I held her gaze intently. “Will you forgive me for being an idiot?”
“Yes, I will. Seeing those shots on the screen showed me how genuinely you love me. I’ve thought a lot about how you saying I was a bore was something that was spoon-fed to you, not your actual opinion. But that still really hurt me, Tim. It was too close to what Perry had said about me for years, and I hadn’t realized how much I needed to heal from what he did.”
I’d really like to punch Perry for the hundredth time.
“That makes sense, and I’m just so sorry. I never want to hurt you again.”
“Well, you might, as you are a man after all,” she said, chuckling. “And, Tim, you need to do one last thing to keep me.”
“What’s that, Tabs?”
“Do not bloody sell your business, you silly man.”
I roared with laughter, which made her sigh with joy.
“Do you still love me?” I asked.
“Yes, I still love you.”
Oh, thank fuck. “So you’re coming to live with me?”
“Is that an invitation?”
As an answer, I reached out and pulled her hard into me. A rustle sounded from behind us, and two heads popped up, holding cameras.
The two cameramen grimaced apologetically. Swinging Tabs around, I put my back to them to shield her face. Filled with love for her, I put two fingers gently under her chin and kissed her tenderly, like it was only us. Like we had all the time in the world. Like we weren’t being filmed.
“I want to tell you more,” I said. “There’s that pub just around the corner where we can hide.”
56
Tabitha
He tugged medown a cobbled lane, then into Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, rebuilt in 1667, a tangle of stone nooks and dank cellars.
“We can’t get away from the old shit,” he said, laughing. “But it’s dark, and no one’s watching us.”
We fronted up to the bar, and he bought us gin and tonics and carried them to a booth nestled into the stone wall.
Once we were seated, he pulled me under his arm, and we took a sip of our drinks.
“What else did you want to tell me, Tim?” I asked. Tucked under his arm, pressed against the side of his body, a euphoric tingling spread through my body. I was right where I was supposed to be.
“Basically, another way I’ve fucked up. You know what I realized this week? While I was getting everything together for the advert?”
“I can’t imagine how much you spent on that, Tim.” My heart nearly burst at the thought of someone going to that extreme for me.
“Did it work?” He held my gaze intensely, and I melted.
“Yes.”
“Cheap at twice the price.”
I laughed, and he went on, “It made me reflect on how much energy I’d wasted covering up that Mum was declining, putting on a show for Amy, hoping Mum would keep up the ruse.”
He took a breath, and I squeezed his hand. “While I was doing all that, I wasn’t allowing myself to experience how I was actually losing Mum, how she’s slipping away from me. I dealt with it when she didn’t know the way to the shops, tried to climb the school fence, left the water on to boil. But I haven’t let myselffeelthe grief.
“Last night, I took her to the public pool, and she smiled, because she was so happy she was in the water, so happy when she looked up at the sky. You know how it is when it’s dusk in the Cotswolds, and the water is cold and the air is crisp, and it’s so beautiful? And the smile on her face was the one I saw when she returned from a trip with her old wild swimming group. Then she turned to me, and I could see it. She didn’t really know who I was. I was familiar, but she couldn’t quite place me. I think she thought I was a young man who often swam in the lane next to her. Then her face relaxed, her eyes had a spark of recognition, and she said my name. She remembered I was her son. But there was a flash in between those two things. She realized she’d forgotten me, and she was very afraid.”
