Written in the Stars (39 page)

Then there’s Milly, who’s never left my side, even when I dropped out of school, coming over every day after school when I was lying on the sofa to tell me what had gone on. Even when she went away to university, she would write me endless letters, telling me how much fun we’d have together once she’d graduated. Then when it was clear Kieran was never coming back, she forced me into the glare of life by moving me to London, but always kept me safe, making decisions for me, encouraging me to start temping, being gentle when she needed to, forceful when necessary.

And finally there’s Adam. I wish I could turn back time and tell him I was wrong. He
did
fix me, he saved me. I look at Cal who is still gazing anxiously in my direction, poised as if ready to spring into action at any moment. I want to call out and tell him that he needn’t worry because I don’t want to jump any more. I’m not the same girl. I crossed that line a long time ago, chose a different path. The right path. All I have to do now is get back on it.

I look down at my hands gripping the rails of the pier and realise just how much I have changed. My life is no longer determined by the list of people who have left me, but by the ones who have stayed. It has been for a long time. I just didn’t see it. My phone buzzes in my pocket and I pull it out. There are twenty texts, all from Adam. Each one says the same thing.

I love you Bea and I‘m never going to leave you. x

I raise the phone, nuzzling it as if it is his cheek, tears staining the screen. When I think what I have put him through over the years we’ve been together and yet he’s never lost faith in me, or us. I look at my engagement ring and my wedding ring. They are shining brightly in the darkness, auras of Adam’s love and protection. He’s always known that I am prone to emotional instability, that I find it hard to cope with life, that I push away happiness because I don’t feel I deserve it. It’s why he never took no for an answer every time he proposed. It’s why he organised the wedding because he knew I couldn’t cope with the enormity of it. It’s why he arranged for James to contact me. He believes in me so he makes decisions for me when he knows I’m too scared to take a risk. It’s probably why he didn’t tell me about New York. He isn’t a control freak; he keeps me moored, bobbing on the waves, whilst trying to steer me towards a happy future. Our future.

I wish I’d told him – and Loni and Cal and Milly – what had really happened that night but I was too ashamed. I jumped before Elliot, not because I was reckless, or depressed, but because I wanted to prove that I could. It was a stupid snap decision. The wrong decision. I wish I’d trusted them all more. They would have understood. Adam would have told me it was OK, he would have pulled me out of the murky depths of my guilt and made me see that Elliot’s death was a tragic accident. I feel like I can hear him whispering to me on each whip of the wind that it’s all right, it wasn’t my fault.

Suddenly Kieran’s voice comes into my head, a déjà vu moment, like an echo of a time before, or a life not lived.

It would have happened anyway, Bea! You have to stop believing that you caused Elliot’s death, and start believing that you saved my life.

I put my hands over my ears because suddenly I can hear everyone in my head. Loni telling me we make our own paths and that we can’t save other people, only ourselves. Milly telling me that the main thing she’s learned from years of working in finance is that the only thing worth investing in is love. Dad telling me in his diary to always look up and ahead, not down and back. And Adam telling me he loves me over and over again. I think of the compass I was standing on earlier and how it felt like a symbol: one life, so many different directions. The infinite What Ifs we live with every single day. The possibilities at each pole, the confusion at the crossroads, the excitement when it feels like life is going our way, the sorrow when it doesn’t. And that’s when I realise no one ever truly knows where they’re going. No decision is easy. Loving, or leaving, saying yes or no. We can waste our lives wondering if we’ve made the right choices; or we can own them. Stop looking at the other routes and just follow our inner Siri, or in my case, listen to Loni and realise that being happy is the only decision we really have to make.

I look up, thinking about my dad all of a sudden. I may never know if his choice made him happy, but I have to stop letting it make me miserable. He left his diary for me to help me to come to terms with his choice. So, for the first time in ages, I take my long-lost Dad’s advice and gaze at the infinite galaxy of stars shimmering above me. I realise then that I have to trust my instincts. Follow the path my heart has taken me on so far and know that, no matter what detours I may make, I will always end up exactly where I’m meant to be. I just have to trust myself.

And with that, I turn my back on the pier and my past – ready to embrace the future I’m now completely certain I want.

February

Dear Bea

The winter is nearly over and all around you new shoots of promise are beginning to appear. It’s time to come out of hibernation, to stop thinking of your garden as bare and see what is growing beneath your feet, what has been there all along. You will see drifts of dwarf iris and early crocuses piercing the earth, not to mention beautiful, bright cyclamens and camellias rampaging through the garden like Pink Ladies on an adventure. Soon the wild narcissus – a flower that grows best in the sun – will parade its golden petals once more before the other perennials that always seem overshadowed by it.

There is much to do in the garden this month, but I see February as a comma, a pausing point, a breath between a hard winter that is on its way out and a spring we’re waiting to meet. Maybe you are not ready to forget what has gone before, you are still feeling the effects of being out in the cold for so long, but I’m sure there are also moments when the pale sunshine touches your face and you can sense brighter days ahead.

I don’t have to be with you to know you have such a bright future before you, Bea.

Love, Dad

Chapter 63

Bea Bishop is Going to Goa (Goaing?)

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As my taxi pulls into the airport I notice that there are thick, bulbous clouds hanging like blimps in the gun-metal grey sky. The day feels broodingly heavy like a sullen teenager desperate to unshackle him or herself from their studies and sod off to sunnier climes.

I climb out of the cab and the taxi driver smiles as he hands me my backpack from the boot and waits for me to scrabble about in my purse for the fare. He’s been a good companion, chatty without being intrusive, offering more personal information than he took. I’ve heard all about his two adored teenage daughters, how much he worries for them and how he insists on picking them up when they’re on nights out, no matter what job he’s on – or where it’s taken him.

‘I’d go to the ends of the earth for those two,’ he’d laughed at one point, glancing at me in his rear-view mirror as I’d smiled weakly at him, as if he was assessing whether I’d caused my father as much concern. It had sent a pang of pain through me to know the lengths some fathers go to for their children.

Then I’d comforted myself with the thought that Loni had done the equivalent of running solo around the world for Cal and me. And after all that, she’s still supporting me in my quest to find Dad. Even though I can’t imagine what it’s doing to her.

This trip was Loni’s idea. After I’d shown her the address of where Adam had traced Dad to that Milly had given me on Christmas Day, she’d taken everything in hand, made me organise a week’s holiday from the flower shop. I told her I couldn’t, not when Sal had just had her baby, but Loni went ahead and called her and Sal told her immediately that of course I should go. She said that her dad would happily run the shop for the week I’m away. So Loni booked me a ticket and arranged for me to stay with an old friend of hers.

‘And you don’t mind? You won’t mind if I find him and manage to build a relationship with him?’

‘Oh Bea, you don’t know how much I wish that for you, what
joy
I would find in that!’ Loni’s eyes had filled up then and I’d cried and hugged her tightly. ‘Remember, darling, to dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily, but not to dare is to lose yourself.’

‘Thank you, Mum,’ I said quietly. Calling her that made me wonder when I had stopped using that word. And made me want to start using it again.

‘Ooh don’t call me that, you make me sound so
old
!’ she said, kissing my forehead, and I laughed. But I noticed her eyes were glistening with tears. Had that been another adapted story for my benefit; she making it look like she didn’t want to be called Mum, when actually, she found it hurtful that I didn’t call her that? Or was it her choice? I’m amazed that one person could protect another so fiercely that they wouldn’t care about hurting themselves. She is incredible, and part of me wishes that she was coming with me on this trip.

Cal hadn’t been interested, even though I asked him to come. ‘I understand why you want to, sis,’ he said. ‘But I’m not willing to leave Lucy and the kids to go on some wild goose chase. This is your journey and I hope meeting him helps you see what I’ve always known. That our childhood, our lives have been the best version they could be because of the choices both he and Loni made.’ He stopped then and I saw him get a bit choked up.

The terminal is abuzz with excited holidaymakers; couples looking to escape the cold British weather (and no doubt their respective families) after the long Christmas break, parents with young kids on half-term in search of winter sun. Others probably off for fabulous city breaks or going back home to their own countries after a Christmas in the UK. So many people looking to escape their lives – or return to them.

I’m not entirely sure which I’m doing.

I gaze up at the departures board as people stream past me and I get momentarily tangled up in a family or a conversation. I feel like a bobbin, spinning uncontrollably in the effort to keep still as everyone else seems to weave easily around me. The electronic letters on the board are clearly spelling out destinations and flight numbers and gates but they blur in front of my eyes and I suddenly feel completely overwhelmed by this journey I’m taking alone. What am I doing flying to India to find a man I haven’t seen in over twenty years to see if he can find the answers to my life? I wish Adam were here; he’d make this better, I know he would. I want to tell him everything I’ve gone through since last April to get to where I am now. I want him to know that I haven’t forgotten him either, that he’s always been there, that it wasn’t him I was running from – or our relationship. I was running back to everything that had happened before. I’ve tried to get in touch with him since Milly told me what he’d done for me, but he won’t answer my calls. Milly says he’s out of the country but I think finding my dad was his final act of altruism, helping me because he still thinks I can’t help myself.

I head for the check-in desk slowly and take my place at the back, feeling self-conscious in my solitude and yet empowered by what I’m doing. I’m in control for the first time in my life. I hear a commotion from the automatic doors but I don’t turn around. I just want to focus on getting to the front of this queue, get through the gate and onto the plane. I’m worried that if I turn around I’ll make a run for it (it is my party trick after all), get in a cab and go back home.

‘Mind out of the way, please! Lady with a lot of luggage on her way through!’

I turn just as she appears like magic at my side.

‘Ta-dah!’ She presents herself with a little shimmy, jewellery a-jangling in time with her body.

‘LONI?!’ I gasp as she plonks down her rucksack, takes off her fedora and shakes out her batshit-crazy hair as she grins at me.

‘The one and only.’ She bows as what feels like the entire queue, the entire
terminal
of travellers, turn and look at her. She is dressed in a floor-length tie-dyed skirt that she’s wearing with battered old boots she’s had since the 1970s. On top she’s wearing a white vest – and a loose-fitting jumper that has slipped off her shoulders. At least six necklaces adorn her neck, she has on gigantic hoop earrings and rows of beads are wrapped around her wrist. She’s also wearing an Afghan coat. She looks incredible.

‘What are you doing here?’ I gulp.

‘I’m coming with you, of course, darling!’ She laughs, throwing her arms around me as my jaw drops open. She pulls back and strokes my face. ‘How could I miss the chance to show my baby girl a place I’ve loved for years, that runs through my blood and yours, through my work, my every breath! I want to support you, to be there for you when you meet your dad . . . this is just as much my mess as his.’

I’m about to speak but she holds her ring-covered fingers up. Only one finger is bare. Her wedding ring finger. I clasp her hand.

‘Loni, you don’t have to do this. I know how hard it’s going to be for you.’

‘I want to do it,’ she replies. ‘Not just for you, I’m not a total martyr.’ She winks and I can’t help but smile. ‘
I
need to. I’ve realised that I can learn a lot from you, my darling. I need to face up to my past before I can move on, too. Roger – you remember Roger, don’t you, darling?’ she says coyly. ‘He was there at Christmas. Beautiful man, silver hair, voice like silk, moves like Jagger?’

I see she is blushing – I have never seen Loni blush.

‘Well, it would seem he is rather interested in me . . .’ She leans forward and whispers in a voice louder than most people’s shouts, ‘And not just sexually! He wants a relationship. You know, to be serious, go steady or whatever the word is these days. But anyway, I can’t, you see. I haven’t been able to let myself fall in love with anyone since . . . well, you know. Since your dad left.’

I nod and take her hand. I can see she’s finding this hard to talk about.

She clears her throat and smiles. ‘In many ways I’ve been in limbo as long as you have. I’ve just got better moves . . .’ She throws her head back so her hair almost brushes the floor and starts displaying some of them. The people in our queue begin to clap and she stands up and puts her hands in prayer position and bows before looking back at me.