Matt stopped talking and turned to face her. ‘I think you could. If you thought it would help. You’re a very strong person. And maybe it would help you as well as them.’
Lily thought for a moment. ‘Weirdly, I think you could be right.’ She’d had a lot of chats recently that she’d never expected to have.
‘If you wanted any moral support I could come with you.’
Lily shook her head automatically. ‘Honestly, no, that’s really kind but if I do speak to them I’ll do it alone.’
‘You don’t always have to do things alone. I mean if you don’t want to. Obviously I wouldn’t want to intrude.’ His eyes were full of such kindness that Lily wanted to cry. And to kiss him. And that wasn’t a great thing to be thinking right now.
‘I doubt we’d be able to find a date that we could all make anyway,’ she said. ‘My mum still works long hours, I’m busy with work too, and you’re away a lot.’ She’dloveto live in a world where she could rely on Matt and he could come with her to meet her parents properly. But she didn’t.
‘Well, funny you should say that.’ Matt took her hands, really not the reaction she’d expected because, if she was honest, her words had been a little spiky. ‘I’ve been thinking. From my perspective it seems like a lot of our problems stemmed from us not being in the same place at the same time so I’m thinking that I need to start working in London a lot more and doing a lot more remote meetings. There’s a lot of amazing technology now courtesy of when we were in lockdown that makes you feel like you’re actually on site.’
‘Oh no.’ Lily shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t want to ruin your career.’
‘You really wouldn’t be. I have more work than I can feasibly manage anyway. I can just make sure I only take on new projects that are close to home or where I know I can do a lot of the work remotely. And,also, if you were to give me your work schedule for the next few weeks, or however long you know in advance, I should be able to arrange things so that I’m only away when you’re working nights.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really.’ He leaned down and dropped a far-too-brief kiss on her lips. ‘I’m thinking I should see you home now and say good night to you and then if you like you could let me have your schedule and I could make a work plan. Maybe we could go for dinner soon when we’ve had a chance to look at our schedules and work stuff out? And I’d be very happy to meet your mother with you if you like?’
‘I… Okay. Yes. Great.’ Maybe that could work.
Lilyreallydidn’t want him to leave her outside her front door when they finished a lingering goodbye and he said, ‘I should go.’ But, yep, it was probably for the best, given that neither of them really knew whether they could actually make things work.
It washardgoing inside without him, though.
She had a text from Matt waiting on her phone in the morning when she woke up, asking for her work schedule, and another one from her mum saying that her dad would be going home on Saturday and it was going to beverydifficult – Lily could hear thehushed toneswhispering off her screen – and they’d have to be very cautious with him and his health.
Snap decision. She was going to speak to her mum and she really didn’t like the idea of doing it and she was going to ask Matt if he could come and if he couldn’t – which, realistically, he wouldn’t be able to at short notice – fate would have made the decision that she wouldn’t involve him.
But, ‘Yes, I’ll be there,’ he replied when she told him over the phone that her mum could manage a meeting the next afternoon, Friday.
And, yes, at one day’s notice, he abandoned his Friday afternoon work meetings, which had to be a first, and arrived in good time for the meeting in a café on the South Bank near St Thomas’s Hospital, where her mum worked.
‘Hi, Mum.’ Lily and Matt both stood up to greet her mum. She kissed Lily’s cheek – Lily had to make a conscious effort to stop herself rubbing her face afterwards because she wassurethere’d be a lipstick mark there now – and turned to Matt with her hand outstretched. ‘You remember Matt,’ said Lily.
‘I don’t think we’ve met before.’ Her mum sat down and Lily and Matt joined her.
‘Yes, you have, at Granny’s funeral.’
‘Really?’ Her mum frowned. ‘I suppose I was too worried about you to register much else.’ Lily tried very hard not to glare at her. Her mum pushed her glasses up into her hair and peered at Lily’s face. ‘Are you alright, Lily? Has the worry about your father been impacting your breathing?’
So. Annoying. Yes,obviously, it was lovely that her mother cared. But there was so much more to Lily than her breathing and she wanted her mother to see that.
‘I’m totally fine,’ Lily said.
‘Are you sure?’ Her mum looked at her phone. ‘I don’t have long. I have an important meeting at three.’
Lily heaved an internal sigh. What was actually the point of this? Nothing was ever going to change between her and her mum. Matt took her hand and she looked up at him and he smiled at her and mouthed, ‘You can totally do this.’
He was right actually. And if her mum was busy she was just going to launch straight in.
‘Mum.’ She stopped. Maybe she should have rehearsed this. ‘I…’ The words really weren’t coming. Okay. Start positive. ‘I love you. Thank you for caring so much about me.’
Her mum, one eye still on her phone, held up a finger to the waiter and called, ‘Could we order? We’re in a rush. Darling, I have to look out for you because I’m not sure you take enough care of yourself.’
No. Beyond annoying. Lily opened her mouth to let three decades of frustration rip and the waiter popped up in front of them, pencil poised over open notebook, and said, ‘What can I get you?’
