Chapter 16

SIXTEEN

FREDDIE

If Charlotte's father hadn't got ill, she might never have given Freddie a second chance.

For the first month after they'd broken up, he'd tried to get Charlotte to speak to him but she refused to answer any of his messages. He even tried writing a letter and posting it through her front door. She wanted nothing to do with him. Eventually, he had to stop before it became harassment.

At the beginning of November, Dominic's dad was complaining that the van was still parked behind the barn on his land. Even though getting rid of it seemed like the final nail in the coffin for his and Charlotte's relationship, Freddie agreed to get it cleaned up and sold.

It was amazing how many sweet wrappers and crisp packets could be stuffed into edges of the back of a van. Clearing them out, he couldn't help but think of all the gigs he'd taken Charlotte to. The times they'd driven home singing along to the latest band she was into. It didn't matter how many times Dominic – and his mother – had told him he'd get over it, he just couldn't forget her.

It was when he was pulling out the car mats at the front of the van to vacuum the carpet that he found her necklace. A silver chain with a heart that her parents had bought her for her eighteenth birthday. He remembered her taking it off one night because he'd bought her a necklace and she wanted to wear it immediately. She'd tucked it into her bag, but it must've fallen out and they'd searched everywhere for it. It felt like fate was giving him a second chance by offering it up now.

The next day, heart thumping out of his chest, he was on her doorstep, with the necklace in a brand-new box. He rang the bell, then knocked, but there was no reply. Still, he hesitated. Her dad's car was on the drive. Were they actually not in or just ignoring him?

He was just about to leave, when a neighbour from next door shuffled out onto his own front porch. ‘They're at the hospital, son.' He shook his head. ‘Poor old Steve. It doesn't sound good.'

For about ten minutes, Freddie sat in his car further down the street, just staring into space. Charlotte's father was ill? Maybe dying? He knew what it was like to lose a father and he also knew how close Charlotte was with hers. He made up his mind. He'd drop the necklace through the letterbox. But before he did, he sent her a text:

Hi Charlotte. I found your heart necklace in the van, so I dropped it through your door. I heard about your dad being ill. I'm so sorry. If there's anything I can do, I'm here x

That night, at the gym with Dominic, he made the mistake of telling him what'd happened. Dominic pushed the bar upwards with a grunt. ‘This could work in your favour.'

He watched him lower it back to its rest. ‘What do you mean?'

Another grunt as he pushed it upwards. ‘She gets upset, you swoop in and comfort her. Before she knows what's hit her you can…'

He was supposed to be spotting for his friend, but he could quite cheerfully have let the bar fall directly on him. ‘Don't you dare talk about her like that.'

Dominic sat up on the weights bench. ‘Alright, mate. Calm down. I was just joking.'

He was still in love with Charlotte, but that's not what she needed right now. He knew that she had other friends, but he'd lost a parent. If he could be a friend to her right now, that was all he'd want to be.

The next day, she sent him a message: Thank you for the necklace x

He replied immediately: No problem. Hope you're okay. If you ever want to go for a coffee and just talk, give me a shout x

Two days later, she replied: Coffee tomorrow?

She didn't want him to collect her from her house, so they met in a Starbucks. He got there thirty minutes early, his heart lurching every time the door opened. When she walked towards his table – thin, pale and so very sad – it took everything he had not to wrap his arms around her. ‘Hi. Shall I get you a latte?'

Twirling her paper cup in her hands, she told him all about her father's illness. ‘It's really bad. It's cancer. In his brain. We don't think he's got very long with us now.'

His heart actually hurt to listen to her. ‘Charlotte, I'm so sorry.'

She frowned into her coffee. ‘That night. When I found you and you told me that you kissed the girl? That was the day after they told me he was ill.'

She couldn't have taken the wind out of him more if she'd punched him in the stomach. ‘That's why you wanted to find me?'

She nodded, staring into his eyes as if to make sure that he understood just how awful that'd been for her. ‘Yes. And then your mother told me you had someone else and then you told me about the kiss and I just…lost it.'

He thought about her screaming at him in the street. No wonder she wouldn't listen to what he had to say. ‘Charlotte, I am so so sorry.'

She waved away his apology. ‘I was so angry. With you. With your mother. But with my parents, too. They'd known for months about my dad's diagnosis. Both of them. And they kept it from me.'

He was out of his depth here. ‘Maybe they wanted to protect you?'

From the look on her face, that hadn't been the right thing to say. ‘That's what they said! Protect me? I'm an adult. All that time, all that time they knew and they let me carry on as normal, going to university, playing gigs. And all that time my dad had been really, really sick.'

He wanted to pull her to him, comfort her, make the pain go away. ‘Come here.'

As he reached across to her chair, she looked at him with such pain in her eyes that it ripped his heart out. ‘He's going to die, Freddie. My lovely dad is going to die.'

She collapsed into his arms and he held her close, never wanting to let her go.

After she'd been to the bathroom and splashed some cold water on her face, they talked for another two hours. She told him how she'd insisted that Rachael and Lucy still go through with their planned travels to South America, which meant that she spent all day at home with her parents. ‘I just don't want to miss a minute with him.'

‘Of course.'

These days, though, her father slept an awful lot and it was getting difficult to keep her mind occupied. ‘Me and mum keep arguing about stupid stuff. Then realising it's just stupid stuff and then we start crying.'

‘Well, if you ever want another coffee or just to go for a walk. I'm here.'

She smiled at him then. A watery smile that shattered his heart. ‘Thank you.'

After that, they met three or four times a week in the afternoons when her dad was asleep, and they texted back and forth late into the night. It was friendship, but it was intimate; he didn't let himself get carried away. It was his kindness she needed, nothing else.

Then, the night after her father passed away, she sent him a message just after midnight. Are you awake?

He picked her up and took her back to the apartment. It'd belonged to his uncle who'd emigrated the year before and left him the keys. Though he and his friends stayed there a lot, he still lived at home. That night, he held her until she cried herself to sleep. Then, as promised, woke her at 5a.m. and dropped her home before her mother woke up.

It became a routine in the days before the funeral. She'd spend them with her mother and then, once her mother was asleep, she'd call Freddie. On the third night, she'd whispered to him in the darkness, ‘I don't know how I would've got through the last few weeks without you.'

When she reached for him, it'd felt like the most natural thing in the world, but he'd wanted to be sure. ‘You're going through a lot, Charlotte. I don't want you to do anything that you'd regret.'

She'd shaken her head, smiled and pulled him closer.

Lying awake afterwards, listening to her breathing, he thought about his own father's funeral. Business associates with their hands on his ten-year-old shoulder, telling him that he had to be the man of the family now. His mother, circulating, making sure that everyone was catered for, then finding her alone in the kitchen that night, weeping into a large glass of red wine.

Though he'd missed his dad, his mother had done everything in her power to make his life as good as it was. Every week at university, she'd sent packages of food and treats. Anything he wanted or needed, she'd get it for him. He knew it was her dream to see him working at his father's family business with his cousins. It wasn't as if he knew what else he wanted to do, so it wasn't really a huge sacrifice. She'd done so much. If he could do anything to make this easier for Charlotte, he would do it.

He woke her at 5a.m. the next morning, ready to drop her home as usual, not wanting to presume that their night together meant anything more to her than comfort, but hoping with every part of him that it might.

‘Hey, you. Time to drop you back home.'

She'd smiled at him. ‘So…last night?'

He held his breath for a moment, weighed up how to respond. Honesty seemed the only option. ‘I love you, Charlotte. I always have. But I don't expect you to forgive me or to feel the same. And you have much more important things going on right now. I'm here for you whatever. For as long as you need.'

She pulled her knees up to her chest. ‘I have forgiven you. I'm not saying that what you did was okay, but I might've listened to your explanation if circumstances were different.'

He waited. There was no way he was going to push her to say any more than she wanted to.

She rested her chin on her knees and looked up at him through her eyelashes. ‘And I love you, too. This is the most terrible timing in the world, but I do want to give us another chance.'

Tears pricked the back of his eyes. ‘Are you sure?'

He could see tears in her eyes, too. ‘Yes. But I'm also sure that if you ever ?—'

He was beside her on the bed in less than a second. ‘I will never ever do anything that stupid again. I promise you, Charlotte. I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you.'

She smiled then. The first he'd seen in days. ‘Well, that sounds like a good plan.'

He kissed her lips – salty with the mix of their tears – and then held her close. Muffled by his shoulder, her words were warm against his body. ‘Now we just need to deal with our mothers.'