‘I’m so sorry Dad said that to you, sweetie. But he’s wrong. He and I split up because we weren’t working. It was nothing to do with Josh.’ I kneel in front of her and take her holiday-brown hands in mine. They remind me, fleetingly, of summers past, of ice creams and sandpits and dancing through water fountains.
She nods thoughtfully. ‘I readGraveyard Hearton the plane.’
I swallow. ‘What did you think?’
‘I think Josh wishes you’d never broken up.’
I feel my stomach roll over as she holds my gaze.
‘What about you?’ Emma says.
‘What about me?’
‘Do you wish you’d never broken up?’
‘No. Because then I wouldn’t have you. I wouldn’t swap the last eighteen years for anything, darling.’ I’m surprised, as I tell her this, that a sentence can be truer than anything I’ve ever said, yet still feel like a lie.
‘Do you still love him?’
I meet her lagoon-blue eyes, feeling my breath buckle.
‘God, you do.’
‘It’s complicated,’ I whisper.
A few moments pass.
‘And sad,’ she says eventually.
‘Yes,’ I say, because I only want to be honest with her now.
After that, we just sit together for a while, holding hands in the magnolia hush of my bedroom. The one I used to share with Oliver.
Soon after my father’s funeral, Oliver started sleeping in the box room across the landing. He said this was because he knew he snored. But I wondered if it was all related to our struggleto conceive. What it had done to our sex life. The unexpressed resentment, the ego-blow.
All issues we could have discussed in therapy, if Oliver had given it more than two sessions before declaring it to be a waste of time and money. He’d been stiff and uncommunicative throughout, proving he was far more emotionally buttoned-up than I’d ever realised.
I’ve been wanting to confide in Emma about all this, but now I’m not sure. Might she start to question my entire relationship with Oliver – and perhaps then hers, too?
‘I love you, Mum.’
My heart jolts me back to her. ‘I love you too.’
71.
Rachel
November 2023
‘Rachel?’
I sit up. It is the middle of the night. Darkness is at high tide.
‘Josh?’
‘I need you.’
‘I’m here. I’m here. What’s wrong?’
