"It is better this way. If you tell him that she has gone to Africa, he would ask you for specific details. At this moment, she is too fragile. Even hearing his voice on the phone can make her say something that would jeopardize his new marriage. Before leaving for the airport, she made me promise that Tang would not get to know about her current location or the truth of her marriage as it stands today," reiterated Li Jie."You can stop arguing your case. I didn"t say anything to him on the phone, did I? Whether I agree with this or not is entirely another matter. And I am coming to realize that between you and her, my opinion doesn"t seem to hold any weight," Chung grumbled.
"Had I known twenty-three years ago that my best friend is going to suffer so much, I would have never let her run with that ball," rued Li Jie, remembering their first meeting with Tang.
Two weeks later
Jia Li sat on her favourite window sill looking out at the leaves which had changed colour with the changing season. Her childhood room remained her safest coc.o.o.n and brought her the peace which no other place could. Though she hadn"t come home so often in the past few years, this time there was nowhere else that she could have gone. She had taken an indefinite leave from work because she knew deep down that she needed to heal, from the shambles of her marriage and from the heartbreak of last week. No one knew about her whereabouts, not even her best friends. She had already asked them to lie for her and didn"t want the burden of her circ.u.mstances affect their relation with Tang.
It had been more than a fortnight since she last saw him but the memory of that perfect afternoon in the Yu garden still haunted her, making her crave for more. Even her ex-husband thought that she was in Africa instead of being in her native town.
This was cos of two reasons. One, she wasn"t capable of human interaction currently. Second, her brain told her firmly that she needed to purge herself of all the memories of her growing years.
The past days had been a living h.e.l.l as she mapped the nooks of Moganshan. Every corner she turned, Jia Li tried to wipe the smiles from the trails they had trekked, erase the adolescent love from all the places they had visited and scrub the imprints of their touch from the entire town.
She walked in a daze, trapped in the tangle of her memories unaware of her surroundings. How could the absence of someone"s smell make one feel like the loneliest person alive? The next evening was also one such stroll when she felt her name being called out. Resigned to meet a known face, she pasted a smile on her face and turned.
"And we meet again, Ms. Hepburn," said w.a.n.g Wei, Tang"s business partner.
He was referring to her persona donned during Tang"s masquerade ball.
A look of dismay crossed her face before she could suppress it.
"Oh, h.e.l.lo! This is a surprise," she tried to inject false enthusiasm in her voice.
"What are you doing…?" both started with the same question.
Taking the lead, he answered, "I am here, err…actually visiting someone."
"This is my hometown," she said simply, as a way of answer.
After a moment of awkward silence, she said, "it was nice to see you but I should be getting back home."
"I was wondering if you could join me for a cup of coffee," he asked impulsively.
"I am sorry. I really do need to get back home now. It was good to see you," she said politely, turning to move away.
"I am madly in love with Xie Chu," he blurted out, referring to Tang"s younger sister.