Page 102 of Swept Away

“And that means you don’t need me as much.”

“Lexi, I—”

“It’s OK. It’s good. It’s good that you don’tneedme. I’d like you to stillwantme around, though. I’d like to still be Mae’s auntie.” My voice is getting thick. This is hard to talk about.

“Always,” Penny says, finally looking at me. “Always, always, always. Do you know how heartbroken that little girl would be if you weren’t part of her life? I nevereverwanted that. I should have made that clear. I screwed up the whole thing. It was just so hard for me to let you go, I…I was trying to be selfless and I’m not…a natural at that, so I…ballsed it up, really.”

I smile. I don’t feel any of the anger and heartache I felt when I first walked out of this flat. It got lost somewhere out there on the water. I know where she was coming from—I think even back then I knew it, really.

“Just to be clear,” I say, “you and Mae, you give meso much.Helping to raise her has been the greatest joy and privilege, and seeing you become the amazing mum you are now…I’d die for you both, Penny. And I say that as a person who has recently done a lot of nearly dying.”

She throws herself at me, sobbing.

“I’m an awful person,” she says, as I let out anoof.

“You are not an awful person.”

“I am. Lexi, you don’t even know. I’m selfish and weak and cowardly and—”

“Penny! This is crazy! Will you stop?” I smooth her hair back and shoot Ryan a look, like,A little help, here?

“Come on,” he says, easing her out of my lap and into his arms. “You’re all right, love.” He looks at me. “It’s been a hard few weeks for her,” he says quietly.

“I know,” I say, with a twist of guilt. “I know it has.”

“Viktor in Flat 6 is moving, you know,” Ryan says after a moment. “If you wanted your own place, but without going far.”

The kindness of this almost brings me to tears. I smile at him. Maybe Ryan reallyisfine. More than fine. Maybe Ryan is one of the good ones.

“Mummy?” Mae says from the doorway.

“Hey!” Penny says, whirling out of Ryan’s arms, wiping the tears from her face. “Hey, Mae-Mae, did we wake you?”

“Why are you crying?” Mae asks, pulling Harvey the bunny a little closer to her chest. “We got Auntie Lexi back.”

I bite down hard on my bottom lip. There are so many things that have been terrible in the last fortnight, but I think the very worst thing is knowing how frightened Mae was when I was at sea. The thought of it makes me want to crumble.

“We absolutely have,” Penny says, smiling at me, eyes still wet. “And we are so lucky to have her.”

“So why are you crying?”

Penny thinks for a moment. “Because I did something I shouldn’t have done,” she says. “I said something I shouldn’t have said. And I’ve been trying to be brave enough to say so.”

“Oh,” Mae says, looking relieved. “That’s easy. You just have to think about what Lexi would do. Lexi’s always brave.”

“Come here,” I say, as my heart breaks. “Come give me a cuddle and I’ll take you back to bed.”

As we walk hand in hand to her bedroom, I have to grip the banister to keep myself together. There is no greater gift than this little hand in mine. It was simply too much for me to hope for more, that’s all. The universe couldn’t give me MaeandZeke—it’s more than I could possibly deserve.

Zeke

“You’re different,” Bradytells me, cocking his head back to drink his beer from the bottle.

“Probably,” I say, staring at the living area of our Putney flat, with its secondhand leather sofas and the rug we got from the Aldi middle aisle.

It’s smaller than I remember. And darker. And…moldier. It’s actually kind of makingThe Merry Dormouselook good. Did we usually leave the place this dirty?

“You’ve always had that slightly, you know, wounded vibe,” Brady goes on, sliding a beer my way along the kitchen countertop. “But now you’ve gone proper dark.”

---