Page 49 of The Love of Our Lives

Three weeks to live

For the next week, I try to just focus on living my life here as much as I can, while I can – so Adam and I cook together or go out for food most nights, and I seem to have this insatiable hunger for it all.

We go up Munros, and camp under the stars again in the Pentlands, and I really start to understand what William meant by simply picking one place, one person, and just loving that life.

And I think Adam is starting to understand it too, and that constant restlessness in him is calming, for now anyway.

Emily’s old memories and feelings have stopped appearing for a while and I can’t help but wonder why. Will they come back?

And what will they show me if they do?

But for now, I’m appreciating the break.

It’s only when I find myself in a quiet moment during the day, or last thing at night in bed with Adam lying peacefully beside me, I feel this other ripping sensation inside of myself – and I can’t quite catch my breath.

That thought I had on the plane, about the love Adam and Emily shared first, starts to play on my mind again.

From the glimmers that came back to me, I know they met across the hall, like we did, and got together, like we did.

But what does that mean for me? For Adam and me? Does this connection we share, this love, mean anything at all? Or is it all some carbon copy of what they had? Something that had already happened before I even got here and I’m now just experiencing secondhand.

I’m about to head into our building after meeting Adam for lunch when I see an elderly couple coming along the street and I beam.

‘Hello,’ I say as William and Ruth come to a stop in front of me. They’re a handsome pair, Ruth in her pink coat and William in a red sweater, his hair neatly combed back – and I realise they might have just been on a date.

‘Well, well, well,’ William gives me a shrewd smile, ‘you’ve returned. And how was it? Those mountains looked fantastic.’

I’d emailed William on his new laptop along the way, of course. After all, he was the one that got me out there – the one who gave me the courage to keep going until the end. And I’d sent him a photo too, of Adam and me, together on the cabin porch, the fairy lights all around us.

William had sent back a smiley face.

‘It was great,’ I say, but even I can hear the strain in my voice, and William frowns.

‘Well,’ Ruth says, looking between us, ‘lovely to see you, Emily. I’d better get going, though. I’m looking after my granddaughter after school today, you see, and I need to go get those biscuits she likes, the chocolate ones with the cream she licks off in the middle. What are they called again?’

‘Oreos,’ I say softly.

‘That’s it.’ She grins, and grips my arm. ‘Thank you. Well, I’d best be off. I’ll see you at class on Friday?’

William nods. ‘Of course, wouldn’t miss it.’

And as she walks away down the road, William turns to me.

‘More tea?’ he says, his eyes sparkling. ‘Or perhaps a walk this time.’

Wandering towards the Meadows a few minutes later, I’m struck by how limber William is these days. I can barely keep up with him. He’s dancing so much, I guess, but perhaps there’s something else bringing him to life – something more to do with Ruth.

‘So, let’s not beat around the literal bush,’ he says, as we wander along the path underneath the leafy trees. ‘What’s happening now? After everything you two stupid kids have gone through.’

I smile at his words; try to vocalise what it is I’m thinking.

Because it feels almost petty in a way at this point, wondering who Adam actually loves, which love is the truest. But still, I can’t think how else to make my choice.

Emily was the one who had the amazing life and made the big move up here; she was the one Adam first fell in love with.

So, why the hell should I keep the heart, and potentially her great love? If I ever managed to find him in my old life, that is. He wouldn’t know me, of course, but perhaps he would feel a trace of something. Would that connection between us still be there, though? To me, Maggie?

‘I just wonder sometimes . . .’ I start, ‘if it’s really me Adam loves, or if his heart belongs elsewhere.’

William frowns briefly, then softens again in some sort of understanding. ‘You’re meaning Claire, aren’t you? The one he was with before.’

It’s funny because there was a point a while back before Christmas when I would have said yes. Now I realise, it was never Claire who was the other person in all of this.

It was Emily.

I nod, just as William gets his wallet from his pocket and opens it.

He pulls something out, holds out a faded and creased snapshot of Connie for me to take.

It’s not one I’ve seen before but it’s still that same woman with her wavy fair hair and excited eyes.

She’s in a blue dress, at a party, I think. Looks like the nineties.

‘She was beautiful,’ I say, looking back at him.

‘She was indeed,’ he says. ‘Everyone said Connie was out of my league but I knew something they didn’t know.’

‘What was that?’

‘Love. Sometimes it just happens whether you like it or not, and we adored each other.’

I smile, but I’m not sure where he’s going with it.

‘The thing is,’ he says softly, ‘that was then, and this is now. And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t besotted with Ruth too.

I’ve never met anyone quite like her before, and I know it’s a bit silly – the two of us at our age, but I love how happy she always is and how she wears pink all the time.

I love how she always wants to go see something or do something, and the truth is, they’re two very different relationships.

And not just in looks, but who they are – their soul.

So even if Adam loved someone else before, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you just as much. ’

I sit with the words for a moment as I digest them because he’s right. All those little things I found out about Emily in London – the love of minestrone soup and horror movies and fancy-dress parties: she was different from me in so many ways.

So even though we might look the same, and even though we might have started off the same, I’m starting to feel that maybe this life wasn’t all one big fake.

And the love Adam has for me is actually real.

‘And you know what else?’ William says, stopping by a lovely spot in the Meadows now, which looks up on to Arthur’s Seat.

I turn to him, curious.

‘It may be a cliché but when you find that sort of love . . . you don’t let it go.’