Chapter Twenty-Four
JESS
I pick Mum up from her house in Orpington and drive a couple of miles to High Elms Country Park.
The grounds near the car park are tended and mowed, but paths lead into sprawling woods that spread for a couple of miles.
Down a short path is a wildlife conservation area that leads to a pond surrounded with reeds and buzzing mayflies with a cute café beside it.
I had no idea how things were going with Mum after the promise I made Luke last anniversary.
I know I kept in touch with her the first time I lived these years, but it was very strained.
I wasn’t trying to mend things or be supportive; I was just trying to survive our relationship without too much further damage.
However, I realized I have a secret weapon to help me navigate this new version of my life – my bullet journal.
I picked up the practice the year after Luke and I married after seeing a YouTube video.
Not the artsy, decorative kind of bullet journalling you see a lot of on Instagram, but the method from the book: a pared-down system for focusing on what’s important in my life and keeping track of daily tasks and events to accomplish those goals.
Thankfully, I not only unearthed my very first bullet journal notebook, but also a double-paged spread of brainstorming on how to try and be a supportive influence on my mother.
That’s what Mrs Wonderful would do, isn’t it?
The Jess who is here between the anniversaries I’m reliving is clearly quite committed to this plan, and she’s put some steps in place that I honestly am envious I didn’t think of first time around – like not inviting Mum to the house but going out when we get together.
It gives us something to do/talk about and she’s always clear in the head, if you know what I mean, at the beginning of the day.
I also learned from my bullet journal that I’d booked the day off work today, hoping Luke and I would be able to go off somewhere for our second anniversary, but life had other ideas and he has to work.
I decided to take the time off anyway as I’ve got some plans for later on and I’d prefer not to have to rush things.
I buy us both coffees and we find a table overlooking the pond. It’s such a glorious day. The sun is catching the reeds, making them glow almost neon green. Insects skate across the top of the water and butterflies dip and dive over the tops of the lily pads.
I reach into my handbag, pull out my purse, then push a few folded notes over the tabletop towards her. ‘Will this be enough?’
She does a quick check. ‘If you could throw another twenty in, that would be marvellous.’
I nod and add another note to the pile.
‘Thanks,’ Mum says, pocketing the money. ‘I’ll pay it back, obviously. It’s just a bit tricky having gone down from full-time to part-time, and there was a bit of a gap between ending the old job and starting the new one.’
‘Sure,’ I reply, even though I am not sure at all.
According to the log in the ‘Mum’ section of my bullet journal, she still hasn’t paid back twenty pounds from the last hundred she borrowed, and the switch in jobs happened more than two months ago, so her paydays should have sorted themselves out by now.
But I’m embracing Luke’s motto of ‘family is family’, and doing my best to believe that Mum is trying.
I also don’t mention that I suspect Mum’s move from a full-time role at the solicitors to a part-time role with a charity is because she’s finding it harder and harder to keep her drinking life separate from her work life.
For so many years, she managed to compartmentalize, but I assume there may have been an ‘incident’ that prompted her recent career move.
I listen to Mum talk about the new office and why she doesn’t like the manager who’s there on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and then she goes on to the next-door neighbour’s dog, who is always a source of irritation, and then on to plans for a trip away to a friend’s caravan in Bognor Regis.
She doesn’t ask me about my life, but I’m used to that now, so when she pauses to take a sip of her cappuccino, I take the opportunity to speak up.
‘I’ll have to take you back in about half an hour,’ I tell her.
‘I need to pop to the big Tesco to get some supplies for this evening. I’m doing something special for Luke.
’ And this wasn’t something I found planned out in the journal.
This is something extra I decided on this morning, something to really make the effort for him from this version of me. I feel this is important.
Mum raises her eyebrows. ‘Oh? Why is that?’
I look down and stir my coffee, even though I added no sugar to it, because looking her in the eye might seem like I’m making a point that she hasn’t remembered or asked, and I’m not, but I do want her to take a bit of notice about what’s going on in my life.
‘It’s our anniversary. Number two. Yay!’ My cheer sounds pathetic even to my own ears.
‘Oh, yes! Congratulations.’
‘I’m making Luke a picnic.’
‘A picnic?’ She makes me think that somehow this idea has offended her.
‘Yes.’
She shakes her head. ‘Luke should be spoiling you, not the other way around!’
‘We haven’t got the cash to spoil each other, no matter who’s doing it,’ I explain.
I don’t point out the fact that the hundred and twenty pounds she’s just pocketed would’ve covered dinner at a half-decent restaurant.
‘Now Luke is working for his dad, we’ve had to tighten our belts a bit.
The salary isn’t quite what he was getting in his corporate job. ’
A corporate job he hated. Despite studying business at university, Luke’s dreams of being a titan of industry evaporated early. Maybe it was the firm he worked for. But he was finding the greyness of a City job, nine to five every day, draining. It didn’t help that his last boss was a total cow.
And then, seven months ago, Luke’s dad had a heart attack.
He owns his own construction firm – just a small one, with a handful of guys and contractors working for him – but he was still on site a lot himself, and he had to take time off to recover.
Luke worked alongside him as a Saturday job when he turned sixteen, and then Easter and summer holidays throughout university.
It was either let the firm go under, or step up, so it wasn’t really a choice.
This is the way it went last time, and it has happened the same way this time. I have no issues with it.
I remember it being hard not having as much money, especially as we weren’t overflowing with the stuff beforehand, and I had to put my budding idea of training to be a physiotherapist on ice for another year or so, but Luke had a spring in his step when he kissed me goodbye this morning, and that makes it worth it.
There’s something about creating things with bricks and mortar that fills his soul in a way typing into a computer and doing presentation decks never did.
‘It’s such a gorgeous day,’ Mum says, ‘You should’ve had a picnic here for lunch. Much better than in the evening when the grass will be damp, and it’ll start getting chilly.’
‘That was my first thought, but Luke just couldn’t take the day off today.’
Mum frowns at me. ‘I know Luke is very dedicated to his family, and that’s all very commendable, but sometimes, Jess, you need to make sure he puts you first. It’s just one day out of the year. Surely he could manage that?’
I fold my arms, slightly annoyed Mum is being negative about Luke.
If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to her today; I’d have cut her out of my life completely.
‘Although Ed has been directing from the office over the last couple of months, he had his heart bypass surgery on Friday. Luke’s the only one holding the fort.
Yes, it would have been nice to have the whole day together, but I totally understand. ’
Even if it’s going to make it harder for me to change the direction of my marriage if we’ve only got a few short hours together.
But, if I remember rightly, on our ‘first’ second anniversary, I don’t think we did much to celebrate.
Luke’s dad was in the hospital, and it just didn’t seem the right time.
We eventually ended up going out for dinner a couple of weeks later.
Mum seems slightly mollified, but she crosses her arms and sits back in her chair, looking steadily at me.
‘Just make sure that you’re not the only one putting the effort in, Jess.
Don’t let him get complacent. That was the mistake I made – I gave myself over completely to a man, only for him to walk away and tell me it wasn’t enough.
Maybe, if I’d made him work a bit harder from my love, he would’ve appreciated it more. ’
‘Noted,’ I tell Mum. I can’t explain to her here and now, but I’m not going to take her advice. I wasn’t a good enough wife the first time around, but this time I’m going to be Mrs Fricking Wonderful.