Page 85 of The Life She Could Have Lived
Anna felt tears prick at her eyes. It was hard, knowing where the lines were, when it was okay to step in and when she should stay out of it. Early on, Stella had been pretty horrible to her acouple of times, said that she would never like her or accept her relationship with Ben, and Anna had taken it hard, despite knowing that she, Stella, was going through something tough too.
‘I want them to trust me,’ she said. ‘I want to be part of their lives. But you can’t just create something out of nothing. It has to be built.’
‘And it will be,’ he said. ‘It is being built. And I’m so grateful to you for wanting all of that.’
Anna lay on her back, letting the tears fall. They slipped down to her cheeks and fell off the sides of her face, and she just let them. After a few minutes, she sensed that Ben was asleep. His breathing had deepened, and his body was still. Early on in their relationship, they’d talked about children, about whether she felt she’d missed out, whether she wanted to try. Ben was happy as he was, with his girls, but he made sure she knew that he would go through it all again with her, if that was what she wanted. And if they were able to. Anna had said no. It had passed her by; it was too late. She still felt, at least 90 per cent of the time, that it had been the right decision. Perhaps if she’d met Ben earlier, it would have been different.
She’d been thinking more about it, since her mother had died. She’d always been scared that she wouldn’t be a good mother because she hadn’t had a good mother, that her relationship with any potential children would be deeply flawed or, worse, almost non-existent. She’d felt untethered since the news, since the funeral. She’d seen her mother so rarely that the weeks since her death could just have been weeks in which they didn’t visit one another or speak. And yet, there was something about knowing that she was no longer in the world that had winded Anna a bit. Ben had been brilliant, but she knew he didn’t quite understand the nature of her grief. His parents were both aliveand well, and he was close to them. They loved him uncomplicatedly, loved the girls the same way, and they seemed to be starting to love Anna, too. In all kinds of ways, she was part of a family in a way she’d never been before. And yet, she had no biological family left at all.
When they’d got back to the house that evening, Anna had slipped out again, bought Stella a pack of pads. She’d debated buying new underwear too, but she would have had to guess Stella’s size and she wasn’t at all sure of her tastes. Plain black pants from Marks seemed safe enough, but what if Stella thought she was crossing a line, going too far? No. She was bound to have brought spare knickers in her weekend case. Anna had knocked on the door of the room the girls shared when she got back, handed the pads to Stella discreetly. Tess was sitting on her bed with her legs crossed, a book in her hand. She was miles away.
‘Thanks,’ Stella had said.
And just as Anna was backing out of the room, she’d spoken again.
‘Thanks for everything, Anna.’
30
YES
Friday 5 June 2015
‘I’m not going,’ Thomas said. He was sitting on his bed.
Anna stood in his doorway. His room was a state; it always was. She knew he didn’t like her going in there and she hated to think what he had hidden away under his bed or in his wardrobe. She hated that there was a room in her home that stank and was filthy. But now wasn’t the time. She put her hands on her hips.
‘I told Nia we’d be there,’ she said, keeping her voice calm. Pleading with him was more likely to work than getting cross.
‘But you didn’t ask me,’ he said, ‘and I have plans.’
‘What plans? Playing with Connor on the Xbox?’
Thomas looked hurt and Anna wondered whether he really did have plans. Whether he was doing something that he was nervous about, something that was important to him. She wondered whether he was seeing someone, whether there was a girl or a boy he liked. He kept his cards pretty close to his chest on that kind of thing, always had. She’d been delighted once,when he’d asked her to help him choose a Valentine’s card for a girl in his class. But that had been a few years ago, when he was no more than ten, and he hadn’t confided in her about his love life since.
‘Mum, when you go out drinking with Nia, I don’t take the piss out of that. My plans are my plans.’
So it was Connor and the Xbox, she surmised. She blew her hair out of her face and tried one more thing.
‘You know your brother won’t want to come if you’re not coming.’
Thomas shrugged. ‘That really isn’t my problem, Mum.’
‘Thomas, look at me. Please, I’m asking you to do this for me.’
Anna didn’t wait for an answer. She went next door, to Sam’s room.
‘Why does Thomas get to do his own thing and I have to come to a baby’s birthday party?’ Sam asked.
He wasn’t angry, just making sure she knew that it was unfair. He was too sweet-natured to be angry, this one.
‘Because he’s thirteen,’ Anna said. ‘And I can’t make him do things he doesn’t want to do any more.’
‘But you still can with me?’
‘Just about.’
Sam smiled, and she smiled back, and she thought of him at six, his front teeth missing. The way he’d held her so tight when they’d cuddled, and she’d almost been winded by it.
