Her stare was assessing, and she was silent, but then the shadow of a smile crossed her face and her intelligent eyes brightened. ‘Why?’
‘Because Abbey is the strongest person I know. She always confronts her fears. And she’s never afraid to be vulnerable.’
‘Goodbye, Nick.’
‘Bye, Iris.’
Tuesday morning, I kissed my sleeping daughter goodbye. She had argued with me, refusing to return. How dare I change the plans? Did I not know they were having a birthday party for Abbey on Saturday? I promised she could stay here with Ev for two more weeks, and then I wanted her home.
‘I think this could be our home, Dad. It feels more like home than home. Or is that just me?’
It wasn’t just her.
My flight boarded, and I left Sydney and Abbey on a grey, rainy day.
Abbey
My phone rang at four in the morning. Only five numbers could disturb my slumber: Ella’s, Kate’s, Peter’s, Grandma Iris’s, or her nursing home.
It was a nurse on the phone from Ashford House; she said her name, but I would never remember it.
She was calling to let me know that my grandmother, the wonderful, irreverent Iris Cavendish, had passed away overnight, peacefully in her sleep.
Chapter Sixteen
Abbey
The darkness surrounded me as soon as the light from my phone shut down. I took a deep breath, and it stuttered in my chest. It almost felt impossible that she was not in the world anymore. How could someone so large in our lives be suddenly gone?
We had lost people before, Kate and I. Our mum passed away the year before Kate left school. She’d had a stroke in her sleep and never woke up. Then Dad had a heart attack the year after Ella was born.
The difference was that Gran had been there for us. She had been there every day of our lives.
Grief could sometimes take its time. You could think you were doing fine, only for it to kick your arse unexpectedly, always at the wrong time, like being overcome by tears reaching for pasta sauce or explaining your mum’s lasagne recipe to a work colleague. Or, like Nick, grief could hold you and you could build your life around it, protecting its vice-like grip, thinking that in doing so you would never let it touch you again. But, really, it was just that you had never let it go.
I unlocked my screen and my hand hovered over his name. The temptation to call him and let him comfort me almost overwhelmed me. I knew he would come. He was in love with me, he just couldn’t say it. I would bury myself in his arms and I could let him take care of the details. Let him rescue me, save me, prop me up. It would not change anything between us, though.
It was not enough for me to know I was loved. I wanted to hear it and feel it every day. I wanted his braveryandhis vulnerability. I wanted him fun and sad. Silly and smart.
The walls he had built around his life for his protection were impenetrable from the outside – he had to want to take them down from the inside of his safe, sad space. It was not something I could do for him.
He needed to decide. To choose me. He needed to choose to be loved and to know those choices were worth the risk of losing everything, that I was worth the risk. But only he could make those choices. I could not make them for him.
I had made the mistake of moulding myself and my needs in a relationship before. Pretending everything was fine when it wasn’t. Thinking that being easygoing meant letting go of things that were important to me. I was dreadfully unhappy in that relationship, and Peter was miserable. And, I don’t know, if he hadn’t had the affair, maybe it would have taken me years to work that out. What a bloody, horrifying thought.
I wouldnotdo the same thing again. It was time for me to find someone in my life who loved me as I was, even when I did not agree with them, even when I needed space. I’d hoped with every cell in my body it would be Nick, but I could not control that he had chosen to avoid a life of being loved, fulfilled and cared for. He had chosen his grief.
I looked at my phone again, deciding to call Kate soon but not yet, as she would be sleeping. Gran was so wrong about Kate, thinking she would be unemotional. Kate and Gran were sidekicks, partners in crime. Gran thought Kate was the younger version of her, and Kate thought that too, but I knew Kate had this huge molten centre. She would be devastated.
I climbed out of bed, wrapping myself in a cardigan and pulling on socks against the chill of the morning, and padded silently down the hall to Ella’s room. I slid under the covers, wrapping my arms around her while she slept in oblivious peace. I watched her steady breath rising and falling, just as I had watched her as a newborn. She had been the most perfect baby: chubby and content. She would yawn the minute I began to wrap her. She loved routine and rules, but she loved cuddles above all things. I felt an ache in my heart for tiny hands and feet, the baby I had grown within me, this perfect, perfect child, who was now growing into this extraordinary woman.
There was a little bit of Iris in her for certain, a little bit of Kate too. There was a little bit of me and then there was just her. I would spend every day for the rest of my life telling her that the bits that were her were the most important and beautiful things in the world and that she should never, ever change them for a boy. Even one she loved.Especiallyone she loved.
Ella’s eyelashes fluttered, and she woke up slowly. She had always been a good sleeper, and she took her time opening her eyes, sensing my body and then snuggling into it.
‘Hi, Mumma,’ she whispered. ‘Is everything okay?’
‘Morning, baby.’ I pressed a kiss into her golden hair. She smelled like strawberries from a body oil she was currently obsessed with.
