Page 97 of How Good It Was (Excess All Areas 3)

Of course, she started with herself. “I know. I was there. It broke all of us.”

“No, Luke. It broke me. I didn’t tell you because I was embarrassed, but I needed antidepressants just to make it out of bed in the morning. I just didn’t know how to function without your dad. I did some things, made some decisions back then that I would never make now.”

“I’m sorry that happened to you. Really, I am. And I don’t want to get into a pissing contest of who had it worse, but you only lost Dad. We lost Dad and we lost you. And I wasn’t allowed a moment to grieve for either of you.”

“That’s not fair. I was there as best I could be.”

“No, Mum. You weren’t. Do you remember what Dad was buried in?”

“A suit.”

“Yeah, but which one?”

Shelley looked down at the table.

“It was the navy one. I picked it out because you’d always said he looked handsome in fucking navy. You were so out of it, you couldn’t even make the most basic decisions, so I made them for you.”

Silence fell between them.

“I tried my best.” Blue eyes, so like his own, stared up at him. “But your dad was my anchor. And without him, I drifted.”

“And without you, I had to bury my own grief and move on. I couldn’t sit on the sofa and cry, because Iz needed picking up from netball. Or she needed help with her geography homework. Or the form for her school field trip needed filling out. Did you know I forged your signature in her homework diary for twelve months?”

“I know you did a lot. You were like your dad. Always so capable.”

Luke huffed. “Capable. You left me with no choice. I was going to fail my A-levels because of all the time I had to spend looking after you and Iz. And you know what? I couldn’t even think about resitting a year because we needed money. I was brimming with resentment. I love Izabel, but she was your daughter. She needed a parent. Then, you physically left us too. I had no choice but to work. You sold the house, took the money and the life insurance, and gave me the first and last month’s rent on an apartment.”

“You were working by then.”

“Because I’d had to drop out of school, because I was failing, because I was taking care of you and Iz. Jesus Christ, Mum. Don’t you see the broken fucking cycle? I was working a not-much-better-than-minimum-wage job. And you expected me to look after Iz on it. At least as a single parent you could get child support. I took out loans I never told her about so she could go to college.”

“Why didn’t you ask me for help?” He watched her wander to the window where she fixed the curtains that didn’t need fixing.

“You’d already proved you weren’t any help to me. Dad would have been embarrassed by what you did. Not the falling apart, because he held you up all those years. But the after. Leaving the two of us. Taking all the money.”

“His will were his wishes.”

“His will was twenty years old. It predated me. And I didn’t know back then that I could have contested the will or whatever. I wish I had back then, though. Never occurred to me you’d just take it all.”

“Can I explain? We needed the money to buy a house in Brighton. It’s expensive down here.”

“We needed the money to fucking eat, Mum.”

Anger, confusion, and swathes of loss raged through him. His head spun like the moment you realise you’d had one drink more than you should’ve. That weird feeling of spinning and nausea and a nasty taste in your mouth. There was a pack of cigarettes in his bedside table back home, unopened. He’d seriously cut down on cigarettes, but suddenly, he felt as though he needed a hit of something.

“Isn’t this all water under the bridge?” Shelley swiped away the tears that had pooled beneath her eyes. “Why is all this coming up now?”

“It’s nothing you need to know about,” he said. But Willow squeezed his hand. In her eyes, he could see compassion he was struggling to find.

“Tell me, Lukey,” his mum said, and the pet name she had for him when he was little cut like a knife.

“Willow’s pregnant.”

“I’m going to be a grandmother?” Shelley asked, a smile cutting through her mascara-stained cheeks.

He didn’t want her to be happy. “Yes. Willow is American. Lives in Malibu.” It was all the detail he could spare for her. He didn’t want to tell her why saying those words hurt.

“Congratulations to you both.” Shelley grabbed a tissue for her face and cleaned up the streaks in the mirror above the fireplace as she took a deep breath. “I’ve obviously done way more damage than I can ever make up for. None of it was intentional, but that doesn’t ease the hurt, does it? And I’m sorry, Luke. Really sorry. Is this why you are here? The baby bringing issues up from back then?”

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