‘You’re not seeing her again before you come back?’
Urgh. This was one of the downsides of video calling. His face had probably already given him away. ‘No. It’s probably for the best if I don’t.’
Norina frowned. ‘I thought maybe you liked her.’
Ben shifted position and sighed. After a long while, he said, ‘I do … But it turns out she’s engaged to someone else. Not much I can do but let her go back to her life, and I’ll go back to mine.’
‘Och, that’s too bad.’
‘Yeah …’
‘Uncle Ben!’ A small face appeared on the screen, one with large glasses and an even bigger gap in her bottom front teeth than when he’d left. ‘Look! My second tooth fell out!’ She brandished the item in question so close to the screen that all Ben could see was a blurry white lump.
He grimaced. ‘Wonderful!’
‘That means the tooth fairy is going to come tonight! Do you think we can catch her? I’d really like to have a fairy of my own!’
He did his best to keep a straight face. There was something wonderful about Willow’s unwavering optimism, given all she’d been through. Sometimes he thought he was certain to learn more from her as she grew up than she’d learn from him. ‘I don’t think we can. I mean, it wouldn’t be fair to keep her locked up. And if you did, nobody gets visits from the tooth fairy any more. Not even you!’
‘Good point,’ Willow said seriously. ‘I’m going to go and put this under my pillow right now, just to make sure everything’s ready for tonight.’ And she disappeared from view before he could yell, ‘Bye … Love you …’
‘That child,’ Norina said, shaking her head. ‘Anyway, I was going to say I’m sorry that things didn’t work out with Alice. But this week has been good for you, so it wasn’t all for nothing.’
‘It has? How?’
‘I’ve heard the “old” you on the phone since you left. Full of energy, enjoying life. I’d started to wonder where that guy had gone. It’s been long enough now since your sister passed to maybe see a glimpse of him again. You know, you came home to Invergarrig to be Willow’s guardian, but that doesn’t mean you have to put your own life on hold. You have to find some way to stop punishing yourself for what happened to Cat.’
Ben exhaled. ‘That’s what Alice said to me.’
‘Memory or no memory, that girl has her head screwed on right.’
‘I know you’re both right, but I can’t get away from the fact that if I hadn’t been absent so much, if I hadn’t jumped ship and moved away at the first opportunity, things might have been different for Cat.’
Norina gave him a sympathetic look. ‘It probably did have some impact, but you can’t carry the burden of what happened to her all by yourself. I never did like my brother-in-law – warned my sister she shouldn’t have married him – but he was the key player, the culprit, in this scenario. And although she stood up to him, did her best to protect the two of you, I never understood why your mum didn’t leave him, so I suppose she had a part to play too. And Cat made her own choices. It wasn’t you who put the needle in her arm, Ben.’
‘No, but I feel like I set the stage so it was easy for her to do.’
‘You only remember the fact that you left home at eighteen,but you conveniently forget all the times you were home, all the times you made her clean up her act, or gave her money for rent and food, even making her do a will for Willow. I lost count of the girlfriends who got fed up and walked away because you always put Cat first. You werealwayshelping your sister.’
‘But not that last time, not when she really needed it, when it might have made all the difference.’
‘We’d tried for years to help her, and you know thatnotsetting boundaries only did more harm than good. Even if you had given her that money, it wouldn’t have changed anything. It just would have delayed it.’
He looked at his aunt bleakly. ‘That night, when she came to see me to ask for the cash, she got so angry. It was the last time I saw her.’ His throat tightened. ‘She told me I was just likehim… my father.’ He refused to call that man ‘Dad’.
‘I want you to get that out of your head, you hear me? You are nothing like that waste of space! Ben Robertson, you are a good and kind and loyal man. Willow is lucky to have you as her stand-in father.’
Ben looked away, aware that his eyes were stinging. He trusted Norina’s opinion and hearing her confirm what Alice had told him made something break free inside him.
‘We all feel responsible for Cat,’ Norina said huskily. ‘We all wish we could have done more, but in the end, the choice to change was in her power, not ours.’
‘I know,’ Ben whispered, and for the first time, he felt the truth in those words, rather than just telling himself they were right.
‘And as for Willow … You can see for yourself how much that little girl adores you.If there’s one thing I’m certain of, it’s that you’re never going to let her down.’
‘Thanks,’ he said, swallowing a lump in his throat, and then, because it was getting all too emotional for him, he added, ‘Anyway … I’d better go and find out about train times. I’ll call you again when I’ve got more details.’
‘Aye, you’d better,’ his aunt said, her expression more playful than her tone. ‘My car is still stuck in Glasgow, and I’d really like to know when I can have it back!’
