Chapter 23
I can’t deal with this.
I go to empty the washing machine only to discover that I forgot to turn it on. Shoving the dirty clothes back in and stabbing at the control panel, I sit down on the cold kitchen floor and stare as the machine chugs into life. What’s happened to my efficiency?
Mark. Mark is what’s happened.
Usually, when a problem comes along, I fix it. But this feels somehow too big, too much, for me to tackle on my own. I could talk to Poppy but she gets het up whenever Mark comes up in conversation, so I imagine her immediate reaction to his reappearance would be graffitiing the words ‘Mark’s a tosser’ on Bristol’s new Mylk It pop-up. And I’m not sure a criminal record for petty crime and a fledging career as a wedding photographer go hand in hand?
Then there’s Frankie but I don’t want to interrupt the family time she so craved when we left Tally’s birthday weekend last night. Actually, the person I yearn to talk to is Joe. But things with Joe and I are all a bit confusing right now. HA HA UNDERSTATEMENT. Although … He did say he was here for me, didn’t he? Would it be okay to burden him with my problems even when we’ve got problems on our own? I sigh heavily. My life feels like a Jay Z song.
Before I completely overthink it, I dial Joe’s number.
‘Hey,’ he answers.
‘Hello!’
‘I’ve been thinking about you. How’d it go?’
I make a garbled noise by way of reply.
‘That bad, huh?’
‘Do you mind me talking to you about this?’
‘Of course I don’t mind. We’re mates, right?’
‘Right,’ I agree, and push aside the way it stings when he uses the word mates. ‘So, Mark wants to meet Lila.’
There’s silence down the line.
‘How d’you feel about that?’ Joe asks eventually.
‘Like I want to be sick. I feel like I’d finally started to get everything sorted, you know? Work’s good, Lila’s happy, I’ve made friends with the school mums, I’ve met you …’ Don’t dwell on that one, for gawd’s sake! ‘And now he’s come along and pulled the rug from under my feet.’
‘I get that,’ says Joe in that soft tone of his, the one that makes me feel like he’s really been listening to me.
‘He offered me a job at my old business as well. I don’t know whether to be offended or interested. That’s the thing, Mark did seem softer than the man I remember.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yeah, it was weird,’ I say, suddenly everything pouring out. Joe has that effect, I realise. I feel so comfortable around him that I could share anything. ‘The job thing I can handle, that’s a simple business decision at the end of the day and I’ll figure it out. But the fact that he wants to see Lila is messing with my head. I can’t make that decision selfishly, just because I don’t like him, can I? I have to put Lila first and maybe she would be better off if she had a father figure in her life.’
Joe sniffs and it’s hard to tell what he’s really thinking when we’re not face to face.
‘There’s a lot of big questions for you, Sophie. I’m really sorry you’re dealing with this.’ A pause. ‘It’s odd that he’s done a complete one-eighty, from not wanting a kid at all to now wanting to meet her. Did he say why?’
‘Just that now he’s grown up and realised he was “too hasty” to walk away from being a dad.’
‘Wow.’
‘Yeah. He said it was his one big regret in life.’
‘Hmm. Well, like you say, you have to base this decision on Lila. Maybe he has changed. Five years is a long time, you know?’
I do know, but I find myself oddly disappointed to hear Joe being so rational about this.
‘You’re right. Maybe he does deserve a chance to be a father.’
I swear I hear Joe suck in his breath at that.
‘Maybe. And, look, just so you know, I would hate to get in the way of that,’ he says.
This pulls me up. Joe wouldn’t get in the way of anything. Joe’s great!
‘What? No! You wouldn’t get in the way …’
‘Your ex is here and he wants his family back. I totally understand. Family means everything to me too.’ I can hear in his voice the pain he still carries over losing Claire and my heart breaks clean in half for him.
I want to reassure him. ‘No, Joe—’ I start to say.
But he interrupts. ‘Actually, Sophie, I’d better go. I can see my mum pulling up with Sid outside. I’m here to talk if you ever need a sounding board, okay? And I hope things work out with Mark.’
With that he hangs up. Hangs up!
And I’m left feeling even more tangled up. My head’s so scrambled that I sit staring at the wet, sudsy clothes churning in the washing machine until it’s time to pick Lila up from school.