Chapter 22
22
SIX AND A HALF YEARS AGO
The evening following Noah’s funeral had been the start of the end for Flynn and me. One night away turned into three but the time apart didn’t resolve anything. The anger still burned inside me.
I knew I couldn’t hide from Flynn forever. We ran a business together and our clients had been extremely understanding but we had to return to work. To normality. It was a phrase I’d heard a lot from my parents and from Georgia. Normality? Nothing about my life would ever be normal again.
I might have physically returned to The Bothy and to Flynn but I never did emotionally. We didn’t talk about me leaving. We didn’t talk about much at all, although that wasn’t for want of trying on Flynn’s part. I had no idea how to be around him anymore, resentment towards him constantly bubbling beneath the surface. I was irritable all the time, picking fights over anything and everything. Flynn wouldn’t bite, which angered me even more. How could he be so calm? How could he possibly be taking all of this in his stride instead of stomping about in a rage demanding answers?
Even work – my absolute passion – didn’t excite me. I spent hours sitting in front of my drawing board or at my computer just staring into space, trying to make sense of what had happened and why it had happened to us.
I became convinced that Jessie knew more than she was letting on. She and Noah had been best friends for several years before they became a couple and I’d spent enough time around them to know they told each other everything. I’d always loved seeing them deep in conversation. It warmed my heart that he had someone special to whom he was comfortable chatting for hours.
Flynn was out on site each day, but my work was predominantly home-based. My office was at the front of The Bothy in one of the spare bedrooms and I became fixated on Jessie’s movements to and from The Byre. She was in her first year of sixth form and none of the students had lessons on Wednesday afternoons. Jessie cycled home at lunchtime and, with Helen and Guy out at work, she was in the house on her own. It was the perfect opportunity to have a word.
The first time, a few weeks after Noah’s funeral, I was really polite. I’m so sorry to ask you again but sometimes we just need a bit of space to focus. I don’t suppose you’ve thought of anything else that would help me understand what happened to Noah. She didn’t. She was sorry. She’d let me know if anything came to mind.
The following week, I’d made a few careless mistakes with my work which had been humiliating as well as costing a lot of time to resolve. I never made mistakes so I wasn’t in the best frame of mind when I rapped on the knocker at The Byre. Jessie’s face fell when she saw it was me. There’s nothing else to tell you. So I told her exactly what I thought of that. She slammed the door in my face.
I was on tenterhooks that evening, expecting Helen or Guy to pound on our door and demand that I stop harassing their daughter. When they didn’t, I concluded she couldn’t have told them which, to my mind, confirmed my belief that Jessie knew more than she was letting on.
The Wednesday after, I tried again. I was so driven by my need to find answers that I never paused to think about how unreasonable my behaviour was or how it might be affecting Jessie. She shouted from the entrance hall that she wasn’t going to answer the door and I’d better leave or she’d call the police. Not at all intimidated by her threat, I pushed open the letterbox.
‘You have to know something, Jessie. You two were inseparable. Noah must have told you what was going on with him.’
Next minute, she yanked open the door, almost trapping my fingers in the letterbox.
‘You really want to know what was going on with him?’ she demanded.
Her hair was wild, her pale cheeks tearstained, and I knew I’d gone too far, but how could I walk away when her question was so loaded? She clearly knew something.
‘Yes!’ I cried. ‘I need to know.’
‘It was you! He felt invisible around you and Flynn. The pair of you spent all your time working and, if you weren’t working, you were discussing work or you were talking about building your dream home. Did you ever include him in that? Ask him what he wanted? No! And do you know how that made him feel? Like he didn’t matter. Like you couldn’t wait for him to move out so you could get the perfect home without him.’
‘It wasn’t like?—’
But Jessie was on a roll, her voice getting stronger and louder. ‘He didn’t have siblings and do you know what he thought about that? That you’d never really wanted kids and he’d been a mistake.’
A look of horror crossed her face, as though she realised she’d just crossed a line. Her voice softened. ‘I loved Noah and he loved me. When he was struggling, I could always bring him round but, at some point over the summer, I stopped being enough. I don’t know why. He never told me and now he never will. That’s it. That’s all I know. Please don’t come back. I can’t do this. I really can’t.’
She closed the door and I stood outside for several minutes, reeling. Could there be any truth in that? Surely not! But I had a montage playing in my mind of numerous occasions when Noah had walked into the lounge or kitchen-diner where Flynn and I were deep in conversation, and had walked out again. Times when he’d asked what we were doing that evening or weekend and we’d told him we were working. Had he really felt pushed away?
If he had, that wasn’t fair on us. Everything we’d ever done was for Noah. He’d been the centre of our world and we’d given him so much of our time. As he’d hit his teens, he’d wanted to spend more time with his friends and less with us – usual teenager behaviour – but we’d still talked regularly. Except… if we’d properly done that, wouldn’t I have known he’d lost touch with his friends, split up with his girlfriend, was bunking off college and dropping grades? Had Jessie spoken the truth?
I was sitting in the dark when Flynn returned home from work.
‘Jessie thinks we neglected Noah,’ I said.
‘You scared the life out of me!’ he cried, flicking the light switch. ‘Why are you sitting in the dark?’
‘Did you not hear what I just said? Jessie thinks we neglected Noah.’
‘I thought you were going to leave Jessie alone.’
I stared at him, unable to comprehend how he could be more concerned about why I was sitting in the dark and why I was pestering Jessie than he was about what she’d said. My befuddled mind joined some dots and told me that it was because Flynn knew it was true and that he’d been the one to neglect our son, so I hurled that at him but all he did was roll out his usual patter about letting it go.
Days rolled into weeks with Flynn and I barely speaking to each other and then came the breaking point. I woke up early one morning in June to find the bed empty. I could hear noises along the hall, like furniture being moved. I crept along the landing and found Flynn kneeling on the floor of Noah’s bedroom, picking up his clothes and folding them into bin bags.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ I demanded.
He twisted round, his cheeks wet with tears. ‘It’s time.’
‘To hell it is!’ I stormed over to him and tried to wrestle the bin bag out of his hand but he gripped it tightly.
‘It’s been nearly six months,’ he said. ‘I know you keep saying you’re not ready, but this isn’t healthy for either of us.’
‘So it’s your decision, is it? You get the final say?’
‘I’m doing this for you.’
‘If you were doing it for me, you wouldn’t be doing it at all.’
Noah’s favourite hoodie was draped over his bed and I grabbed it before Flynn had a chance to stuff it in a bin bag. ‘You’re not throwing this out.’
Flynn tied the handles on the bin bag he’d been filling and placed it beside several others before looking up at me.
‘I’m not throwing any of it out.’
‘Then what are you doing?’
‘I’m bagging it up and putting it somewhere safe until we’re ready to sort through it properly.’
‘Why?’
‘Because no matter how much I wish it wasn’t true, Noah isn’t coming back. Because I’m scared that, if I don’t do something about it now, six months will turn into six years. And because it feels disrespectful to leave his room in a mess when he was one of the few teens in this world who actually kept a tidy room.’
He gave me a weak smile at the feeble joke. As I stood there clutching Noah’s hoodie to my chest, I felt like I was at a crossroads where what I said or did next would have a profound effect on our lives going forward. Flynn was in pain. I could see it in every movement, hear it in every word, feel it emanating from him, and I knew that my obsessive search for answers had made things worse for him. Deep down, I knew he was right about so many things. We did need to empty Noah’s room. We needed to redecorate and repurpose it and, in fact, moving house might even be an option. I found it too hard to spend time in Noah’s room and, as a result, our beautiful home no longer felt like a sanctuary. Flynn was also right that I needed to let go and accept that I was never going to find out why Noah took those drugs or who gave him them. Deep down I knew this. Very deep down. But the red mist still lingered close to the surface.
Noah really had been one of the few teens in this world who actually kept a tidy room and it had been a standing joke in our family. Are you sure you’re a teenager? Have you got a cleaning pixie hidden under your bed? I could have responded with a smile right now. I could have even made a joke – Have you found the cleaning pixie yet? If I had, I’d have broken that tension between us. We might have laughed together, shared some anecdotes, talked, cried, hugged and somehow found a way through this. But that wasn’t the road I chose to take. I was in self-destruct mode. My world was still spinning off its axis and I might as well blow the whole thing up.
‘I can’t do this,’ I said.
‘I know. That’s why I’m doing it.’
‘Not the room. This. Us. It’s not working.’
I didn’t know where those words had come from. I hadn’t planned on ending things. Or had I? I’d repeatedly acknowledged to myself that we couldn’t go on like this. Something had to happen. Was separating that thing?
Flynn stared at me for a moment, his eyes full of sorrow. ‘We’ll get through it. It’s just going to take some time.’
‘I think we’re beyond that.’
He shook his head. ‘You can’t mean that.’
‘I do.’
‘Mel! No!’ He took a couple of steps towards me but I backed away.
‘I’ll book into a B&B.’
‘Can’t we talk?’
‘What difference will it make? You’re so calm and I’m so angry and I can’t… It’s just… This is killing me, Flynn. I need some space.’
He swallowed hard. ‘And after you’ve had some space?’
I lowered my eyes. I couldn’t give him an answer. Well, not the one I suspected he wanted to hear. I needed to think. I needed to breathe. I couldn’t do either while Flynn was around.
‘I love you,’ he said. ‘Always have, always will. That’s never going to change.’
Did I feel the same somewhere under the pain and anger? At that moment, I wasn’t sure.
‘I should go,’ I whispered.
‘Don’t.’
Raising my eyes to his nearly broke me. ‘I have to.’
Tears trailed down his cheeks. ‘Then I’d better let you, but don’t forget what I just said. I meant every word of it.’
Flynn walked towards the door, then paused. ‘I hope you find the answers you need, Mel. And when you do – or if you hit a point where you decide you don’t need them anymore – I’ll be waiting for you. Even if that takes weeks or months. Even if it takes years.’
He left Noah’s bedroom and, moments later, I heard the front door close and his car start.
* * *
I spent that first night in a B&B but my parents insisted I stay with them and, unable to think of a reason not to, I moved back into my old bedroom at Derwent Rise. A week after walking out on Flynn, I woke up on my forty-sixth birthday to a moment of clarity. I needed to leave Willowdale and start afresh somewhere new. A place that didn’t remind me of everything I’d lost. A place where I didn’t see sympathy in the eyes of everyone I met. A place where I didn’t feel guilty all the time that I wasn’t strong enough to support the people around me who were also hurting because they’d lost a grandson, nephew, cousin, friend.
It was a Wednesday so Flynn would be on site working on one of our long-term projects. I prepared a short handwritten letter, told my parents I was going for a drive, went to Darrowby’s to collect a bundle of cardboard removals boxes, then parked on the drive at The Bothy.
I felt strangely calm as I packed up my belongings and loaded them into my car. The door to Noah’s bedroom was closed and I paused on the landing, staring at it for several minutes, but I didn’t go in.
Back downstairs, I placed my goodbye letter on the worktop by the kettle. My stomach churned as I read it.
Flynn
We both know we can’t go on like this. The day Noah died, something died inside me too and I need a fresh start. My solicitor will be in touch about dissolving our business partnership and our marriage. The last 6 months have been hell so let’s not prolong it. Please go along with it for both of our sakes.
Mel
Tears burned my eyes. It sounded so cold but that was how I felt at that moment. Cold, distant, detached. With a shaky sigh, I walked out of the kitchen, locked the front door and posted my key back through the letterbox. It was over.