“Consider me told.”
Louise smiles, brown eyes glittering. “Do you have time to read to the end of the chapter?”
“I do,” I tell her. “There’ll even be time for a cup of tea before my shift too.”
Louise nods happily, and I carry on. This is something we have been doing ever since that day I found Louise in bed unable to get up, which have multiplied over the last few weeks. Those days, where she can only get downstairs to the sofa, or the conservatory, where she stays most of the day, or worse, when she stays in bed, seem to be ever-increasing, and when they arise, I do what I can for her. She is fiercely independent, though, preferring to do something that may take someone able like me only five seconds, even if it takes her hours. But I like that about her. She’s strong. She needs no validation.
“I don’t need company,” she once said to me, but I think that is a belief she is slowly shedding. We talk now. Nonstop, actually, and even eat dinner together most nights. The gap in the bridge between us is closing, and I like the way it feels. I never thought I cared, but it’s so nice coming home to someone who wants to hear about your day. It throws me, though, and Louise has made me promise that I will no longer apologize for simply speaking. So many times I have found myself going off on a tangent, telling her about a funny customer at work, or something hilarious Fox and Rosie argued about, or about France, and then stopping and saying, “Sorry. I know this is probably really boring for you.”
“Boring?”
“Yes. Me, harping on about things that don’t really matter, people you don’t really know.”
And Louise has looked at me every time, her wrinkled brow furrowing, and said, “That is called a conversation, is it not, Emmie? How relationships are made, slowly sharing pieces of yourself, in turn?”
And I try to remember that. That Mum and her rolling eyes and sighing when I would come home from school, desperate to tell her about my day, my new friend, the funny thing that happened in PE, or the band Georgia’s mum was taking us to see, anything I’d seen or experienced that felt important enough to say aloud, was not how any person, especially not a mother, should react to another human being doing what Louise called it—sharing a piece of themselves. It was heartless, really, I know that now. And sad more than anything. But I wonder, even now, after sitting here with Louise for almost two hours, if I will ever shake the feeling that I am sharing too much of myself, boring the other person to tears, so in turn, draw back. Close my book, as Eliot would rightly say.
Eliot. I haven’t seen him since that night I sat with Lucas and watched movies, like old times. It’s been about four weeks now. We’ve texted a few times, but there’s something about what Lucas said that night about looking out for me—that reminder of what happened on our nineteenth birthday—that has sent my barriers up again, like the sides of a cage.
I click on the kettle, the book on the kitchen counter beside me, the place in it marked with a pointed plant label stick.
The doorbell sounds.
“I’ll get it,” I call out to Louise, and when I pass the lounge, I see that despite being in a lot of pain today, with her back and legs, she was shuffling back into her seat where she had tried to get up and see to it herself.
I swing open the door of Two Fishers Way, the dust of the porch dances in the sunlight that floods in.
“Emmeline,” Marv says from the doorstep, the jiffy bag of cards in his hand. “I was wondering if we could have a chat.”
* * *
I make Marv wait outside while I make a tea for Louise, and make sure that there is a sandwich in the fridge for her, covered in foil, ready for her lunch, later. I get changed into my work uniform, my hands shaking with nerves, and when I go outside, I tell Marv I have only fifteen minutes.
“You can walk with me to work,” I tell him, and as much as I will my voice to sound strong, it wobbles.
He smiles at me, sadly, almost embarrassed, and nods. “I’d like that.”
We walk, both of us avoiding each other’s gaze, and instead looking at the houses that line Fishers Way—large and Victorian, bay windows, gravel drives—and the knobbly oak trees that border the street. A mother wanders by, holding a waddling toddler’s hand. Marv smiles at her, and it’s then that I catch a look at him. A proper look, looking with the eyes of someone who is trying to recognize themselves in something. When he smiles, his eyes crinkle, the eyelashes fanning together, crisscrossing. In photos that have caught me mid-laugh, my fair eyelashes look exactly the same.
“I’m really sorry about what happened, Emmeline,” he says, “when you stopped by.”
“Emmie,” I say.
“Ah. You prefer Emmie.”
I nod. “I do. Insist on it, really. Without sounding too much like an idiot.”
“No, I think that’s fair. If you want to be called something, then that is your right.” He nods, slotting his hands in the pockets of his jeans. He talks like a teacher. Well-spoken, authoritative. “Plus, Emmie is nice. I like it.”
I don’t say anything, steeling myself. I am ready. I am ready for an explanation of why he can’t see me. I don’t want one. The fact he doesn’t is enough for me, and no explanation he pulls from the recesses of his brain to justify it will make it better. I’m his child. What excuse could there be?
“I was—I think I was in shock the other day, when you turned up with your pal.”
“I was too,” I say. “Even more so. You knew. I never did.”
“I can imagine, sweetheart,” he says warmly, and I feel shame at the way my heart twangs. Sweetheart. I have a dad and he’s calling me “sweetheart,” like all the dads do in books and on the TV shows I used to watch as a teenager. “I—see, I have a wife. Carol. We’ve been together for thirty-one years. Married for twenty-eight.”
“You and Mum had an affair.”
His eyes close momentarily. “I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings here, but I think it’s best I’m honest.” He takes a deep breath. “But I wouldn’t even call it that. Sorry, Emmie. Well, I’m not of course, for me, but for you, a… one off doesn’t sound very nice.”
“I always knew I was the result of a one off,” I tell him. “Well. That’s what Mum told me. It was one romantic night—”
I see his eyes lift at that and he says, “It was one night. I was in the pub with a few mates. She was there. Katherine. I don’t remember much about it. I’m… so sorry, that sounds dreadful, but well, that’s how it was.”
I pause, adjust the bag on my shoulder and look up, to the sea that appears in the distance as we round the leafy corner of Fishers Way.
“It’s fine,” I say. “I didn’t expect candlelight and music.” Except, I did. I would dream up the night they met sometimes. Dad, with his drumsticks, hair sweaty from the stage, him locking eyes with my beautiful mother across the sludgy grass of the festival, drawn to her, and unbeknownst to him, for a special reason. For me. So I could be born. A miracle result of timing and genetics and science in a tiny window of time, that resulted in my life. Not a local pub. Not a spoken-for man.