‘Then, a few days ago, Patti showed me the newspaper report about… him.’
‘Oh!’
‘And a few things fell into place for me. I’m not too big to admit, mistakes have been made.’
Joy only listened. She knew how to interpret this: mistakes had been madeon both sides. She was definitely not in the right headspace to consider whether she too shared the Foley stubbornness. Especially not when she realised her mum had stopped to rub at her ankle right at the door of a cottage bearing a sign that read ‘Bickleigh’, painted on a piece of driftwood and strung all around with decorative fishing net and colourful buoys.
‘Let’s get off this slope,’ Joy told her, and to her surprise her mum offered her an arm.
They climbed in silence until they reached the top of the village where, of course, everything was closed. The visitor centre car park was long since cleared and all the little concession huts shuttered.
‘About that newspaper story your sister showed me recently?’ Pam ventured once they located a bench and sat facing out over the roofs of Clove Lore to the sea beyond. The sun was sinking into the horizon in a wonderful hazy orange that held their gazes as she spoke. ‘Once I read it, things made a lot more sense to me, Joy. I hadn’t much of a clue before. Of course, I always thought he was a wrong ’un, but I…’
Joy didn’t move, willing her mum to get the words out and quick.
‘I blamed you. OK. There! I admit it. I thought it was you letting him get away with it.’
Joy shrugged. It had been, in a way, and she couldn’t yet be convinced otherwise.
‘Do you remember my fiftieth?’ Pam asked.
‘’Course I do.’ The guilt of what she’d done that day made Joy’s cheeks redden now. This whole thing was too hard. Joy wished herself anywhere but here listening to the shake in her mum’s voice.
‘I’d booked Valentina’s for lunch, just the two of us? Remember?’
Joy took a deep breath and tried to count out for seven slow beats.
‘And you rang about an hour before our reservation time and said you weren’t coming?’
Oh god. There was nothing Joy could say in her defence.
‘You said Sean had taken the car to work unexpectedly, and you weren’t feeling well anyway, and maybe we could go to Valentina’s another day?’
‘I know.’ Joy could barely think about it. She’d cried all that afternoon and Sean had sat there watching the football, her car keys in his fist.
‘I was going to come,’ said Joy, weakly. ‘I’d put on that dress you gave me for my birthday, the black one?’
Pam turned to face her daughter, eyes brimming with tears now.
‘He wouldn’t let me, Mum.’ Joy crumpled on the bench, her arms folded across her stomach.
‘I know that now,’ Pam told her, bursting into loud sobs that scared the sparrows from the gorse. She pulled her daughter to her, holding her close. ‘But at the time…’ she faltered, guiltily. ‘At the time I thought it was you wanting to be with him all the time, cutting me out of your life.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Joy wept, her head down.
‘Don’t say sorry. You don’t ever need to say that. I knew, deep down. When you first started missing things, parties and Sunday lunches, I knew from your tone in those texts, it wasn’t you speaking. It was him. Making excuses. Somehow always making me feel like an inconvenience, like I was asking too much wanting to see my own girl. I knew it was all him.’
Pam rummaged in her handbag for a tissue and offered one to Joy too.
‘Itwashim,’ Joy said, monotone and exhausted. ‘But I let him do it.’
‘No, love,’ Pam insisted. ‘You had no choice. Like those other girls. Only, instead of sending your dad round and throwing him out on his ear, I took it personal. I was angry and hot-headed. Not like me, I know.’
Joy sniffed a laugh that made Pam smile with relief.
‘If I could go back, knowing what I know now!’ Pam said, ruefully casting her eyes about the sky.
‘But we can’t go back,’ Joy said, shrugging sadly.
