Page 76 of The Day Shelley Woodhouse Woke Up
‘I don’t know whether I can fully forgive her,’ I say.
‘For letting him into your life?’
‘Not that, so much, but for standing by when he was hurting me as well as letting him hurt her. It’s just, it’s your number one job as a parent, isn’t it? To protect your child. I feel so let down. It’s so complicated, the way I feel about her. I’m desperate for her to get out, couldn’t have been happier when I saw her message just now, but there’s a part of me that’s still angry with her and I think maybe I always will be.’
Matt is silent for a moment. He doesn’t rush in with words. He is considered, careful. ‘I think that’s okay,’ he says. ‘I think it’s fine to feel both of those things at once.’
‘But she’s my mum. I want to just love her, the way you love yours. I want it to be simple.’
He takes my hands in his when I put the empty mug down on the floor. ‘I don’t think you can choose that, at this stage.’
He is probably right. ‘I wish Granny Rose had seen this.’
‘I wonder what’s made her decide, after all these years.’
Perhaps something’s happened, like it did with David, I think. Perhaps Mum sent that message from a hospital bed. I send her another message but there’s no reply. Eventually, tired of waiting, I stand and say I’m going to bed, relieved that this decades-long ordeal is going to be over.
We go through our night-time routine. Brushing our teeth side by side at the sink, playfully pushing each other out of the way to spit. Matt strips to boxers and I pull on pyjama shorts and a vest top, and we climb into bed. I am quiet, my mind still racing, going over escape plans and possibilities, when Matt speaks into the silence of the room.
‘What was the second thing?’
‘Oh, yes. The second thing is that I wanted to ask you something.’
‘Ask away.’
I turn over so I’m facing him. He is on his back, but I put a hand on his arm and pull him onto his side. We lock eyes. This isn’t how I had thought it would happen, but so what? With David, I had a romantic proposal story and a body full of bruises. You don’t always get what you think you want.
‘Will you marry me?’ I ask.
He bolts up into a sitting position. ‘Are you serious?’
Something about his reaction makes me laugh, and then he is laughing, too.
‘Shelley, really, do you mean it? I can’t tell whether you mean it.’
I gather myself, stop laughing. Suddenly, it’s not funny. It’s deadly serious. ‘I really want to marry you,’ I say, and there are tears in my eyes threatening to spill, and I’m not sure whether they’re left over from the laughter or newly there because this is the most important thing I’ve ever asked anyone in my entire life.
‘I really want to marry you, too,’ Matt says. ‘I didn’t know whether you would, after David.’
He kisses me, and I fall into it. And before I stop thinking, I remember what Dee said about it not being sexy, the way I feel about Matt. Dee knows me so well, but she is wrong about this. For me, right now, feeling safe and loved is the sexiest thing of all.
39
NOW
Dee offered to take a day off, but she was off yesterday and I know what it’s like when you run a pub. She has orders to do, wages to sort. I tell her to go, and she kisses me on the forehead with her lips scratchy from toast crumbs. Liam walks Callum to school, and the bustle of their family life is replaced with a deep silence. Dee asked what I was planning to do today, and I said I was going to take it easy. Read a book. Maybe go for a short walk. She told me to come to the pub for lunch if I fancied it.
I didn’t tell her what I’m really planning to do. I feel like this meeting with Matt should just be between the two of us until afterwards. But I’m as nervous as if I was going on a first date. I blow-dry my hair, put on a bit of makeup. I go through the clothes Dee has brought me, wishing I had something better while trying to remind myself that this man has seen me at my best and my worst, that for the past week he has seen me in nothing but pyjamas. That he has stood by me, even when I didn’t know who he was.
Our agreed meeting point is a café, and I get there early and go inside to buy us both drinks to take away. I’m hoping we will walk. It’s easier to talk, sometimes, when you’re walkingalongside a person rather than sitting or standing opposite them, with the full force of their gaze on you. When Matt appears in the distance, I watch him approach. How did I ever not know this man? Everything about him is familiar, from the way he moves to the way his hair falls in his eyes, and he blows it away.
‘Hi,’ he says.
‘Hi.’ I hold out his coffee and he smiles, but the sadness in his eyes doesn’t lessen. ‘Can we walk?’
We set out walking. It’s a cold, bright late winter day, and I’m astonished by how much beauty there is everywhere. The clear skies, the bare trees.
‘I know,’ I say, after a minute or two of silence.
