‘Um, well, I was really hoping you could help us with some legal advice,’ I said. ‘There’s this whole situation at work, and… no.’
I closed my eyes for a second. It was a cold, clear morning, but it felt like that night in the garden with Jonah, when he’d told me he loved me and two pathways had snaked away into the night from me as I stood frozen, caught between grief and joy in equal measure.
‘I need a lot of things,’ I said. ‘But the most important one… I need to know why, Chess. I need to know why you – why you abandoned me.’
I opened my eyes again. She was staring at me, a stricken, almost horrified look in her eyes.
‘Abandonedyou?’ she said at last.
‘I said some awful things to you,’ I said. ‘I know I did. And I totally understand that you needed some space. I’d need some space too, under the circumstances. But all I wanted to do was make it right, and you were gone. I needed you and you weregone.’
I hated the way my voice sounded, high-pitched on the last word, the petulant cry of a child, the child I’d been so insistent I wasn’t.
If Chess had noticed, though, she didn’t say anything. She was still staring at me, as if I’d spoken in some other language and she needed to translate it in her mind before she responded.
‘Then why didn’t you call?’ she asked.
‘What?!’
I had to clutch at the edge of the kitchen bench to keep myself tethered to reality. ‘Are you seriously asking whyIdidn’t callyou?’ I demanded. ‘I tried! So hard! I calledconstantlythose first few weeks! And then I tried to give you space, because that’s what you asked for, but… I wrote you all those letters!’
‘And I wrote back,’ she said. ‘I know it took me a while to be ready, but I wrote back and I told you, if you needed me, you could call.’
‘That is not what you fucking said!’
The coffee machine started making an ominous whirring, grinding sound, but I ignored it. ‘You said that you needed to work out what your life looked like without me in it!’ I exclaimed. ‘You basically said,ugh, fine, call me if you need bail money!’
‘Sadie, no!’
Chess crossed the kitchen in two steps and put her hands on my shoulders. ‘No,’ she repeated, looking into my eyes. ‘That is not what I said at all.’
I pressed my tongue hard to the roof of my mouth. I was so, so close to crying.
‘I said I needed to work out what my life looked like when it didn’t revolve entirely around you, not that I wanted a life without you in it,’ she said. ‘Everything in my life has been about you for so long, Sadie. Ever since we were kids, it’s been baked into me, bone deep.Look after your sister. Protect your sister. Everything’ll be all right if you can just make sure your sister’s okay.’
Her fingers were digging into my shoulders, almost painfully hard. ‘But those things you said to me were absolutely right,’ shewent on. ‘It was a kick in the guts, but you were right. I’ve been so focused on looking after you that I’ve spent all these years treating you like a child, when you’re… God, you’re so much more of a functional adult than I am.’
‘No, I’m not.’ I sniffed.
‘You’ve got a whole life here,’ she said. ‘I could see it in your letters. You’ve built this whole world for yourself, a whole, happy, complete life, and… and I think I was stopping you from doing that before. My world revolved around you, so I made yours revolve around me.’
A tear slipped down her cheek. ‘The last thing I wanted was space from you, but after you went through with the wedding, I realised that was what you needed. I needed to give you a chance to live your own life. To be the grown woman that you are, without me forever treating you like a child. To work out what you really want, without me interfering. Because I loved you so much it was smothering you.’
‘Chessie, no,’ I whispered. ‘No.’
She let go of my shoulder with one hand so she could wipe her tears away. ‘I… It took me a lot to write that letter,’ she said quietly. ‘I thought – well, I’m still a mess, but I could see from your letters that you were flourishing. You kept saying that you missed me but I thought… I thought maybe it was habit, or guilt, or something. So I wrote… well… if there was still room for me – still a place for me – if you still needed me in your life, still actually really, truly needed me…’
‘No. No, no, no, Chessie.’
‘And then you didn’t call.’ Her voice cracked. ‘You stopped sending me letters—’
‘I didn’t think you wanted them anymore!’
‘—and then your birthday… God, I had so many plans for your birthday. I wanted to see you so badly, but you hadn’t written andyou hadn’t called, and I—’ She swiped her wrist across her eyes. ‘I completely chickened out. All I could make myself do was send you that wine and hope that even though I wasn’t brave enough to call you, you might call me, even just to tell me that you got it, but—’
I flung my arms around her, as tight as I could. ‘Chess, I’m so sorry,’ I gasped into her hair. ‘I thought… I thought… I’ve got a fucking PhD in English andI read everything all wrong!’
She didn’t reply. She was too busy crying, her face pressed into my shoulder, and the joy of her being here and the grief of the past few months were all mixed together, and it was absolutely, deeply, profoundly eucatastrophic.
