Chapter 29
MARY
I led Kieran into the cottage. What else could I do?
Well , the part of me still bitter and broken from what had happened argued. You could have told him to get lost, instead of embracing him as if all is forgiven.
He could still head home and arrive well before midnight. He’d no doubt have some fun activity planned with Shay for tomorrow, the Saturday before Christmas.
But it was Kieran. Bob’s uncle. The concerned crease below his white-blond fringe had triggered a response similar to stepping out of a storm into a warm house.
Beckett had slipped away, so I made two coffees, automatically adding loads of frothy milk and sugar, how Kieran liked it. After chopping two thick slices of a leftover yule log that Rina had brought, I took a seat at the table opposite Kieran. As always, I waited for my friend to take the lead.
‘What’s his name?’ Kieran nodded at Bob, still asleep in his car seat.
‘Robin Timothy, after my great-grandfather. I call him Bob.’
‘And is he… Are you… Has it been okay?’
‘What, giving birth and then figuring out how to look after a baby, by myself?’ I shook off another boulder of hurt. ‘It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever been through, by a mile.’
Kieran started to reply, his face creased in sympathy, but I hadn’t finished.
‘But also the best. For the first time, as an adult at least, I’ve had to deal with it alone.
Make my own decisions. Decide what to do and how to do it.
Discover whether I could actually function without you two – or Leo – propping me up.
And I’m doing it, Kieran. Or starting to.
Some days, at least. I’ve bought a cot, learnt the mystery of how to fold a pram down one-handed.
How to do almost anything while breastfeeding.
He’s put four pounds on, all down to nutrients from this slightly saggier body.
I gave birth in a church. Made new friends who threw me a baby shower.
This evening, I was at a dress rehearsal for a carol concert, which I created all the costumes for.
It’s been full of the challenges and heartbreaks that go with any adventure.
The sleepless nights alone almost broke me.
But they didn’t. I feel like it might be the making of me.
I’m a mum now. And even as some days I want to bury my head under the duvet until someone else handles my problems, mostly, I love it.
I’m slowly, two millimetres forwards, one back, building a life here for myself, and for maybe the first time ever, I’m proud of who I am. Or, at least, who I’m becoming.’
‘That’s amazing.’ Kieran wiped his eyes. ‘I’m so made up that you’re proud of yourself. I’m proud of you. Leo would be, too. Although this house is grim. You should let Shay work her magic, sort it for you.’
‘Okay, firstly, we are nowhere near ready to be mentioning Leo. Secondly, Shay made her feelings on sorting anything out for me again quite clear.’
Kieran took a sip of coffee. ‘We will have to talk about him at some point.’
‘I know. I’ll decide when that is.’
‘And Shay would do anything to make things right with you. She’s devastated.’
‘Yeah, right. She looked positively bereft on that red-carpet thing she did a few weeks ago.’
‘Well, she’s hardly going to reveal her feelings in public, is she? She drove out to Chatsworth on your birthday and ordered a cream tea, in the vain hope you’d show up.’
It had become an annual tradition, a fancy cream tea in the stately home restaurant.
It was my turn to blink back tears.
‘I ate a cheap supermarket scone here, followed by a prepacked sandwich and a dry fairy cake. Wearing my pyjamas.’
‘Watching Hamilton ?’
I nodded. We could sing every word off by heart.
‘Did you tell her you were coming to see me?’
Kieran shook his head. ‘She’d have been crushed if you turned me away.’
‘And she’d never have let you come without her. You were worried that her tell-it-how-Shay-sees-it approach could have ruined any chance of me letting you meet your nephew. How did you know where I was, anyway?’
‘You had to give your forwarding address to HR. I sneaked onto Naomi’s computer when she was flirting with the DPS guy.’
‘What, weird sideburns man?’ I screwed up my face in disgust. Not because of the sideburns. The DPS guy gave every woman in the building the ick.
Kieran laughed. ‘He was replaced months ago. The new one apparently looks like that actor from The Bear .’
‘Fair enough.’
There was a brief silence – not awkward, exactly. Kieran and I went far too deep for that. Maybe, a charged silence? We were teetering out onto a frozen lake, the hidden depths of which included my marriage to his half-brother, and everything that came after. It could crack at any moment.
‘I missed you, Mary.’
‘Really?’ It was a genuine question, with only a smidgin of self-pity. ‘I always thought you and Shay were enough for each other.’ I smiled. ‘You, Shay and whatever random woman you happened to have picked up like a stray kitten that month.’
‘Harsh.’ Kieran winced. ‘On both counts. We always needed you. How could you not know that? You balance us. Bring common sense and an aura of peace. We’d have murdered each other by now, without you.’
‘So, you still haven’t admitted you’re madly in love?’
I had nothing to lose at this point with Kieran. I might as well say what I thought.
To my mild surprise, he didn’t reel back in horror or get annoyed. He looked down for a long moment, released a slow sigh and then was honest about how he felt, for the first time in twenty years.
‘Even if she did love me back, she’d rather stay alone forever than risk messing up ShayKi by acting on it. Our fights would only be ten times worse if we had the added complication of being together. Without you to steady us, it’d destroy everything.’
‘Or, without the bubbling underlying tension of your forbidden feelings for each other, you might stop fighting all the time.’ I sat back. ‘I can’t believe you just confessed you’re in love with her.’
He shrugged. ‘I’m getting tired of pretending it’s not slowly killing me. Dating other people isn’t so much of a useful distraction these days.’
‘We should invite her down here.’
Wow. That popped out of my mouth without getting approval from my brain first.
‘What?’
‘Or were you fudging the truth when you said she missed me?’
‘No, of course we miss you! We love you, Mary. I accept now isn’t the time to talk about what happened, but I have to say that we are so sorry.
We let you down in the worst way when you needed us the most. Nothing is the same without you.
Christmas is a sloppy mess without your schedules and recipes and perfect presents.
’ He finished his cake. ‘That’s another reason I’m here.
Obviously I was worried sick, and needed to see if you were okay.
I was desperate to meet my niece or nephew.
But as well as that, I wanted to ask you to come home. ’
‘Sheffield isn’t my?—’
‘Not for good. I get you won’t be ready for that. But for a few days? Show Bob a ShayKi family Christmas? Everyone will be thrilled to meet him.’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘What, you can’t seriously want to miss the Christmas Eve party? Lori’s nativity? To spend it alone, here?’ He glanced around the dismal kitchen, and I felt a prickle of defensiveness.
‘Who says I’m going to be alone?’
That made Kieran pause. ‘The guy who dropped you off?’ He raised one eyebrow. ‘I’d say that was fast, but compared to Leo…’
‘He’s just a friend,’ I protested, as if it were any of his business these days. As if there were anything ‘just’ about Beckett. ‘A really good friend. Who was there for me when I needed him.’
Kieran nodded. ‘He’s not a bad-looking friend. Who looked about ready to throttle the man waiting outside your house. Maybe you should think about whether you could be interested in more than that.’
‘Which brings us nicely back to you and Shay. I’m not going back to Sheffield any time soon, but I wouldn’t object to her spending the day here tomorrow.’
‘Really?’ Kieran peered at me, a glint of hope in his eyes.
‘We can have a ShayKi Christmas Day here. Heal some wounds. Get the band back together and find out if we can still be in the same room without screaming at one another or crying about what we’ve lost.’
‘Who we’ve lost,’ Kieran said, meeting my eyes.
I sighed. ‘Nope. Still too soon.’
* * *
Kieran set off soon after that, arriving back at eleven the next day with Shay, and everything we needed for a traditional Christmas, our way.
I hovered in the doorway, Bob in my arms, while they hauled in a cool box each.
‘Hey,’ Shay said, uncharacteristically small-voiced, once we’d moved to the kitchen and I’d put Bob in his bouncy chair.
‘Hi.’
‘You blocked me,’ she added, sounding full of hurt.
‘You deserved it,’ I replied, because it was true, and I wasn’t intimidated by her any more. She was an awesome woman, but I’d learned recently that awesome came in all shapes and sizes.
‘I’ll get the rest of the food,’ Kieran said, ducking back out of the door and leaving us to it.
‘I did.’ She gave a rueful smile. ‘Can I have a hug anyway?’
‘Yes. But it’s a temporary truce, like that Christmas Day football match in World War One. I’m not pretending everything is all fine now.’
‘Nothing is fine while you’re here and we’re there,’ Shay said, squeezing me so hard my ribs creaked.
‘I hate not talking to you every day. I hate you not telling me when I’m being a cow or my outfit doesn’t work or how your day has been.
I have 226 days to catch up on and I need to know everything. ’
‘You’ve been counting?’ I asked. Shay still struggled to know what date it was half the time, let alone keeping track over months.
‘I worked it out on the way here.’ She sniffed, pressing her face against my hair. ‘Okay, Kieran worked it out. But only because it’s so many days no normal person could count that high.’
I pulled away. ‘I missed you, too.’