I sit up, drink some more water, and look down at Luke sprawled on the grass. He takes up a lot of space. He is dressed in baggy shorts and an Iron Maiden T-shirt, and I can’t imagine him suited and booted and working in corporate finance. I will never know that version of him, and that is okay—we all change. We all grow, and evolve, and who knows how many new skins we will wear before the end?
“Well,” I say slowly, “if you’d asked me about my family years ago, I’d have had a simple answer. I’d tell you they were controlling, manipulative, domineering. I’d have told you about how stuck-up I thought they were, how they had my whole life mapped out for me with no regard to what I wanted. How they tried to trap me and stop me from living the life I wanted. I’d tell you about their snobbery, and their judgments, and their cloying insistence on what was right for me and what wasn’t. I’d have said they were suffocating me, that they only loved their fantasy version of me, not the real one. I’d have told you all of that, and meant every word.”
“And now?” he says gently. “Now you wouldn’t?”
“Now... I’m not so sure. Now I’m an adult myself, and the mother to an eighteen-year-old. Now I have more life experience of my own and understand the way a parent wants to protecttheir child a lot more than I did back then. When I have fights with Charlie, when he accuses me of treating him like a child, I can see both sides of it. Basically, now I’m not entirely clear on any of it.”
“What happened?” he asks.
“Nothing. Everything. Maybe somewhere in between. I was seventeen when I met Rob, Charlie’s dad. I was on track for all the usual good stuff—final exams, university, career, and, at least in their minds, I suspect, marriage to a suitable man. Financial ease, couple of kids, everything all very nice and ordered. Then I went and made it all messy. I fell in love, in that deep and completely committed way you only ever seem to be capable of when you’re that young.
“Rob was older than me, and he was... well, he was a drifter, a dreamer, even back then. He’d left school at sixteen, never had a proper job, played drums in a band.”
“Oh no. That’s a red flag,” he says, smiling. “The drummers are always the crazy ones.”
“Yeah—tell me about it! But none of that mattered to me. He was the love of my life. He was my world, and there was no way I was ever going to be parted from him, you know? I didn’t think I could actually breathe without him.
“My parents were not pleased and didn’t try to hide it. At first, it was little stuff—they tried to keep me in at night, booked me up with other things, tried to distract me. Told me I was too young for something so serious, that I needed to concentrate on my schoolwork. Then they stepped it up, gave me a curfew, told me I couldn’t see him anymore...”
“I bet that went down well. Nothing quite as effective as telling a teenager they can’t do something to make them want to do it even more.”
“Exactly. My older brother was allowed to do whatever he wanted, so it always seemed like this huge double standard—I went on long rants about the patriarchy and all sorts... and, yeah, it didn’t work at all, keeping us apart—in fact, it made it all even more exciting. There was a lot of conflict, a lot of very hurtful things said on both sides. I think they still assumed I was their malleable little girl, and I assumed they were evil, nasty old control freaks trying to brainwash me into being a Stepford wife, and the truth... well, the truth is there was probably a bit of both going on.”
“It got bad, I take it? Bad enough that you left?” Luke sits up beside me, frowning.
“Oh yes. It got very bad. The curfew didn’t work, so they started locking me in my bedroom at night, which made me crazy. Even more determined. So one night I climbed out of my window and snuck off to be with him. When they saw I wasn’t there, they called the police and got Rob arrested for abducting me. It was an insane drama. I was seventeen, and once the police realized I was with him of my own free will, they let him go—but it felt like there was nothing to go back to after that. I only went home once more, to get some of my things, and then I walked out and told them they’d never see me again. And later... even when I was alone, with a baby, and Rob had done what they probably suspected he would all along and walked out on me, I still somehow couldn’t go back on that. I don’t know if it was pride, or me just being stubborn, or if I genuinely did think I was better off without them. It all feels so long ago now. But fast-forward a lifetime or so, and here we are. I have Charlie. I had a home and a job and I didn’t feel like I’d done a bad job of it all, really—didn’t feel like I’d missed out. Except now...”
“Except now,” he continues for me, “some of those things have literally fallen off a cliff, and everything feels uncertain, and you’re wondering about it all? About your parents? About the past?”
“Not just the past,” I say firmly. “About the future. That thing Charlie said about us being a family. The way he’s always loved being with his friends who have siblings. The questions I know he has about me, about my background.”
“Has he asked?”
“Yes, kind of. But not seriously until the last few years. By that point, I was so deeply embedded in it all, you know? I tried not to think about them myself, to the extent that I think I’d almost stopped. Whenever he raised the subject, I’d try to answer in a bland way that wasn’t exactly lying, but also wasn’t exactly answering—and he’s a nice lad, he could see that it upset me, and he never pushed too hard. I think maybe I’ve been a selfish moo, Luke.”
This is the first time I’ve admitted this properly out loud, and it says a lot about the way I feel about Luke. I feel safe with him, I realize—able to be myself, even when I don’t like what I’m being.
“I wonder if I’m being fair to him, keeping all this a secret?” I continue. “Keeping him away from his relations? I made the decision to cut them out of my life before he was even born, and I did it when I was younger than he is now, because it felt like they’d boxed me into a corner. It was the only option I felt I had. But do I have the right to make that decision on his behalf? I don’t expect you to be able to answer that, by the way...”
“Good. Because I can’t. It’s a tough call. All I can say is that from what I’ve seen, you’ve done a good job. You’ve been a good mum. So I’d say maybe trust your instincts? I think you’ll cometo the right conclusion—but you don’t have to come to it right now. You’re still reeling from everything that happened, so you’re going to feel a bit off-balance. Maybe keep doing what you’re doing, keep finding your joy, or whatever it is we’re doing on this crazy trip—and then perhaps the answers will start to feel a bit clearer.”
I stand up and swipe the grass off my legs. I feel more robust physically now I’ve recovered from Nemesis, but a wee bit wobbly emotionally after that info dump. I reach out, extend my hand. Luke grabs hold and I pretend to heave him up, making comments about the biscuit barrel, and we make our way to the pathway.
“Back to the hotel for me, I think,” I say. “Might accidentally fall into the bar for a little glass of wine...”
“Sounds like a terrible accident that could most definitely happen. I’ll get Joy moved and see you back there. Won’t be long. I might accidentally order a beer or two as well, as I don’t have to set off first thing for a change. Hey, do you want to see what I got from the photo place? It was some kind of package deal I just said yes to because I felt a bit sick...”
I nod and he pulls some printed photos out of the bag, enclosed in cardboard frames. My traumatized face, immortalized in print. Then he shows me a fridge magnet and a key ring.
“These are for you,” he says, passing them over.
“Well, that’s very kind. It’s a shame I don’t have a fridge, or the keys to anything that still exists.”
“I know that—it’s an aspirational gift. Kind of like, here are the first steps toward having those things, if that’s what you decide you want.”
“So,” I say as we reach the gates and follow the wooded path to the hotel, “I’m not just finding my joy—I’m finding my fridge and finding my door and finding my car?”
It’s a tall order, I think. I’m not sure I feel capable of it all, and suspect he has more faith in me than I have in myself right now.
