The Day Of Second Chances (12 page)

‘Just taking you to bed, Mum,' said Avril, trying to sound bright and failing, breathless. Lydia had a split second to worry that they wouldn't be able to bend Mrs Toller's body enough to get her into the corridor, but since she was so limp, they were able to manoeuvre her by bending her at the middle. They carried her the few feet down the corridor and into her bedroom; Avril bumped open the door with her hip.

Mrs Toller was heavy enough that she'd slipped down quite a bit, so it was a struggle to lift her enough to put her on the bed, which was unmade, the duvet a tangled heap at the bottom. Lydia heaved, but her arms lacked the strength to get Mrs Toller up. In the end she climbed onto the bed herself, with her shoes on, taking Mrs Toller with her, crawling backwards on her knees and sliding the woman across the bottom sheet so that her head was more or less near the pillow.

Panting, she watched Avril take off her mother's shoes and push her legs onto the bed. She pulled up the duvet over her, and Mrs Toller groaned again, turned on her side, and curled up. The curtain was already drawn, and Avril and Lydia tiptoed out of the room. Avril went straight to the kitchen, found a large bowl and poured a glass of water, and brought them into her mother's room.

Lydia waited for her in the corridor. ‘Are you sure it's OK?' she whispered. ‘Doesn't bumping your head make you throw up, too? If she's got a concussion, shouldn't she go to A and E?'

Avril shook her head. ‘It's not concussion, it's gin. I checked her head for bumps and there aren't any that I could tell. I think she just lay down and went to sleep in the bathroom. It wouldn't be the first time, though usually I can wake her up.'

Her face was still white, and she was beginning to shiver. Lydia put her hand on her cold arm and stroked it to warm it up.

‘I could call my mum,' she suggested.

Avril shook her head again, so hard this time that her hair nearly whipped Lydia's face. ‘Don't do that. I don't want your mum to know. She'll be all right. She'll just have a hangover.'

Avril's teeth were chattering now. ‘Do you – do you want a cup of tea?' The question sounded like something her mum would ask. ‘Or something else to drink? I know – a Coke,' she sai, starting for the kitchen again, but Lydia stopped her.

‘Go and sit on the sofa. I'll bring it in.'

The fridge had cans of both full-fat and Diet Coke in it; Lydia took the red can, because even though Avril usually drank Diet, she could do with the sugar. She put some bread in the toaster, too, and while it was toasting, went to get a blanket from Avril's room. She brought both to Avril, then went back to the kitchen to spread the toast thickly with butter and jam.

This was also something her mum would do: feeding. It drove her crazy, sometimes – as if real problems could be solved with carbs. But Lydia couldn't think of anything else to do, any other way to help. She brought the plate through with another two cans of Coke. Avril was staring into space on the sofa, with the blanket wrapped around her. Lydia balanced the plate on the arm of the sofa next to Avril, opened the curtains to let some light in, and sat down next to her, popping her own can.

‘She just had one too many in the pub,' said Avril.

It was more than that. Lydia heard the pain in her friend's voice, all the other times that Avril had never told her about, all the times that Avril had had to deal with by herself, and she wanted to hug her, kiss her, hold her close. Curl around and into her, surround her. Kiss her forehead, her eyebrows, her cheek. Stroke her hair and tell her it didn't matter, she loved her, she would look after her. That the two of them could be happy. They didn't need anyone else.

‘What can I do?' she asked helplessly.

‘Just … stay here. Can you hang out for a while? I don't want to leave her, and I don't want to be by myself.'

‘Yeah.'

Avril reached for the remote and turned the telly on. They sat there side by side, in the blue light and the sunshine, looking at the television without seeing it. Lydia felt every breath Avril took; slowly, minute by minute, she felt her shivering subside, and her body quieten.

She could not reach out her hand.

What felt like much later, after Avril's mum had woken up and slumped into the kitchen, feet dragging, to put the kettle on, Lydia went home. She was astonished by the sunshine.

At home, the entire downstairs smelled of paint. In what used to be Lydia's bedroom, Mum was reaching up, rolling a second coat of light blue paint on the walls. The purple underneath still showed through in patches. She turned around when Lydia entered, putting her free hand on the small of her back.

‘Oh, hello,' she said. ‘Is Avril with you?'

Lydia saw that Mum's cheeks were flushed; she appeared to be wearing make-up, though she was wearing a lot of paint on her face and hair as well. The top of her chest was pink, and her eyes bright, as if Lydia had caught her doing something naughty, instead of putting a second coat of paint on the walls.

She looked younger and prettier. More like the Mum she remembered of a long time ago, when Lydia was little, when they had done all those things together. When Dad was still alive. She was the Mum who fed her, who bought her Disney DVDs, who insisted on painting the toenails on both of their feet pink and who loved to fly kites and dance in fields. Who always told her things were going to be all right, when Lydia was young enough to believe her.

All in a rush, Lydia wanted to go across the room and snuggle up into her mother's arms. She wanted to tuck her head under Mum's chin and let her stroke her back and make ‘there there' noises like she used to when Lydia had a bad dream in the middle of the night.

But that would require explanation. It had been too long. And she knew that it wouldn't change anything, not really.

Instead, she picked up a paintbrush. ‘Where do you need help?'

Mum's eyes widened in surprise. ‘Well – if you wanted to go along the skirting boards for a second coat, that would be great. Thank you.'

Lydia nodded, and the two of them worked together in silence for a while. It wasn't a painting party, but it was sort of peaceful.

LYDIA WAS PLUGGED
into her phone, staring out through the windscreen as they negotiated the North Circular on the way to the hospital. Above the sound of the car engine, Jo could hear the flimsy drum and bass sound escaping through the headphones. It was as if yesterday hadn't happened. Not that they'd said much to each other yesterday. Sometimes it was like living with a stranger.

She reached over and tapped Lydia on the arm. Lyddie sighed and took one of her earbuds out. ‘What?'

‘I thought maybe we could have a chat while we were driving to get Granny Honor.'

Lydia sighed again and took the other earbud out.

‘We don't seem to spend much time together these days,' said Jo. ‘When you were little, we spent every day together.'

‘Well, I have a life now, you know.'

‘I know. And it's natural that you're growing up. And I'm really busy, too, with your brother and sister. I'm sorry that I don't have as much time for you as I used to.'

Jo waited, hoping for some response, an apology in kind, but Lydia only fiddled with her phone.

‘How's school?'

She shrugged.

‘Are you worried about your exams? Not that you should be; you're a very clever girl. But I know they put the pressure on these days.'

‘It's OK.'

‘I thought we could work on a revision timetable together. You know, with coloured pens and stickers. With treats built in, so that you have something to aim for. That would be fun, wouldn't it?'

‘Mm.' Lydia stared out of the window.

She was losing her. Her little girl, her firstborn, was slipping away all the time. Jo couldn't gather her up into her arms any more; couldn't tickle her until she laughed so hard she was squealing. Couldn't play dress-up and paint her nails, couldn't make it better with biscuits and warm milk, couldn't tuck her into bed and kiss her on the forehead.

When she was little, Lydia would laugh easily, and cry easily, too. Her emotions were so clear on her face. She was soft-hearted and tender. When she was seven, a skinny little girl with no father, she'd saved up all of her pocket money and asked Jo to donate it to the plaque they were putting up on the bridge for Stephen.

Lydia's phone played a musical note, the special note she had for texts from Avril. Jo heard it all over the house at least twenty times a day. Lydia read the message, and stuffed the phone into her pocket. When Jo glanced at her, her face was screwed up, as if she'd just received some sort of a blow.

‘Lyddie? Are you all right?'

‘I'm fine.'

‘Was it some bad news from Avril?'

She couldn't look at Lydia properly because she was driving, couldn't study her face for pain or evasion. ‘Avril's fine,' said Lydia, but her voice was angry.

Jo swallowed her questions and tried to concentrate on her driving, and on giving her daughter some space. The Range Rover was much too big for driving around London. It was much too big in general; Jo felt silly driving around so tall, as if she were looking down on everyone else. Richard had bought it, as Richard had bought everything.

‘How did you know that Dad was in love with you?' Lydia said abruptly.

Jo signalled left and negotiated the bend before she answered. ‘I knew from the very beginning. You know the story, right? How I was working in that café in Cambridge to save up some money so I could go to uni?'

‘And how he came in every day with all these big thick books to study and drink tea, and how he never even looked up from his books for the first three weeks and then suddenly one day he did?'

Jo smiled, pleased that Lydia was talking at last. ‘I looked forward to him coming in every day. I even had a cup ready for him and I would save him one of his favourite scones, even though he never noticed that I did it. You probably don't remember the way he had, of being so fully absorbed in what he was thinking of that it was as if nothing else existed. I thought he was adorable. He needed a haircut and he was tall and gangly and he wore glasses. He looked like a young mad professor.' Jo grinned. ‘The other girls in the café teased me that I was falling for a nerd.'

‘You used that word back then?
Nerd?
'

‘Not everything was invented by your generation, Lyddie. Anyway, one day, he looked up when I brought him his tea – I don't know why he did so that day. He told me later that he'd had a feeling that something important was going to happen, from the moment he'd woken up that morning. I put his cup of tea and his scone down on the table and he looked up from his book and our eyes met.'

‘And it was exactly as it's described in the books.' Lydia said it like the often-repeated phrase that it was. They had gone through this story many times before, the story of the moment when her mother and her father had fallen in love.

‘It was,' Jo said. ‘Exactly. He had the most beautiful hazel eyes, just the same colour as yours, Lydia. We stood there staring at each other in that café for what felt like for ever but I suppose it was only a few seconds. I don't think I breathed for the entire time. And then he cleared his throat and asked me if we could see each other after I finished work, and the rest is history. Instead of going to uni, I married him, and then you came along.'

‘But how did you know he loved you? I mean, how did you
know
?'

‘Your father had a wonderful gift of concentration,' said Jo. ‘I'd seen it already with the way he studied his books, which was part of why I was attracted to him, I think. But it wasn't just Physics. When he loved something or someone, he threw himself wholly into his feelings. I never doubted that he loved me. It was in everything he said, everything he did. The way he touched me, and looked at me. And you know, he shouldn't have fallen in love with me. He was about to get a First in Physics at Cambridge, he had a brilliant career in front of him, and I was a waitress in a café with no university education. But your dad didn't care about any of that. He loved me, and that was enough for him. He was exactly the same way with you, when you were born. You were his world.'

‘If it was like that, why did you settle for someone like Richard? Doesn't that cheapen what you had?'

‘My marriage to Richard wasn't the same as my marriage to your dad,' said Jo carefully, ‘and it didn't end well, but that doesn't mean it was cheap. We have Oscar and Iris now. I wouldn't change anything for the world, if it meant losing them. Just like how I wouldn't change a thing that happened with your dad, even though we lost him. All the pain was worth it, because of the good things, because I loved him.'

‘But you didn't love Richard.'

‘Why do you say that?'

Lydia let out a huff of exasperation. ‘All that stuff you just said. Richard never treated you that way. And you were never happy with him, not really.'

‘Lydia, when you're grown up, you'll realize that there are lots of different kinds of—'

‘Bullshit.'

Jo blinked. ‘Pardon?'

‘
Bullshit
. There's only one kind of love, and that's the kind of love that you feel for ever. Even if you can't have it, you still feel it. You never let the person you love go, and you never stop missing them.'

She was so vehement that Jo risked a glance at her, even though the traffic was getting heavier.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘You're right. You deserve honesty. I married … I married Richard because he was – he
seemed
steady. It wasn't easy, Lydia, working fulltime as a single mother. He seemed like a good choice. I thought he would look after us. And I cared for him. I really did care for him.'