Dragging the suitcase down from the top of the wardrobe I threw it onto the bed, standing back as it hit the mattress with a resounding thud. For a couple of seconds I just looked at it as if, all of a sudden, I’d temporarily forgotten just what the hell it was I was doing. Was that deliberate? Was that actually my own subconscious giving me a little bit more time to think about everything? To make sure this really was the right thing to do?
Leaning back against the wall, I closed my eyes, breathing in deeply. My heart was still beatingfast, pounding away inside my chest as I tried to shut out the noise drifting up from the party going on downstairs: a party I should be getting back to. But I couldn’t. Not now.
‘… this is just something she needs to get out of her system…’
His words were playing over and over in my head like some never-ending record I couldn’t switch off.
‘She loves me, and she knows I need her to do certain things if this is going to work a second time…’
Yeah. I loved him. But did I love him enough? Enough to strip myself of everything I’d fought so hard to become?
I slowly opened my eyes, taking another deep breath, my gaze falling back on the empty suitcase.
‘Lana?’
I swung around so quickly I almost lost my balance, my breath catching in my throat as I saw him standing there.
‘What’s going on?’
‘I’m leaving, Adam.’ I’d thought my resolve would weaken the second I saw him, but I was obviously stronger than I thought I was. ‘And this time, I’m not coming back.’
My brother, Finn, slid something a rather startling shade of orange towards me.
‘What’s that?’ I asked, eyeing the drink warily.
‘A cocktail.’
I threw him a withering look. ‘Yeah. I can see that. It’s what’s in it that’s bothering me. What is in it?’
He shrugged. ‘No idea. Just thought you might like one, you know, you being a woman and all that.’
My withering look turned into a wide-eyed stare. ‘Seriously?’
He shrugged, a look of mock innocence on his face.
‘When have you ever known me to drink cocktails, Finn? When?’
‘Just get it down you. Might help you loosen up a bit.’
I loved Finn. I loved him a lot, despite his knack of being able to wind me up at a moment’s notice. But he’d always been able to do that, right from when we’d been kids and he’d realised how easily I could be sucked in.
At thirty-five years old Finn was four years younger than me. And with his short, dark, messed-up hair, a multitude of tattoos that adorned his entire body, and a black and red Ducati Multistrada that I was extremely jealous of, he was handsome in that rough, edgy, rock-star kind of way – a bit of a cross between a younger version of Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and The Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl – which meant he was never short of female attention. And the fact he was also one of the most reputable tattoo artists in the north-east of England didn’t do him any harm, either. His studio – Black Ink – sawpeople travel to Newcastle-upon-Tyne from as far afield as Cumbria, north Yorkshire, and even Scotland,to be ‘inked’ by my brother. I was incredibly proud of him. Even more so after everything he’d done for me over the past twelve months. He’d been my rock. The best friend I could have asked for. Because the past twelve months had seen my life change in a way I could never have anticipated. A year ago I’d walked out on my husband, and left behind the only life I’d known for almost two decades; a decision that hadn’t been an easy one to make, because Adam was a good man. We’d been together almost twenty years, and been married for eighteen of those. I’d thought I’d found my soul mate. But sometimes, even when – or should that be especially when – you’ve been together for as long as we had, people can grow apart. They lose each other. And when neither of them really make that effort to find their way back, well, it stops working. There’s no point any more if the fight has gone.
We’d started wanting different things – or, in my case, things I’d always dreamed of, but thought I could never have. Those things I’d put to the back of my mind whilst I’d concentrated on doing what everybody else wanted me to do, instead of doing things that actually made me happy. I guess I’d just wanted an easy life. But now I considered ‘easy’ to be dull. Now I wanted a bit more excitement. Was that selfish of me? Maybe. But when you know you’re not the person you really want to be, there comes a point when you either accept that this is the way things are always going to be or you realise the stone-cold reality that you only get one life, and you’ve got to go out and live it.That’s exactly what I’d done. I’d moved in with Finn, got to know my brother again, and gradually started putting my life back together. By changing it completely.
‘Can I just have a beer?’ I asked, still warily eyeing the cocktail. ‘I mean, do I look like the kind of woman who’d drink something that colour?’
‘Lana,