I gulp away the thought and then continue: ‘I was infatuated with him and I suppose he liked that I did much of the chasing after he first asked me out.’
‘What things had you come off the back of?’ I don’t reply straight away, so Olivia continues: ‘Ellie told me about how you, her and her brothers would spend time over at the watermill.’
There’s a second in which I’m temporarily stunned at the thought of Ellie spilling everything. The fact that my daughter might know more about me than I could ever be comfortable with.
‘We’d sit on the banks if it was nice, or shelter inside if it wasn’t,’ I say, keeping it simple. ‘Nobody bothered us. It was our little hideaway.’
When I speak of the mill, it feels more like a person than a place. It was a part of who we were as a group.
‘You told me it was out of bounds,’ Olivia replies. ‘You said it was too dangerous.’
I snigger at that. It’s hard not to. Parents make the best hypocrites. We tell our children not to lie and then spend however many years convincing them a bloke in a red suit comes down the chimney every Christmas.
‘I didn’t know you and Ellie talked about things like that,’ I reply.
‘We don’t… not always. I asked what you were like at my age.’
‘What did she say?’
‘Not much. Just that you’ve been friends a long time and that you were typical teenagers. You used to go out with her twin brother.’
I nod: ‘Wayne.’
‘I never knew that. I didn’t even know she had a twin.’
This is obviously the time to tell my daughter the thing I’ve kept from her throughout her life. There won’t be a better moment.
Except I can’t.
If I tell her about Wayne, then I have to tell her about Jason. And if I do that, then how can she ever respect me again? Why would she listen to what I have to say about anything?
‘I suppose I was in with the wrong crowd,’ I say.
‘Ellie was the wrong crowd?’
‘Not her. Just in general. I suppose that’s why I’ve been so concerned about you and Tyler. I don’t want you to repeat my mistakes.’
Olivia turns back to the screen, shifting her weight so that she’s angling away from me once more. I wonder if I’ve lost her. It was clumsy to bring things back to her but what else could I do other than evade her questions?
‘He’s not as bad as you think,’ she says quietly.
‘I only know what I’ve seen. If he’s better than that, then how is he better?’
Olivia doesn’t reply but there’s a big part of me that wouldn’t mind being wrong. I wish she could tell me how he makes her happy, how he enhances her life. It’s not as if I enjoy the arguing and fall-outs.
She doesn’t defend him, though. She takes her time, and I can hear her taking a series of deep breaths before she finally asks what’s been on her mind
‘Was I a mistake?’
‘No, Liv. Of course not.’
I shuffle across the sofa and hold her head onto my shoulder. She hugs me back, wrapping her arms around my chest and sitting with her legs across my lap.
‘Your father and I got married really quickly after starting to see each other. It was only a few months – but you were never a mistake. We wanted a child – both of us. You were the glue that bonded us together.’
‘But now you’re unstuck...’
I stroke her hair, searching for the words, trying to figure out how to tell her that the issues between Dan and me are ours alone.
‘There was a point where we realised we didn’t need each other. Your father had his life and his interests – and I had mine. The problem is that, by then, we had a house, a mortgage, car loans, credit card payments – and so on. A marriage is so much more than saying the words. We were living separate lives but unable to do it separately. You were at school, growing up, becoming a smart and independent young woman. It wouldn’t have been right to rip all that apart.’
Olivia doesn’t say anything but she presses her head harder into my shoulder. We both sit and watch the wildlife show, neither of us moving. The only sound is Attenborough’s calm, methodical voice seeping from the television. Thank God for Attenborough.
Eventually, Olivia disentangles herself. She’s upset and there’s dampness around her eyes which she wipes away.
‘That’s the opposite of selfish,’ she says unexpectedly.
‘What is?’
‘The other night, I said you were separating because it was what’s best for you. I thought you were being selfish – but you literally spent years making yourself unhappy so that I didn’t have to be.’
It takes me a couple of seconds to respond. It’s not what I expected to hear. ‘Not quite,’ I tell her. ‘Not really. Your father and I went through the motions over the years. We made a commitment when we decided to have you and, regardless of anything since, we stuck to that.’
Olivia’s eyes are ringed with tears once more. She tries to breathe but her nose is blocked, so she reaches to the table for a tissue.
Her smile is weary: ‘You’re going to be late for work.’
Chapter Twenty-One
I’m not going to be late, of course, mainly because I’ve peddled Graham a load of nonsense about having a follow-up with the police. That’s on the back of asking for a pay rise. I’m the worst employee going.
The thing is, I genuinely do have something more important to do today.
St Paul’s Church sits on top of a hillock on the edge of town. It’s ringed by a crumbling drystone wall and there’s a plaque etched into the arch at the front which says how this was once the focal point of the original settlement. The grass is slightly overgrown but green and springy. I stop when I’m under the arch, turning to take in the unparalleled view below. The older I’ve become, the smaller North Melbury has felt. As a kid, it would take hours to get from one side to the other on foot. A trip to anywhere with bigger buildings or more people felt exotic, as if places like Ipswich or Lincoln were the epitome of adulthood and sophistication. This little town now feels like the end of everything, rather than the beginning. It’s confining and empty; free of creativity and ambition. It’s an island of small buildings surrounded by a sea of green. I can’t believe I’ve spent forty years here.
Down below, the river winds its way around the mound on which the church is built. Trees flail in the breeze but, in the gaps, I can see a glimpse of the watermill and the lurid fencing that now surrounds it. I’m still staring when a hand touches my shoulder, making me jump.
‘Been a while, hasn’t it?’
It’s Ellie, sombre and downtrodden all in black. Her hair is in a neat bun and it’s all a distant cry from her usual sit-at-the-kitchen-table-look.
‘A really long while,’ I confirm.
Jason is standing off to the side, looking awkward in an ill-fitting suit of his own. I wonder if it’s the same one he wore to court all those years ago.
A biting breeze singes across the graveyard as Ellie and I pass arm in arm through the arch. The temperature is probably a good couple of degrees cooler here than it is in the town itself. I suppose graveyards are supposed to be this cold and eerie. It doesn’t feel like a place in which life could thrive.
We walk slowly because there’s no rush to get to our destination in the furthest corner. The path is marked by piles of small stones that crunch as we go. The grinding, chomping noise is the soundtrack, with Jason ambling at our backs.
I ask Ellie how her ribs are feeling and she replies that she took a cocodamol before leaving the house.
‘The ones the doctor gave me are too strong,’ she adds. ‘They knock me right out, so I got these from the pharmacist.’
‘Doesn’t that mean you can still feel the pain?’ I reply.
Ellie is quiet for a moment before responding: ‘Maybe I need that today.’
‘Pain?’
I glance at her as we walk and there are a few seconds where all I can hear is the crunch of the stones underfoot.