Chapter 2
TWO
JANE
We are back in our apartment, with a bag full of books, a phone that is still working but needs replacing, and food from a local deli.
I deal with my work calls, checking in with my boss about our new IT system, an upcoming recruitment drive, and our social responsibility projects – or ‘woke box ticking’, as he charmingly says.
It’s one of my favourite parts of the job, but he’d axe it if he could. He’s not a nice man.
Work done, I take a shower, and as usual try not to look at myself in the mirror.
I know very few women make it into their forties looking like they did in their prime, but I suppose today I feel extra aware of it.
Thinking about him, about Bonnie Bay, about the past, is making me hyper-aware of the failings of the present.
It’s all been so very strange, the way it’s crept up on me.
I’d felt that odd sensation of being stalked by Romeo and Juliet, and then wham, it went from stalking to a full-on mugging.
Bonnie Bay. How is that even possible?
I towel-dry my hair, a bit too vigorously. When I go back out, Beth has set up our food on the dining table, and poured me a glass of wine. ‘This is nice,’ I say, gesturing at what she’s done.
‘For a change, you mean?’
As ever, we are only a hair’s width away from conflict. I smile, and let it go. ‘Not at all. Shall we?’
It doesn’t take long to work our way through the spread. Artisanal olives and charcuterie boards are all well and good, but I confess I wish we’d gone for fish and chips instead. Beth is mopping up the final bit of hummus when she suddenly speaks.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says quietly.
‘Okay. About what?’
‘About being such a bitch to you. I mean, you’re my mum, and it’s normal we have rows sometimes, but I know you’ve been trying really hard and I’ve just been… yeah. A bit of a cow, actually.’
She’s staring at her carrot stick as she speaks, and then slings it onto her plate in disgust.
‘That’s all right,’ I tell her calmly. ‘But thank you. I know things haven’t been easy for you.’
I leave it there, hoping she’ll open up. Hoping she will talk to me, let me help her. No matter how awful she can be, I love the very bones of this girl, and I would do anything for her.
‘When we were in that bookshop, while you were having your nap,’ she says, hesitantly to start with, ‘I looked at Insta.’
Of course she did. She spends way too much time on social media, like they all seem to. Probably catching up on what amazing things Lily is up to. I nod, giving her space.
‘And Dad had posted. He’s on “vacay” in Florida. Him, Val, Ollie, all together in a place called Naples. It looked really pretty.’
Ah. Things suddenly become clearer, and I feel a red mist descend.
How dare he treat her like this? How dare he cancel her trip, claiming that he had ‘too much going on’, and then take his new family on holiday?
More to the point, how could he be so stupid and selfish as to then post pictures of said holiday, knowing there was a chance Beth would see them?
No wonder the poor love needed to throw a book!
I reach across the table, and take her hands in mine. She’s staring down, trying to hide her emotions, but I can feel the tremor in her fingers.
‘Beth, can I be honest with you about something?’
She looks up, and nods. I’ve always tried to stay positive or at the very least neutral about her father, but maybe it’s time for a few home truths.
‘Your dad has many good qualities, but he can also be deeply selfish. He’s always been the same. I don’t say this to just criticise him, love, I say it because I want you to know that none of this is your fault.’
‘How can it not be?’ she asks, her voice anguished. ‘It must be my fault – maybe if I was better, or more fun, or different somehow, then he’d have wanted me to come and stay?’
My nostrils flare with fury. I want to stab him through the heart, the absolute bastard.
‘No! No, Beth. Stop right there. This is a complicated situation, but one thing is very simple – there is nothing wrong with you. It’s him, all the way.
You were little when we split up, and we’ve never really talked about it.
I’m not going to go into gory details, but even then he was selfish.
He… he did things, he behaved in ways that hurt the people around him.
It wasn’t through malice – he never deliberately sets out to be mean.
He just never really thinks about the consequences of his actions. It’s… it’s just the way he’s made.’
In truth, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if things are already going wrong with Valerie.
If cancelling Beth’s trip and taking her and the baby away on holiday is an attempt to patch over the cracks that are already starting to show.
I say none of this, because I have no facts to base it on.
Just years of watching the trail of destruction Beth’s father leaves in his wake.
Beth chews her lip and seems to think about it. ‘I’ve been really sad, and really angry, and kind of hated him. And then I feel guilty about that and go back to being annoyed with myself. Or, uh, you.’
‘I know, darling. And it’s okay. We’re complex creatures, capable of feeling all kinds of things. I just want you to know how precious and special you are, all right? You always were and always will be my magical girl.’
She rolls her eyes, but manages a small smile. Despite the eyeliner and the nose ring and the bad attitude, my magic girl is still very much in there. And she still needs her mum.
‘So, what’s the deal with this Bonnie Bay place?
’ she asks. The abrupt change of subject catches me off guard, and I school my face into neutral.
Immediately, she frowns. ‘No, don’t do that thing, Mum – that thing where you pretend to look all calm even when I know you’re not!
It’s like… emotional Botox, like you can’t move your face, like Lily’s mum! ’
I laugh out loud at that. Maybe Lily’s mum isn’t quite so perfect after all.
Still, can I talk to Beth about this? Should I?
Looking at her hopeful expression, I decide there is no reason not to.
She has opened up to me. She is a young woman now.
Besides, it was all so long ago – practically Jurassic.
‘Okay, Little Miss Nosy. So… you do realise I wasn’t always ancient and boring, right?’
‘Technically, yes. But it’s like the moon – I know it exists, but it still doesn’t feel real.’
I throw an olive at her, just for fun.
‘I used to be different. I loved poetry and plays and art. In fact I thought I’d probably be an artist when I was older.’
I wait for the mockery to continue, but she just raises her eyebrows. ‘Yeah. You are really good at drawing, Mum. You wrote all those stories for me when I was little, and you did all the illustrations of pixies and frogs and stuff.’
I smile, thrilled that she remembers. I loved drawing them, was so sad when she grew too old to be interested. Maybe I should start doing manga instead.
‘Yes, I enjoyed that. Obviously, I didn’t grow up to be an artist in the end, but back in the day it was one of my ambitions. Anyway. So, when I was eighteen, I played Juliet in the school play.’
She snorts with laughter at that point, and I can’t blame her. Looking at me now, it must be a leap of imagination. I quote a few lines, just to convince her.
‘So what happened? Did you fall for your Romeo?’ she asks sarcastically, then looks shocked when I actually nod.
‘I did. I fell for him like no girl has ever fallen for a boy before. He was new in the college, setting all of our boring Surrey girl hearts a-flutter. He’d moved over from Dublin, and oh my Lord – that accent!
At risk of making you feel sick, it was soooo sexy.
’ Of course Beth rolls her eyes again at this, but I press on.
‘And he was good-looking too. Classic tall, dark and handsome, with these amazing green eyes – they were kind of flecked with gold, always made me think of sunlight dappling through the trees in a forest…’
Even now, I can still see those beautiful green eyes. Remember the way they made me feel like I was the only girl in the entire world when he looked at me.
‘He was fun too,’ I tell her. ‘One of those cool boys. The ones who seem so comfortable in their own skin that whatever they do is by definition also cool. Even if it’s stupid.
The ones who can skateboard off a roof and break their leg, and make everybody else want to do the same. You know the kind I mean.’
She smirks, and says yes, and I wonder who her cool boy is. I can tell from the look in her eyes that she is familiar with the concept.
She leans forward, elbows on the table and chin in her upturned palms. ‘Did he make you go all googly?’
I laugh. It’s a good expression. ‘God yes! Gross to hear from your mum I know, but he was so hot – I literally turned to jelly every time he held my hand. And even though I didn’t have much to compare it to, he was such a good kisser!’
‘Gross, yeah, but okay – I get it. And did he like you back?’
It’s all flooding back now. The connection.
The sheer joy of our eyes meeting at the first play rehearsal.
Of the swoop and swirl and stomach-spinning shock of finally realising what love was.
It was dizzying, thrilling. Like being on the world’s biggest high, so high the rest of the world looked tiny and irrelevant to us.
Every touch of his hand, every brush of his lips, every word he whispered…
they transformed me. Changed me. And damn him, Jurassic or not, I swear I can still feel it all like it was yesterday.
There is nothing in this world quite like falling in love – especially for the first time.
I hope that one day, my darling daughter finds that out for herself.
But I also desperately hope that she never experiences the flip side of that love – because none of this was simple, and all of it left very deep scars.
Things happened to me after our split that I have never told another living soul, and those scars will never leave me.
‘Yes,’ I say simply. ‘He did like me back. Our parents though… well, that was a different matter. Mine hated him, and his hated me.’
‘Why? I mean, I didn’t really know your mum and dad that well, but why did they hate him?’
My parents were older when they had me, I was a late surprise. Maybe that’s why they were so overprotective.
‘Complicated stuff, doesn’t really matter now. But the grown-ups did everything they possibly could to keep us apart, and you can imagine what effect that had.’
‘It made you even more determined to stay together,’ she replies, a sense of wonder in her tone. This must be quite the change in image for me, her boring old mum.
‘It did. So we decided we were going to run away. We’d saved money from our Saturday jobs, made a plan.
The only bit we weren’t sure about was where we were going to go.
So, this was in the year 2000 – we had mobiles, these little Nokia bricks you’d wet yourself laughing at – but we didn’t have smartphones.
Plus, I suppose we were just caught up in the romance of what we were doing – so we went to the library, and got a map. ’
‘A paper one?’ she says, sounding incredulous.
‘Yes. A road map of the UK. And we opened it on a random page, and we closed our eyes and held hands, and counted to three. Then together, we pointed at a place…’
I still recall how we giggled, intoxicated by our plan, by the whole concept of what we were going to do.
We weren’t complete idiots – we’d waited until we finished our A-levels – but we were maybe eighty per cent idiots.
Would we have made it? I wonder. If we’d actually run away, found a flat together, lived that dream?
The odds say no, but my heart still thinks maybe yes.
‘That place,’ I tell her, shaking my head. ‘Was Bonnie Bay.’
‘No way!’
‘Yes way. It’s on the coast north of Aberdeen, like the bookshop says, at the edge of the world.
We looked it up afterwards. It seemed so beautiful, so dramatic, so completely perfect for us.
We made our arrangements – a train, many long coach trips and possibly some hitchhiking – and we were all set to go. ’
Beth is fascinated now, completely enraptured. ‘So why didn’t you? Or did you? Have you been there before?’
‘No. I’ve never been. Neither of us ever made it to Bonnie Bay. But I’ve thought about it over the years. I suppose it’s become almost fictional to me. Seeing that card was so weird. Like being invited to visit Narnia.’
‘Yeah, I can imagine. But Mum… why didn’t you go?’
‘Pretty simple, love. He dumped me, and I never saw him again.’