are you going to Truro? To your sister’s?’
‘Where else do you want me to go?’
He followed me up the glass staircase into our master bedroom where I began to pull open drawers and cram some of my stuff into a wheelie suitcase.
I loved every inch of this house and every moment of our life together. If I had managed to be happy here, then my life would have served a meaningful purpose. But not anymore.
I tucked my mum’s diary among my clothes, nestled and protected from the ugliness of the moment, all too similar to her own break-up. I wish I could take this entire home with me, for her as well. But I could only take my memories and my broken heart, just like she had. A diary and a picture of the house, with the breakwater in the background. I’d had so many dreams for our future. And a proper family, something I’d never had. I couldn’t believe he didn’t love me anymore and that he was doing this to me. I couldn’t understand why he hadn’t told me before going straight to dumping me. Who did that?
I shoved the last of my things into the suitcase and rushed down the stairs, my luggage bumping against each step.
He followed me, rubbing the back of his neck, obviously upset, but not as much as I was. I took one last glance around before throwing myself out of the only happy home I’d ever known, the very house where I had been conceived. The very house where we could have started the family I pined for.