Chapter 32
MARY
Kieran and Shay crawled out of bed just before lunchtime. We made Christmas leftovers sandwiches and I told them I was ready to talk about Leo. Waking up that morning, I knew I needed to open this door, deal with what I found on the other side, then properly close it before I spoke to Beckett.
We went over everything. How Leo and I had fallen for each other.
The glorious and the bumpier side to our relationship.
How he’d almost, sort of, steamrollered me into a wedding, but that, without Shay and Kieran on my side, I’d felt as if, without Leo, I’d have no one.
Besides, I’d been desperate to prove that I could be my own woman, for once.
Make my own decisions and control my own life.
They shared their anguish at whether to tell me about Leo’s heart problem. They knew it wasn’t their place, but since when did the three of us have those kinds of boundaries?
Instead, Kieran had repeatedly pushed Leo to tell me himself, praying that, after years of difficulties and family issues, he’d not have to betray his brother’s confidence.
Once I was married, they’d felt even worse. I’d emphatically pulled away, and shut them out, and they felt I’d removed their right to stage an intervention.
‘We were petrified of losing you altogether. We knew you’d find it too hard to be angry at Leo. While our bridges were burning, you needed him, so instead you’d be upset at us for meddling,’ Shay tried to explain.
‘And we could see how important it was that you made a success of this,’ Kieran added. ‘We’d honestly never realised how you’d been feeling all these years, like a tag-along or afterthought. We never saw you like that, Mary. You’re our sister.’
‘If you were a third wheel, then ShayKi is a tricycle.’
‘So, the more we interfered, the more you resented us.’
‘You could have taken me out for a drink and broken it to me gently, instead of having a go at me all the time,’ I said, feeling slightly bamboozled by their different perspective.
Shay sat back, counting off her fingers as she answered that. ‘Bar Humbug. The Frog and Fly. That spa day, when I brought it up you stalked off and sat in the sauna with the scary man.’
I sighed. ‘Okay. Maybe I didn’t give you much chance. But this wasn’t a fallout over my choice of partner. Leo died. I lost my husband. Bob’s dad.’
‘My brother,’ Kieran said, with a sharpness that jolted me.
‘I love you, Mary, but in the aftermath, you seemed to forget that. You’d known him six months.
I’d helped him take his first steps. Sat with him in the wreckage of his diagnosis.
Kissed him goodbye as they wheeled him to open-heart surgery.
We might have had our issues over the years.
But I lost my brother. We can all grow bitter about what if one of us had done things differently. ’
‘You think it’s my fault?’ I sat back, stunned.
‘No more than mine, or Shay’s, or our deadbeat dad’s. No more than Leo’s, for being so blummin’ stubborn. The doctor for waiting almost a week before operating. Blind, cruel chance that he was the one to inherit the gene, not me or any of the others.’
We talked about afterwards. About why I had to leave.
ShayKi had become a brutal reminder. Leo’s designs were a major feature of the autumn collection, and every meeting, every decision, was like a knife thrust into my wound.
It felt wrong, living in what I still considered to be Leo’s house, but how could I move back in with Shay, when I couldn’t bear to look at her?
I wasn’t strong enough to begin putting it right between us, and I would end up hating both of them if I stayed.
At that point I was also afraid that the baby would be a constant reminder.
I was terrified that Leo’s child had inherited the heart defect.
I’d had no idea that a child could produce enough joy, and hope and wonder, to help heal my own damaged heart.
Bob would have been a new bridge between us, but I couldn’t see that then.
‘Is Bob…?’ Shay asked, taking Kieran’s hand as his eyes filled with fear.
‘He’s fine,’ I said. ‘We got the all-clear while I was still pregnant.’
They asked what my plans were now, after eventually accepting that they wouldn’t include ShayKi.
‘I don’t know. I’m giving myself a year of maternity leave, so can start deciding that in the spring. I think it’s here, though. I’m wondering if it might include making things. A small business. I know it will be something simple, that allows me as much time as I want to be with Bob.’
‘I think you should come back with us, just to double check,’ Shay said. ‘You can live with us and still do your own thing.’
They both knew that wasn’t true, so instead simply begged me to come back for a visit.
‘Just for Christmas! We’ve got the worst panto in the world this evening, then carols at the pub with a brass band tomorrow. At the very least, we’ll come and get you on Christmas Eve for the party.’
I held my ground. There was no way on earth I’d miss the carol concert that evening, I’d been invited to a festive fuddle at Li’s on Christmas Eve, and felt sure I’d be spending Christmas Day with Beckett and Gramps. Hopefully a whole lot of days after that, too.
‘You know I need to have a conversation with Beckett,’ I said, manhandling Shay in the direction of the front door. ‘Go and enjoy being all nauseatingly loved up, and I’ll maybe visit in the new year.’
‘With your gorgeous boyfriend?’
‘He’s not my boyfriend.’
‘Yet,’ Shay said, making me grin, because we both knew he soon would be.
‘It’s not too soon?’ I asked, suddenly gripped with doubt and regret.
‘Uncle Danny always said it’s not about the right time, it’s the right person that matters,’ Shay said, her frivolity evaporating.
‘You loved Leo, but you’ve admitted he wasn’t necessarily right for you.
You’ve found a man who brings out the best of who you are, instead of making you try to be who he thinks you are.
Personally, I’ve recently concluded that waiting around when you’ve found your person is a stupid waste of precious time. ’
‘Do as I say, not as I do?’ I asked, laughing.
‘Do as I say, and as I’m doing as of now.’ She grinned back, before hugging me with the force of all those missed months, and left me to it.
* * *
By the time I needed to leave for the NLCCCCC, I had given up waiting for Beckett to reply to any of my messages, and accepted Rina’s offer to pick me up.
Apart from the two missed calls, there’d been nothing.
I refused to consider the possibility that, after our kiss, Beckett would suddenly ghost me.
Even if it had prompted a minor freak-out, or what he’d said in the car was a lie to protect my feelings, he wouldn’t be so ignorant as to flat out ignore me.
These past two days were the longest we’d been without contacting each other in ages.
I was genuinely worried, and when the reserved seat beside mine in the New Life hall remained empty, I couldn’t quench the jitters.
Either he genuinely couldn’t bear to be in the same room as me, even for something as significant as this – and if so, I hadn’t the faintest clue why – or something awful had happened.
A couple of minutes before the concert was due to start, I ducked outside to try calling again.
As I did, a message pinged through.
My initial relief, however, died with a splutter.
Beckett
Hi, Mary. I’ve been thinking a lot about what happened on Friday evening, and I wanted to apologise for letting the emotion of the moment take over. Kissing you was wrong.
What? It wasn’t wrong! Beckett kissing me had been one of the rightest things to ever happen!
Beckett
You said you couldn’t be friends with me now, but I sincerely hope we can both move past this rash mistake. It’s probably best to take a bit of time apart, given the situation, but I would hate to lose your friendship altogether. Best wishes, Beckett.
A rash mistake? Time apart? Best wishes?!?
Was he serious?
Wow. How could two people experience the same two-second kiss and come up with such completely different conclusions about it?
I slunk back to my seat, huddled over with humiliation, hurt, and a growing flicker of anger.
How dare he act all pompous and rational, after flipping everything upside down, making me believe I could find love again after the crappiest year ever?
How could he do this to me, three days before Christmas? What was I meant to do now? Spend the day alone, me and Bob? Crawl back to Sheffield, my miserable face gatecrashing my sickeningly in love friends’ first Christmas as a couple?
Beckett could take his perfectly punctuated brush-off and stick it up his stocking.
Thankfully, at that moment the house lights dropped, so no one could spot the tears about to pour down my face.
After the wackiest, wildest, most wonderful carol concert that surely ever graced a community church stage, while the crowd whooped and clapped their approval and Cheris and Carolyn burst out of a giant Christmas cracker to yet more rapturous applause, I slipped out of the audience.
Collecting Bob from where he slept as peacefully as the baby Jesus in his makeshift manger, I mumbled some incomprehensible excuse about having to get straight off and practically ran to the bus stop, Bob bouncing against my broken heart.
* * *
The next day, Monday, I woke up feeling as if I’d slid back three months. As if all the worst things I’d ever wondered about myself were true after all. The urge to hide under the duvet was overwhelming.
I had to get up, though. After I’d fed Bob in bed, he produced the kind of stink that needed a changing mat and a bath, if not a hazmat suit or breathing apparatus, and by the time I’d sorted that, I decided I might as well decamp to the sofa.
At least there was a TV there, and leftover crisps and mince pies from Saturday.