Chapter 32
32
CRYSTAL
I couldn’t say I was surprised, obviously, that I’d now upset Gemma’s father as well as her mother. It was unforgiveable, as well as stupid, to leave my excuses for the weekend until the last possible moment and then invent something that was palpable nonsense. My only excuse was that it was that weekend, and I couldn’t think straight. But now I felt like I might have made Gemma start wondering about me too. Hearing her parents express doubts about my motives – however much she said they were being ridiculous – I was worried now that some of it might have stuck.
So, I was going to have to make time to meet up with both of them: the dad the next time he was down from Manchester (and I just hoped it wouldn’t be on the same weekend the following month, or I’d have to find a better excuse), and Jane, the mum, whenever she deigned to meet me again. Although God knows why she’d want to, as she hadn’t exactly seemed eager to get to know me each time we’d met up so far.
It crossed my mind briefly that perhaps I should just tell Gemma the truth. Explain why I had one weekend every month booked up, sacrosanct, when I couldn’t see her, her parents, or anyone else. But no – if I did that, I’d have to wave goodbye to being allowed any more time with Poppy. And I couldn’t let that happen, not now, now that it was going so well… helping me so much. I shuddered, literally shuddered, to think how I’d cope if that was taken away from me.
I wouldn’t have minded if the weekends marked in red in my diary had ever turned out to be a success – if I didn’t always come back afterwards feeling worse than when I went away. That previous weekend I’d cried so much I felt like I’d almost have preferred to spend it facing the inquisition from Gemma’s father. The next visit would be a pre-Christmas weekend… and any normal person would have been looking forward to it.
But I wasn’t normal, was I? Nobody normal would have had to do what I did – no matter how much they all tried to tell me now that I couldn’t have done anything different, that I’d had no choice at the time. Everything would come good in the end, they all told me: I just had to be patient. But it was so hard, and I’d had to be patient for so long. And I’d never, ever, be able to forgive the person whose fault it all was.