Ella whispered something.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t hear that.’ He leaned his head closer to hers.
‘I failed her so badly,’ Ella said in a barely audible voice.
‘What? No.’ In contrast to Ella’s, James’s voice rang out ridiculously loudly, from the shock.
‘Yes.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘I was the one who failed her. You weren’t even there. It was all down to me and I messed up. I just couldn’t manage it. I was too young. I had work. I wanted to make a good life. I tried so hard but I just really, really messed up.’
‘But that’s the whole point. Youwerethere and I wasn’t.’
‘But you couldn’t be. You were at uni. You did a fantastic degree and you have a fantastic job. You’re adoctor. You help people.’
‘I didn’t help my own brother and sister, though, did I? I left. I was so desperate for a better, saner, more structured home life that I basically deserted you when I was eighteen and left the daily responsibility for Leonie and Mum to you. I can’t believe you don’t hate me for it.’
‘I…’ James stopped to think. He’d learned from talking to Cassie that honesty was a good thing, even when it hurt. ‘Yeah. I did. A little. But also, I was so proud of you. I mean, medicine. So impressive. And you did come home in the holidays and your example really inspired me to work hard at school and get myself to uni too. And I had the same sense of being desperate to make a better life. That’s why I chose to work in private equity. It really wasn’t my vocation. I mean, it’s fine, I’m not complaining, I do enjoy a lot of it because I like being busy and it’s interesting, and I also love that the world of smart-suited high finance is so far away from a dirty, shabby, empty-bottle-filled flat in a horrible estate. But the only reason I did it initially was the money. I can’t rationally hate you for leaving. Really, the big difference between what we did is that you’re two years older, so you left first. If I’d been the older one I’d probably have chosen a university away from London not realising that that would mean that you’dhaveto stay.’
Ella did an almost alarmingly gigantic sniff. ‘We should have had this conversation five years ago. If not before Leonie died. You know what? You know who failed whom? If we’re being magnanimous, we could say that life failed Leonie. And if we’re pointing fingers and speaking ill of the dead, we could say that Mum did. And all three of our fathers. Our neighbours. All the adults in the situation.’
‘I don’t want to think that Mum failed us. Her alcoholism was an illness. She couldn’t help it.’
‘Moot point. It’s too fatalistic for my taste to think that people can’t help themselves. But, yeah, maybe. The fact remains, though, that someone should have helped us. I mean, you and I were carers from when we were so young. People must have known about that.’
‘We were very good at hiding things.’
Ella nodded. ‘We were. But even so.’
‘You still good at hiding things? I am. My best friends don’t know about my background.’ That wasn’t one hundred per cent true now, in fact. Cassie did. James’s other friends didn’t, though.
‘Similar. I tell people, but in a very potted-history kind of way.’ Ella smiled at James and he smiled back and hugged her properly, this time because he wanted to. ‘Leonie would be pleased to see us back together like this,’ she said. ‘We are properly back together now, aren’t we?’
‘We are,’ James confirmed. He stepped forward and pulled a weed away from Leonie’s gravestone. ‘She was beautiful,’ he said. He heard his voice go all wobbly like a heartbroken child’s.
And then they both cried, a lot, which was much better than it might have been because this time, unlike when Leonie had died, James and Ella were very much crying together. They were standing close to each other, their arms round each other’s shoulders, instead of several feet apart, each of them with their arms clasped across their own chests, the way they’d been at the funeral.
In the end, Patrick babysat the girls in the flat, while James and Ella went out for dinner together and talked a lot more. And then when James and Ella got home, they played poker with Patrick, and James put his Maine-gained skills into practice and thrashed both of them, ending up with a hundred and thirty-seven extra-long matches to Patrick’s three and Ella’s ten.
* * *
James looked out of the windows towards the park. He wasn’t appreciating the view as much as usual. You couldn’t pass an entire Sunday evening just sitting on a sofa. He hadn’t planned anything this evening, imagining that he’d be grateful for some peace and quiet after Ella, Patrick and the girls had left. But now they’d been gone for fifteen minutes and the flat, and the rest of the day, just felt remarkably empty.
Right. He was going to call Cassie. Let her know how yesterday had gone and ask her how she was.
No. He was going to text her. He couldn’t deal with any more emotion this weekend.
He really, really missed her.
He wished so much that they could be together. But they couldn’t be. Cassie wanted children. And babies needed to be adored andwantedby both their parents. Like Ella’s girls. And not like Leonie. Babies should never be let down in any way by the adults in their lives.
Of course, if he and Cassie got together and tried for a baby, maybe it wouldn’t happen. But that would be awful too. Cassie would be devastated, and James… wouldn’t be.
Yep. Best just to stay in touch in a relatively distant way.
Hi Cassie. Thanks so much for the chat yesterday. The one step at a time thing really worked. I got through the whole day and, to my surprise, it was great. Ella and I have got a lot closer again. We talked a lot about Leonie. Thank you. Demon slaying works… Planning to talk properly to my friends more too. How are things with you? What have you been up to? How are the animals? Laura? Dina? Jx
And now he was going to see if Matt and their friend Josh were up for a quick Sunday pint. Since they were his actual best friends and he had not had sex with them, nor was he wondering whether he would or would not ever want to try for a baby with them.
