Page 119 of Fix Them Up
Mum’s face flickered with pain; then she schooled it. She took a step forward. ‘I know you’ve taken his death hard. I understand, I do. But I don’t regret my choices, Kat. You don’t understand what it was like. How overwhelmed you become –’
I smiled sadly. ‘I get overwhelmed, Mum. Sometimes life is a bit much. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t live it. It doesn’t mean I’m not capable.’ I thought about Liam’s words. ‘I can’t be mollycoddled anymore. I have to push myself. And if I get overwhelmed, fine. I’ll get over it. If you wanted, you could support me through that. Help me instead of making me hide from everything.’ I lifted my eyes to hers. ‘You’ve made me risk-averse. You let me believe he didn’t love me.’ My voice broke.
Mum’s face softened. But then, her mask was back on.
‘Does this look risk-averse to you?’ Mum gestured around Liam’s hallway. ‘Living in some random man’s house, you’ve onlyknown a few weeks? Does leaving your job and a stable income behind sound risk-averse? If that was my plan, I did a poor job of it.’
I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath. I wanted a new job, a new life. I wanted to stay with Liam. I was in love with Liam.
‘I want to stay.’
Blood rushed to my head. That was it. I’d said it. And once it was out, I couldn’t stop.
‘Liam and I are together. I know I’ve only been here a little while, but I found a home here. I like it here. And it likes me back. I’m moving up here, and you can’t convince me otherwise.’
‘I don’t know what to say. This is so incredibly selfish, Katherine. What about Graham and me? We’re not getting any younger, and you want to move two hundred miles away. What if something happens and we need help?’
‘You said you were going travelling next year. So what difference would it make?’
Mum scoffed. ‘Travelling. Who on earth told you that?’
‘You did. You and Graham have all those travel books. You said after retirement –’
‘That’s a dream, Katherine. It would be nice to travel the world, but we have a life to consider. Responsibilities. Normal people don’t just drop everything. And at our age…’ She laughed. ‘We could never do anything like that.’
I thought about all the times Mum limited herself. All the examples flickered through my head. She loved to bitch about her boss but never went for a promotion when he resigned. She always complained about the house but never put any work into repairing the creaky floorboards or touching up paint. She could travel and see the Pyramids and the mountains in Peru, but she wouldn’t leap.
She liked her life to be small and manageable.
Nothing I ever dreamt about was small and manageable.
She was never going to understand me or Liam or Everly Heath. She’d never understand why I wanted to move here and how it wasn’t daunting to me in the slightest. I wanted to share all of this with her, but I imagined her repeating it back to me, all the words sounding ridiculous out of her mouth.
The whole idea sounded silly – a pipe dream.
Mum shook her head. ‘I knew this would happen. This is why I’m so hard on you, Katherine. This is just like your dad – unreliable. I mean, if you don’t think of Graham and me, then think of Willa. She’s been left in the lurch. She put faith in you when she hired you after all those dead-end jobs after university. She trusted you, and now, when she needs you most, you abandon her to renovate some hovel.’
Tears burned under my eyes, but I didn’t open them.
Mum placed her hand on my shoulder. ‘There’s no need to cry, darling. I’ll send the estate agent details, and we’ll get it sorted.’
I took in a shaking breath and gave a sharp nod. I felt like I was twelve again.
‘Good. I’ve got an open return on the train, so I’ll head back.’ Judgement laced her voice. ‘I doubt I’m welcome here. I’ll book you on a train for this week, and we can sort everything remotely, okay?’ Mum patted my shoulder again. ‘We’ll sort it all out, darling. Get you back to normal.’
Mum left in a blur. I remember shutting the door behind me. I slid down the back of the door and burst into tears. I smelt Liam’s cedar scent first, and then I felt his strong arms come around me and hold me.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Mum sent me the train ticket on the Monday after her visit. She emailed it to me with no message. I’d opened my phone to look at it several times.
Liam had given me space after Mum’s visit.
After she left, he led me to his sofa, pulled a blanket over me, and brought me bowls of food and cups of tea with reruns ofGilmore Girlson in the background. Liam’s eyes searched mine like he was looking for signs of life. I fell asleep on his sofa, but he pulled the blanket higher and kissed my forehead.
On the second day, I went back to the annexe. I didn’t want to burden Liam with my pathetic wallowing. I needed to pull myself together and get over it. Either stand up to my mum or go back to London. I screamed at myself to make a decision, but I couldn’t.
So I just lay in bed, paralysed by indecision.
