“Coming, love,” he called back. “You can photograph them, but I can’t let them go. And anything I’ve said you’ll only use as background? No quoting me. Understood?”
“You have my word,” she said and Joe started copying the pages on his phone.
THIRTY
Emma
MONDAY, APRIL 2, 2012
I’ve got out my old diaries from the suitcase under the spare bed. It’s the first time in years I’ve looked at them, but the baby has made me want to check on how it all started. In case my mind has been playing tricks.
They’re cheap, thin exercise books filled with tiny writing. My teenage years. Funny how I divide my life into blocks of time. Like I was different people. I suppose I was. We all are.
When I read them now, I want to weep for her—for me—and the girl I might have been.
She was so young and innocent—nothing like thirteen-and fourteen-year-olds I see on the bus, shouting and swearing, frightening old ladies. Teenage Emma scribbled away about her life as if she were Jane Austen, recording the conversations and rivalries at school and home, observing the people around her. And occasionally, she described her feelings—like when she saw a boy in town she liked. She used words like “dreamy.” And that’s what they were, these boys, fodder for imagined romances and happy-ever-afters. Poor Emma. Outside her books and diaries, the world wasn’t like that, even if it looked like it for a bit.
Darrell Moore was her—my—first coup de foudre. She would probably have called it love at first sight. Whatever it was, it was devastating, literally. Not devastating, the opposite of awesome, as used on the news by people to describe minor events. But devastating as in overwhelming, savage, shattering. I couldn’t think straight.
The diary says we went for a walk—with hearts round the words—and I remember him stroking my hair, squeezing my shoulders, and putting his arm round me as we walked along the promenade that first time. I loved it. I didn’t want him to stop. I wanted him to touch every inch of my skin. He was so lovely, he took my breath away.
I was so dazzled by Darrell that I almost forgot why I’d come to Brighton. We were on our way back to the station when I asked him if he knew where Charlie was.
He said he had no idea, hadn’t heard from him in years. Even joked about him becoming a stockbroker. I didn’t understand why it was funny when he said it—I didn’t know Charlie had been a musician when he met Jude. Darrell told me Charlie had written a song about her. About her eyes. My eyes, Darrell said, and he kissed me. I wrote in my diary that it was my first proper kiss. A sweet kiss.
He asked me to come and see him again. I wrote that I would’ve done anything he asked at that moment. And I would have. I was thirteen and had just been kissed for the first time. I couldn’t see anything wrong in it. I was in love.
But Harry reappeared, furious at being abandoned, and grabbed my arm to take me home.
I remember we walked away, me looking back as Harry frog-marched me off. Darrell stood in the middle of the pavement, surrounded by shoppers and holidaymakers, looking at me until we turned the corner and I burst into tears again.
Harry was telling me to pull myself together—I expect she was a bit frightened about the state I was in. She’d never seen me like that. I’d never been like that. Normally, I was the sensible one, soothing and calming her when she was upset or angry, but she was the nurse that day.
She went to the toilet on the train and got some loo roll to mop me up, but it was as if something had broken free inside me.
Harry thought I was crying because it’d been a disaster—she hadn’t seen the sweet kiss on the lips—and she tried to help by saying horrible things about Darrell.
“He smells,” she said. “Like stale bread. I don’t think he washes.”
I told her he didn’t know where my dad was and pretended to go to sleep so I wouldn’t have to talk.
Harry let it go—she got bored easily, luckily—and started talking about the man at the sweet stall who’d chatted her up.
He’d had horrible spots, but she got a free candy floss.
THIRTY-ONE
Jude
MONDAY, APRIL 2, 2012
The kettle was boiling furiously—she’d forgotten to close the lid again—and she turned it off at the plug. She’d been like that all day, losing things, putting things in the wrong place. Her head was full of Will.
“For goodness’ sake,” she said loudly. “You’re too old to be getting in a state over a man.” And she laughed, light-headed with the feelings that were reemerging.
I wonder what he looks like now, she thought for the umpteenth time, smoothing her hair and holding her head high to stretch the creases in her neck.
She dialed Emma’s number for the tenth time and put the receiver down before it connected. She desperately wanted to talk to someone about Will but, after last week, she knew her daughter wouldn’t want to hear about it. But Emma was the only person who knew Will as she did. She’ll have got used to the idea by now, Jude told herself as she picked up the phone again.
“Emma, it’s me,” she said. “How is the work going?”
“Oh. Hello. I was going to ring you to thank you for lunch last week,” Emma said.
“I’m sorry I said that about you getting ill, Em,” Jude said. She needed to make the peace as quickly as possible so they could move on to Will.
“That’s okay,” Emma said, her voice lighter. “I’m sorry I was so moody. I’ve been a bit tired.”
“You’re probably working too hard. Anyway, it was good to see you. And to share my news.”
Emma’s silence was as loud as a clanging bell but Jude ignored it, chattering on determinedly about Will’s call, where she might meet her ex-boyfriend, what she might wear, what they might talk about.
When Jude finally drew breath, Emma said, “I wonder what he looks like now.”
“I was just thinking the same thing, Em,” she’d gushed. “He was always so handsome, wasn’t he? We were all in love with him, weren’t we?”
“Umm, well, I wasn’t,” Emma said so quietly that Jude had to strain to hear her.
“What did you say?”
“I said I wasn’t,” Emma repeated, louder.
“Oh, Em, you were. You were always there, hanging on his every word. You even went to that party with him. Do you remember?”
She could see Emma, all eyes and jailbait legs, standing in the doorway of the kitchen, drawing Will’s attention away from her. Jude got in a huff about it sometimes and Will had laughed her out of her jealousy.
“Well, he certainly made a big impact on me,” Emma said. “He did that.”
“There you are,” Jude said.
“Any adult man would have done,” Emma said. “If you remember.”
“Oh God, let’s not go down the long-lost-daddy route, Em. Will was not your father.”
“No,” Emma said. “He wasn’t.”
She hesitated, and Jude waited for her to say it.
“And he made you throw me out when I was sixteen,” Emma said.
“He didn’t,” Jude snapped. “It was my own decision based on your behavior. You were impossible to live with and it was driving a wedge between us.”
“Between you and me or you and him?” Emma said.
“Both. You were trying to force him out with your lies and tantrums.”
“Lies?”
“Saying you’d seen him chatting up other women. Trying to destroy our relationship. You can’t deny it, Emma.”
“I’m not denying it. I did see him chatting up that woman down our street.”
Jude was furious all over again—with her daughter and herself.
“It was all perfectly innocent,” she hissed. “She denied it completely.”
“Well, she would, wouldn’t she?” Emma said.
“Look, I know I wasn’t the perfect mother, but you weren’t the perfect daughter, either.”
“But you were the adult, Jude,” Emma said, their discussion returning to well-worn lines. “Anyway, I’m just surprised you want to see him again now. He did leave you.”
“Things are different now,” Jude said firmly as if closing the subject. But a voice whispered in her ear, And I am so lonely.