Chapter 25
UP EARLY THE next morning and freshly showered, this time without any bathroom collisions, Helena pulled on black trousers, a T-shirt and a grey jumper.
She brushed her hair and tied it back into a ponytail.
She felt flushed with back-to-school nerves, determined to keep herself in the moment.
When her thoughts tried to suck her back into the spiralling misery that had consumed her in the past month, she wrenched her attention back to the present.
There was no use living in the past. She couldn’t spend the rest of her life living and reliving the years she had spent with Noah and Raffy in minute detail in her mind.
As hard as it might be to stop herself slipping into thought, she knew that that way madness lay.
It was a particularly cruel form of self-torture, obsessively combing through memories of a reality that was no longer an option for her.
These past weeks, the days had seeped into night, night into day, without her really being aware of the passing of time.
She had been living in a trancelike state.
The prospect of work had given her days a sense of purpose again, no matter how tiny, and she was clinging to it as though her life depended on it.
Helena drove to the café, trying to maintain her new resolution, noticing when she became submerged in thought and trying to pull herself back, to look around herself and see.
As she waited at a red light, a squirrel darted up a tree on the side of the road, stopping to glance over its shoulder as if worried it was being followed.
At the crossing, an old lady, bent double with arthritis, pulled her shopping trolley along with one hand, the other clutching her small leather handbag against the side of her plaid coat.
Helena’s heart went out to her. She wondered if she lived alone, like Margery had done for so many years.
It was a sad fact of the times, that so many people lived by themselves with little or no family around them.
Even village life, once so vibrant, was now so different.
Everyone kept themselves to themselves. As she drove, she looked around her, people who were walking past mostly had their phones in their hands, their gaze fixed upon the screen.
Others had headphones in, lost in whatever it was they were listening to.
There was no eye contact, no friendly good mornings.
It was sad how solitary society had become.
It was much busier than she thought it would be, which was good.
It gave her less time to think. There were periods where it was almost empty followed by lengthy busy spells.
Ahmed explained that the peak times were usually first thing, lunch and teatime.
A mixture of people grabbing coffee before heading off to work, local mums meeting up or getting out of the house with their kids and those coming after school pick-up.
The day flew by, with so much to learn in such a short space of time.
She suddenly found herself turning the sign back around and locking the door as the clock struck five.
Then the big clean-up operation started: wiping down tables, mopping the floor, cleaning the work surfaces and the glass, taking the coffee machine apart, cleaning the bathroom.
By the time they had turned the lights out and locked up Helena was completely exhausted, but in a good way.
She zipped up her coat. ‘Thanks for today, Helena,’ Ahmed said. ‘You were great.’
‘I enjoyed it.’
‘I’d like to offer you the job, if you’re still interested?’
Helena’s heart leapt into her throat. ‘Oh thank you Ahmed!’ She bit back tears.
‘Same time tomorrow?’
‘Fantastic.’ Helena smiled, more grateful than he could possibly know to finally be in gainful employment.
‘You’ll be paid at the end of each month, with tips on top.
It’s shut Sunday so you’ll always have those off, and my niece is going to do Saturdays so that’ll be covered too for the most part.
So it’ll be Monday to Friday as the norm, but I may ask you to come in on the odd Saturday if I need help, depending on your availability of course. ’
‘That sounds good to me.’
‘Great. Really. Thanks Helena. See you tomorrow morning, have a lovely evening. Doing anything nice?’
‘Not particularly. You?’
‘Just dinner with the wife and kids.’
‘That sounds lovely.’ As always, a rush of missing Raffy coursed through her at the words. His beautiful, gold-flecked blue eyes. His bouncy curls. His skinny legs always covered in bruises. ‘Well, see you in the morning,’ she smiled, pulling her coat closer to fend off the unseasonably cold air.
As she walked to the car, she imagined how envious she would feel now, of Ahmed going home to the smells of home cooking and a full household, if she was still living in that horrible flat share.
Instead, she would be going back to Johnny and Margery, and she realised how much she was looking forward to seeing them both.
She checked her phone, noticing an email from the hospital.
She tried not to think about that awful night, the night she had been for her colposcopy, what had happened when she arrived back home.
She tried not to think about where Raffy was right now, and Noah, who was cooking Raffy his dinner, what school he had been to that day, who his new friends were, whether he had any…
She tried not to notice the gaping ache that resonated deep inside her.
As she opened the email, she read the results of her colposcopy, giving her the all clear.
She sighed with relief. Another thing that had been weighing on her mind this past month.
She had been putting off calling the hospital for far too long, sure that it would undoubtedly be more bad news.
Perhaps it was a sign, maybe her luck was beginning to change at last.
*
Her first week at Coffee Stop had passed by in a flash.
On Saturday morning she looked up the schedule at the closest cinema, determined to get herself out and about.
Johnny had taken Margery to see her goddaughter, who lived about an hour away, and the house seemed terribly quiet without them both.
She decided to watch a newly released comedy, avoiding the more depressing genres, in need of something light and uplifting.
She thought about asking Nathalie if she’d like to go with her, but she didn’t have her number and wasn’t brave enough to pop around on the off chance she was at a loose end.
She assumed her kids must be with their dad at least every other weekend.
She decided she’d make an effort to chat to her next time she saw her out and about, perhaps they could arrange to go for a drink or something.
Nathalie was the one other person in the village she had the urge to befriend.
It took Helena a surprising amount of courage to walk into the screening room.
She didn’t know why she felt so nervous, it wasn’t as if people really talked to each other in a cinema anyway.
But she did. She was worried that people would stare at her and wonder why she was alone.
As it happened, no one paid her the slightest bit of attention.
She was relieved to see many other solo cinema goers dotted around the room.
Like with most things, the thought had been much worse than the reality.
She actually enjoyed herself, realising it had been years since she had been to the movies.
Noah hadn’t allowed screen time with Raffy, so they had never been able to go.
And his reluctance to use childcare other than Helena or himself meant that they had rarely been on a cinema date as a couple.
Helena stretched out her legs and ate her popcorn, another thing Noah would never have allowed.
She revelled in the anonymity of the darkness, and told herself off for being such a wimp.
There was nothing wrong with being alone.
It was loneliness that she was afraid of.
She could see it now. The shame of feeling lonely in her relationship had been too painful to admit, even to herself.
She had carried that emptiness within her like an invisible scar.
Like the insidious creep of illness, slowly distorting cell after cell, destruction from the inside out.
Being with Noah should have been the happiest time of her life.
She had finally had the love she’d wished for, yet she had felt like she could only see the world in shades of grey, not the radiant technicolour she had dreamed of.
A crisp cerulean sky stretched out before her as Helena drove back towards Hambleton.
As she turned into the village her heart sank at the sight of the pub, remembering that it would soon be closed.
She thought of Podge and Perkins and wondered who would take care of them if Dave moved away, whether he would take them with him.
She smiled as she remembered Raffy throwing carrots into the mud for them to nibble on, yelping with delight as they snuffled over to grunt hello.
Her heart rate quickened, as it always did, as she swung the car onto the lane that led up to Hazel Cottage and her old home.
Pausing at the entrance to Banham Cottage, she caught her breath as the memories hit her once again like a punch in the gut.
The lights were on. The new tenants would be there, perhaps about to share a meal at the kitchen table, just as Helena had lovingly prepared lunch each weekend for Noah and Raffy.
She had met them a few times now, they seemed nice enough, but Helena hadn’t felt like making much of an effort.
She hadn’t mentioned that she used to live there.
It was too painful. After several minutes, she forced herself to look away, to pull the steering wheel to the left and into the drive of Hazel Cottage.
Later that evening as she got into bed, after eating delicious lasagne cooked by Johnny, followed by Helena’s signature Guinness brownies that she had baked that afternoon, she felt the warmth of Margery and Johnny’s company lingering within her like the glowing embers of a fire.
The time she had spent with them in the past week had done her the world of good.
It had begun to occur to Helena how vital human connection was, and not just the odd bit of conversation with the postman or someone working the shop till.
Real, meaningful connection was what she had been missing all this time.
Her bond with Raffy hadn’t been enough. Noah’s refusal to make space for other people in their life had whittled away at her sense of self-worth.
To be seen and accepted in your entirety is the greatest gift you could be given.
To be loved with no desire to change you, with no hidden agenda, as Raffy loved her, pure and selfless.
Noah had never felt that – she saw that now.
And, worse, Noah’s isolation of her, cutting off her friendships and enforcing her solitude, had caused the light that had once shone so brightly within her to splutter like a flame starved of oxygen.
She saw now that friendship was the webbing through which she could hold and be held.
It gave her opportunities to show love and solidarity, a shoulder to lean on, to be uplifted and enjoyed.
Without friendships she felt she had lost her third dimension, her impact on the world limited to Noah and Raffy.
His sudden severing of all the remaining human connection she had left had nearly destroyed her.
She was beginning to wonder if anyone could survive without it.
It seemed to her that it was as vital as breathing to a person’s well-being.
Without those guide ropes, those ribbons that bind you, it is all too easy to become unanchored from the world, retreating further and further into the darkest reaches of yourself.