Chapter 27
THE FOLLOWING WEEK at work passed by quickly and uneventfully.
Helena was finding her stride, becoming quicker at operating the till and more skilled with the coffee machine.
She found herself thriving with the routine her job offered her, realising how important having a sense of purpose was, especially to distract her from thinking about Raffy.
She also realised how much she enjoyed working in the café.
She loved chatting to the customers, watching them go about their business as they sat working or talking to friends.
She spoke to the elderly people that came in and cradled their one cup of tea for hours, realising they were probably craving company, having experienced that feeling for herself.
The café was like a small safe haven from the outside world.
It served a real purpose in the community: a place to come to meet friends, to seek company, to eat, to drink, to escape the elements – exactly what was missing in Hambleton.
There was something reassuring and rewarding about being part of that. It was tiring work, but she loved it.
The social interaction she had at work was meaningful and positive, making her feel connected to the world once again.
Of all the people that came through the door, the children were her favourite, accompanying frazzled, exhausted mothers, and the occasional father, as they mainlined caffeine to get themselves through the day.
She loved interacting with the kids as she cleared the tables, enjoying the occasional smile or wave as they looked at her with unabashed curiosity.
She loved watching the tiny newborns the most, with their scrunched-up frog legs and silken hair, bobbing their heads around in search of milk.
She began to feel the faintest bit hopeful for a new future, one where the chance of starting a family of her own no longer seemed like an impossibility.
She thought back to the psychic who had told her all those years ago that she would meet a man and have a child.
Maybe she hadn’t been talking about Noah and Raffy.
Maybe there was someone else on the horizon for her after all?
She knew she was a long way off being open to a new relationship, but she was thirty-eight.
There was time. Who knew what the future held?
As Margery said later that night, after sharing a bottle of wine, ‘It is, after all, much better to be alone than to be with another person who makes you miserable.’
‘Were you?’ Johnny asked, concern causing the lines on his forehead to deepen even more than usual as he studied her with those piercing blue eyes. ‘Miserable, I mean?’
Helena paused for a minute or two. She couldn’t lie to him, or to Margery. She felt her eyes brim with tears. ‘Yes. I think I was. It sounds absurd, how I couldn’t have realised it at the time. But now I’ve had some distance I’ve started to see our relationship for what it was.’
‘Did he ever hurt you?’ Johnny asked. He looked so upset at the thought that Helena couldn’t help but feel touched.
Margery too. There was something about the two faces staring back at her, both so open and supportive, so lacking in judgement.
Over dinner she had found herself telling them about the controlling behaviour, the arguments, about all Noah’s weird rules and regulations: how he hadn’t let her socialise, the fitness regime he had put her on, the healthy diet he had enforced, how she had had to answer the telephone within three rings, how he expected her to be immaculately dressed but spend little to no money.
The more she talked about it, the more she realised how crazy it all sounded, how completely unreasonable it had all been.
She shook her head. ‘Not really. He pulled my hair, pushed me around a bit.’ She paused, reliving the memory. ‘He very nearly punched me once… He smashed his fist into the wall right next to my head.’
‘Jesus!’ Johnny reached for Helena’s hand across the table, his eyes alight with anger. ‘That fucking bastard!’
‘I quite agree,’ Margery said, shaking her head.
She looked so distressed Helena almost wished she hadn’t said anything.
But she also felt relieved, as though a weight had lifted from her shoulders.
It felt good to finally be heard. She hadn’t realised how much she had needed the external validation to tell her she was not crazy, that his behaviour really had been unacceptable.
‘How could anyone treat you like that?’ Johnny asked. ‘Of all people?’
‘I know. Someone as kind as you, Helena. Who wouldn’t hurt a fly. It’s so cruel. I’m so glad he’s gone,’ Margery sighed. ‘Although, of course, I worry for Raffy. I am sure he is lost without you.’
Helena was more grateful than they knew for their understanding. She was glad she had told them, that it was no longer her shameful secret to carry around.
‘Your support means a lot to me. Both of you.’
‘I know what it’s like to lose someone,’ Johnny said, his brow furrowed as if reliving the pain. ‘It seems impossible to imagine another future. But time does help. For what it’s worth, I think you’re doing amazingly well.’
‘Thank you,’ she smiled, hoping he was right – that the more time that passed, the stronger she would feel.
She already felt like she was coming back to herself the longer she spent away from Noah.
She was stunned just how much she had lost her sense of self these past years, and how slowly and insidiously he had worn her away.
As Helena served dessert, a pear and amaretti crumble she had baked earlier that evening, Margery announced that she had some news.
‘Guess who will soon be responsible for the wellbeing of Podge and Perkins?’
Johnny chuckled, raising an eyebrow. ‘Oh yes, you haven’t heard!
It seems we’ve now not only got three dogs but also two pigs to look after.
’ Knowing he was talking about them, Trevor, Tammy and Terry’s ears pricked up and their tails began to wag as they lounged sleepily in their ragged tartan dog basket by the Aga.
‘I’m afraid we do!’ Margery laughed apologetically.
‘What’s happening to Dave?’ Helena asked.
The pub had finally closed its doors for good the previous weekend.
They had all gone for a final drink on the Saturday evening, a whisky for Margery who had insisted on coming despite her cold.
She had looked so poorly that Johnny and Helena had only stayed for one before walking Margery home and getting her tucked up in bed.
Helena had found herself wishing they could have gone back for another round of drinks, just the two of them, but neither of them had suggested it and so they’d called it a night.
‘Dave has booked himself a last-minute ticket to Canada,’ Margery explained.
‘Canada?’
‘He came over earlier,’ Margery continued. ‘Now he’s no longer running the pub he’s decided to take a once in a lifetime trip to see his family over there. He’s rented the flat out for six months. When he gets back he’s going to convert the ground floor into another flat and sell it on.’
‘At least that way he can stay in the village I suppose,’ Helena said.
‘Exactly. I’ve volunteered to feed the pigs while he’s gone. Johnny is going to deal with the rest of their upkeep.’
‘How amazing! Well of course, I’ll be happy to help out,’ Helena laughed, suppressing a pang at the thought of how thrilled Raffy would have been at the prospect.
‘And seeing as we’re sharing news, it looks like my offer has been accepted on the Old Rectory,’ Johnny said.
‘No!’ Helena gasped, looking straight to Margery for her reaction. She knew how much this would upset her.
‘He broke it to me this afternoon,’ Margery said, trying to put on a brave face. ‘At least I’ll still have you, dear,’ Margery smiled at Helena.
She knew it had gone to sealed bids for best and final offers – there had been two other interested parties. ‘That’s amazing news,’ Helena said, and she meant it. The beautiful house, with the climbing rose around the door and the wild overgrown garden, would suit him perfectly.
‘Thanks. There’s still a lot of hurdles to jump before completion. I’ll need to get a survey done for starters.’
‘When will you move if all goes to plan?’ Helena asked.
‘I should be in just after Christmas. The house is empty and the owners need a quick sale.’
Helena felt absurdly close to tears at the thought of Johnny moving out. It was very squashed with the three of them, especially sharing the one bathroom upstairs, and she would love to get off the tiny futon and into a proper bed, but she was already so used to having them both.
Later, having sent an exhausted looking Margery off to bed, Johnny and Helena washed up the dishes to the melodic sound of Nina Simone.
Helena decided to ask Johnny about his ex-girlfriend and their break-up in Hong Kong.
She was intrigued to find out more about her and the circumstances that had led him back to England, and realised now that they wouldn’t be sharing a house for much longer that she may run out of opportunities to find out.
‘What was she like?’ Helena asked. ‘Naomi?’ She noticed a shadow cross his face at the mention of her name.
Johnny paused, taking a dish from Helena as she rinsed the suds off under the tap. She knew he had been badly hurt, but she didn’t know why. Margery had told her that the breakup had been sudden, and that Johnny had been heartbroken, but that was all she knew.
‘She was a whirlwind. She was funny, and beautiful. Everyone always loved her, wherever we went.’ She could see he was lost in thought, travelling to another time and place in his memory.
She wished she could see what he saw. He placed the dish carefully on the counter.
‘She had a voracious appetite for life, an insatiable curiosity for the world around her. She was always after the next adventure, the next new thing. I sometimes felt like I couldn’t keep up.
That I was never quite enough for her.’ His voice was quiet.
Helena wanted to leave the dishes and put her arms around him, she felt like he needed a hug.
But she wasn’t sure she should, so she gave him a sympathetic smile instead.
‘I know how that feels,’ she said.
‘Yes. Not the best.’ Johnny smiled back, the emotions seemed to be swelling under the surface, like a bubble about to burst.
She knew she should probably leave it but before she could stop herself she had blurted out, ‘Why did you break up?’
He hung the tea towel over the side of the Aga to dry.
‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘It’s none of my business.’
‘No, it’s okay,’ he swallowed. ‘She left me for her ex-boyfriend. They’re still together now.’
‘No!’ Helena gasped.
‘Sadly yes,’ Johnny sighed. He turned to look at her and she could hardly cope with the vulnerability in his eyes. He was so kind, such a genuine and decent man, she couldn’t imagine anyone lucky enough to have him wanting to leave him.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.
‘Thank you. It was incredibly hard. Still is, sometimes, even all these years later.’
‘Are you still in touch?’
‘No. She wanted to be, but I could never have managed it. I needed a clean break. It’s funny though, I always suspected she wasn’t over him.
No matter how many times I asked her, how many times she told me to trust her, I just knew on some deeper level that she still loved him.
When I found out I just felt like such an idiot. ’
‘We are a right pair,’ Helena said. ‘Aren’t we?’
Johnny laughed, and her heart shifted gear at the change in his expression.
She realised she cared deeply what he thought, and that making him smile or laugh had become one of her favourite moments of any day.
She was really going to miss him when he was gone.
She was so grateful that he had come into her life at the moment that he had.
He was the antithesis of Noah. She felt like her mother had planted him in her vicinity to remind her that men were not all self-centred egomaniacs; that they could be loving, normal and grounded. Just like her own father had been.
‘I’m sorry that happened to you,’ she said.
Johnny stepped closer to her and brushed his thumb softly against her cheek.
She felt her heart rate quicken at his touch, small electrical impulses flickered within her.
Noticing her confused expression he paused and cleared his throat.
‘Washing up bubbles,’ he said, not looking her in the eye.
He changed the subject. ‘I’m sorry about what happened to you, too, Helena.
You didn’t deserve any of that. I know how much you miss Raffy.
Children make break-ups a million times worse. ’
The candle in the middle of the table had almost burned down to the bottom, dribbles of wax draped over the edge of the blue glass candlestick, trickling down towards the tabletop. The flame flickered gently, casting a golden glow over the dimly lit room.
‘Did you ever want to?’ she asked quietly.
He looked at her. ‘Want to?’ he repeated.
‘Have children?’
‘Ever since I can remember,’ Johnny said. ‘And lots of them. I loved being one of three, being part of a gang. It was, and is, so much fun.’
‘I can only imagine. I was desperate for a brother or sister growing up.’
‘Did your parents want more?’
‘They did. They tried for years but eventually gave up, I think all the loss was too painful for Mum.’
‘Would you?’
‘Want to have children of my own?’ Helena asked. She nodded, biting back tears at the loss of the child who couldn’t have felt more like her own than if she had given birth to him herself. ‘I’d love to, one day. I hope so.’
‘I think you’d be a wonderful mother,’ Johnny said.
‘Thanks,’ Helena replied. They gazed at each other for a few moments, the song finished and suddenly the room fell quiet.
He looked like he was going to say something, but then he seemed to change his mind.
Helena dropped her gaze, suddenly feeling overwhelmed.
She blamed all the deep conversations and the bottle of wine they had shared that evening for heightening her emotions.
She busied herself blowing out the candle and setting the dishwasher cycle on, asking Johnny what he had planned for the following day, what new clients he had lined up for the week ahead.
She was glad to see business was booming for him. He truly deserved only good things.