Page 86 of All Yours

She inhaled slowly and let it go. Being a bitch wasn’t going to help anything.

‘Sorry. Me too. It’s a bit of a surprise, you just turning up like this.’

He grinned then and in his smile she remembered his delight on A-level results day, as he’d opened his envelope and punched the air. The elation on his face under his mortar board as he graduated from university, and the happy relief that flooded his face when he proposed a few years later. But he wasn’t her Finn any more. He was a different man, beard and all.

‘When Ross told me he thought he’d seen you, I knew I had to come.’ Gesturing at a bench on the bank, he asked, ‘Shall we sit?’

She parked the buggy and applied the brake, tucking the blanket around Willow’s shoulders before taking a seat. The bench creaked as Finn sat on the other end. The amount of space between them would have been unheard of in the old days. It felt strange to be so close to him and yet lifetimes apart.

‘I would have come to talk to you earlier, but I had no idea where you were,’ he began. ‘And you deleted your social media accounts so I couldn’t even get a message to you. I tried messaging Wren once or twice but she blocked me straight after the wedding.’

‘The non-wedding you mean?’ Again, she couldn’t help herself.

‘Is that what you call it? I call it the day the earth stood still.’ He half laughed until it tailed off. ‘And then you just disappeared. It was such a strange feeling. We’d been together every day for years and then all of a sudden I did not have a clue which continent you were on even.’

Robyn shook her head as if to clear it. Was he looking for sympathy, about how hard it had been for him? She had determined to be open-minded, but she wasn’t sure she could run to sympathy. But she wanted to get to the bottom of things, and that meant being open and honest. Both of them.

Taking a deep breath, she began. ‘I just had to get away from everything and everyone. It was such an overwhelming time. I couldn’t cope with everyone else’s feelings on top of my own. It was easier to run away.’

Saying it out loud, she realised all of a sudden that was exactly what she had done. Run away in a desperate bid to forget the hurt and the disappointment, and in a mission to move on, find a new life for herself.

‘I wish you’d stayed,’ he said. ‘Even if for a few days more. We could have talked.’

‘I was heartbroken, and you weren’t answering your phone. What was there to stay for?’

He turned towards her on the seat. ‘Things might have been different.’

She frowned, curious. ‘How, Finn? You left me at the church. You didn’t show up to our wedding. Where would we go from there?’

His shoulders sagged.

‘I did a terrible thing.’ His voice was quiet, but she could hear the tremor of sincerity. ‘I’m sorry, Robbie.’ His old nickname for her. It took her back to late night curries out of silver foil trays, walking home from the cinema holding hands and Post-it notes on her fridge signed with a kiss.

Looking at Finn now, she saw the first faint lines at the corners of his eyes, and a few grey hairs in that well-groomed beard. He was wearing a pair of shoes she’d never have chosen for him, and a tattoo on his wrist peeked out of the sleeve of his coat. She really didn’t know him any more.

‘Why did you do it?’ Robyn burst out, the question she realised she should have asked him six years ago. He ran a hand through his hair and exhaled slowly.

‘I honestly don’t know.’

Robyn jerked her head towards him at that, suddenly furious.

‘You don’t know?’ she said incredulously. ‘You don’t know why you suddenly decided at the last minute that I wasn’t the right person for you to spend your life with?’

He blinked and she swallowed. She didn’t want a row, she just wanted the truth. She wanted to understand what she’d done wrong, or what it was about her that made people not want to stick around. She took another deep breath, steadying herself.

‘I’m interested. Really. I think it would help for me to know.’ Tucking the collar of her coat up under her ears, Robyn noticed the increasing chill of the afternoon, and hoped Willow stayed asleep in her cosy cocoon. The silence grew heavy between them, broken finally by Finn’s heavy sigh.

‘I panicked, Robs.’ He wiped his hands across his face and up through his hair. ‘My mind was going at a million miles an hour and it was making me crazy. I couldn’t think straight.’ He cracked his knuckles, a habit she’d forgotten but that still made her cringe.

‘So, you left.’ Her voice was flat, no blame, no malice. Just fact. ‘Just like that.’

‘All I was focused on was getting somewhere quiet. I just had to think.’ He threw his palms to the sky and then let them fall to his thighs.

‘I kept wondering if we were too young, whether we should wait a year or two or if it would change us to be married. Whether you’d want to have children right away, if my friends would look at me differently or I should get a will, maybe start paying into a pension. Whether we’d be paying a mortgage for the next fifty years. It felt like a lot to be taking on. I literally just needed time to think.’

Robyn let the words sink in. She’d waited so long to hear them.

‘It didn’t feel like a lot to me,’ she said quietly. ‘I was ready for change. I’d grown out of being an ex-student, living in a crappy flat. I wanted more – a house, a baby, a future. I wanted to make plans for a bigger life, together.’