I have to laugh at the expression on his face – he is perfectly torn between natural curiosity and terror of being subjected to an outpouring of deep, dark emotion.
‘I don’t think “want to” is the right description. But that box there – and the way I reacted when we found it – is like a great big dirty bomb waiting to go off. At some point very soon, when I feel solid enough to open it again, I’m going to go through it. I’m going to read those cards, and those letters, and it’s probably going to change everything.
‘So, I’m giving you the option – I know that this might not be something you want to discuss, or know about. If that’s the case – if this is too much for you – then you should leave. I won’t hold it against you, and I’ll still love you to bits, I promise. But if you stay … well, let’s just say that things might get messy.’
‘You don’t mean the kind of mess I can clear up with a J-cloth and a spritz of Jif, do you?’ he asks.
‘If only. It would all be a lot simpler if it was.’
He taps his fingers on the table top, a quiet drumbeat, and I see his jaws moving as he mauls his lip and thinks.
‘OK,’ he announces, clapping his hands together decisively. ‘I’m in. I’m too nosy not to be, plus it’d make me a pretty crappy human being if I left you here on the day of your mum’s funeral, having some kind of meltdown … that was pretty scary, your whole Girl, Interrupted routine? How should I … you know, deal with it, if it happens again?’
‘Are you asking what you should do if I go nuts?’
‘Yes, frankly – although I don’t think “going nuts” is the politically correct term, Jess. Not to me and my snowflake generation, as you’ve pointed out.’
I’m teasing him slightly, and it’s not fair. I think perhaps I am attempting to defuse the tension I am feeling by making light of what I know could be a very serious situation.
Explaining that I had a form of post-traumatic stress disorder might not put his mind at rest, so I decide I can save the technicalities for later – for now, ‘going nuts’ will do.
‘To be entirely honest, Michael, I’m not completely sure what you should do. When I was seriously ill, I was too far gone to remember it. I don’t recall much, which is maybe a blessing. But in the years after that initial breakdown, I had a lot of therapy. I mean, a lot – all of which was pretty awful, and hard work, and makes me curl up a bit inside when I think about it. But it does mean that I picked up a lot of useful techniques, some good advice, and some tip-top methodology for keeping calm and carrying on.
‘I know how to control my breathing, and know how to ground myself, and I can recognise the signs of panic attacks at fifty paces, even if they’re in disguise. I am probably better equipped than the average person. Like I have in the last half hour – being here, in this room, talking with you, talking with myself, all of it has slowed me down from that initial reaction. I’m still feeling what I was feeling then, but I’m putting the brakes on. Does that make sense?’
‘A bit like when you’ve had too much coke and need a spliff to calm you down?’
‘I have no idea, as I’ve never done either of those things, and sincerely hope you haven’t. But … yes, maybe, if that’s a comparison that works for you.’
‘Don’t worry,’ he says, placing a comforting hand on mine, ‘I speak only from second-hand experience as a spectator. I stick with gin myself. So … where do we start, then? With this frankly terrifying journey into time and space?’
I glance at the box, and feel a throb of excitement and trepidation beat through me. It’s a good question – where do we start?
At the beginning, with our first dates, our first kisses, our first declarations of love? The first time he met my parents, and they declared him not good enough? The first time I told them I didn’t care what they thought, and spent the night sleeping in Joe’s arms in the backseat of his car, parked up under the stars after driving to Windermere?
At the end, in its gory, mind-bending horror, where all that love, all that shared experience, seemed to mean nothing at all?
Or at the very best place of all, the utterly beautiful middle – the most terrifying and happiest time of my life?
Chapter 6
October 1999
‘She’s so tiny, Joe – I keep thinking I might snap one of her arms like a little twig when I’m putting her clothes on … ’
‘You won’t, babe. She might be small, but she’s tough. Like her mum. Gorgeous like her mum, too.’
He leans in to kiss the baby’s forehead, and then repeats the gesture with Jess. Jess doesn’t feel very gorgeous right now. She’s more tired than she thought it was possible to be, her boobs are so sore even her bra hurts, and every time she goes for a wee she feels like her insides might fall out.
She bursts into tears at dog food adverts, and she smells of sour milk and desperation, and she’s wondering how she’s going to cope with the pretty much equal amounts of love and fear that she’s currently experiencing.
None of it felt real until the baby was actually here, a living, breathing, red-faced thing, by turns furious and serene. Having her here, looking after her, being the one responsible for keeping this precious thing alive and well, is nothing like she thought it would be. It’s harder than she ever expected.
She remembers her mum, weeping with frustration when she found out that Jess was not only leaving home, but planning on raising a child with Joe Ryan – who might as well be the living embodiment of Satan.
‘You have no idea,’ her mother had said, her voice raised louder than she’d ever heard it before, ‘what it’s going to be like! You have no idea how hard it is to care for a baby – you’re only a child yourself!’
At the time, it had infuriated her. Made her even more determined to prove them wrong. To show them that she wasn’t a child – she was a woman. A mother. A person with a life of her own.
Now, she silently admits, she is starting to suspect that Mum might have been right. She is only just eighteen, filled with self-doubt, swamped with anxiety, exhausted – even when the baby is asleep, she stays awake, watching the gentle rise and fall of her chest to make sure she’s still breathing.
Jess had thought the battles had all been fought – the terrible scenes at home, the frantic scurrying for cash, putting her A-levels on hold, Joe finding work at a mechanic’s garage. His foster dad looking her up and down like she was a piece of meat hanging in a butcher’s shop window.
Her parents had, of course, been horrified when she told them her news. They’d insisted she was ruining her life – that she should see a ‘special doctor’ to make this awful mistake go away. When she resisted, there was screaming and tears and recriminations and worst of all, her father’s sad, solemn sense of disgust that his little girl had disappointed him so severely.
The threats of getting Joe arrested had followed – once they’d accepted that she was keeping the baby, they wanted her to stay with them. Perhaps they thought they could persuade her to put it up for adoption, or at the very least get him out of their lives.