Chapter 37
Finn had once told Jade that the hardest bit about meeting his mother again after thirty years and finding out what had really happened when he was a child was having to readjust his view of the past in the light of new factual information.
‘That’s if there ever really is any factual information,’ he’d added lightly. ‘Because in the end the past is just someone’s opinion of what happened.’
‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ she’d told him back then. ‘Of course there are facts. There are times and dates and places and people. They’re all facts.’
But when they drove back from seeing Brian on that October afternoon, Jade finally understood what Finn had meant.
She’d thought she’d had all the facts of her life sorted.
But then again, maybe she was a slow learner because she’d already had to adjust them all once.
She’d spent her entire life thinking her father had left because he didn’t want anything to do with being a dad.
Because that’s what her mother had told her had happened.
Then she’d had to change her thinking because Hector had told her it hadn’t been like that. He hadn’t wanted to go at all. He’d wanted to be a part of her life. But he’d been told he must leave.
That had been a huge adjustment and the shock waves had echoed through her for weeks.
Long ago, Jade had also come to the painful conclusion that her mother had never really loved her because the hotel business she’d built up from nothing, her empire, had always come first.
But now Brian had told her that even that hadn’t been quite as it seemed. Elizabeth had put her first. Elizabeth hadn’t married a man she was clearly in love with because she hadn’t wanted to jeopardise her daughter’s financial future.
And if Elizabeth’s raison d’être had been money, which Jade had no doubt it was, it had been there in every breath of her body, then Elizabeth had loved her. And she’d shown it in the only way she knew how. Throwing money at the situation.
It was huge. Jade knew it was going to take her a long time to fully process any of it.
‘Do you want to talk?’ Finn said when they got back to Duck Pond Rescue. ‘Or do you need some alone time?’
‘I need some alone time. Would you be OK to do the evening rounds with Dawn and Ursula? Have you got time?’
‘Of course I have.’ He kissed her gently. ‘We can catch up later.’
‘Thanks. I’m just going to walk for a bit.’
She changed the shoes she’d put on to go and see Brian for her walking boots, and grabbed a light coat and ten minutes later she slipped out of the gates of Duck Pond Cottage and set off.
She could have walked around her own land. That would have been incredibly peaceful and healing, but she needed to be alone, which she could never guarantee at Duck Pond Rescue. There was usually an animal-loving volunteer somewhere.
Anyway, she had a destination in mind.
Ten minutes later she was at the cemetery.
And a few moments after that, she was at her mother’s grave, standing beside the white marble angel, breathing in the autumnal scents of damp earth and mulched-up leaves and the soft fragrance of decaying flowers left too long on graves.
The gnarled and ancient yew tree that grew alongside a nearby wall had a scattering of scarlet berries amongst its evergreen foliage.
The last time she’d stood here she’d been angry. She’d shouted at her mother for banishing her father from her life. She had demanded answers she’d thought she would never get.
But now she had most of the answers she’d needed. She had some really important ones. They’d been a long time coming but they were here now. And she realised Finn had been right. There weren’t any facts.
Because all that Brian had given her was his opinion of what had happened.
Only Elizabeth truly knew. But then again, one thing Jade had been absolutely sure about when they’d left Arleston Court Cottage was that Brian had truly loved her mother.
Why else would he have stayed with her and remained loyal to her for so many years?
And there was the fact he’d named his cottage after the place he’d worked half his life.
A place which must have held such bittersweet memories for him.
‘No wonder he resented me,’ she said now, aloud to her mother’s grave. ‘If I hadn’t been around you’d probably have married him, wouldn’t you. Poor bloke.’
She sighed. ‘I shouldn’t be too angry with you, should I? We’re all partly a product of our parenting, aren’t we, and from what Brian said, you didn’t have it easy either.’
Jade wished she could remember her maternal grandparents. She had a hazy image of a man with a flat cap and a woman with a thin nose, but there was no warmth attached to the images. No feeling of love. If what Brian had said was right then this wasn’t all that surprising.
‘I guess we all have to learn to be parents, don’t we?’ Jade murmured. ‘And the only place we can learn from is our own parents, and from what Brian said you didn’t have very good teachers.’
She sighed again. ‘So I’m guessing you just did your best with what you knew.’
Of course there was no answer. There could never be an answer, but it seemed to Jade that everything in her surroundings was suddenly a little brighter.
The marble angel gleamed whiter. The berries on the yew tree became a more vibrant scarlet.
Even the white sky overhead seemed brighter somehow as if the early-evening sun was about to burst through.
No, no, it wasn’t brighter, Jade realised suddenly. It was lighter. Everything in the little cemetery felt lighter because she felt lighter. She felt as though a great weight that had burdened her narrow shoulders for far too long had been lifted.
Her mother hadn’t put her last. Her mother hadn’t tried to wreck her life. On the contrary, she had tried to give her the best life she could. The best future she could. Even though she’d had a funny way of showing it.
Elizabeth had done her best for her only child.
It was a huge revelation.
Not only did it fill Jade with lightness, it also made her want to cry. To weep and weep for the relationship that she and Elizabeth had never had because they had seen life through such different-coloured lenses.
For Jade it had always been about love. Maybe it had for Elizabeth too, but she’d just seen love in material terms. The more gifts you could shower upon someone, the greater your love was.
No wonder they had never truly gelled. They’d been on entirely different wavelengths.
And they’d had utterly different perspectives.
How odd that it had been grumpy, morose Brian who’d had to enlighten her. Why had she never seen it for herself?
Maybe it didn’t matter that she’d never seen it herself. She could see it now. She reached out a hand and touched the headstone, running her fingers along the epitaph: Rest in Peace.
That was what it said, and Jade had often wondered if her mother was resting in peace. Or whether she too regretted the relationship they’d always had.
‘I’m sorry we didn’t understand each other better,’ she said now. ‘And I’m sorry you didn’t marry Brian.’
She crouched down until she was level with the headstone and dropped a kiss on her mother’s name.
It was something she had never done before, and something she would never have dreamed of doing before today.
She couldn’t remember them ever sharing a kiss in life.
There must have been kisses, of course. There must have been hugs, but they were blanked from her memory. Maybe one day they’d come back.
Jade stood up slowly. It was getting cold, an autumnal dampness in the air. Time to go home. Home to a house that was always warm, a house where there were always hugs and kisses. She wondered briefly as she walked back towards the lichen-covered gate what her mother would have made of Finn.
And then she had another blinding revelation.
The second time she’d ever met Finn they had been in this cemetery – he’d been visiting his grandparents’ graves while she’d been visiting Elizabeth’s.
So maybe Elizabeth had met him. Maybe there had even been some gentle intervention from the people who lay at rest in this picturesquely peaceful spot.
As Jade strolled back home along the quiet roads, past the untidy hedges and trees bare of leaves, it was a comforting thought. It was very, very comforting.
Jade knew with a deep-down certainty that she would never come here again with a feeling of dread. She and Elizabeth had finally found peace.