Chapter 35
Roly was shocked when he walked into his nan’s house to find Ella sitting at the kitchen table with her, drinking tea.
‘Roly!’ Christine looked up. ‘I wasn’t expecting you.’
He frowned at Ella. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I was just leaving,’ she said, getting up. She appeared flustered as she quickly pulled on her jacket and made for the door. ‘Thanks for the tea and cake, Christine. It was lovely.’
‘I’ll see you on Thursday,’ his nan said.
Ella swept past him and rushed out of the room. He heard the front door close. ‘I’ll be back in a sec,’ he said to his nan, then hurried after Ella.
She was already halfway down the street when he got outside. ‘Ella!’
She stopped and turned, and he jogged to catch up to her. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked, narrowing his eyes at her.
‘I was visiting Christine.’
‘Obviously. But why are you visiting my nan?’
‘What’s it got to do with you? You don’t own her, Roly. She’s a person in her own right.’
‘I know that!’
‘Do you?’
‘Of course!’
‘Why are you questioning me about seeing her, then?’
‘Because… it’s weird. We’re not together any more.’
‘She’s entitled to have her own relationships, separate from you. We’re friends.’
‘Friends? You’re friends with my nan?’
‘Yes. Why is that so hard for you to understand?’
‘Well, I mean… she’s seventy.’
‘And you don’t think seventy-year-olds should have friends?’
‘Yes, but… friends their own age.’
Ella rolled her eyes in exasperation. ‘It’s not as if we’re shagging! What’s the age difference got to do with it?’
‘Nothing, just… I mean, what have you got in common with a seventy-year-old woman?’
‘Plenty, if you must know! Not that it’s any of your business. But we have similar interests and we’re on the same wavelength about a lot of things. She’s teaching me to knit, and we watch Queer Eye together. She’s a really interesting woman and we like each other. Okay?’
He nodded. ‘Okay. Sorry.’ He couldn’t believe she was making him feel like he was in the wrong.
‘Well, bye,’ she said, but she still stood there.
She seemed hesitant, and opened her mouth to speak, but said nothing.
She turned to go, then turned back to him immediately, her face set, as if she’d decided something.
‘Actually, I’m glad I bumped into you. I wanted to talk to you.
’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’m a bit worried about your mum. ’
‘You’re worried about my mum?’
‘Yeah. About this boyfriend of hers—’
‘Not this again!’ Roly shook his head. ‘Where do you get off, interfering in my family?’
She blushed. ‘Sorry. But I had to say something.’
‘Yeah, because you know what’s best for everyone, right? Look, Mum’s fine. She’s happy. Just leave her be. He’s coming over next week, you know.’
‘Yeah.’ She nodded. ‘Did you know she paid for the flight?’
His stomach plummeted. She could probably tell by his face that the answer was no, and he hated being wrong-footed by her, resented her knowing things about his family that he didn’t.
‘So what?’ He shrugged. ‘Look at all the stuff he’s given her.’
‘What’s the price of a few gifts in the grand scheme of things?’
‘The grand scheme of swindling my mum out of the price of a flight? Sounds like the work of a criminal mastermind, all right.’
‘It wasn’t just the flight. She sent him money too.’
‘Well, if he’s after my mum for her money, he’s barking up the wrong tree.’
‘She doesn’t have to have much, just some. Whatever he can persuade her to part with.’
Roly flicked his eyes to the house. ‘Have you said any of this to my nan?’
Ella shook her head. ‘No. I promised your mum I wouldn’t tell her she’d sent him money. She said Christine would just overreact.’
‘And you didn’t sneak off behind her back and tell Nan anyway? Well, that’s something.’ He saw her flinch at that.
‘She said it’s just a loan, and he’ll pay her back as soon as he gets here.’
‘There you go, then.’
‘Do you have any photos of him?’
‘Me? Why would I have photos of my mum’s boyfriend?’
‘I don’t know.’ She shrugged. ‘I just thought she might have sent you one in a WhatsApp message or something.’
‘Why do you want a picture of him anyway? Are you thinking of printing up a “Wanted” poster?’
She didn’t laugh. ‘If you had a photo of him, you could do a reverse image search – see if that picture has been used on different profiles. Do you know how to do that?’
‘No, and I don’t intend to find out.’
‘There’s no harm in checking, is there?’
‘Well, I can’t anyway because I don’t have a photo. Have you said anything to my nan about this scammer theory?’
‘No. I didn’t think it was my place to.’
‘Well, you got that right at least.’ He sighed. He knew she was genuinely worried about his mum and she was trying to help. He shouldn’t be so hard on her. It was just Ella being Ella.
‘Look, I know you mean well. But Mum isn’t as clueless as Nan makes her out to be. She knows this guy, she’s spoken to him loads of times. She’d have a better idea if there’s anything dodgy about him than you would.’
‘Okay. Right.’ Ella nodded, but he could tell she wasn’t convinced. He didn’t blame her. He wasn’t even convincing himself. ‘I hope you’re right. Well, bye.’
She turned and walked away, and he went back into the house, cursing her. Damn her! Why did she have to go and plant that doubt into his mind? He tried to shake it off, to tell himself she was jumping to conclusions. But now that the idea was there in his head, he couldn’t dislodge it.
‘I can’t believe you’ve been seeing Ella behind my back,’ he said to his nan when he went back into the kitchen. He was still fuming and confused, and on edge now about what Ella had told him. It wasn’t fair. His nan should be on his side. But then, he’d never told her what Ella had done.
‘She stayed away for long enough and it’s not behind your back,’ she said. ‘You just saw her.’
‘You know what I mean. You never told me you were still seeing her.’ He sat down beside her in the seat vacated by Ella.
‘Oh, I wasn’t aware I needed your permission.’ She poured a mug of tea and handed it to him.
‘She’s my ex, Nan. It’s weird for me seeing her here.’ He took a sip of tea. ‘The thing is, I never told you why we broke up.’
‘No, you didn’t. But Ella did.’
‘What?’ He hadn’t expected that. ‘So you know what she did?’
‘I do, yes,’ she said calmly, reaching for a biscuit.
‘And you still want to be friends with her? She ruined my life, Nan! She’s the reason that photo got out, she’s why I got kicked out of the band!’
‘She’s the reason you went to rehab,’ she said quietly.
‘Oh, Roly.’ She put a hand over his. ‘We were so worried about you – me and your mum. We didn’t know what to do.
We tried – remember? We tried to talk to you, tried to persuade you to get help.
But you wouldn’t listen. You were too far gone.
’ To his horror, her eyes welled up with tears.
He’d hardly ever seen her cry. ‘We were beside ourselves.’
He swallowed hard, tears pricking his own eyes at the thought of all the hurt he’d caused the people he loved most in the world, the pain he’d put them through.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—’
‘I know you didn’t, sweetheart.’ She squeezed his hand on the table.
‘You weren’t yourself. The boy we loved was…
gone. It was like you’d vacated your body and there was just this empty shell walking around where you used to be.
We were at our wits’ end. We thought we’d never get you back.
’ She wiped her eyes and stood. ‘So yeah, I know what Ella did,’ she said in a firmer voice, ‘and I’m bloody grateful to her.
Because I’m not sure you’d be sitting here today if that photo hadn’t got out. ’
He looked up at her in shock, unable to speak. He didn’t like feeling so in the wrong – not here, not with her. But confronted with all the heartache he’d caused her and his mum, he couldn’t avoid his guilt.
‘You think she ruined your life,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if you’d even have a life any more, if it weren’t for her.’
It reminded him of what Pippa had said – that he didn’t know what his life would have been like if Ella hadn’t done what she did. But that cut two ways.
‘But she lied to me about it!’ he said, grasping for some moral high ground. ‘She should have told me. That’s what I really can’t get past.’
To his relief, she nodded. ‘She should have. But we all make mistakes.’ She gave him a pointed look. ‘She was just a kid, Roly. You were both just kids, trying to do your best.’