Page 68 of For One Moment With You
On Not Counting Chickens
As things begin to get better, I think a lot, a little self-indulgently perhaps, about who I am and everything that’s brought me here. But then I have spent many hours in this hospital bed.
And you see, in this crazily muddled mind of mine, I’m starting to work out how it all fits together. First up, there’s our genes – and there isn’t a lot we can do about those. There are our formative years, and by that, I mean our nearest and dearest. The parents we are born to, the friends we make, the social circle we hang out with. Even my old best friend, Jasmine, bless her, who left me with the sense that I was inadequate.
Then it all gets more complicated. I mean, throughout our lives we arebombardedwith expectations and obligations. With rules about what’s acceptable, which are basically about conforming to other people’s ideas of what right is. There are our dads. And there are our mothers. Their joys, their trauma, their suffering that are a part of us, too; that if we allow them to, go on to shape our own lives.
In all this, what about what I think? How am I even supposed to know how I think? Is it even possible to isolate that from the tangle of other people’s thoughts in my head? It’s probably why I became a hub. It was the only way I could fulfil the sense of duty that had been instilled in me.
I think back to a couple of weeks ago, when Gareth told me about Olivia. I remember how upset I was. Actually, I was more than upset. Coming so soon after losing Lizzie, I was devastated. I couldn’t bear the thought of selling the house. But it was never about losing Gareth. It was about losing control of my life. That flipping programming again – that the family home was where I’d live forever, would be a place for the boys to always come back to, in time with their own children. That marriages just somehowworked out.
But the reality is, life isn’t like that. People are human. We make mistakes – people like me and Gareth. And meanwhile, things happen along the way. We make choices too, and ours drove us further apart from each other. There were disagreements, infidelities. In short, whatever love there was, it wasn’t enough, while the house was a symbol, but no more than that. Home is wherever we are, with the people who love us.
‘Mum?’
In my sleep, I smile a little.
‘Mum?’
‘Mum? Wake up.’
My eyelashes flutter, then I find myself looking at Alex, his lovely eyes filled with worry. It’s going to take time for us to get over this. But we will get over this.
‘Hey,’ I say drowsily. ‘Don’t you have somewhere more interesting to be?’
‘Not really.’ He glanced behind him. ‘There’s someone to see you.’
This is where it gets weird, again, because as another figure comes into focus, I see it’s Adam.
‘Hello,’ he says gently. ‘How are you doing?’
For a moment, it’s enough to just gaze into his beautiful eyes. I open my mouth and close it again. ‘I’m OK,’ I say, a little wondrously. ‘You were there, weren’t you? That day, in the rain?’ There’s more I want to say, likeWhat were you doing there? Why are you in Crete?But at this point, there are just too many words.
‘Don’t try to talk, Mum.’ Alex glances at Adam.
Which is all very well, but I have these questions. ‘No,’ I say quietly. ‘Please stay.’
‘We’re under strict orders,’ Adam says gently. ‘You need to take things really easy.’
‘We’ll come back later,’ Alex adds. ‘Robbie sends his love. He had to go back to uni.’
Suddenly I feel terrible. It’s where Alex should be, too.
He seems to know what I’m thinking. ‘It’s OK, Mum. I’ve brought work with me. Now try and get some rest.’
My eyes are already closing as they get up and turn to walk away. But fate hasn’t finished with me yet and as the haze thickens and darkness swims into focus, I find myself pulled back to the place I’ve become so overly, ridiculously attached to. Our lovely family house.
Sitting at our kitchen table, I was going through the sympathy cards that had kept arriving since Lizzie died. I knew that at some point, life had to go on. But the fact was, I was stuck.
I didn’t know how to be anyone other than Tilly the hub, at the centre of everyone else’s universes. And one by one, the strings of the balloons I was holding were pulling free of my fingers and floating away.
However much I liked it or not, whatever he’d done, Gareth was an integral part of my life. It’s just that even now, looking back, the way it ended felt sobrutal. Telling me he’d met someone, followed by the news that she was pregnant – the blow multiplied because of how he’d behaved when I was pregnant with the twins. As I say, positively brutal. But given our history, given my ability to hang doggedly on no matter what was thrown at me, maybe there was no other way.
In many ways, feeling as I did, it’s remarkable that I got as far as I did, sorting through my clothes and throwing so much away; that only my most treasured things are stored in Elena’s garage. That I bought my ticket to San Jose, before fate redirected me and in the strangest course of events, I ended up here.
I mean, honestly, if I hadn’t offered to feed Michail’s chickens and cats, I’d never have got caught in the rain, or fallen. Or found Adam again. But I did – and here I am. And so is Adam. Talking of which…
‘Tilly?’
