Chapter 19
BEFORE
Dear Lexie,
It was the best time, wasn’t it, the three of us sharing the house we moved to?
It was the kind of life I’d always wanted for you, a safe place for you to come home to.
We’d been through enough to know there would always be ups and downs.
But I don’t think any of us were prepared for Ryan to turn up.
We were eighteen months into our new lives. The three of us settled. Having just come back from Mary’s walled garden, I’d just got out of the shower and was pulling on clothes when I heard you call out.
‘Mum? Dad’s just turned up.’
And in that grain-of-sand second, my sense of peace was shattered.
I heard your footsteps on the stairs, before you pushed my door open. ‘Don’t let him in, Mum.’
I registered the anger on your face. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t.’ My voice was grim.
As I opened the door, I’d prepared myself for one of Ryan’s outbursts. But the Ryan who was standing there was clean shaven, his hair freshly washed. His skin was clear, his shirt ironed. My overriding thought: he’s sober.
‘Why are you here?’ I asked.
‘I know you don’t want to see me, Edie. And I don’t blame you. I was just hoping we could talk.’
Stepping outside, I closed the door behind me. ‘Do you have any idea how much we’ve been through?’ I said, quietly furious that he’d dared to come here. ‘We’ve moved on. The kids are in a good place. There’s nothing to talk about.’
He was silent. ‘And that’s it? Even though we’re still married?’
I was cursing myself for not continuing with divorce proceedings.
But after moving, I hadn’t wanted to fill my mind with anything to do with Ryan.
It was short-sighted, though. He still lived in the house we jointly owned; we were still, on paper at least, married.
‘We need to start divorce proceedings,’ I told him.
‘I should have done it a long time ago.’
‘There must have been a reason you didn’t,’ he said softly.
‘I didn’t want to even think about our toxic relationship,’ I said angrily. ‘I still don’t.’ But I had been burying my head in the sand.
‘Come on, Edie. It was always you who wanted to talk,’ he cajoles. ‘That’s all I’m asking.’
‘It’s too late.’ My body was like a coiled spring. ‘I don’t want you here. We can never be together again.’
‘I’ll leave then.’ The familiar bolshy look was back.
‘I think you’d better,’ I said, calmer now that he was going.
I went back inside, closing the door and leaning back against it, listening as I heard Ryan’s car start before it drove away.
Coming out of the kitchen, you were ragingly angry as you rounded on me. ‘I thought you said he’d never come here.’
‘I didn’t invite him, Lexie. I would never do that. He took it upon himself to just turn up.’
‘So what’s to stop him doing it again?’ Your eyes flashed.
‘Lexie’s right.’ Ollie’s face was white as a sheet. ‘None of us want him in our lives.’
‘I’ve told him there’s nothing to talk about.’ I looked at you both. ‘He was sober.’
‘So what? We all know it won’t last,’ you said. ‘It never does.’
But as I looked at you and Ollie, I was rocked to see how fragile you both still were. ‘Look, he’s gone. And even if he does come back, there’s no way I’m letting him in,’ I said. It was painfully obvious that there wasn’t, never would be, space for Ryan in your lives.
* * *
Ryan’s reappearance triggered a turning point in all our lives. Rippled the smoothness of us: three of us equalled calm; four was a violent storm.
‘What the fuck was he playing at?’ Lucy was outraged when I told her. ‘Doesn’t he have any idea of how much trouble he’s caused you?’
‘Probably not. I don’t think he ever thinks about anyone else. But he was sober,’ I said.
‘So what?’ She looked furious. ‘You have to be insane if you’re considering letting him in your life again. You said it yourself. That man only ever thinks about himself.’
‘I’m not, Lucy.’ I couldn’t. I’d given my word to Ollie and you. I owed it to you both.
The air of disquiet between us persisted into a rare weekend there were no weddings to set up, when I was having a lie-in.
‘Mum?’ you yelled up the stairs. It was early – 8 a.m. Especially early for you. When you weren’t at the animal shelter, you’d developed a teenager’s ability to sleep into the afternoon, when you’d stumble out of bed in one of Ollie’s oversized hoodies, then huddle for hours in front of the TV.
Pulling on my dressing gown, I went to the top of the stairs.
‘What is it?’ I took in your jeans, your hair tied back in a messy half-up do, the well-worn trainers you lived in.
‘You don’t need to be at work till nine.
’ But I guessed already there would be a reason.
There always was: one of the animals was sick, another rescue was coming in.
‘I need to be there now,’ you said agitatedly. ‘One of the ponies is sick. They need me.’
I dressed, then quickly made a sandwich and pressed it into your hands. You begrudgingly accepted it, food being less important than extra minutes with the animals that needed you.
As I drove you to the animal shelter, I was already steeling myself for the heartbreak that invariably followed another homeless dog or scrawny cat that couldn’t be saved.
The sickly boy calves like the one you tried to save before, who were the unwanted byproduct of the dairy industry.
And today, a pony. You’d told me so many times about the owners who could no longer afford to keep them.
This world is guilty of so much, you’d told me. There are all these layers of suffering that people don’t see; so many victims.
You’d found your cause, of that I was in no doubt. But the days you fought hardest were when you were at your most troubled. Obtusely, on another level, I knew you were at your most fulfilled.
What I do makes a difference, you told me earnestly.
* * *
And you did make a difference. As more time passed, it was you who’d made me think more about the flowers Lucy and I ordered in, prompted us to look closer to home. The world was changing. People wanted sustainability, not flowers that had flown halfway around the world.
I remembered standing in our workshop in the early days of Petals, wondering how we could supply the winter weddings that were growing in popularity, taking inspiration from English gardens, the seasons.
Winter foliage and berries that were as beautiful as summer’s abundance of blooms. We worried at first that in refusing to use imported flowers we’d lose business.
But offering something different, something ethical, became our strength.
You were proud of what we did.
It’s the way forward, you said. If each one of us does what we think is right, it might not seem like much. But together, we can make a difference.
It was a philosophy that inspired your dedication to the animal shelter. There were injustices to heal; so many wrongs you wanted to right. It drove you on.
That weekend, when the pony was sick, you fought with it, gave it kindness while it lived. And you took solace from that. But there were always more animals. Not even you could change their outcomes.
* * *
As more time passed, it didn’t get any easier for you. After one particularly traumatic day, I watched your heart break.
‘It isn’t all right,’ you sobbed pitifully. ‘All these animals who suffer, because of people…’
I wasn’t sure what had happened or what you’d seen.
I tried to comfort you, but it wasn’t possible.
You bore too much weight on your slender shoulders; had seen too much.
Eventually I got it out of you that you’d been out with Lea, who ran the shelter.
The two of you had gone to an industrial dairy farm, where those innocent, unwanted boy calves were too many.
‘Do you know what happens to them?’ You were inconsolable. ‘They take them away from their mothers at birth. The mothers cry, Mum. Their calves can barely stand. Then they kill them.’
‘Surely not.’ I was shocked. Couldn’t contemplate that such things went on. But they did; not everywhere, though on a scale that was unbearable to you. To me, too. But until then, I hadn’t known.
You’d witnessed their last seconds. But it got to you more because they were babies.
Newborns, who would never get the chance to have a life.
‘Cows’ milk is for calves. Not for people.
’ You didn’t understand why people couldn’t see that.
It was the very definition of exploitation, the way you saw it.
‘Tens of thousands of calves are killed – every year, all so that humans can consume dairy products. They shoot them on farms or send them to slaughterhouses.’ Your eyes were haunted. ‘Can you imagine the uproar if they were puppies or kittens? Calves are babies. It’s no different.’
I felt your pain – though less acutely than you, whilst my worry grew for you. I hoped you might step back, but instead, it hardened your resolve. I watched you channel it the only way you could, using it to sharpen your focus, to drive you.
It wasn’t long after that you started attending slaughterhouse vigils.
Ollie tried to talk you out of it. ‘You can’t do anything, Lex. It isn’t going to stop. Only change at a higher level can do that.’
‘I’m still going.’ Your mind was made up. ‘I’m going to document it. People don’t know what goes on in these places. It’s up to people like me to show them.’
You went, standing outside the slaughterhouse gates, adding your presence to the silent protest of others, offering animals water through the slats in the trailers that carried them in.
Watching, powerless to do anything as lorries containing month-old boy calves arrived, witnessing the last minutes before their deaths.
But even that still wasn’t enough for you. You joined a group to film what went on inside, too. Your eyes told of the horrors you’d seen. Then your Instagram started. @animalwarrior. Angry posts that drew anger in response.