The Holiday (A Tom Hiddleston Fanfic)

Existence

For the first few weeks after the call, Jamie existed. She didn't live. She didn't laugh or cry. She just existed.

She worked, she ran when she felt able to summon up the energy and she watched tv. And that was pretty much it. Her life seemed like some kind of horrible dream. The one where you watch your life dissolve before your eyes and there's nothing you can do. The night she'd broken up with Tom, was the last she could remember feeling anything resembling normal. Peter and Helen had been kind and patient, letting her say as much or as little as she wanted. They made sure she ate, slept and generally was ok. Other than that, they left her to grieve. For grieving is exactly how it felt inside. A cold empty hole where her heart used to be. An ache she couldn't describe or pinpoint and a rage that exploded at the stupidest of things. She was running out of mugs. She told them repeatedly it had been her fault, she'd had cold feet, ran away from the pressures and expectations. Even now, after everything, she wanted to protect him. They didn't even pretend they believed her, and secretly for that she was grateful. Was it Lord Tennyson that once wrote that it was better to have loved and lost than never loved at all? She was quite certain he didn't know what the hell he was talking about.

She saw Tom - and 'Emily' - in the press from time to time. With a curiously morbid fascination she scanned the photos. Looking for a sign, a clue, was he happy? For his sake, she hoped he was. He seemed so, always smiling, always charming. She was pretty, a willowy blond with a dazzling smile and expensive boobs, now with an expensive ring to match. It never once occurred to her, in her dark fog of grief, that he was an actor. It also never occurred to her his smile never reached his eyes.

It must have been about 2 months after she came home that Peter suggested a long weekend diving, distraction therapy. She said no. She doubted, as she looked through the photos on her phone for the first time since... then, she would ever dive again. Now it was a painful reminder of how much she had loved and lost. Scrolling through them one night after a particularly terse conversation with Helen, she came across the one if her and Tom, THE one of her and Tom. For the first time since that awful night, she cried. And cried. And then cried some more. It all came spilling out, down her cheeks like a dam bursting its banks. She'd been standing in the kitchen and as she succumbed to the sadness, she'd slid down the stained wall till she was sitting on the floor where she bawled like a child. Hugging her knees, head bowed, she gave in. It was long overdue.

Slowly, like some sort of accident victim, she began to come out the other side. She still loved him, it was something she now accepted that would never leave her. Like some kind of weird affliction, she was learning to live with it. Each day became just that little bit easier. Until eventually, one day she got out of bed and with a dawning realisation that life did indeed go on. Jamie knew she was ready. To face the world again.

Working remotely had meant she didn't actually need to bother what she looked like. When she looked , really looked, in the mirror she saw a tired, sad, unkempt shadow of herself. She hardly recognised the face that stared back at her. Shocked at what she saw, she resolved to get the old Jamie back somehow.

A few days and a couple of call to her boss later, she was on the plane looking out as the runway disappeared beneath her. Goodbye drab and sad, hello Big Smoke. A weekend in London, at a posh hotel with some retail therapy and beauty treatments. That would be the place to start. Helen offered to go with her but she wanted to do this alone. Needed to, to get her self reliance back on point. She booked a haircut, she would get her nails done and a makeup masterclass to revamp her image. She looked forward to it more than she thought she would. This wasn't going to be a 'new' Jamie, this was a 're-born' Jamie. Nothing was going to stop her now.

Well, that was the plan.....