She burst out laughing, and after giving my heart a moment to start beating again, I had to join her. For no other reason than here I was, on a Saturday night, sharing a drink and a joke with yet another new person (even if I had practically forced her into it).
Here’s what I should have learnt years ago, given my job, and my disastrous family: there are imperfect, mixed-up, complicated people everywhere. People who are simply doing the best they can to shake off whatever’s been dumped on them, pick themselves up and keep on going. I’d wasted a lot of time disqualifying myself from this grand adventure called life – I might make a mistake, take a wrong turn, fail spectacularly. The truth dawned on me that summer evening, as the sunset lit up the forest in a blaze of fire and the memories that swirled around us slowly sank into the shadows – I will make a thousand mistakes, I will take many wrong turns, and I may well fail spectacularly, along with every other person who ever lived. And when these things happen, I will shake it off and get back up again – maybe accepting a helping hand, if I need it – and I will keep on going.
Phew. A lump of fear that had been sitting in my chest for more than twenty years quietly crumbled into dust as we finished our tea.
‘Thank you,’ Leanne murmured, leaning her head against the back of the chair.
‘You’re welcome.’
‘No, I mean it. I can’t remember the last time someone did something nice for me. You hanging out with Joan, I’m dead grateful, but I know it’s for her, not me. Probably the same for cleaning and cooking dinner. But running me a bath? The candles and the fancy shampoo. That little plate of chocolates.’ She was weeping now, in heart-wrenching contrast to the violent sobs from before. Nesbit got up from where he’d been snoozing under my chair and went to lay his head on her knee. ‘That was… It made me feel, for just those few minutes, like someone didn’t think I was an invisible piece of crap. I felt… cared for. It’s a long time since someone did that without trying to get something from me in return.’
‘Like I said, you’re welcome. Please come and use my shower whenever you like. And my oven. Although if you’re renting, surely the landlord should sort them out as a priority?’
She stood up, handing me the mug. ‘The landlord won’t sort them while I’m two months behind on rent. Joan needed school shoes and trainers. I wanted her to have a phone so she could call me if anything happened while I’m at work. A week later, the old washer broke and I got one of them loans out to replace it, only the second-hand one I bought lasted six washes. Now I have interest I can’t pay, one of my clients refused to pay me for last month’s work because I failed to meet her impossible standards, and another one just fired me for being drunk on the job.’
What?
‘I haven’t drunk a drop since the day I left that scumbag Archer. I was feeling lightheaded and they caught me at the wrong moment.’
I had no answers for Leanne. I couldn’t tell her that it would be okay. Clearly, things were far from okay.
And as for being wrongfully fired – I so wanted her to be telling the truth, for her to be the woman who’d found the guts and the grit to walk away. Who then, in a cruel twist of fate, simply got ill, as if life hadn’t been hard enough.
I wanted to believe Leanne – to believe in her. But if she was a woman living in the grip of substance abuse, who’d spent all her money feeding her addiction, hoping to dupe the gullible neighbour into feeling sorry for her and helping her out? Well – wouldn’t she say exactly the same thing?
I went to bed that night full of disturbing questions. Should I give Leanne the benefit of the doubt, ignoring my growing unease on the basis of one conversation? Or should I assume the worst, hand over my concerns to someone in authority, and potentially start a sequence of events that – should Leanne be telling the truth – would wreak yet more devastation on a woman and a little girl who had already faced more than enough?
It was a long night.
15
After the conversation with Leanne, it was inevitable that I’d wake up with Mum on my mind. To be honest, I thought about her far more than I wanted to.
I would often make a mental note to tell her something – if someone was rude to me, or a funny incident happened, or I had a mini-victory with an issue to do with the cottage. And then I’d remember that, even if I did phone or message to tell her, she wouldn’t be interested. Not unless she could twist it to revolve around her, and how I had made her feel.
The websites I’d been reading about emotional abuse were helping me realise that I didn’t make her feel anything. She was her own person, and how she chose to react to me was her responsibility. That, however, didn’t stop a deep-seated part of me from craving her approval or from hoping that one day she would be proud of me.
I’d have days when it looked like I was making progress – I’d cook dinner without thinking whether she’d like it or not, or leave a mess on the kitchen table and not worry that she was right about me not coping alone. Other times, her miserable moaning haunted my every step.
I didn’t know it was possible to miss someone so much while still being so happy not to have to see or hear from them.
I spent the morning going through the Buttonhole website, finding that Mum had continued to get more actively involved – she was running more workshops, had some quilts and other crafts up for sale. There was a blog about the recent embroidery course, and I was shocked to see a photograph of her looking delighted as she demonstrated a stitch. She had a new hairstyle and wore a cotton dress that made her look a decade younger.
For years I had wished and prayed that she’d get a life of her own, leaving me to get on with mine.
So why did it feel like she’d stabbed me in the chest with her crochet hook?
I took Nesbit out for a long walk once the temperature had eased. I’d called Steph, and she’d listened and sympathised and then ordered me to get back to the Dream List and focus on things I could change, rather than people I couldn’t.