“So,” says Luke, once we are alone again. “What’s the story with his dad? Is he still in his life? If you don’t mind me asking. Don’t feel obliged.”
I bite my lip and wonder if I do mind. I decide that I don’t, and reply: “Well, it’s a story as old as time—boy meets girl. Girl gets pregnant at eighteen. Boy dumps girl to backpack around Europe and is never seen again.”
“Right. That must have been tough, doing it all on your own.”
“It had its moments,” I admit, “and for most of it, I had no clue what I was doing. The first baby I ever held was my own. And yes, Rob is still in Charlie’s life—in a way. Another story as old as time, I suppose—the absent parent gets to be the fun one, don’t they? That can sting a bit, if I’m honest. But mainly... it’s been great. I mean, Charlie’s great.”
“He certainly is. You did a great job raising him, so, whatever you did, you did it right.”
I pause and let that soak in. When you’re a single parent, you focus so much on your failures—on what you can’t give them, on what you get wrong, on every consequence of every decision you make. It’s easy to get wrapped up in that, to feel as thoughyou have never been enough. That you have let them down in some way, haven’t given them the perfect family, the perfect life.
But the truth is that the perfect family doesn’t exist—and all parents make mistakes, single or not. I know that logically, but don’t always feel it. Hearing someone else point it out feels good, like a balm applied to a sore spot I’ve had for so long I’ve just learned how to ignore it. “Thank you,” I say simply.
“And what about you?” Luke asks. “Charlie’s great, but how did all of that affect you?”
I bite my lip and realize that’s a tough question to answer. It’s also one that nobody has really asked before. I was so young back then, and I’m never quite sure what my life would have looked like if I hadn’t been forced to deal with so much, so soon. “That’s hard to explain,” I reply. “Sometimes it all seems so long ago I can barely remember it. But I suppose it shaped me—in good ways and bad ways. The bad ways are... well, the clue’s in the name, I think. I worry a lot. I find it hard to relax, like I always have to be on guard duty. But the good ways—well, I try to focus on those. It made me independent and resilient. It made me realize how much I was capable of, maybe... I don’t know. I’m in transition at the moment, Luke, so you can’t expect sensible answers!”
“In transition...,” he says quietly. “That’s a good way of putting it.”
We spend a few moments in silence, sipping our drinks and relaxing in the still-warm evening air, until he says: “I chose ‘Wuthering Heights’ because it was my daughter’s favorite song. She was called Katie, and her grandmother was a huge Kate Bush fan. She used to play it for Jenny all the time, telling her she was named after her—she wasn’t, but that didn’t matter. They watched the video, that old one, and after that, whenever she could, Katiewould grab a sheet or a towel and dance around to it, wafting it around like a cape. She always got the words a bit wrong, though, and she used to sing, ‘It’s me, I’m a tree.’ It was... lovely.”
He is staring away from me as he talks, one hand gripping his beer a little too tightly. He is smiling at the memory, the sides of his eyes crinkling, but there is no mistaking the sadness of his tone. Or his use of past tense.
“What happened?” I ask quietly, washed with an icy sense of dread. I know what is likely to come next and I feel my heart start to splinter.
“She died four years ago. She was only nine. A type of leukemia called ALL.”
His voice is low, the words clipped, the sentences brutally short. This is, quite obviously, hard for him to talk about.
“I’m so sorry, Luke. What was she like?”
He looks at me in surprise and shakes his head slightly. “Nobody ever asks that,” he says. “They’re usually just too freaked out. That’s one of the reasons I stopped talking to people about it. Stopped talking to people at all really... but she was perfect: funny, clever, kind. Full of life, even when the treatments were torturing her. She had her mum’s blond hair, and my eyes, and her own sense of mischief. Yeah. She was perfect.”
The look on his face is a heartrending combination of pain and pride, and I swallow the lump that starts to form in my throat as I reply.
“She sounds it. I’d love to see a picture of her sometime.”
“I have some,” he replies, sounding hesitant. “Maybe I’ll show you one day.” He stands up abruptly, knocking his can to the ground and cursing as he retrieves it, the remaining beer fizzing out onto the grass. He hovers above me, looking stern, and says: “Right. That’s me done for the night.”
He is tense, his mouth a grim line, his eyes flickering from side to side as though he is looking for a threat. I reach up, place one of my hands on his. I wind our fingers together and say: “Thank you for telling me about Katie.”
He doesn’t meet my eyes, but I feel a returning squeeze of pressure before he pulls his hand from mine, nods firmly, and heads inside. He pauses on the steps and says: “Sorry if it was too much. I don’t know why I told you all that. Maybe because you’d told me about your situation. Maybe just because I feel... like I can trust you.”
He doesn’t give me the chance to reply, just disappears quickly inside, as though embarrassed by the whole thing. He feels like he can trust me... I don’t underestimate the power of those words. Trust is not a thing to be trifled with. I can’t remember the last time I totally trusted another adult human being, and I realize that I am starting to trust Luke. I at least attempted to give him a genuine answer to his questions, instead of retreating to my default setting of making everything into a joke.
I stay where I am. It’s been an unexpectedly emotional evening. I am sad and shocked and worried I might cry. It is not my grief to hijack, and although I briefly wonder if I should go inside and check on him, I know that Luke needs some space. It seemed to take a physically tangible toll on him, talking about it at all, and he might need a few minutes alone.
I sip my wine and, as soon as I am sure he is not going to come back out, allow the tears I have been clenching to roll down my face. For Luke, for Katie, for his wife. For everyone who has suffered such an unimaginable loss. My life has not been easy, but Charlie is tucked up in bed, safe and happy, and that makes me the luckiest woman on earth.
Chapter 10
“Zombies?” I say, confused. “Our next stop is zombies?” We are all sitting outside the van, eating croissants and drinking coffee. Luke was up early, and bought treats and a spare fold-up chair from the site shop. The baseball hat is on the table amid the plates and mugs, and Charlie is cringing as he stares at the tiny scrap of paper in his hand.
“I know!” he says, despairing. “It’s really stupid, isn’t it? But... well, I’d had a drink, and I was just thinking about things I like, and about all the zombie films I’d watched and the video games I play, and... look, all I can say is it made sense at the time!”
Luke starts laughing, and it is a fine laugh—deep and genuine and utterly infectious. He seems more like his normal self today, although his early solo start implies that he perhaps didn’t have the best night’s rest. I’d been vaguely aware of him tiptoeing around somewhere near five o’ clock but had fallen straight back asleep.
“Well, zombies it is then,” he says, once we have all calmed down. “We made a pledge, and now we must honor it. Let’s see what we can find out about zombies in the locale...”
