Page 113 of A Recipe for Love
‘It wasn’t your fault. He never even told me he was feeling ill.’
‘He wasn’t ill exactly. Just not himself.’ He could see her welling up. ‘I love him so much. Still.’
‘I know.’
‘Where does all that love go? What am I supposed to do with it?’
Adam tried to blink back his own tears.
‘And I’m angry too, but I can’t be angry with him now, can I?’ She wiped her eyes. ‘Why didn’t he go to a doctor or at least say something to me if he wasn’t feeling right?’
‘I don’t know. He always told me everything was fine too, no matter what.’ Adam ought to have known something was wrong.
‘He never wanted to worry anyone. He absolutely hated the idea of letting people down. Especially you.’
‘Why me?’
Darcy took deep breath in and turned to face him properly. ‘Well because of your mom.’ She said it like it was the most self-evident thing in the world. ‘He couldn’t bear the thought of anyone hurting you like that again, especially not him. Whatever happened, so long as it was all right for you, that was enough for him.’
Adam stopped fighting the tears.
‘I wish I could ask him what to do now.’ That was the bottom line. Adam needed someone to tell him if he’d made the right choice, but how could he ask Darcy or Veronica when it was their home? He’d let Bella believe it was her home too, and he’d betrayed them all. ‘But I can’t ask him and I don’t know what to do on my own and whatever I do, I’ll be disappointing all of you. Especially him.’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘What do you mean?’
Darcy wrapped her arm around his shoulder. ‘You all get so wrapped up in the duty of the thing. This place is glorious. You and your whole family are so lucky to have it and be a part of it and you spend your whole fucking time worrying that you’re not good enough.’
‘I really don’t think my father worried about that.’
‘Balls. I don’t think any Lowbridge son ever feels up to his daddy’s standard. If you all stopped trying to uphold something from the generation before and got on with how you want to do things now I think everybody would be a lot happier.’
‘Isn’t that what I’m doing? By walking away?’
Darcy sighed deeply. ‘I don’t know. If it’s what you really want, but…’ She looked around the neglected, unkempt, yet still blooming garden. ‘I think you could do amazing things right here, if you just let yourself accept that you’re good enough, and that’s all you need to be.’
Chapter Twenty
Another two days passed with Bella going through the motions. She’d put on proper clothes and let her nan drag her along to an anti-war sewing circle, and a ‘save the swans’ riverside litter pick. She moved around the kitchen with no sense of joy, aware that her nan was watching her intently. ‘Bella darling?’
Her nan was sitting at the tiny kitchen table, sipping a mug of oversweetened tea. ‘What?’
‘I think it’s time we talked about what you’re really doing here.’
‘Nothing. I’m making a snack.’
‘You’re making sad cheese on toast,’ her nan pointed out. ‘Which you also made yesterday and the day before. You’re depressed.’
‘Eating cheese on toast does not mean I’m depressed.’
‘Comfort cheese on toast does. You went and got plastic cheese specially didn’t you?’
‘I’m fine.’ Bella laughed merrily to prove her point, which even she could hear did sound a little bit strange.
‘No. Come and sit down.’ Her nan pulled out the mismatched chair alongside her. ‘What are you running away from?’
‘I’m not running away.’
