Chapter Five
Erin felt like she’d won the lottery when she opened her bedroom curtains the next day to the beautiful late May sunshine.
She’d taken the day off, leaving Riley to manage the café, so she could collect Jack from Birmingham.
But he was already here, so there would be no stressful motorway driving and she had the whole glorious day ahead of her to spend with her son.
Her zeal didn’t even diminish at the sight of the bags still in situ in the hall.
They’d been too tired to tackle them yesterday, opting for a quick dinner and a re-watch of The Royal Tenenbaums instead.
It was like old times, the two of them at either end of the sofa, a bowl of crisps between them, giggling at the same parts they always did.
She wandered through to the kitchen, a scattering of spilled coffee granules telling her Jack had recently been in the vicinity.
That didn’t even annoy her, not yet anyway.
Give it a week. As she wiped the counter clean, she dismissed the usual pang of regret that the surfaces of their galley kitchen didn’t have room for a proper coffee machine, then lifted the kettle to check the weight, deemed there was enough water for a cup of instant, and flicked the switch.
‘Morning,’ Jack’s deep voice shouted from the sitting room.
She smiled to herself as she walked through to greet him. Her chick was in the nest and all was well with the world. ‘Good morning. Sleep well?’ She lifted a coaster from the pile on the table and slid it under the mug he’d put straight onto the wood.
‘Like a baby.’
‘Huh,’ she said. ‘Not like you as a baby, then.’ It was family lore that Jack had been a terrible sleeper.
Even at ten months old, he still woke several times in the night, calling out for her if he lost his dummy.
Erin resorted to leaving five of the things peppered around him on the mattress, but still, he’d cry until she came into his room and popped one back into his mouth.
That time was foggy when she tried to recall it.
She was in a pit of turmoil and grief when she should have been relishing her precious, if exhausting, time with her longed-for baby.
Still, now he was home for good, they’d be making even more memories together.
‘You’re never going to forgive me for that, are you?’
‘My eye bags won’t,’ she said. ‘I looked like Claudia Schiffer before I had you.’ That was a lie. She might have inherited her father’s unusual combination of naturally blonde hair and dark eyes, but she knew her round face and soft features made her more girl-next-door pretty than beautiful.
‘Is that right?’ He shook his head gravely. ‘I can only apologise for disrupting your international modelling career. Although—’ he made a flourish ‘—I think we both agree I was worth the sacrifice, if you discount the minor teenage blip.’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ she said, with an exaggerated sigh.
‘And you need to forget about that blip. I have.’ It was sad that he still felt the need to reference how difficult he’d been as a teenager.
He’d made up for it a million times over since then simply by changing back into the thoughtful, funny boy she knew and adored.
‘We need to talk about your cultural references, by the way,’ Jack said. ‘So far we’ve had Tom somebody or other I’ve never heard of, and a model from the nineties. You need to step out of the last century.’
‘I liked the last century,’ she said. That was true.
Up until her thirties, her life had been exactly how she wanted it, most of the time, anyway.
She had loving parents, a romantic relationship which had started in sixth form and lasted through university, despite everyone telling her it wouldn’t, and she enjoyed her job as an events coordinator.
The new millennium brought with it infertility, heartbreak, and the death of her father, then her mother and the myriad stresses of being a single parent.
Was it any surprise she harked back to the past?
‘When you’ve finished that coffee, let’s make a start on those bags. ’
An hour and a half later, the washing machine was spinning noisily at the end of the first load, and Jack’s bedroom looked like a landfill site.
Erin stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips.
‘How did you fit it all in in your student digs? Your room wasn’t much bigger than this.
’ Her flat was optimistically described as having two double bedrooms when she bought it, and when Jack was still small, the room felt perfectly adequate.
But since he’d grown to over six feet tall and they’d put a double bed in there, it appeared to have shrunk to half its original size.
‘It’ll be fine when I’ve put everything away,’ he said, sounding a lot less sure than his words indicated.
‘Remember there’s space in the drawers under the bed.’
Jack dragged the handle nearest him, and the drawer slid out to reveal an enormous pile of folders and colourful paper.
‘What’s that?’ Erin stepped over a pile of bedding and peered in.
‘All my old art stuff,’ said Jack, lifting an A3 pencil sketch of an old, bearded man in ragged clothes, reading a newspaper.
Erin examined the drawing, a familiar pride blooming in her chest. ‘I’d almost forgotten how good you are,’ she said. ‘That’s incredible.’
‘And you’re not at all biased,’ said Jack. ‘He’s got one leg twice as thick as the other, look.’ He pointed, but Erin could only see the detail in the creases of his tattered trousers, and the delicately drawn, if slightly too long, fingers holding the paper.
‘I think it’s brilliant,’ she said. ‘You should take up drawing again. You always enjoyed it and you’ve got real talent.’
‘I’ll add it to the long list of things my mother thinks I could win awards for,’ said Jack, folding the paper, as air whistled from his nose in quiet laughter.
Erin grabbed at the drawing. ‘What are you doing? You’ll crease it.’
‘I can’t keep everything, can I? There isn’t enough space.’
‘But …’ Erin contemplated the drawer, a hollowness opening inside her. ‘It’s all your GCSE and A level stuff.’
‘I know,’ said Jack. ‘But I’ve got all my degree stuff to put somewhere now.’
She thought of their old house, with its loft space where, if Andrew hadn’t ruined everything, she would have been able to store their son’s precious creations, instead of him feeling like he had to throw them away as if they meant nothing.
She could still see a younger Jack in her mind’s eye, head bent close to the table, as he made careful marks on the paper with his 4B pencil, then smudging it to make shadows with his middle finger.
She fondly recalled the grey smudged fingerprints appearing on the fridge door, and the white cupboard fronts, when he forgot to wash his hands.
She might be seeing them through rose-tinted glasses, but those memories still mattered to her.
The things her son had lovingly created with his skill and imagination mattered.
‘Aw, don’t chuck it out. We’ll find somewhere. ’
‘We can’t keep everything.’ He picked up another piece and held it out. ‘I mean, I don’t even know what this was meant to be.’
Erin assessed the brightly painted triangles, trying and failing to work it out herself. ‘It’s an abstract.’
‘Of what?’
‘I don’t know. You painted it.’
‘An abstraction of talent, or talent abstracted,’ he said, in a pretentious voice, viewing it from different angles. ‘Seriously, this is not worth keeping.’ He screwed it into a ball and threw it over his shoulder.
Erin watched it fall on top of an open bin bag. ‘I don’t think I can bear it,’ she said. ‘It might not mean much to you, but you’ve got your whole life ahead of you to make new memories. I’m more than halfway through mine, so I’m clinging on to the old ones.’
‘I don’t know which is worse,’ he said, his expression turning serious. ‘You harping back to the past, or me being terrified of the future.’
‘Terrified?’ Erin’s shoulders tensed. She searched his face, scanning for signs of distress she’d missed. ‘What do you mean?’
Jack swallowed. ‘Forget it. I’m being melodramatic.’
‘No, please. Tell me what you’re frightened of.’ The thought of her son being scared of the future made her heart ache.
‘Well, things feel a bit … a bit big, overwhelming, I suppose. It’s all unknown, from now on, isn’t it?
When I went from school, to sixth form, to uni, it was predictable, you know?
The biggest risk I ever took was leaving home and going to Birmingham, and even then, I was back here for the holidays.
I always had a safety net. Now I’m heading into the real world and I’ve got to make real-life, grown-up decisions.
’ He tugged at the edge of his moustache, which made him seem oddly younger. ‘I’m scared I’ll make the wrong ones.’
‘You won’t,’ she said, feeling helpless herself, because he was right; the real world was terrifying and unpredictable.
‘You’re bright, and you’ve got a good education.
It will all work out fine, I promise.’ That was a stupid thing to say.
She couldn’t promise, not when his future wasn’t in her control.
She hated not keeping to her word, and she hated not being able to predict or manage outcomes even more.
‘I hope you’re right. I do need to work out what to do with the rest of my life, though.’ He picked his way to the small desk against the wall, which was piled with books and folders. He lifted a black notepad. ‘I’ve been making notes of things I can do with a film and media degree.’
‘That’s good,’ said Erin. ‘I do love a list.’ There was nothing more useful in events coordination than a trusty list. The only thing she liked more was the satisfaction that came with ticking things off.
Sometimes, if she’d achieved something she hadn’t been planning, she added it and struck it through immediately, just to get the little dopamine spike.
‘Is it?’ said Jack. He opened the notebook, showing her pages of handwriting.
‘I’ve been scribbling down ideas, what I’m worried about, and what I need to do, but I haven’t done anything about it.
I told myself there was no point since I was moving home, but that was an excuse. All jobs are advertised online.’
That was worrying. Procrastination could be a sign he was suffering from anxiety, which was a step beyond worry. She should know. ‘Well, you’re home now. You can start looking, can’t you? I’ll help you.’
‘Thanks, but graduate jobs in film and television are like hen’s teeth.’ Erin couldn’t help but feel a pang of loss at her son’s use of a phrase her mother used to say. His voice rose in pitch. ‘I’ve got mates who’ve done five rounds of tests and interviews and still been turned down.’
‘It’s okay,’ said Erin, putting a hand on his arm. ‘Something will come up.’ She wished she had something other than platitudes to offer.
‘The perfect job isn’t going to fall into my lap, though, is it?
And I’m even frightened about what happens after I do find a job, I mean, is that it, you know, for the rest of my life?
Will I start getting the train into work one day, then do the same thing, day in, day out until, one day, I wake up and find I’m sixty and my life has passed me by? ’
‘You’re catastrophising,’ said Erin, softly. ‘The best thing to do when you’re overthinking, is to do something practical to keep your mind occupied.’ She only wished she was as adept at following this advice as she was at dishing it out.
‘But what if—’
‘We’re going to save the what ifs for when we’ve got this mountain of stuff down to a hillock.
’ She rubbed his arm, then took the notebook out of his hands.
‘This can all wait.’ She scoped the room for a task that would keep him busy.
‘Take all the artwork out of that drawer and put it on the floor in the sitting room. We can go through it together and decide what to keep and what to chuck out.’ The notebook felt like a lead weight in her hand.
It contained her son’s worries, and his worries were hers.
‘I hate not knowing what’s ahead,’ Jack said, lifting a pile of papers from the drawer.
‘I know, love, I know.’ Erin understood that feeling better than anyone. Had she passed down her fear of uncertainty to her son? He should be excited about the next chapter of his life, not fearful. She’d done that to him, and she didn’t know how to make it right.
As she went through to the kitchen to make them both a fortifying cup of instant coffee, the letterbox flapped and a white envelope fell onto the hall carpet.
She picked it up and opened it as the kettle boiled.
Her heart began to beat more quickly as she read the first lines.
It told her that the building which housed The Bookmark and the empty unit next door had been sold to a company called Galmouth Estates.
The letter gave her notice that when her current lease was up in twelve weeks’ time, the rental amount would be subject to change.
She read the new figure in bold letters, then did the calculations in her head.
It was eight thousand pounds each quarter higher than what she currently paid.
That was thirty-two thousand pounds a year.
Profits had been down since the gift shop closed.
How could she possibly afford such a monumental increase? She couldn’t.
Panic tightening her chest, she turned to the next page, where comparable rentals were listed, demonstrating that she’d been paying considerably below the market rental for years.
Even if she tried to fight it, the evidence that she was only being asked to pay the going rate was there in black and white.
With trembling fingers, she folded the papers up and shoved them back into the envelope, but she couldn’t hide from what that figure in bold print meant for the future of her mother’s café, or her only way of making a living. This was bad. This was very bad indeed.