Page 102 of The Spark

Perhaps, after all these years, I need to finally accept that’s never going to change.

It’s only three weeks till Christmas, but she hasn’t got any decorations up. After Dad left, she never bothered, because Christmas is apparently only worth celebrating if you have a man by your side.

I sit reluctantly down on the sofa. The velvet grates slightly beneath me.

‘Whisky?’ Mum asks, nodding at the bottle on the sideboard.

I shake my head.

‘How’s Ash?’

‘Not good.’

She lowers the volume on the TV. ‘What happened?’

My instinct is to make something up and change the subject. But then I remember that nothing I can say could ever out-crazy the way she behaved over Dad. I should just tell her the truth. Lying is starting to become too exhausting. ‘This is going to sound weird, but when I first met Ash, I thought... I thought he was Jamie. There’s this thing called walk-ins, where—’

‘And he didn’t like that.’

I blink. ‘Mum, listen. I honestly think that Ash... might be Jamie. I know it sounds mad, but when I met him—’

‘I know. I heard you talking to Ralph about it.’

‘What? When?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. A few months ago, maybe.’

That Saturday I came over, back in June, when Ralph was eating soup and Mum was blaming her alcohol habit on open bars. ‘You heard me... telling Ralph I thought Jamie walked into Ash’s body?’

‘Yes. I heard everything. And I must admit, I did think you were talking a load of—’

‘So that time Ash and I came over here, and you were drunk and you kept calling him Jamie...’

‘I suppose,’ she says, with a heavy sigh, ‘I thought I could make you see sense.’

‘You what?’

She shrugs, sipping her whisky. ‘You were always so obsessed with Jamie. I wanted to make you see how ridiculous it was. I thought we might be able to... I don’t know. Have a laugh about it, I suppose. That it might wake you up, somehow.’

My breath catches in my throat. ‘Why would you—’

‘Because all these years later, you still can’t forget him. And for what it’s worth, Neve, I never thought your relationship with Jamie was healthy.’

I deep-breathe in that way people do when they’re trying not to punch someone. ‘Um, in what way, exactly?’

‘You were like I was, with your dad. Infatuated.’

‘No. I loved Jamie. Massive difference.’ Goose pimples have broken out across my skin. I glance at the gas fire, which is always dormant, and wonder what the risk to life would be of switching it on. Probably high. I expect we’d both explode, though hopefully Mum would go first.

‘But all these years later, you’re still not over him.’

‘Well, that’s love, isn’t it?’

She shakes her head. ‘No, it’s obsession. I could never get over your dad, either. Not for years afterwards. So it turns out, we’re not so different, you and I. They’d have given you a restraining order by now, if Jamie was still alive.’

My mother’s said a lot of stupid stuff over the years, but I think this just about tops it.

I find my voice, though it comes out in flakes and layers. ‘This is nothing like that.’

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