And here we were again.
“I’ll tell you exactly what I told you before: I wrote to Shirley, and I wrote to Donna. But no, I didn’t try and find you directly, because I simply wanted to know that you were okay. When both letters were returned unopened, I suppose I took it as an omen that it wasn’t to be. I didn’t feel I had the right to interrupt your life and risk doing further damage. I felt a great deal of guilt at the devastation I left behind me: I didn’t want to remind you of all that, or make you feel any obligation towards me. It never occurred to me that you… that you’d be waiting for me.”
He leaned forward, his eyes intense and angry. “But I said I’d wait for you. I promised I’d wait. Hell, Caro, it was the last thing I got to say to you. And you… you said…” he bit his lip, hesitating.
I’d promised to love him forever.
An ugly wave of guilt rushed through me, and finally I could see how it had looked from his point of view: I hadn’t tried hard enough – I’d let him down.
“Oh, Sebastian… I’m so very sorry.”
What could I say that would wash away so many years of hurt?
His voice dropped to a whisper. “Did you mean it, Caro? Did you mean it when you said you loved me?”
“Yes, tesoro, I did. I loved you very much. But you’re not the person I knew ten years ago. The Sebastian I knew was sweet and gentle and loving, but you… you can be like that, but your anger scares me. The hatred I saw in your face and heard in your words – that was hard for me. I can see that you think I let you down badly ten years ago, or seven years ago… and I can’t tell you how sorry I am for that, but I can’t fix it either – I can’t change the past.”
He turned away, staring out at the sea.
“I’m confused about what you want from me, Sebastian. One minute you say we’ve been given a second chance and that we should try again, and the next minute you’re blaming me for every bad decision you’ve taken in the last ten years. If you hate me that much, if you resent me that much, why am I here?”
“I don’t hate you, Caro,” he murmured.
“Sebastian, you called me a liar; you said you could never trust me.”
He winced, but I was determined to see this out.
“You asked me to come with you on this trip, and then the first time something goes wrong, you fling the past in my face. If you really believe I did what I did because I didn’t care, then I don’t see how we’re going to get past that.”
I hoped he’d offer something, some insight as to what he was thinking, but his lips remained pressed together.
“Look. I wouldn’t be who I am now if I hadn’t met you – that’s the truth. I’d probably still be locked in a loveless marriage. But that’s only half the story.”
Finally he looked at me.
“It was really tough for me when I got to New York. I had almost no money, no contacts, nowhere to live, no job. Do you want to know how I survived? I cleaned people’s houses; I scrubbed their toilets. For three years. Until eventually I earned enough from my writing.”
“I didn’t know,” he said, softly.
“No, because you didn’t give me the chance to answer you last night.”
I wondered if he could see how cruelly he’d behaved, but his next question took a different turn.
“You said you dated a couple of times.”
“Excuse me?”
“The first night we talked. I asked you if you were seeing anyone, and you said you’d dated a couple of times.”
“Yes, so?”
“When?”
“What, you want dates?”
“Yes.”
I sighed. “I met Bob on my 35th birthday when I was having drinks with friends. We dated for three months and then he was transferred to an office in Cincinnati. Eric was a couple of years later: we dated for about six weeks before he dumped me for a younger woman.”
“That’s it?”