‘I emailed Briony when she didn’t reply to your message and asked her to call me. I don’t care if your mum is angry about it any more, I couldn’t just keep waiting.’ Ken’s voice might have been quiet, but his tone was resolute and she could have kissed him. There was no room for messing around any more – they had to get this sorted.
‘That’s great. Have you spoken to her?’
‘She called me just now. That’s why I went outside. She’s going to be there on Monday when your mum sees the consultant again, and she’s going to tell him she wants to donate part of her liver.’
Bex was desperately trying to untangle her feelings about the prospect of seeing Briony again. Part of her had longed for this moment for more than sixteen years. The pain of being separated from her younger sister for so long had been devastating. Briony had been her best friend, her sidekick and closest confidante for so long. There was no way anyone could just break a bond like that without feeling the loss of it. She had sought comfort by reminding herself that the person she was missing had never really existed; the loving sister she’d considered Briony to be was an illusion. It was what had stopped her reaching out on the many occasions when she’d been tempted to try to forgive andforget. After all, it was because of what Briony had done that she’d found true happiness with Matt and their boys. It should have been easy to forgive, but Briony’s betrayal had broken something deep inside Bex that nothing had been able to fix, not even the beautiful life it had opened up to her. The person she’d trusted most in the world, the only one who truly understood what it had felt like to be let down and lied to by their father time and time again, had chosen a fling with her former fiancé over Bex. A man Briony had claimed not even to like.
Bex hadn’t wanted to listen to Briony’s explanation of why she’d done what she done, and she’d dug her heels in when her mother had tried to persuade her to at least hear Briony out. Over the years that followed, every time she’d been tempted to reach out to Briony and let her guard down again, Bex had talked herself out of it and dug her heels in even further instead. Somewhere along the line it had reached the point where too much time had passed to back down, even if she’d wanted to. How was she supposed to explain to her boys what had happened? And how could she trust Briony to become a part of their lives when she was capable of inflicting such pain on someone she’d claimed to love? It hadn’t been an option to risk her sons’ happiness and stability, no matter how much she’d ached to go back in time – to before she’d met Liam – when she and Briony had told each other everything. She knew how much the estrangement had hurt her mum and she hated herself for causing Donna such great pain, but maybe that was the price she had to pay for her own role in what had happened.
Briony had tried to tell her what kind of man Liam was and Bex had been arrogant enough to believe that she was the only one who really knew him, and that she would never fall for a man who was as much like their father as Briony had tried to convince her he was. Except that’s exactly what Bex had done. Pride beforea fall and all that, but she’d certainly been punished for it. None of that made the prospect of seeing Briony again any easier. Things would have been far more straightforward if the only feeling she had for Briony was hatred, but regret and the desperate longing for what they used to be to one another, was all still there in the mix. It would have been much easier to keep trying to pretend that Briony didn’t exist, as she had done for most of the past sixteen years, but she could hardly continue to do that when they came face to face again.
‘Do you really think Mum is going to react any differently than when I offered?’ Bex’s scalp prickled and she tried to push down another unwanted feeling, hating herself all over again for experiencing even a shred of envy that her sister might be the one who could help their mum when she couldn’t.
‘Maybe not at first, but if the three of us band together and stay really united, surely she has to see sense?’
‘God, I hope so.’
‘Me too.’ Ken paused for a moment and then looked directly at Bex. ‘So will you come to see the consultant with us, too and be there when Briony makes the offer?’
‘Of course I will.’ The words made it sound so easy, and nothing in the world would have stopped her being there for her mum and trying to make her see the sense that everyone around her could see except her. But the thought of facing Briony again was already making nausea swirl in her stomach, and she had to swallow hard against it. This wasn’t going to be easy in any sense, but it had to work because it really was their only chance.
10
Bex couldn’t seem to sit still. Every time she tried, she popped back up onto her feet and started to pace. That would have been one thing if she’d been in her own home, but she was round at Rowan and Nathan’s house for dinner, and they must have wondered what on earth she was doing. Rowan’s two children were playing a game with the boys, using the Nintendo Switch linked to a big TV in the lounge, while the four adults were relaxing in the kitchen as the chilli Nathan was making bubbled away, the aroma promising that it was going to be delicious, but Bex had no idea how she was going to sit still for long enough to enjoy it. Her mind was racing overtime and all she could think about was the fact that within days her mother could be facing major surgery, and in the meantime, she was going to have to see Briony again; the only person in the world she’d admit to hating. Whenever her boys said they hated something or someone, Bex would remind them how strong the word hate was. The words of the then vicar of St Jude’s Church, who’d visited Port Agnes primary when she’d been about to leave for secondary school, still stuck in her mind.
‘You should never tell someone you hate them.’ The reverend had stared at the gathered children from over the top of his half-moon spectacles, which had looked far too small for his fleshy face. ‘In the first book of John, chapter three, verse fifteen it says that anyone who hates his brother is a murderer.’
‘Just because they say it, but don’t actually do anything? That’s stupid!’ one of the boys had said and the reverend had pushed his glasses even further down his nose, so that he could stare directly into the boy’s eyes, his voice booming as he responded.
‘What is stupid, James, is ignoring the lessons the Bible offers, and trust me when I say you do so at your own peril.’ The reverend had straightened up then and scanned all the children’s faces. ‘Hating someone is akin to wishing them harm. That kind of animosity towards another person demonstrates a murderous spirit and it’s the sort of emotion that made Cain kill his brother, Abel, out of envy. There is no room for hatred in the heart of Christians, and I don’t want to hear anyone using that word.’
As much as Bex hadn’t ever been a church goer, the vicar’s words had never left her, and she’d always done her best not to hate anyone, preferring to try and identify the reasons why people acted the way they did, and to let things go wherever possible. After all, she couldn’t control the behaviour of other people, only the way she reacted to it. The theory had stood her in good stead through challenging situations and the ups and downs of relationships, never more so than when it came to her own father. He’d been the epitome of a deadbeat dad, even though her mother had done her best to protect both Bex and Briony from the reality. When Bex had been about to give birth to her own first child and had asked her mother why she’d had two children with a man like Jeffrey, Donna’s response had shocked her. Especially when she’d always been convinced that Briony was their father’s favourite.
‘He was amazing when you came along. Totally devoted. It was only after Briony arrived that things started to change. He got back in with some friends he hadn’t seen in years. They were bikers who liked drinking more than they liked working, and all the other guys were having casual relationships, sleeping with whoever took their fancy. Your father saw a lifestyle he thought he should be able to have, so he decided to go for it. I tried to turn a blind eye for a while, because I thought it was best for you girls if we stayed together, but I started to hate myself for putting up with his cheating. Even then it was really hard to make the decision to end things, and I kept hoping he’d go off permanently with one of those women, but he kept coming in and out of our lives instead.’
‘Maybe deep down he realised he’d never do better than you?’
‘I very much doubt that, but what he should have realised was that he had two amazing daughters.’ Her mother had hugged her tightly then. ‘He was just too stupid to see it. He gave it all up and I doubt he’s ever had a meaningful relationship since. I’m the lucky one, because I got to have you and Briony all to myself, and then I met Ken. After what I’d been through, I knew exactly what I wanted and what I wouldn’t stand for, and I’m convinced that’s why I ended up with such a good man.’
‘You really did.’
‘And so have you, except you, my girl, are far smarter than me, and you didn’t have to spend years married to a frog before you married your prince.’
‘I almost did… I can’t bear the thought that Matt might change his mind one day about wanting this life we’re building together, like Jeffrey did.’ It wasn’t the first time Bex had thought about the possibility of Matt changing his mind, but it was the first time she’d voiced it out loud.
‘Oh darling, that’s never going to happen.’ Donna had huggedher again. ‘Matt worships the ground you walk on, that much is obvious, and even if you’d never had children, he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but with you.’
‘I find it hard to believe that. After all, the men in my life haven’t been very reliable on that front, what with Jeffrey and then Liam.’ Bex had stopped calling her father ‘Dad’ years before. She’d tried everything to make him love her the way she’d desperately needed him to, despite all the times when he hadn’t turned up as scheduled to see them. Or when he’d put them in danger with his selfish behaviour, dragging them with him to dingy pubs, where they’d be shoved in a corner while he disappeared with the latest woman to take his fancy. He’d also left them in the care of people he barely knew, and it had been scary and dangerous, and when Bex had finally found the courage to tell her mother what was going on, Donna had put a stop to unsupervised contact. Jeffrey had turned up even less frequently after that and then, on one occasion just after Briony’s ninth birthday, he’d turned up at the house, demanding to be let in. Having claimed he needed to use the toilet, he’d gone up into the bedrooms and stolen everything of value that was small enough to stuff in his pockets, including all of Briony’s birthday money.
After that, Briony had refused to see him at all and had stopped calling him Dad or referring to him as her father. Bex had clung to the hope that Jeffrey might finally change for longer. But the more she’d tried to make him love her, the more he’d seemed to prefer Briony, who showed absolutely no interest in his existence. Eventually Bex had given up on him too. She’d been certain she’d come to terms with the past, but her first pregnancy had dragged up a lot of feelings, and Briony had been at the centre of most of them.
What had happened between her and Liam had made Bex doubt Matt in ways he didn’t deserve. The strands of that kind ofbetrayal had ways of reaching into parts of her life they had no direct relationship to. Just because two people she’d loved with all her heart had shown they were capable of hurting her in ways she’d never imagined possible, it didn’t mean Matt would ever do the same thing. The trouble was, having been betrayed like that, it became almost impossible to trust her own judgement. She didn’t think Matt would ever let her down, but she knew she couldn’t be 100 percent sure, and it had taken the shine off the build-up to their wedding. Even making it as different as possible to the one she’d planned with Liam hadn’t fully relieved the nagging doubt that Matt might change his mind before they got to the little chapel in Las Vegas where they’d decided to exchange their vows.
Worse than that was how it had made her react when she and Matt had decided to start a family, and she’d been left feeling incredibly vulnerable after giving birth to their first child. It wasn’t just Bex who Matt could let down any more, now there was Henry too, and the thought terrified her. It tainted the early weeks and months she’d experienced as a new mother, because she was constantly on edge. Maybe it wasn’t fair to blame Briony for how she was feeling, or even Liam, but there was no denying that what they’d done had changed her in ways she wished it hadn’t. They’d destroyed the part of her that had been able to trust someone wholly and completely, despite her father’s behaviour. Perhaps she’d been a naïve idiot, but that didn’t stop her missing that version of herself.
Donna had been so thrilled at the prospect of becoming a grandmother, but when she’d held Henry in her arms for the first time, tears had rolled down her face. Bex had asked her what was wrong and, at first, she’d tried to brush it off, but eventually she’d been forced to admit the truth.
‘It just breaks my heart that Briony isn’t here with us, and thatwe’ll never be able to share a Christmas with her and your beautiful little family.’ Donna had sniffed hard against the tears and forced a smile so wobbly that her chin had trembled. ‘Ignore me, I’m just being silly, it’s all the emotion. I’m just so thrilled he’s here safely and we’re so lucky to have him.’
