It’s good to see him laugh. ‘I love you,’ he says and warmth creeps into his expression for the first time this morning.
‘You’d better,’ I say, smiling back.
I usually shop at Sainsbury’s but for some reason I drive straight past it and head to the big Tesco in Orpington. And then I drive straight past that, make a few turns down side roads, and eventually pull the car to a stop on the other side of the street from a row of 1930s semi-detached houses. The one on the right, the one with the gardenia-painted render and rickety porch is my mother’s.
I pull the handbrake and kill the ignition. It takes me a while before I turn my head to look at the house. I have no idea if someone is inside or not.
I’ve been thinking about the letter Mum wrote to me. It’s still tucked into the pouch at the back of my bullet journal. I checked. I must’ve moved it from last year’s book and put it into this year’s but, even so, I could find no hint in the pages of either that I had contacted my mother. Other Jess has remained steadfast.
Is she right? Has she made the right choice? I feel my resolve slipping and that scares me. It hurt to shut the door on her, but it was way more painful while it was still open.
What if this is the time she pulls it all together, that she finally sticks to it? What then? I’d never know. I’d miss out. And I don’t even know if I’m happy or sad about that. It’s all so confusing.
My fingers are on the plastic of the key fob, ready to turn it, when the front door opens. I freeze, too shocked even to hunkerdown. I have no idea what I’m going to do if she sees me sitting here. All I know is, in this moment, I’m in no way prepared to talk to her.
But it seems I don’t have to worry. The person who emerges is a grey-haired man in his fifties, not that tall, a little round around the middle. He’s yelling back over his shoulder at someone inside the house. Has Mum sold it? Am I sitting outside some stranger’s house, stalking them instead? I begin to think I’m right when a teenage boy, maybe seventeen or eighteen, follows him, laughing, then a third person joins them.
It’s my mother. She’s smiling. She’s talking to the boy, and then to the man. They seem comfortable with each other. And she seems … normal. Not drunk. I mean, it’s hard to tell from a distance but I’m pretty good at spotting the signs. It gives me hope. It also terrifies me.
They don’t see me, so I watch them having a conversation about whatever they’re having a conversation about, the man standing with one hand on the half-open gate. And then suddenly they’re moving, walking down the road with purpose, as if they have somewhere to go, something fun to do. They look like a family.
It feels as if an icy javelin shoots through the top of the car, through the space between my shoulder and my collarbone, and right down through my torso. I suppose, if this is the man Luke told me about in the future, the man she ends up marrying, theyarea family.
Another one that I am not part of.
I turn my gaze straight ahead, twist the key in the ignition, and take myself off to Tesco to buy some steak.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
JESS
Luke got me a beautiful anniversary gift. Seven years is wool apparently. Don’t ask me why. As well as a lovely bracelet, he got me this beautiful sort-of cardigan, sort-of wrap thing from Etsy that you can wear in different ways, depending on how you put your arms in the sleeves. It looks like something Claire fromOutlanderwould wear but in a soft pale green rather than a muddy brown or grey. I love it.
Luke is out longer than I expect. It turns out his brother needed help measuring his bathroom because he’s going to do a refit. What puzzles me is that he has a partner who is quite capable of holding one end of a tape measure, so I have no idea why he needed Luke to go over there and do it. He probably didn’t remember it was our anniversary, and Luke probably didn’t remind him, not wanting him to feel bad.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the fact that my husband is the guy that everyone can depend on, but then I remember the weariness in his expression this morning over breakfast. Matt is only three years younger than Luke. Surely, he could have worked it out by himself? But I think Luke’s family have gotused to him being in big-brother mode, charging in to the rescue, sorting out their problems for them, and I’m starting to wonder if they ask too much of him.
It gets me thinking about his professional life too, taking over the business from his dad. Is that what Luke wants, really? Or is it because it’s what his father wants? As I wash the spinach for a bacon, mushroom and spinach salad, I mull over the situation. I know it wasn’t exactly like this last time we lived these years, because Luke didn’t have these side projects, he wasn’t renovating houses, losing himself in original features and dreams of family homes, but does that mean he wasn’t as frustrated with the day-to-day work of Harris & Sons? Is this something else I missed?
After we’ve eaten our steak dinner and tidied away as much as we can be bothered, Luke and I snuggle up on the sofa with a glass of red wine each and start watching one of their big action film hits of the previous summer. We’ve just got through the credits, when I reach for the remote control and hit the pause button.
I turn to Luke. ‘Are you happy?’
He blinks and looks at me as if I just asked him if his leg fell off. ‘Of course I am! What do you mean?’
‘It’s just … I was thinking about what we were talking about this morning over breakfast. I know you love working with your dad, and there have been plans for years for you to take over the business, but I don’t see you get excited about that the way I can see you get excited about doing up your own houses, selling them on. Wouldn’t you rather be doing that full-time than giving it up?’
Luke looks as if I’ve just punched him in the face. Talk abouthitting the nail on the head. But he doesn’t seem very pleased about it.
‘I know your dad likes having you there because you’re good – you keep an eye on things, you keep the standards high – but even if Warren isn’t a great second in command, it doesn’t mean you and your dad can’t find someone who is. That would leave you free to do what you love.’
Hope flares in his eyes and then dies again just as quickly. ‘It’s fine. I don’t mind stepping up for the family.’
Luke would never regret supporting his family, but I’ve had the benefit of seeing our life play out two different ways. ‘Of course, I know that’s true, but I’ve never seen you as happy at work as when you’re trying to source the right age of fireplace for a property or when you come home and show me the pictures of the parquet floor you found underneath a carpet.’
‘Jess … It’s fine.’ He’s starting to sound a little irritated now.
‘But—’
