Rose giggled, which was the desired outcome.
“How are you feeling?”
“I’m okay. I just want to get it over now, or at least get to next weekend because Uncle Owen’s got my favourite poet in Cases to do a talk and a signing.”
“I heard about that. You excited for it?”
She nodded enthusiastically. “Can Lucy come?”
“If she wants to. I think she has a cricket match so she’ll need to choose.” She couldn’t make her mind up, so it would be decision made at the eleventh hour but I suspected cricket would win.
“She’s really good at cricket.” Rose followed me outside. “She’s just bowled Uncle Eli out.”
“Really?”
Rose nodded again, very seriously. “Overarm, hit the wicket. Uncle Eli swore. I think Lucy liked that best.”
“I bet she did.”
The cricket match had taken a pause when we got outside, the barbecue in the process of being obliterated with every man for themselves. My sons were arguing over corn on the cob, which I didn’t intervene with, they could work it out for themselves. Lucy was having a picnic with Eliza and Orla now, the cricket ball next to her, and Vic was talking to Vanessa, in their own little world, probably moaning about the decorating that Jacks and I never got round to doing.
“This is nice, isn’t it.” Marie sprang up next to me. “Being here for the weekend.”
“It is.” I nodded, attacking a rib that Dad had done a really good job of marinating. “I think we’ll all get out here more often now, without the London house.”
“Which is how it should be. It’s only an hour and a half and there’s more space here and more for the kids to do, and you grown ups. I can’t believe you’re all grown ups with children of your own. Now we can watch them have revenge on our behalf.” She chuckled, only slightly evilly.
“We weren’t that bad.”
“Oh, you were. I wouldn’t have changed any of it though, as long as I don’t have to live it again.” Another laugh.
“How was it handing the keys over?” I hadn’t really spoken to her since.
“Easier than I thought. The dad likes gardening so Rose’s plant will be looked after. It didn’t feel like our home anymore when I showed them round. The building was ready for someone else, another family.”
Her words resonated with a memory. “You said that before. I asked you if you and Dad would always live there, even when we’d moved out and had families of our own. You said that you’d know when it was time to leave it.”
I watched her as she looked about the scene as the sun started to set, grandkids and children sprawled out across the garden, laughter and chatter amongst the midges.
“It was time, Max. Time to walk into a new era.”
I didn’t respond, seeing everything through her eyes. Her family.
Our world.
EPILOGUE
It was almost too hot to be walking, which meant Rose had to walk slowly. She had to walk slowish anyway, which was both frustrating and a useful excuse because it meant she had more time to concentrate on daydreaming, which she knew she was doing far too much. Books and boys. Boys more now they weren’t as irritating and some had learned how to wash and smell better. There was a boy in her tutor group who she kept noticing, and he was sometimes looking at her too. He was cute and liked music, usually going into the music department at lunchtimes where he was learning to play guitar.
That might change though now they were going into another year. More grown up. No longer the youngest in school. She felt excited about it because it was that time of year when you bought new stationery and school shoes and everything seemed shiny and full of possibilities. There was something to get through before that though.
It had been the most wonderful afternoon, enough that she almost thought that it was worth having to have heart surgery if her family made sure she had everything she asked for right now. Her favourite writer, at the bookstore where she’d happily move in, afternoon tea with some of her friends which madethem feel like they were adults rather than twelve-year-olds and she’d managed to wrangle some freedom walking home, even though it was only fifteen minutes and the route she walked to school most days. Rose was hoping that once she’d had her procedure, she’d have some more freedom again and her parents would stop being so helicopter-like.
She’d asked her Aunt Payton if her husband, Owen, who owned the bookstore, could arrange a signing for her favourite poet, Matt Goodfellow, who’d written her favourite book,The Final Year,which was a verse novel; Owen had done it. Rose had thought he would do anyway, because Owen loved how she liked reading better than anything else, but it’d happened as soon as her dad’s brothers and sisters had found out about her operation.
She wasn’t worried about the operation. There’d been a lot for her to read about it, and she’d spoken to Shay, her dad’s cousin who was doctor and he’d explained a lot of the technical things. She’d felt better about asking him questions rather than the surgeon who’d never smiled, and she’d been able to ask them without her parents there, who were panicking about this more than her, and she was the one having a weird thing put in a vein.
The Last Yearhad a character in it with a heart condition too, only that hadn’t ended very well. Rose knew her surgery was highly likely to close the hole in her heart and she would be absolutely fine. Nothing to worry about. Just like having a tooth out, not that she’d had a tooth out ever.
