‘Work’s not going well, then?’ she said finally.
I responded to that by rolling my eyes and stuffing my mouth with chocolate.
‘Well, you just need to keep at it, and it’ll all come good. Or try something new. Remember’ – she raised a finger, mock-serious – ‘everything will be OK in the end. If it’s not OK, it’s not the end.’
‘Mum, you’ve gone into teacher mode again,’ I muttered. ‘Where d’you read that, on a fridge magnet?’
‘No.’ She half smiled at me. ‘Saw it on Facebook, actually. Rather good, I thought.’
She was trying to cheer me up, make me laugh, but I wasn’t in the mood. ‘Yeah, well, I don’t need meaningless slogans. I’m not revising for my bloody GCSEs. This is actual real life.’
I could feel myself degenerating into a sulky teenager – something I often did when I was back here – but I couldn’t snap out of it. I was pissed off and frustrated, and I wanted someone to take it out on.
Mum took a sip of coffee. ‘Well, what about your own writing?’ she pressed.
I stared at the kitchen table. ‘No. I’ve given up on all that. I wasn’t any good at it.’
She pinched the bridge of her nose, and then looked at me sadly. ‘I wish you could see yourself the way I see you, love. You’re so hard on yourself all the time. You’ve got so much talent. I just wish you had a bit more self-belief. You’ve got it in you to do great things, I know you have. But you give up too easily.’
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
Mum kept going. ‘I’m not talking about making millions of pounds or being world famous. I’m talking about doing something that makes you happy, that makes other people happy. Leading a good life.’
I said nothing again, but inside me, everything was churning and whirring. I felt we were suddenly on the cusp of talking about something we hadn’t properly talked about ever at that point: Dad.
He was on my mind already that day because I’d spotted something online about his new play, which was opening soon in New York. And now I could feel it all boiling up in my chest: the years of us avoiding the subject, the anger I felt at him leaving, at never making the slightest effort to get in touch.
‘I don’t know …’ I began. I could feel the words gathering pace in my head, and before I could decide whether I really wanted to say them, they were spilling out of me. ‘Maybe if Dad had stuck around, he might have rubbed off on me a bit more. I might have had a bit more ambition, I might have learned from him. I might have actually achieved something.’
Mum looked down at the table and rubbed the back of her neck. I couldn’t see the expression on her face.
‘But I guess there was something wrong with me,’ I added. ‘Or with us. We weren’t enough for him, in the end.’
She looked up at me then, her forehead wrinkled. ‘Have you ever considered that it might be a good thing that your father left?’ she said softly. ‘That maybe it’s better he didn’t rub off on you? That life might have been worse if he’d stuck around?’
‘I don’t see how life could be any worse,’ I muttered. And in eight days’ time, the universe would show me.
Mum sighed heavily. ‘When you were growing up, I always tried not to bad-mouth your father in front of you, because no matter what he’d done, he was still your father. But the truth is, Ben, he was a shit.’
The shock of hearing her use that word nearly snapped the anger right out of me. I almost started laughing. I don’t think I’d ever heard her say anything worse than ‘bloody’ before. But then she carried on: ‘All these years, you’ve hung onto this idea of him as this’ – she flapped her hands in the air, trying to pick out the right word – ‘great guy, who’s had all this success, but trust me, it’s a good thing you’re nothing like him. You don’t know him. Not really.’
‘And that’s the whole problem, isn’t it?’ I said, my voice rising as the resentment poured back into me. ‘I never got the chance to know him. When I was growing up, every time I wanted to get back in touch with him, you put me off. You always warned me against it.’
Her voice rose to meet mine. ‘Because I didn’t want you to get hurt! It broke my heart in the year or so after he left, when you tried to arrange to meet him, and he always cancelled or couldn’t be bothered. You were eleven, twelve years old, Ben! It shouldn’t have been you making the effort. It should have been your father.’
I shook my head, my throat tightening and my cheeks getting hot. ‘I don’t know … He was still my dad, and it always felt like you were trying to keep us apart. Maybe we could have had a relationship, if you weren’t always getting in the way.’
I regretted it as soon as I said it. Of course I did. It was stupid and spiteful and I didn’t mean it in the slightest. But I said it anyway.
Mum put down her coffee mug on the table, and I’ll never forget the way she looked at me. Straight in the eyes, her smile dissolving slowly as the shock gave way to sadness.
She ran her hand gently across her forehead, as if she was trying to soothe a tension headache. And I wanted to take it back, to walk straight round the table and hug her, but I didn’t. I still don’t know why. She shook her head and picked at some fluff on her sleeve. When she spoke again, her voice was so quiet I could barely hear her. ‘Well, if that’s the way you feel, then … I’m sorry.’
That’s what she said: ‘sorry’. When I should’ve been the one apologising, she said ‘sorry’. That will always stay with me.
And that was it. It didn’t end dramatically. It wasn’t some EastEnders-style bust-up, doors slamming and plates smashing. It just ended with me standing up and saying, ‘Look, I’d better go,’ and Mum saying, ‘Yes, OK, all right.’
We didn’t hug at the door. I thanked her for dinner and we both just mumbled goodbye. And that was the last time I ever saw her.
As I walked back down the path, I thought: fuck it. I’ll call her later and apologise.
I didn’t call her later. I let eight days slip by without calling or seeing her. And then she was gone.
Chapter Thirty-Three
I finish telling Daphne all this and find that I’m suddenly exhausted.
It’s as if the secret has been holding me upright these past two years: woven right through me like the stake in a scarecrow. And now that it’s out, it takes all my concentration not to just flop limply into a heap.
I slump back against the bench, my eyes still fixed on Mum’s gravestone, and expel a deep breath. Daphne studies me carefully for a second or two and then pulls me forcefully towards her. ‘Oh, Ben … I’m so sorry,’ she whispers.
I pull back and look at her, confused. ‘Sorry? Did you not … Daff, I’m the one who should be sorry. The things I said to her …’
She shakes her head and smiles at me sadly. ‘It was just a fight. We all have fights. They don’t mean anything. You fight and then you make up. That’s what happens. But you didn’t get to make up.’ She cups my face in her hands and kisses me gently. ‘And I’m so sorry for that.’