Chapter 26 #2
‘They didn’t have to go out,’ countered Leo. ‘And knowing Cat, I don’t think she would have suggested it if it wasn’t something she was keen to do. It’s just Cat being Cat.’
Gemma sat down. ‘I know. She’s always been such a good friend.’ She paused. ‘Although you might see that differently…’
Leo grimaced. ‘She has quite the way with words when she wants to,’ he agreed.
‘I don’t have what you’d call fond memories of our last meeting, but I do understand why she said the things she did.
She was just looking out for you, trying to protect you like she’s always done. I can’t find fault with that.’
Gemma was quiet for a moment, the passage of years a wide gulf between them and a poignant reminder of all that had been.
‘A lot has changed since then,’ she said. ‘I think I’ve changed, too. At least, I hope I have. I realised something today.’
Leo laid a hand gently over hers. ‘Gemma, I know you’re going to blame yourself for what happened between us, but don’t. It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. It was just two people who couldn’t deal with what had happened in their life.’
‘I know that,’ she said quietly. ‘But I want to tell you something, not as justification, or as an excuse for my behaviour, but because you deserve to know the truth of why I behaved the way I did. It’s important, so that you know who I was, who I am.
This isn’t a fairy tale, Leo, and we’re not kids any more.
’ She swallowed. ‘If things are ever going to be right between us, you need to know it all…’
She turned her hand over, feeling Leo’s fingers curl around hers. She had to get this right. It was the future which was important now.
‘I didn’t know much about grief before Dad died, but like you, I found out pretty quickly.
How it isn’t a straight line. How it doesn’t just lessen over time.
Some parts of it do, but others only get worse.
But what I also discovered, and never expected, was that it can feel like a competition – who was suffering the worst, whose grief was the biggest.’ She squeezed Leo’s fingers so he’d let her continue, so he’d know she wasn’t talking about him.
‘And let me tell you, it was Mum, hands down. And maybe that was right. But I felt cheated, because wasn’t losing a husband just as bad as losing a father?
As losing a best friend, like you did? Cheated, and unable to express my own grief because there was nowhere for it to go, no room for it.
And I blamed you for that, saying you’d let me down, when really it was never that at all.
‘When I popped round to Mum’s every night after work, I found she had barely eaten. Most days she wasn’t even dressed, and it took every little spare bit of me I had left just to keep her going.’
‘But you never told me that, I—’
‘I know, and I should have. I should have told you lots of things, shared them with you, but knowing how much you were suffering, I chose not to. I told myself it was better that way, that I was sparing you more pain, but in the twisted maelstrom of emotions that were swirling round my head back then, somehow that became just another thing I could blame you for.’
Leo wriggled forward in his seat, turning so he could see all of her face.
‘It was a bad time for all of us, Gem. And I didn’t help.
I withdrew from you before you ever pushed me away.
I thought I was seeking a refuge away from the noise of everyone else’s emotions, but I didn’t understand that the biggest noise was the one inside my own head.
I couldn’t outrun it. But what I should have done was face the music and learn how to turn down the volume. ’
Gemma nodded, thoughtful. ‘There’s something else,’ she said.
‘Something that proved to be the catalyst for everything that came after. Because, on one of those evening visits to Mum, she asked me a question – one single sentence which had the power to change a whole life. Two lives. I didn’t realise that’s what it was though.
If I had, I’d have stopped time, gone back and erased it.
Not taken its power and used it to tear us apart.
So from that moment on, I let our future be decided for us.
’ She paused, eyes filling with tears as memories of that night assailed her.
‘Mum asked me if I thought you’d made the wrong decision. At least, that’s what I took her words to mean. What she actually said was “do you think he made the wrong decision?” which is something very different. Something it’s taken me far too long to realise.’
Leo frowned. ‘Sorry, I’m not… I don’t understand.’
‘Because I’d always assumed that Mum was talking about you – asking me whether I thought you’d made the wrong decision by staying with Dad instead of leaving to get help.
But what if she was talking about Dad? What if she was asking me whether by asking you to stay with him, Dad had made the wrong decision? ’
‘Oh, Gem… We only had minutes—’ He broke off, suddenly choked. ‘So we didn’t even discuss it. We talked about you and June. He wanted me to tell you how much he loved you. He wanted me to promise I would tell you.’
‘I know, and you did. It meant the world…’
‘But there was no time for anything else. Bernie knew he was going to die and there was never any question of me going anywhere. I just assumed that’s what he wanted.’ He shook his head. ‘No, I didn’t assume, I knew that’s what he wanted. I never doubted myself until afterwards.’
Gemma nodded, a tear slipping down her cheek.
‘That is what he would have wanted, I know he would. But the damage had already been done. Whether Mum was talking about you or Dad, it didn’t matter.
She wouldn’t have asked the question if she believed the right decision had been made, but the important thing here is that I took it to mean you.
The seeds of doubt had been scattered, and it was frightening how quickly they grew.
I couldn’t get that question out of my head, and although I asked Mum over and over, pressed her to tell me what she thought, she wouldn’t.
All she ever said was that it didn’t matter, and that she should never have said anything.
But if she had told me how she felt, things might have been different.
I’d have had something to fight against.’
She bowed her head, letting the tears fall. She had said what she needed to say. Confessed that her marriage had ended due to a misunderstanding, and, if not that, then down to an assumption on her part, one that she was all too ready to make. ‘I’m so sorry, Leo.’ It was all there was left to say.
‘Hey…’ Leo’s arms were warm and enfolding.
‘No blame, remember? I don’t think any less of you for being human, for behaving the way that humans do, with all our glorious ability to mess things up, but also to make things absolutely right.
It was a crazy time, Gemma, and we were all a bit crazy.
But that time has passed, it’s in the past, and we should leave it there.
We’re different people now, and now is what counts. ’
‘I thought you’d hate me.’
‘I didn’t even hate you back then.’ He wiped a tear from the end of her chin. ‘I will admit to being a teeny bit miffed when you threw me out of the house, but…’ He smiled. ‘I never hated you. How could I when you were the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to me? I forgot that.’
‘I probably should have reminded you,’ said Gemma, smiling and sniffing at the same time.
‘The last few months have done that.’
Gemma drew back so she could look at him properly. At his face, his dear, dear face, and his eyes, dark, calming and now lightening like the sky after a storm. ‘So what do we do now?’ she whispered, as if somehow Cat and Joe would hear.
‘Now, as in right now this minute? Or now, as in the rest of our lives?’
She swallowed. The rest of their lives was a scary thought— She checked herself. No, it wasn’t. It really, really wasn’t.
‘The second,’ she managed, heart thumping in her chest.
‘We live,’ he replied. ‘In the present. And trust that the rest will just follow.’
‘But what if it’s too late for us?’
Leo pursed his lips as if thinking, and then he smiled, a slow, lazy smile that crept up from his lips and lit up his eyes like midnight stars. ‘What if it isn’t?’