Over and Over

Chapter Twenty-One

Thankfully, there are no more deep conversations about love and loss during the rest of the visit with Ash’s dad, but rather general chatter about everything ranging from what the new tax rate will mean for small businesses to whether they’ll have another cold snap before summer.

Jack hugs Lissa goodbye when it’s time to leave, his checked shirt soft, his arms surprisingly strong. ‘I hope I see you again,’ he says, pulling back with a wink.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow for the doctor’s appointment,’ Ash says, clapping his dad on the back as he did when they got here.

Jack waves a hand in a way that is clearly supposed to say, yeah, yeah, but Lissa can tell, from the way he offers her a small, apologetic smile, that he’s not actually brushing it off so lightly.

Maybe this is why he talked to her about losing his wife – because he wanted her to understand a little about what exists between him and his son.

She doesn’t know why, exactly, he thought she needed to understand, but she thinks she gets it.

She feels that way sometimes – the need to explain why her mum is how she is.

He mentions you a lot.

She supposes that could also be the reason he opened up. She tries hard to control the fizzing in her stomach when she thinks about that.

‘He’s not well,’ Ash says as they leave the front garden. Lissa slows her steps. She could see that, of course, but she glances at him, waiting.

‘He used to be a military man, you know,’ he says, and Lissa frowns a little at the change in subject.

She tries to picture it – Jack in the army.

He seemed so … soft. Not the hard edges she’d expect, which shows how much she knows.

Ash looks towards her car, a few metres ahead of them. ‘You need to head off?’

She hesitates. ‘I can walk for a bit, if you want?’

‘Better idea,’ he says, heading for her car. ‘You drive.’ She raises her eyebrows as he gets out his phone, then shows her his maps app, set to directions for somewhere five minutes away.

Deciding it’s easier to go along with it, Lissa follows the directions to Prior Park, a National Trust landscape garden. Ash pays for them both to go in, and leads them into an oasis of green, with views overlooking the stone spires of Bath in the distance.

‘Why here?’ Lissa asks.

He shrugs. ‘Why not?’ He tugs his hand through his hair. ‘I guess that’s why I’m so used to living in different places,’ he says, like they’re continuing a conversation without a massive detour.

‘Huh?’

‘Because we moved a lot when I was a kid,’ he explains. ‘When my dad was in the army. We settled here once he left, but I suppose it’s in my bones, all the travelling about.’

‘Here?’ Lissa asks, gesturing around to the park, with its open meadows and ancient trees. ‘Fancy place to settle.’

Ash laughs, and she’s glad to take a little of that sad edge away, one that has lingered since she caught him in the kitchen, staring into the fridge. They’re quiet as they walk through the garden, and Lissa waits, not sure if he wants to keep talking.

She gets her answer when he says, ‘He fought in the Falklands, believe it or not. He met my mum later – she used to work for an NGO, and they met while he was on a posting. He never really talks about it much, so it took me a while to figure out that he had PTSD. Although I suppose I didn’t even know what that was, and by the time I understood, he was just Dad and that was the way he was.

He always dealt. But when Mum died, it was like …

I don’t know. Like the thing that was holding him together just snapped. ’

He leads them down to a serpentine lake with a stone bridge reflected in the water underneath. The bridge is two storeys high, a mini temple-like structure on top of it.

‘How did she die?’ Lissa asks. ‘Your mum.’

He glances at her. ‘Aneurysm.’ She sucks in a breath and he shakes his head. ‘No way we could have known. Happens like that sometimes, the doctors said. She had a bad headache and Dad insisted on driving her to hospital, but she died on the way.’

Lissa feels sick. ‘That is awful. I’m so sorry you had to go through it.’ She realises it’s the same thing he said to her about her sister. This shared language between people who have experienced grief. A club no one wants to be a part of.

Ash steps onto the bridge, running one hand along the stone railing.

‘He just broke after that,’ he continues, not really acknowledging her words, staring into the water, his reflection merging with that of the bridge.

It’s getting late, a cool breeze whisking across the lake, the blue sky slowly muting into subtle orange and pinks.

‘He used to be able to force himself to leave the house, even when he was stressed. Or, I don’t know, maybe Mum forced him.

But when she died, he didn’t set foot outside for weeks. And he never really got better.’

‘Agoraphobia,’ Lissa murmurs.

He gives her a funny look, and she wonders if she’s said the wrong thing, giving it a name like that.

But then he nods. ‘Yeah. I guess. He’s not well,’ he repeats.

‘Physically too, I mean. And he gets confused, and that doesn’t help.

’ She thinks again of the keys in the fridge.

But maybe talking about that is a step too far just now.

Maybe Ash needs time to come to terms with what it might mean.

‘He needs to be somewhere with more support, really,’ he says, running a hand over his face. Tired, she realises. He looks tired. ‘He has a cleaner, and he gets food shopping delivered, but it’s not enough, and if I’m not here …’

‘It’s why you came back,’ she says quietly, and he nods.

‘Yeah. He had a fall. The stairs are getting a bit much now, with his leg, and he got up in the middle of the night and … He called me when it happened. He called me, and I wasn’t there.’

‘It wasn’t your fault that he fell, Ash,’ she says, keeping her gaze on his face even if he doesn’t look back. He shakes his head, and she knows that look. She knows it’s pointless trying to argue. ‘But he was okay?’ she asks instead.

‘Yeah,’ he mutters, and there is a trace of bitterness to his voice now.

‘Yeah, he was okay. But he might not have been.’ The guilt, she remembers.

He’d said he understood the guilt. ‘I tried to take him to look around a care home a while back. It was actually really nice – assisted living more than anything, nice gardens, people seemed friendly. But he couldn’t get out the car when we got there.

And I just couldn’t do it to him. I couldn’t force him to leave his home. ’

You don’t get it, she’d told him. How wrong she was.

They are quiet for a moment, then Lissa leans back against the railings. ‘Why did you ask me to meet you today?’

‘Because …’ He runs a hand down the back of his neck.

‘Because I meant what I said, about seeing the whole you.’ Something inside her tightens at that.

At the way he holds her gaze as he says it.

‘I can’t quite explain it, but I feel it.

So I suppose I want you to know the whole me, too.

And this,’ he gestures around, not at the park but at something bigger, ‘my dad, is part of it.’ The part hiding, she thinks, beneath the smiles and easy laugh.

She wonders if that’s the part she feels drawn to.

‘I also …’ He leans both hands on the railing next to her.

‘I know you don’t like that I’ve seen you when things get too much.

’ It’s a kind way of phrasing it – seen you at your worst would be more accurate.

‘But I thought maybe you’d understand that I’m not ignoring it.

That I do get it.’ Because he’s lived with it, she thinks. Or a version of it.

But Lissa isn’t that bad. It’s a horrible thought, but it comes before she can stop it, the way thoughts often do.

She can leave the house, she can function.

She doesn’t ever fall apart completely. But would that happen if she let it get worse?

She wants to think not, but how can she be sure?

She wonders briefly if that’s another reason Ash brought her here – as some kind of warning. Somehow, though, she doesn’t think so.

‘Also,’ he says, and his tone is a touch lighter, ‘I wanted you to meet my dad.’

She laughs – and she loves how he can make her laugh after all that. He grins down at her, then, without warning, pushes himself up onto the stone railing and starts walking along the edge of the bridge towards the mini temple-like structure.

Lissa’s heart lurches. ‘What are you doing?’ It’s a harsh snap. She didn’t mean it to be. Her throat is dry as she looks down at the water. Imagines him falling. Imagines him hitting his head, the way the blood would gush …

He doesn’t seem to hear her. She follows him on the main walkway. ‘Ash,’ she says, trying to level out her voice.

He glances down at her, raising one eyebrow. ‘You know, I’ve got pretty good balance.’

She bites her lip, looking at the water again. It’s not that far, she tells herself. He’d be fine.

She can still see it, though. Him falling. Bleeding.

Water surrounding her. Pulling her under.

Snap out of it, Lissa.

He’s looking at her curiously. ‘You okay?’

‘Yes.’ She manages a smile. ‘Just thinking, it would be a shame if you got all wet.’

He grins, slow and sure. ‘Would it now?’ She can feel heat rising to her cheeks, even as there’s a pulse of something right through her core just from the way he’s looking at her. He jumps down next to her. ‘Not a fan of bridges, huh?’

‘Bridges are fine. I’m less of a fan of falling off them.’

He makes a tutting noise. ‘One of only four Palladian bridges, this. You shouldn’t be scared of it, you should be admiring it.’

She rolls her eyes. ‘I’m not scared of it.’ I’m scared for you, she adds silently, knowing that it would make her sound like a total lunatic if she said it out loud.

Ash comes to a stop underneath the temple structure, looking like something out of a painting with the lake as his backdrop. A scene she’d like to draw herself if she had the time, the space.

She thinks about what Jack said – about how Ash is the way he is because he is so desperate not to be like him.

She wonders if there’s any truth in that.

The past defines the two of them, she supposes, no matter how much they might fight against it.

Maybe that’s her problem too – maybe it’s her past lives defining her.

Experiencing the same grief over and over.

And if that’s the pattern she’s stuck in, how is she supposed to break free of it?

How is she supposed to let go of a past that stretches back not just in her lifetime, but in multiple others?

She watches Ash, the low sunlight filtering through a gap in the structure falling over one side of his face. He glances over at her, raises her eyebrows when he sees she’s still standing there staring.

Only by making a different choice can she have the future she’s meant to have. She doesn’t know what that means. But she does know that she’s made the choice before to walk away from him.

A leap of faith. That’s what Saskia said.

Her skin is buzzing as she moves very deliberately towards him.

Tiny currents of electricity spark her skin – that feeling she usually only gets once a year, when the need to act, to prove that she is still alive, becomes overpowering.

Her eyes are level on his, and a slight crease forms between his brows – not a frown, exactly, but like he is trying to figure out what she’s going to do next.

She stops in front of him, and he goes very still as she reaches out, places her palms on his chest. On the railings, she sees his fingers flex, though he doesn’t move his hands, like he’s being careful to stay exactly as he is.

‘Thank you,’ she says, tilting her chin up. His eyes are even bluer out here, with the sunlight bouncing off the water. ‘For bringing me to meet your dad.’

Her pulse is spiking against her wrist as she pushes up on her tiptoes, lightly pressing her lips to his.

It’s nothing. Barely a whisper of a kiss.

But she feels the curve of his smile against her lips.

Hears the soft, gentle exhale, the sound something akin to relief.

Feels that same sensation course through her body, uncertainty chased away as something tightens in her.

Something that makes her want to sink deeper.

It alarms her a little – the intensity of it. Alarms her enough that she eases back.

Only then do his arms come out, fingers gently skimming down her sides, then taking her hands gently, holding her in place.

He encircles her wrists, thumbs moving to the underside – almost like he’s reading her pulse.

At his touch, it jumps, giving her away, and the corner of his mouth lifts.

His eyes are darker now, a deep, inky blue.

Neither of them moves. Neither of them takes it any further. They stay still, Lissa’s heart thrumming against her ribs, an awareness she’s never felt before running down her spine. Just from the way he’s looking at her. Just from the lightest touch, the tiniest point of contact, skin against skin.

Nothing else happens. But still, it feels like something has changed.

It feels like a choice has been made.