Life on Point

It would be another three years before we really met each other again. We met after the split briefly in order to collect the various items of clothing we had left at each other’s places. She had hurt me a lot but I knew that I had hurt her more; I was the one who had done the unforgiveable. I’d felt Libby had put dancing before me and the fact that she loved me second was nearly unbearable. But I was the one who had cheated. I was the one who had slept with someone else, threw away our entire relationship and effectively told her she wasn’t enough for me. And for that she couldn’t forgive me, and really I couldn’t forgive myself. I’d heard about her of course – she became famous just a few months after our split and a household name barely a year after that. On Christmas day it was a ballet that starred her in the lead role that was shown in houses up and down the country – the best spot of the year for the best dancer everyone said England had ever seen. Her private life was kept mostly out of the limelight though apart for the odd rumours about what man she was dating. Eventually it was announced she was dating a remarkably handsome Russian ballet star called Peta Manson and they appeared together smiling widely on various red carpets: the epitome of a perfect couple. I can’t say I was that surprised. I had told myself to let that part of my past die, that I would never even see her again.

But then fate gave us a second chance.

I was one year out of University, having immensely enjoyed my time at Oxford and emerging with a First. As soon as I left University I had been offered a job as a junior researcher for the government – a step on the ladder that would, hopefully, lead to my dream. I had been opening various letters one day when I had slipped and sliced my hand open with the letter opener. Crimson blood fell onto the beautiful, rich cream carpet and I wondered if I would get fired for this. I glanced down at my hand to see how bad the damage was and before I knew what was happening I could feel my head hitting brutally against something solid.

The next thing I knew I was waking up from a bed in A&E. The other junior researcher Tom, was sitting in a chair next to me, flicking through a four hundred page health report we needed to summarise for the Cabinet Ministers. “What happened?” I asked him. He laughed slightly, “ah Soph you fainted and then knocked yourself out on the desk when you fell down. But when we came in it looked so bad – you passed out on the floor surrounded by blood and they didn’t want to take any chances. Your hand will be fine, the cut was pretty deep but they put some stitches in it, and as long as you don’t have concussion you’ll be free to go.” I blushed, embarrassed my bosses had seen me like that. “Don’t worry Soph, they weren’t cross just concerned” he told me and I sighed in relief.

Less than an hour later when the doctors had checked me over and confirmed I didn’t have concussion I was released. I was signing myself out when a soft voice came from behind me, “Soph?” I span round to face the owner of the voice. At first I couldn’t place the tiny frame, the sunken eyes or the chapped lips But then she smiled, and her smile transformed her face into the beautiful one I had once spent hours at a time kissing. “Oh my gosh, Libby” I exclaimed and we moved together, still amazingly in synch after all this time, into a desperate hug.

As I gripped her impossibly small, vulnerable frame and felt her bones jut painfully into my body only one thought was left lingering in my mind: what on earth had happened to the once so perfect Libby Gaiman?