Chapter 16
Joz
How can an email feel like a knife
through the chest?
Caroline’s mum opened the door before I had a chance to knock. She greeted me with a broad smile I never felt I deserved, even though I wasn’t expected.
“Well, this is a nice surprise.” She stood back to let me in.
I handed her a bottle of merlot—her favorite—and stepped into the warmth of her hallway. The house smelled like roast chicken and something sweet. Lemon merengue pie, maybe. “I hope I’ve not called at a bad time.”
“You? Never.”
From somewhere down the hall came the unmistakable shriek of excitement, followed by a loud crash.
“He’s in the living room causing havoc as usual.
Good luck.” She bustled down the hallway and into the kitchen that overlooked a long, thin rear garden which was bracketed on both sides by tall trees and neatly trimmed hedges.
I found Arthur mid-battle, swinging his plastic lightsaber at a sofa cushion he’d propped up like a villain. When he saw me, his entire face lit up.
“Joz!”
After launching the lightsaber behind him, where it narrowly missed knocking over a lamp, he flung himself at me, wrapping his arms around my legs.
I ruffled his soft curls and unpeeled his arms to allow me to drop down to his level. “How you doing, buddy?”
“Good.” He retrieved the lightsaber and brandished it at me.
I play-dodged his attempts to hit me with it. I made sure he got a few strikes in before I threw up my hands. “You win. I surrender.”
His giggles plucked at my heartstrings, and as was always the case whenever I spent time with him, the guilt I carried was so heavy, I bowed under the weight of it.
“How was school?”
He shrugged. “S’okay.”
“What did you do today?”
“Dunno. Can’t remember.” He got this gleam in his eyes—one that usually prefaced something naughty he’d done, yet couldn’t help admitting to. “Susie doesn’t like worms.”
Susie was one of his classmates at Ebdon, a private school that catered to children who needed a greater level of attention and help to give them the best start in life.
I’d used my contacts to get him a place, and he was thriving under their tutelage.
Kate never could have afforded the term fees, but I could.
For the rest of this kid’s life, I’d make sure he and his grandmother never wanted for anything.
It didn’t quell my guilt—I owned that shit—but helping Arthur made me hate myself a fraction less.
“What did you do?”
He tried for the innocent look, but it lasted less than two seconds before he dissolved into a fit of giggles. “Put one in her lunch box.”
“Arthur David Bevan. That was not a nice thing to do.”
There wasn’t an ounce of regret on his face. “She called Peter fat.”
Peter was Arthur’s best friend. “Well, that wasn’t nice of Susie, either.”
Triumphant, he said, “That’s why I put the worm in her lunch box.”
This kid. He always could wrap me round his little finger. “She deserved being told that wasn’t a nice thing to say to Peter, but putting a worm in her lunch box was not the way to do that. You must use your words.”
“Oh.” His bottom lip wobbled.
I distracted him by picking him up and swinging him upside down until he started giggling again.
I hated upsetting this kid, and it was tempting not to reprimand him, but even though he had Down Syndrome, he knew right from wrong, and not calling him out for misbehaving wouldn’t help him. Still hated doing it, though.
Kate poked her head around the living room door. “You staying for tea?”
“Do you have enough?”
She laughed. “I know you eat like a horse, Joz, but, yes, I have enough. As long as you’re okay eating at five o’clock.”
Arthur had a need for routine, and Kate worked hard to make sure she stuck to that. One of those routines was eating his evening meal at five o’clock. A bath would follow, then thirty minutes of playtime and in bed no later than seven o’clock.
“I’d love to.”
After dinner, to give Kate a break, I offered to give Arthur his bath and play with him until bedtime.
It was a small thing, but the grateful smile she gave me signaled how much it meant.
As hard as I found it to be here, I needed to make the effort to drop in more.
Raising any child was hard enough, but a disabled child brought extra challenges, and Kate was fifty years old.
She must get tired, but despite the offer I’d made several times over the last few years to hire someone to help her, she’d always refused.
Kate was a proud woman, and like most proud women, she’d suffer rather than accept help.
Therefore, the best way to help her was to find the time to call in more often.
It took a while for me to settle Arthur, and by the time I came downstairs, it was almost seven-thirty. I flopped onto the sofa next to Kate and pinched the bridge of my nose.
“You look exhausted.”
“Had a flying visit to New York. Got back yesterday but couldn’t sleep.”
“Want to stay the night?”
I shook my head. “Thanks, but I need to get back. I’ve still got to finish tweaking a couple of songs, and I’m due in the studio to record the album in a few weeks.”
“How is it going with the new label?”
Aspen’s face popped into my mind. I knew I’d hurt her with my “let’s keep it professional” bullshit speech, especially after I’d relentlessly pursued her for weeks.
With time and space, I could see I’d overreacted to an innocent remark, but in the moment it’d hurtled me back to that night, to Caroline’s threats of self-harm, and to my benign response, too busy chasing my next fix to hear the desperation in her voice.
If I’d never broken things off with her, she’d still be here.
But at the same time, staying with someone I didn’t love—and hadn’t ever loved—wasn’t fair on either of us.
If it’d saved her life, though, maybe I’d have chosen differently. Got her the help she so desperately needed. If only I hadn’t been high…
“Joz?”
I blinked, Kate’s question pulling me back to the present. “It’s going well. They’re a very different outfit from the bigger labels I’ve spent my career dealing with. I think this will be good for me.”
“That’s great.” She briefly touched my arm. “You deserve good things to happen to you.”
“Do I?”
She canted her head. “Yes. You do. I know you blame yourself for what Caroline did, but it wasn’t your fault. How could you have known that by breaking off your relationship she’d react with such… painful finality?”
The temptation to tell her I had known—that Caroline had called me and told me she was going to kill herself and I hadn’t believed her—consumed me.
If anyone deserved to know the truth it was this incredible woman sitting beside me.
But I was too selfish, too afraid of losing her and Arthur to confess.
“I just wish… I wish things were different. Arthur should have his mother. It isn’t fair that he doesn’t.”
“No, it isn’t. But Arthur is happy, Joz. Truly, he is. The school you so kindly pay for is doing wonders for his development. He’s a well-adjusted, cheeky, lively little boy. You play a huge part in that.”
“It’s the least I can do.”
“Few men would’ve done what you have. I mean, Arthur’s actual father bailed once Arthur’s special needs came to light, yet you’ve stuck around all these years. It wasn’t like you and Caroline had been together all that long, but you stepped up when it mattered.”
Six months. That’s how long we’d dated. Six of the most chaotic, toxic, destructive months of my life that had ended in the death of a woman I couldn’t save.
If we’d never met, she’d be alive today.
Nothing would ever change my mind on that fact.
Caroline was a troubled woman, and hooking up with a drug and drink addicted rock star had been the worst decision she could have ever made.
“Exactly. I knew my daughter, Joz, better than anyone. I’d tried many times to persuade her to talk to a counsellor, but she’d always refused.
She wasn’t an easy person to be around. Just because she’s no longer with us doesn’t mean we should ignore her faults.
She was a flawed human being, like we all are, but Caroline’s troubles ran deep.
I don’t believe there is a thing you could have done to save her. ”
Wrong.
A confession crowded the back of my throat, but I couldn’t find the words or the courage to admit my part in Caroline’s death.
“It’s time to move on. You can’t live in purgatory forever.”
Wanna bet?
“Out there is a wonderful woman who will make a terrific partner for you, and maybe one day bear your children. You’d make a terrific dad.”
Never gonna happen.
“Yeah.” My voice sounded like gravel. “Maybe.” I glanced at the old-fashioned gold clock on the mantlepiece. “I should go. It’s a two-hour drive back to London.”
“Of course.” She rose to her feet and saw me to the door. “It was wonderful to see you, and I know you made Arthur’s day. You’re always welcome here.”
“Call me if you need anything.”
“I will.”
She wouldn’t, but we both accepted the lie. I got in the car and waved, waiting until she closed the door before checking my phone for messages. Whenever I visited Arthur, I left my phone in the car. He deserved my full attention, and my phone was always pinging with something or other.
As expected, there were several messages, but it was one email in particular that caught my attention.
From: Aspen Kingcaid
Subject: Professional Parameters Moving Forward
The cold feeling hit before I even opened it. I read it once, then a second time. Clinical, controlled, perfectly composed. Exactly what I would have expected from Aspen. She’d sent it at nine a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Business hours. Of course she had.
Bitterness tasted like bile at the back of my throat. I’d chased her for weeks, got her right where I wanted her, then left her standing there like an abandoned dog in the rain. Now she was returning my cruelty with cold efficiency; her CEO hat firmly planted on her head.
I deserved it. Didn’t mean it didn’t hurt, though.
I leaned back, head against the seat, and closed my eyes.
Look at me now, Caroline. Still fucking things up.
Sliding my phone into my pocket, I started the engine, reversed out of Kate’s driveway, and set off on the long journey back to London. Guilt, I’d discovered, was a bit like love. There was always room to expand and take on more.
Although, where one filled your chest with joy, the other crammed it full of soot and ashes.