Joe paused. ‘I get that too,’ he said softly. ‘I’m not completely insensitive … even if I did act like an insensitive prat.’
‘You didn’t.’ Sarah jumped to his defence, though she had thought he was being insensitive.
‘I think I probably did, and I apologise,’ Joe said with another intake of breath. ‘The thing is … You know my parents split when I was a kid, right?’
Of course they had. She hadn’t really thought about that.
‘You know what that’s like. You’ve been there. Stuff happens, you get over it. The worst part for me, though, wasn’t them separating,’ he went on, ‘it was the acrimony afterwards. The arguing didn’t stop, it bloody well escalated. I don’t want Ollie caught up in the middle of that scenario, Sarah. I care about him too.’
Recalling how his parents had never really been there for him – for his sister either, who’d eventually lost her way and taken her own life, which had almost crucified him – Sarah swallowed hard. ‘I know you do,’ she said emotionally. He was too natural with him for it ever to be considered forced.
‘So can we work on it, do you think? Our future?’ he asked hopefully.
‘Yes.’ She smiled, and the gloom she’d felt descending on her at the thought of rattling around the empty house on her own lifted. She felt comfortable with Joe, as if she didn’t have to make massive efforts to be anything but who she was, and a huge part of her identity was being Ollie’s mum. Joe was hands-on with him. She’d seen how much he cared about him. He’d accepted without question that they came as a package, that more often than not when they went out together it would be the three of them. Thinking she might have lost him, she’d realised she didn’t want a future without him.
‘Great,’ he breathed, relieved. ‘I promise I’ll try to be more supportive.’
‘And I’ll try to be less reactive,’ Sarah promised too.
‘Unless you have to be,’ Joe suggested, letting her know that he also got that sometimes she might have to react, for her son’s sake. ‘So, how’s it going this morning?’
‘Okay … ish. I’ve just spoken to Laura, actually.’ Sarah tried to sound matter-of-fact. ‘I, um …’ Pausing, she blew out a sigh, realising she couldn’t tell it any different to how it was. ‘To be honest, I think I might have overreacted a teeny bit,’ she admitted.
‘Ah.’ Joe sounded amused. ‘How so?’
‘I heard Ollie chatting to himself earlier. He has an invisible friend, it seems. A superhero who rescues starfish.’
‘Right,’ he processed. ‘That’s not a problem, is it?’
‘No,’ she assured him. ‘It’s just … he said he was a lost little boy, that Laura had lost him and that he was trying to find him and take him home. He also said he’d seen him in a photograph. He was worried about telling me. Said he wasn’t supposed to, and I thought …’
‘That Laura had told him not to?’ Joe picked up.
‘Yes. Exactly.’ Sarah breathed out another sigh, one of relief that Joe did appear to understand. ‘I was really concerned, to be honest. I mean, it didn’t sound like something Ollie would invent.’
‘So what did Laura say? You asked her about it, I take it?’
‘I did. I felt I had to.’
‘And?’ Joe sounded wary, but hopefully for the same reasons she did this time.
‘She said she’d told him a story about a lost little boy, wanting to impress on him that superheroes didn’t all have to have superpowers, or something like that, but that she hadn’t told him not to tell me.’
‘Sounds feasible,’ he said.
It did. Also a good life lesson for Ollie, teaching him that ordinary people could be heroes, but still something was niggling away at her.
‘And the photo?’ he asked.
‘I suppose it’s possible that he dreamed it up, or else saw a photo at Laura’s house.’ The way he’d described it, though … he’d seemed so specific. Sarah just wasn’t sure.
‘Could be,’ he agreed. ‘Children’s imaginations tend to embellish the facts, don’t they?’
‘I suppose,’ she mused, but still she wasn’t convinced. Ollie had never kept things from her in the past, yet he’d seemed positive he shouldn’t tell her. And would he really invent a photograph?
Sixteen
Laura
