“I don’t think you’ll take me back.”
He was silent for a long time after I said that. I looked down at my coffee, turning the cup in my hands, thinking about what I was doing. Could I trust this man? I didn’t know but I knew that if he chose to pick me up and carry me out of the cafe, drag me kicking and screaming back to my father, there wasn’t a huge amount I was going to be able to do about it.
“Why don’t you want to go home?” he asked and for the first time his voice sounded softer, the rough edge slightly smoothed. He sounded almost capable of emotion.
“Have a look at these,” I said, reaching into my pocket and pulling out the letters. I slid them over the table and waited while he read through them. It felt strange sharing them with someone but I hoped they’d make him see I was a real person, not just a parcel to be delivered. “What do you think?”
“I think they’re letters,” he replied, sliding them back across to me.
“I love the boy who wrote those letters. Well, the man now.”
“So?”
“So that’s what love is, in those letters. Love isn’t marrying the man your father chose for you. Love is marrying the man you want to.”
“Is that,” - he tapped the letters with his finger - “the man you want to marry?”
“I don’t know, I just think I need to find out.”
“You’re going to see him, aren’t you?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess, maybe.”
“I’ve got to take you back.”
“Can’t you just pretend you didn’t find me?”
He shook his head. “Afraid not.”
“Then we’re done here.”
I got up and walked out of the cafe without looking back. I was an idiot for listening to my gut. I should have stayed on the bus, I should have known better than to try and reason with hired muscle. He didn’t know what love was. He probably didn’t know what an emotion was. He was a cold, hard, brute.
He’d looked at the letters that contained every nuance of young love and lost love when we’d parted and he hadn’t reacted, he hadn’t cared. He just cared about getting paid for returning me to my father and I was a bloody fool for getting off the bus. Well, it wasn’t a mistake I was going to make twice.
I crossed the road to the bus station and pushed open the door to the traffic office. Looking up at the screen above the glass fronted booth, I scanned the destinations. Gladwell, that was just a few miles from where Ben lived. Perfect. The letters hadn’t mentioned the address he was moving away to, I only found that out much later. There was no way they’d find me there.
I looked around to make sure he hadn’t followed me out of the cafe before approaching the bored looking figure on the other side of the glass. “Single to Gladwell please,” I said, reaching into my handbag.
With a frown, I glanced downwards, unable to find my purse. Swearing quietly, I began rummaging for it, beginning to panic.
“Looking for this?” a voice said behind me and I turned to find the brute standing there, holding my purse out towards me.
ELEVEN
JAKE
She looked furious with me when I gave her the purse. “You stole it,” she said, snatching it from me.
“If you say so.”
Her expression changed from anger to confusion. “Didn’t you?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Then why have you got it?”
“I haven’t. You have.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Well, not everyone is as alert as I am.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means if you paid more attention to your surroundings, people wouldn’t be able to dip their hand in your bag and steal your things while you stare out of a bus window without a care in the world.”
“I do pay attention. Stop pretending you know me. You don’t know me.”
“I know that you’re not capable of coping in the real world. Take your father’s cards away and you wouldn’t have a clue what to do.”
“I’d get a job.”
“Really?”
“I could get a job.” She turned to face the man behind the ticket booth window. “You’d give me a job, wouldn’t you?”
“Course I would,” he replied.
I grabbed hold of her, dragging her outside. There was a wooden bench next to the travel office and I shoved her down onto it. “Stay there!” I snapped, raising my voice just enough to see fear flash across her eyes. “You’ve given me enough trouble. I’m taking you home.”
“Why are we even talking about it? You don’t want to take me, you’d have done it already and besides I can see it in your eyes.”