Not mine.
I took a deep breath. ‘Look –’
‘Cassie is my mum,’ Patrick said quietly. ‘She’s my mum, Jessy.’
Oh. I had not expected that.
I hated to think how I must’ve looked. Shocked. Confused. Dumbstruck.
Perhaps that was why Patrick breathed a laugh, turning away from me to look out the window. ‘Look, my childhood wasn’t great. My mum wasn’t great. Always a different guy, disappearing off for days at a time when she was convinced she could start a new life with him … sobbing and needing me to comfort her whenever it went to shit.’
I could tell by the look in his eye and the tension in his voice that it cost Patrick to reveal this part of himself, yet he went on speaking. ‘Part of why These Exiles was so great was because … well, the music was an escape. I think I told you, once, that it was supposed to be about the music.’
When I spoke, my throat was inexplicably dry. ‘Yeah.’
‘That’s because the music was always better than being at home. At the bedsit, or the room she’d managed to get, or some random bloke’s house.’ Patrick’s smile was wistful. ‘I’m not an idiot, I know she didn’t have it easy. I thought, when These Exiles took off – I mean, so many of our problems hadbeen because we’d never had a home, you know? Somewhere that was ours. Somewhere we couldn’t get evicted from, or moved on from. I mean, she’d invite a guy back and he’d move in and then, somehow, we’d be the ones who had to leave.’
My lungs tightened. ‘That … that sounds really hard.’ After bonding over our absent fathers, I had just kind of assumed Patrick’s relationship with his mother was something he’d never want to talk about. And yet here we were.
‘It was. And I thought it would be easy,’ Patrick said as he turned to me, his expression warm and yet somehow lost in the past. ‘Easy, once I had money. I mean, money would solve, like, almost all those problems, right?’
‘Right,’ I found myself saying.
Patrick’s smile faded. ‘Wrong.’
He leaned against the director’s chair, and I fought back the instinct to step closer to him, to comfort him.
I wasn’t sure he would want my comfort. Not after the way I had pretty much accused him of lying.
I waited for him to continue instead, clasping my hands tightly together.
Patrick sighed deeply. ‘I bought her a house – and when she asked for money for a car, for renovations, for decorating, I thought nothing of it. It was easy to hand it over. She was my mum. I wanted to look after her.’
‘But something changed.’ I could tell from the pain in his voice.
He nodded slowly. ‘Yeah. It didn’t happen all at one, but bit by bit. Soon she was never calling just to catch up with me, it was always to ask for money. She started taking out credit cards and forwarding the bills for me to pay. My accountanthad to have a word with me, the money I was spending – the money she was spending – wasn’t sustainable, even for me. But Cassie … Cassie doesn’t like being told no.’ Patrick took another deep breath. ‘She refused to hear me when I tried to explain, so I just stopped trying. Cancelled the cards, stopped paying the bills, ignored the last notices. I refused to answer her calls, hoping she would get the message. But then she started turning up at the studio. At concerts. Everywhere I went, she was there, asking my team, my band, to see me. When that didn’t work, she went to the newspapers –’ His voice, strained but steady up until then, broke. And my heart broke with it.
No one deserved their own mother selling stories.
‘I’m so sorry, Patrick.’ A half sob formed in my throat, his pain was so potent. ‘I didn’t know. I’ve never seen those stories –’ It was true. I’d never heard anything about Patrick’s mother, or anything she’d sold to the tabloids about him.
‘Gotta love an injunction. I mean, I know loads of awful people use it to hide shit, but it kept her lies out of the newspapers. Derek really saved my skin with that one.’ Patrick’s low laugh rang hollow. ‘She stopped hounding me for a little while, but ever since you and I started up this whole –’ he gestured to the space between us – ‘fake relationship thing, she’s been back to her usual antics. Maybe she thought being in love would soften me back up.’
I blinked, hardly able to take it in. His mother – his own mum, using him like this. Not interested in him, or his dreams … just what Patrick could give her?
Deep sorrow rose within me for him, making an ache in my chest reopen at the thoughts of my own mother. I wanted to reach out and take his hand.
‘I even applied for a restraining order a while ago.’ He spoke quietly, his jaw tight. ‘What sort of a guy takes out a restraining order against his own mother?’ Guilt racked his voice, like he wasn’t sure whether he hated his mother or still loved her.
Now there was a question I would never ask.
I swallowed. ‘It … it doesn’t sound like she was acting much like a mum. But maybe she’s changed, maybe seeing you all over the papers again has stirred up some –’
‘No.’ The syllable was absolute.
He was probably right. But my own grief from losing Mum made it hard, hearing someone talk about willingly cutting their parent off.
I continued delicately. ‘I’m not saying reconcile with her tomorrow –’
