Page 28 of Letting Go of Yesterday
‘I hope you still think that when you’re having to set up a GoFundMe after I lose my job and can’t pay my bills.’ Rowan still couldn’t believe she’d said what she had, but despite her fears about losing her job, she was glad she’d done it. And as she looked at the expressions on her friends’ faces, she couldn’t stop a smile from creeping across her own.
‘Oh, don’t worry about Rob Harwood. He won’t want anyone to know he’s been told off by the headteacher, he’ll be straight down the pub to get himself a pint and lick his wounds. Although he might try and prove that he was right by repeating what he said about Nathan and seeing whether he can find someone who agrees with him.’
‘Sadly, someone will.’ The smile slid off Rowan’s face as she realised it was true, the thought turning anger to sadness again. Nathan didn’t deserve this, he was a good man. She was certain of it.
‘It doesn’t matter what a few judgy people think, Nathan Lark has you on his side, Rowan, and you’re a force to be reckoned with.’ Bex raised her eyebrows. ‘Although I must admit I didn’t realise quite how on his side you were.’
‘I’m not it’s just?—’
‘Yes, you are.’ Toni nodded. ‘I’ve been where you are, trying to pretend that it’s something else, but you really like Nathan. You might not be willing to admit it yet, but it’s obvious you do. So if there’s a reason you feel like you need to hide how you feel, you need to get a bit better at it.’
‘Or you could just enjoy it.’ Bex linked an arm through Rowan’s. ‘You could stop being the woman who feels as if she needs to be perfect all the time so that no one can say anything bad about you. But, do you know what? Even being perfect will give people something to talk about behind your back if they want to. So why not do what you want to do for a change?’
‘It’s not like I’ve hidden my friendship with Nathan, we’ve being going out with the boys all the time since they became friends.’ Rowan was doing her best to make it sound like that was all there was to it, but she could see the way her friends were looking at her – as if her feelings for Nathan were written all over her face for the whole world to see. That was the last thing she wanted, so she was just going to have to try harder to have a poker face and pretend that this was completely platonic. Unfortunately, Bex didn’t seem to be willing to let it go.
‘You have, but that’s for the kids. What about you, Rowan? What have you done that’s for yourself since you came back to Port Agnes?’ Bex didn’t blink as she held her gaze.
‘The kids are my responsibility, and I can’t just go out having fun, forgetting they exist, like their father did when he found someone else he’d rather be with.’ Despite her intention to keep her cards close to her chest, Rowan seemed to have unlocked a part of herself she could no longer control, because she hadn’t meant to say that either, and Bex was squeezing her arm in sympathy.
‘That’s not what you’re doing at all. I’m sorry James didn’t realise how lucky he was. If you want a night out where you tell us all the gory details and we verbally rip him to shreds, you know we’re there for you. But we’re there for you practically too, to help out with the kids, and you’ve got great support from your family. Even if James doesn’t step up and do his share of the parenting, don’t use the kids as an excuse not to do something for yourself, because Nathan might well be just what you need. In fact, I’d be willing to put money on it.’
Rowan nodded, because she didn’t trust herself to speak again; anything at all could have come out of her mouth. She might have ended up telling her friends that she was scared of opening herself up to getting hurt again, or of making a fool of herself and everyone seeing her life fall apart at the seams all over again. Part of her knew that Bex was right and that she could be bolder and more honest, because it had felt so good to tell Rob Harwood exactly what she really thought. But that kind of behaviour got you noticed and gave people even more to talk about. Rowan wasn’t sure she was ready to live that way or whether she ever really would be.
15
Nathan had started reading a news article just before he’d gone to bed the night before that had come up as an alert on his phone, about the development of a new type of gene therapy. The researchers were hopeful that it might be significant in delaying the progression of some forms of muscular dystrophy. It had led him down an internet rabbit hole of reading and research, and he’d finally fallen asleep just after 2a.m. He’d been up again at six to do some work on the byre before he was due to take Leo over to Tony and Marion’s house. He’d been taking his nephew over there at least once a week for the past three years. They had a huge in-ground swimming pool with a retractable roof, which meant it could be used all year round, and Leo loved it even more than the swim spa that Nathan had installed at home. Not long after he and Will had first started working in partnership with Rowan’s father, Tony and Marion had invited the whole family over for a barbecue, and as soon as Leo’s eyes had landed on the pool it had been obvious he was desperate to go in.
Water had become Leo’s passport to freedom as his symptoms had progressed. He’d been diagnosed earlier than usual, at just eighteen months, and his symptoms had been far more severe at a much younger age than most children with Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy. He hadn’t hit any of his mobility milestones and, when he wasn’t even trying to crawl at almost eighteen months, he’d undergone the tests that had led to his diagnosis. Will and Heather had discovered that they both carried a faulty gene, which gave them a 50 per cent chance of passing the condition on. They’d been trying for another child at the time of Leo’s diagnosis and those plans had immediately been put on hold.
Since Leo’s fall, the speed of progression terrified Nathan if he thought about it too much, and most of the time he tried to box it away and push it to the back of his mind, otherwise he wasn’t sure he’d have been able to function. He had to believe that the outcome for Leo would be far better than they’d been warned it would be. The wheelchair was helping him now that his legs no longer worked the way they should, but there wasn’t the same kind of solution for the most important muscle in the body – the heart. When that started to weaken, or the muscles involved in the respiratory system were no longer able to help him breathe, the options were painfully limited. Research had to find a cure before then, because the alternative didn’t bear thinking about.
When Leo was in the water, it was almost as if his condition didn’t exist and the joy it brought to his face made Nathan happier than anything else in the world. That same smile had been on Leo’s face when Nathan and Will had first helped him into the pool at Tony and Marion’s house, and again when Nathan had taken him to their place for a second time and Tony had been the one to help him into the pool. The third time they’d visited, Nathan had been lost for words when he’d realised Tony had bought a mobile pool hoist to help Leo get in and out of the water. It was that kind of thing that had restored his faith in people, something which had been severely tested in the wake of his prison sentence. There were only a very small minority of people who’d blatantly shunned him since his release, but the gossip had been far more widespread and he knew how much it had hurt his mum. Along with losing Chester, that was his biggest regret. Maybe he should have regretted the sentence more, or the crime itself. But he couldn’t regret the crime because it hadn’t been motivated by greed, the way a lot of people seemed to think it was. The crime had been committed because of a desperate desire to find a solution for a situation that didn’t have one, and he couldn’t regret that, no matter what it might have cost him.
‘Nathan.’ He’d known it was his mother coming even before she called out, the aroma of the bacon rolls she’d made reaching him before she spoke. He hadn’t asked her to make him breakfast, but it was no surprise that she had. Irene had always been the sort of mother who lived up to that word in every sense. Her priority had been to make sure her boys were happy, well fed and had as much of what they wanted as it was possible for her to give them. His parents had loved each other and they’d had a happy marriage, but he’d never once doubted that he and Will had come first for his mother. When their father had died, they’d talked about the prospect of selling the family home, but she’d wanted to try and hold on to it. It had been a wonderful place to grow up, a solid Georgian house with almost two acres of land and the byre which at the time had been a semi-dilapidated barn-cum-dumping-ground.
By the time they made the decision to convert the main house for Will and his family, with a self-contained annex for Irene, Nathan’s brother had already remortgaged his own place twice. The money had been used for trips to the US to explore experimental treatments for Leo and with the prospect of private IVF looming, there was more and more pressure on Will. They’d been pushed to their limit financially, even before they’d realised that the window for IVF was closing. The one thing they really wanted was a cure for Leo, but that was something no one could offer them and they desperately needed hope. Having another child might be the only thing that could give them that, and Nathan had been willing to do whatever it took to help his brother. He wasn’t trying to excuse the VAT fraud. It had been a stupid thing to do, to think that it would be possible to get away with submitting false accounts that inflated the cost of building materials. It had meant receiving payments the business wasn’t entitled to. Ignoring letters from HMRC to come clean and put the business’s affairs in order to avoid prosecution was even more idiotic, but it had gone so far by then and the end goal had seemed far more important. Those VAT relief payments had helped towards the costs of the IVF treatment and had landed Nathan with a prison sentence. But he defied anyone not to be tempted in those circumstances, and now Heather was just weeks away from giving birth to a daughter. That’s why he could never regret what had happened, even if it had hurt his mother far more than he’d realised it would. When she held her granddaughter, some of that pain would finally be lifted. He was sure of it.
‘I’m in the kitchen.’ It was a bit of an exaggeration to call it that, but the area where his kitchen would eventually be sited was finally plastered and waiting for the units to be fitted, which Nathan would be doing himself. For now he was finalising the preparation for the heating system, which had involved hours of chipping away at part of the cobblestone floor to lay the pipework.
‘Okay, darling. I’ve brought you some breakfast to make sure you eat before you go out.’ His mother appeared a moment later, carrying a tray which she set down on his workbench before he had a chance to take it from her. ‘This kitchen is going to be huge when it’s finished and the views are going to be amazing.’
Irene moved towards the bifold doors on one side of the room, which overlooked the paddock and the neighbouring farmland beyond it, with fields stretching as far as the eye could see. As hard as Nathan had worked to climb the property ladder by himself, it now felt as if this was where he was meant to be. He lived 200 feet away from all the people who meant the most to him, and eventually a renovated and extended version of the byre would be even more of a dream home than the house he’d renovated when he’d been married to Nicole.
‘The views will be amazing and I know I’m going to be happy here.’ Nathan stood up to greet his mother and she put her hands on his shoulders, holding him at a distance as though she really wanted to look at him.
‘I hope so, darling, I really hope so, because no one deserves to be happy more than you.’ She drew him to her then, holding him so tightly that for a moment it was hard to breathe. When she pulled back, her cornflower-blue eyes were filled with tears.
‘What’s wrong? I didn’t say that to upset you. I really think I’ll be happier here than I’ve ever been before, so please don’t be sad.’
‘I’m not.’ Irene swallowed hard, shaking her head. ‘It’s just that you’ve given up so much to move here, and I’m crying out of happiness because I think you’re right and that all the sacrifices you’ve made will be worth it.’
‘Selling the house wasn’t that much of a sacrifice, I had to settle things with Nicole anyway and?—’
‘I’m not talking about selling the house.’ His mother cut him off, looking at him in a way that made him catch his breath, and in that moment he realised she knew the secret he’d been certain was his and Will’s alone. They should have realised they couldn’t fool their mum, she knew them far too well. Even so, he couldn’t say the words out loud, because once they were out there they couldn’t be taken back. He had to keep denying it, otherwise there was no way of knowing what the consequences might be.
‘I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about then.’
‘Yes, you do.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘But we don’t have to discuss it, because I understand why you don’t want to. I just needed you to know that I know the truth and I’m prouder of you than you’ll ever begin to understand.’
