Chapter 5

Bryce caught up with me in the car park. I was struggling to flag down a ride, sweating through the pain.

He watched me not accept his help for about thirty seconds, then launched into an explanation.

"Don't blame Diana for this. You were gone for years without a word. She actually does miss you — she just doesn't know how to say it."

I pulled out my phone, trying to get a signal, and said: "My room's been converted into Lily's storage space. Everything in the house was changed to suit her taste. Tell me again how much she misses me."

Bryce had the decency to look uncomfortable.

"Lily's family situation is difficult. She has no support system in Bristol. Your mum has become something like a parent to her. It wasn't about replacing you."

"And when you slept with her? Was that also not about replacing me?"

A pause.

"It wasn't — I'd had a few drinks. Lily had confessed her feelings for the twenty-ninth time. I lost my head for a moment —"

I looked out at the road.

He kept going. Quieter now.

"Can't we just move forward? What happened is in the past. You're going to need a lot of support going forward, and there's no reason to make that harder by holding onto everything Lily and your mum did wrong."

I turned to look at him.

"Is that a threat?"

"No — I'm just saying. Lily's very interested in your old job. She'd need someone to put in a word with the right people. Your mum thinks so too. You'd have an advantage, given what happened to you there — they'd feel responsible, and you could leverage that for Lily."

They wanted to use my injury and my workplace guilt as a door for Lily. They wanted to strip everything useful out of me and hand it to her.

I told the driver to stop. I opened the door and made Bryce get out at the side of the road.

Then I went directly to my former newsroom and handed in my resignation.