Page 19 of I Know How This Ends

I stare at my burner phone while it rings.

The truth.

Where do I even start?

“Hi.” This seems like a good place. “This is Margot.”

“Hello, Margot.” Henry sounds faintly surprised but not angry. “I didn’t expect to hear from you again.”

I sit on my bed. “I didn’t expect you to either, if I’m being honest.”

Henry laughs and I hear a small voice saying, “Who is it?”

“Just a friend,” he says, sounding a little further away. Something in my stomach tightens: Winter sounds exactly as she did

in my vision. “Winnie, can you do me a favor and pick up all those toys before I end up with a broken ankle? Then I’ll order

us a pizza to say thank you. Pepperoni with extra-spicy meat. All the meat.”

“ Dad ,” I hear in the background. “I’m a vegetarian .”

“Except for when it’s ham sandwiches,” he chuckles. “Super-veggie, extra-veggie pizza it is. Just give me five minutes, OK?”

I hear a little squeak of confirmation, and Henry is back.

“Hello again,” he says into the phone, and I hear a door close. “I am truly sorry, Margot. I’m not sure I’d have wanted to

speak to me again after I walked off like that. So thanks for calling.”

“Please don’t apologize,” I say quickly. “This isn’t about that.”

I’m not allowing myself to think about the visions just yet, or what they could mean: I can only take one mind-melting step

at a time.

“So.” It sounds like Henry has sat down and I briefly imagine both of us on a split screen, perched on the edge of our beds.

There’s something sweet about it, like a film from the 1950s. “Margot. What can I do for you?”

I smile slightly: he sounds exactly like a doctor, as if I’m about to tell him what’s wrong with me in laborious detail, hoping

he can make sense of it.

Which, in a very real way, I am.

“I want to tell you why I’ve been such a dick, Henry. Not as an excuse, because there isn’t one, but more as an explanation.

I haven’t told anyone this. Mainly because I didn’t need to. Everyone close to me already knows.”

You think it’s bad wearing a pink plastic ruff in front of the world? Try not having to explain your humiliation to your nearest

and dearest because they already have front-row seats. It suddenly feels as if inside me there’s something dark and sharp—a

splinter the size of a ship’s mast—and I’m trying to pull it out as gently and as slowly as I can without doing too much damage.

There’s silence; I can feel him listening.

“Eight months ago, I was getting married. To a man named Aaron.”

Henry grunts to affirm that he’s still listening.

“We were together for ten years, and lived together for eight. We met at the Met Office, he’s in Human Resources, and it was...

magical. At the beginning, anyway. It was like Aaron had chosen me, and that was it. Gifts, declarations, constant texts and phone calls. He wanted to know everything I thought, everything

I had ever wanted, and I found myself giving it all to him. Everything I had. It was... intense. Fireworks, movie romance,

the works. I was totally swept away, which was somewhat out of character for me. I’m not really a sweeper . I’m more of a... strategic tiptoer.”

I take a deep breath and wonder what Henry’s thinking: moron , probably.

“But I loved him. Enormously. The kind of breathless love where you can’t stop thinking about them, where you just want to

be with them all the time. Where it physically hurts when you’re not. But when we moved in together, things kind of...

changed.”

I think about Aaron’s face the day we moved into our flat together.

His clear irritation at my excitement.

“He was suddenly there, but not entirely there. He turned up in fragments, as if he’d somehow become two people. Except my feelings for him were still exactly the

same, and I just wanted that first version of Aaron back. But I also felt like a child for wanting the ‘honeymoon’ period

to last. So I did everything I could to get glimpses of it and I didn’t notice I had changed in the process. Shaped myself

around him. It was... more of a slow-dripping tap, when before you know it, you turn around and the sink is overflowing.”

I clear my throat. Ten years . Ten years of water, soaking everything.

And everyone noticed but me.

“Anyway. I kept waiting for him to propose. Pathetic, isn’t it? Six years, seven years, eight years, and I should have walked

away. But he always said that a ‘ring doesn’t mean anything’ and we already had a marriage ‘in real terms.’ And I tried to

believe him. I had to. Because as the years ticked on, as I was climbing the ladder in the Met Office, I’d already invested

so much time .”

“The bus theory,” Henry says quietly. “You’ve spent so much time waiting, you have to keep waiting or you might as well have

walked.”

“Exactly.” I smile. “Plus, I loved this bus. This bus was the one I wanted.”

Aaron was—is—charming, funny, bright, handsome: the world and everything in it rotates around him effortlessly. I felt like the moon quietly orbiting his sun: absorbing his light and trying to reflect it back whenever I could.

But when the sun disappeared, my light disappeared too.

It could get so incredibly cold.

“Anyway. Eventually, nine years in, he turned to me in the middle of watching The Godfather yet again and said, ‘What about it? Shall we lock this shit down?’ Right in the middle of me eating a piece of sweet and

sour chicken. And that was it. We were engaged.”

“Romantic,” Henry says quietly.

“I know.” I laugh bitterly. “He explained afterward that he kept it low-key because he knows I’m a logical, cool-headed, data type, and I wouldn’t want ‘all that jazz.’ So I told myself he was right,

and he knew me so well, really saw me, better than I did, and I didn’t want it. I didn’t need it. But I think, actually, I did want all that jazz. I wanted the whole bloody band.”

“No shit.”

“So I threw myself into arranging the wedding. I had a pretty substantial pot of savings I’d managed to squirrel away from

my job and I plowed through it all. Probably because it felt like if the romance was going to come from somewhere, it had

to come from me.”

I take a deep breath.

“But Jules, Eve and Lily were amazing about it. My best friends, from school. They came to the dress fitting, they helped

me choose flowers, they went with me to see venues. They were so excited for me. At least, I thought they were.”

I have looked for the signs so many times over the last eight months. It’s my job—it’s what I’m supposed to be good at. Noticing

the details and working out where they will lead; seeing what other people miss, and forecasting the future as accurately

as I can.

And I still can’t find any, even now.

Maybe a few moments where Lily was quiet, a few tiny laughs that came a little bit too late, or a mood I couldn’t fully read.

Nights she couldn’t meet us because she was “working on her Instagram page.” But how was I supposed to put that data together?

I would have needed to be looking at an entirely different map.

“During the rehearsal dinner, the night before, we all got carried away. There was a bit of dancing, some silliness, everyone

scattered. I was slightly tipsy, and I decided to go outside for a quick smoke.”

“Fucking hell,” Henry says in a low voice. “You’re not—”

“A smoker? God, no. Not anymore. I quit ages ago—it was just a final cigarette. You know, nerves and whatnot.”

“Margot. That is not what I was going to say. Are you telling me that—”

“Oh.” I nod, suddenly feeling flat. “Yeah. Aaron and Lily. I caught them together outside. Heard the whole thing. Apparently

they’d been sleeping together for a year. Since just after the engagement.”

Apparently, the only shit being locked down was me .

“I don’t know what to say,” Henry says after a pause. “Bloody hell . ”

I’m not going to tell him about standing in the dark of that blisteringly expensive garden I had paid for, blowing smoke into

the air, worrying that Aaron would smell it on my breath—wondering where I could steal a mint from—when I heard the voices.

“ We need to tell her ,” followed by: “ We can’t tell her. We’re going to stop, right? ”

A pause, and then: “ We’re not going to stop, Lil, and you know it. ”

And the bit that fully broke my heart was that the person who didn’t want to tell me the truth was Lily.

“What did you do?”

“I confronted them calmly. I got the information I needed. Then I left.”

I was the one who had to formally text everyone: So sorry, but I’m afraid the wedding in thirteen hours has been canceled. Please let me know if there is any way I can compensate

you for funds already spent. Margot xx

Which nobody took me up on, because by then everyone knew: the groom had run off with the bridesmaid, that old chestnut.

And a part of me still wonders if some already suspected.

Jules and Eve swear they didn’t, and I believe them—I have to—but Mum?

Dad? My grandfather? He never liked Aaron, and I should have paid more attention to his opinion.

“Did they reach out to at least apologize?”

“They both tried, but I wasn’t interested in hearing it. It was way too late for excuses. So I quit my job and moved back

to Bristol, which is where I grew up. And now I’m an angry, bitter, hard woman who destroys men for fun. And punches things.

And burns my belongings. That’s it. That’s my story. All ten years of it.”

“Wow. What happened to Lily?”

I think about all the time I have invested stalking her online.

Watching as Lily plays out her perfect romance, soft-launching, no name, no face, without telling anyone how she got it. And

I knew it was bad for me—that I was simply hurting myself more—but how could I not look? How could I not collect data, knowing

I should have been doing it the whole time? Ten years, and my best friend walked in and took the exact life I’d been waiting

for. Got given everything I had begged for over and over again, without even having to ask.

“They’re still together,” I say bluntly. “They just got engaged.”

“Already?”

“It’s been a year and eight months.” My voice is calm. I have screamed enough, burned enough. “That’s how long they’ve been

together, if you don’t include me. He took her to a beach and made a heart out of petals and candles. Apparently, Lily is

not a data type of girl. Apparently, Lily deserves all that jazz .”

Because that’s what has really been eating me alive, isn’t it? That I didn’t get any of it because I wasn’t worth enough,

wasn’t valuable enough, didn’t have enough of my own glow.

But the person standing right next to me did.

“When you say just ?” Henry’s voice is slightly husky. “When exactly did they get engaged?”

“At the start of our restaurant date.”

“Ah. I see.”

Henry is silent, so I curl into a ball inside my blanket, ready to slip into the dark. Because it’s less about the love I

lost and more about the time. It’s always, always the time that I missed. Ten years I could have spent with my friends. Ten

years of taking up new hobbies. Ten years of learning who I actually am, and what I want, and how to love myself properly,

instead of using all that love on someone else.

I will never get those years back.

A hundred and twenty months ripped off my calendar forever.

“I didn’t see the Red Flags,” I say quietly. “I didn’t see them at the beginning, and I didn’t see them at the end. And worse,

I didn’t see them all the way through either. A decade, and I just... wasn’t looking.”

I wasn’t paying attention, so my entire life was set on fire.

“That explains pretty much everything,” Henry says as I close my eyes, too tired to say anything else. “And I’m so grateful

you told me, Margot. You didn’t do anything wrong, you know that? Right?”

I nod, eyes still closed. “Mmm.”

But I don’t know that, because I stayed when I should have gone.

Henry’s voice is soothing, deep, and I suddenly remember the warmth I felt when I watched him from across the purple room.

The way he kissed my lips and I left paint spattered on him like a tattoo.

“I completely understand if you’re not ready to date yet,” Henry continues quietly. “Hell, I don’t think I’d ever date again.

But I like you, Margot. I think you’re something pretty special. And I think there might be something here. I’m not sure what

it is, but I’d really like to get to know you better. Whenever you’re ready. We could start again, from the beginning. If

that’s something you might want.”

The room is starting to drift: I feel light, empty.

And the visions of me and Henry together suddenly don’t seem quite as scary anymore.

If anything, they’re comforting. Are they actually us, or an alternative version?

Are they something that could be, or will be?

What, if anything, are they trying to tell me?

That somewhere out there, in the future, my heart might be ready to restart?

At least they made me feel connected enough to tell him the truth.

And for that, I am simply grateful.

“OK,” I murmur as sleep finally takes over. “That sounds nice.”

Because all I know is that in every vision, I have wanted to be there.

Perhaps that’s all I needed to see.