“Have them tow the car to a garage, then let me know where you are. I’ll come straight to the garage to get the stuff from the car, and then we can go on to Jaimie’s for the rest, okay? And try not to worry, okay? Everything will be all right.”
The garage people were lovely to me, making me a cup of coffee and offering several more, letting me wait in their cosy reception area. Even so, I had never been so glad to see anyone as I was to see Mark when he finally turned up.
“Sorry it’s taken so long. I got here as fast as I could.”
I hadn’t seen Mark since the funeral a few weeks previously. His eyes were dark shadowed, tired looking. It didn’t look as if he’d slept much since then either. Now, here he was, having to drive up to Ely to rescue me.
“I’m sure this is the very last thing you wanted to do today. Thanks so much.”
“I don’t imagine it’s the best day of your life either,” he said. “Come on, let’s just get it over with. Everything’ll seem better when you’re back in Dalston.”
“Think so?”
“I know so.”
We got on with transferring everything from my poor broken car. Mark frowned when he saw my grandmother’s chair.
“Your gran’s chair,” he said, loading it up. “You weren’t going to take that to the dump?”
“I was in a panic.”
“Understandable. But I’m glad the chair escaped. Maybe I could help restore it? There must be some YouTube videos on chair restoration.”
Somehow I was pretty sure Grace wouldn’t be impressed with that idea. Come to think of it, she probably wouldn’t be keen on Mark helping me out like this at all, being that she and Jaimie were such close friends.
“I hope this won’t get you in trouble,” I said as we drove towards Jaimie’s house.
Mark shrugged. “It’s not a problem,” he said, and I hoped that was true.
I wanted to offer Mark a cup of tea at Jaimie’s, but I didn’t, because it didn’t feel like my house any longer. If it ever really had. So we just got straight down to it. And when Jaimie turned up—hours earlier than expected—I was very glad we had.
“Mark,” he said, getting out of his car. “I didn’t expect to see you.”
“Hi, Jaimie. We’re almost done. Want to go and have a final check around, Beth?”
Jaimie called after me nastily, “Make sure you haven’t taken anything of mine.”
“Hey, Beth’s not going to take anything of yours, mate,” I heard Mark say in my defence. “She wouldn’t do that. Let’s try to make this as pain-free as possible, shall we?”
I toured the house, checking for anything I’d forgotten, mentally saying goodbye as I went, peeping into the girls’ bedrooms as if they’d be there—Olivia with her dolls, Emily with a book. And suddenly, with a jolt, I realised I’d probably never see them again. That, despite everything, I would miss them. Our relationship may not have been easy to negotiate at times, but they’d still featured heavily in my life for the past year. Would I even find out what they ended up doing with their lives? Possibly, secondhand via Grace. Whatever it was, I hoped it would bring them joy. That they would both come to accept their parents’ divorce and learn to thrive.
I moved on, continuing my search for anything I might have left. There was nothing. No trace that I’d ever lived there. Except for the blue-handled cutlery set I’d bought before Christmas, distributed between the cutlery drawers and the dishwasher. Should I take it? No, I didn’t need to scrabble about for knives and forks. No need to be petty. I had a perfectly good cutlery set at the flat already. And I didn’t need any reminders.
It was time to go.
“Beth’s not as perfect as you all seem to want to make her out to be,” Jaimie was saying to Mark as I came out of the house. “None of you has a clue what she’s like really.”
“Look, lay off, mate, okay?” Mark said. “Things haven’t exactly been easy for us lately.” He looked in my direction. “All done, Beth?”
I nodded, glancing over at Jaimie, thinking about the time Grace had discovered him lying distraught and broken on the dining room floor. Somehow I didn’t get the impression he was going to do anything like that this time. He was angry—very angry—but not desperate. He would be all right.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m ready.”
Mark held the passenger door open for me. I spoke over my shoulder as I got in. “Bye, Jaimie.”
He didn’t answer.
“Okay?” Mark asked as we left Ely behind us.
I shrugged. “Not really. As you say, it’ll be good to be back in Dalston.”
“Of course it will. I never did think Ely felt right for you.”
A lorry stopped suddenly up ahead. When Mark braked sharply, a box tipped up, sending an avalanche of books cascading onto the van floor.
“Sorry there’s so much,” I said after a quick glance to check everything was okay.
“This is nothing. If Mum ever decides to sell her house, her attic is full of my stuff. She’s even got my old model aeroplanes up there. Remember helping me to fly them?”
“Of course.”
The memory was welcome. Anything to stop me thinking about Jaimie and agonising about whether I’d done the right thing.
I’d been about twelve years old when I’d helped Mark to fly his planes. I was chief launcher, which involved standing for long hours in the cold while Mark tinkered with the planes, waiting for the exact moment to throw them into the air so he could take over with his controller. Watching him hunt for thermals, his face lighting up when he found them, the carefully constructed balsa-wood-and-tissue-paper planes circling ever higher in the sky.
I’d loved every second of our time together, and it was devastating when Mark switched his allegiance from model planes to girls, and the contraptions got stowed in the attic to gather dust.
“You were quite obsessed for a while.”
He smiled. “Sorry about that.”
“No, I enjoyed it. Well, except for the time I accidentally stood on that model you’d just finished making. I didn’t enjoy that.”
He laughed. “Me neither. But it mended.” He lifted his hand from the steering wheel to cover mine briefly. “Just as this will too.”
Oh God. Only yesterday, Jaimie had loved me. Now he hated me, and I was alone again, sitting in a van with my worldly belongings and a man I’d borrowed from his wife.
“You’re so strong, Beth,” the borrowed man said to comfort me.
“I’m really not,” I said.
“You are. You decide what you want, and you go for it. I’ve seen you do it time and time again. You’ll bounce back from this, you’ll see.”
I thought about the accuracy of that statement now as I waited at the bus stop to catch a bus to the Introduction to Adoption meeting. I hadn’t exactly bounced back. Not at first, anyway. I’d been more like an overcultivated field, lying fallow for a while to regenerate, tending my garden and redecorating my flat. Easing myself back into my work and my friendships. And now, here I was, doing what Mark said I did. Deciding what I wanted and going for it.