Things I Want My Daughters to Know_ A Novel - Elizabeth Noble [14]
All my love, forever,
Mum
When she had finished reading, she folded the letter neatly, slipped it back inside the untouched folder that had come with it, put both into her handbag, and picked up the copy of the Times that the previous incumbent of the seat had left behind.
Lisa
In the end Lisa left her own car and went home in Andy’s. She’d come back at the weekend, she said, and get it. She didn’t want to be by herself.
She’d slept heavily, at last, when he’d arrived. In the morning, early, she’d rolled toward him and started kissing him without opening her eyes and he’d responded to her touch before he was properly awake. They’d made love silently, and sadly. Affirming life, she supposed.
Now, she sat in the passenger seat, with her bare feet up on the dashboard of his car.
“Thank you for coming.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I’m sorry I said I could do it without you.”
He shrugged.
“I couldn’t. Not really. I missed you all day.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does. It was mean of me. I’m sorry.”
He reached over and squeezed her knee. “Shut up, will you?”
She smiled, and put her own hand over his, squeezing back.
“Mum left letters for each of us, you know?”
“Did she?”
“Mmm.”
Andy didn’t ask.
“She said she loved you.”
“That’s nice.”
“She said I was too strong for my own good, and that I should ask you about that sometime.”
“She was a wise old bird, your mum.”
“So?”
“So what?”
“I’m asking you about it. Am I too strong for my own good?”
Andy considered for a moment.
“I don’t think there’s such a thing as too strong. Strong has to be good, right? Too independent? Probably. Definitely.” He smiled at her sideways.
“But I wanted you to come.”
“And I came.”
“You came.” Lisa looked out of the window, squinting in the sunshine, and spoke almost to herself. “You came. Lucky me.”
“What shall we do today?”
“Don’t you have to work?”
“I called them this morning. Told them I wasn’t coming in. Family concerns. My family. So—what shall we do?” Today seemed suddenly surreal to her. There was absolutely nothing that she needed to be doing. The craziness of God knows how long before this day had passed. The world looked to her now, from the car window, like a storm had passed. The air was so clear.
“Let’s find a park, or a field, or a river. Somewhere no one else is. Let’s lie on a blanket, and look at the sky, and hold hands and not talk. Can we do that?”
“We can do that.”
BARBARA’S JOURNAL
Mum’s Thoughts
I’ve been reading all morning, so now I’m going to do some writing. I won’t call it a diary. It won’t be that regular a commitment, if I know myself at all. Besides, the entries on lots and lots of days, including the day I started this particular dark chapter in my life, would just be line after line of expletives. All the rude, angry words I can think of. Written repeatedly. Lucidity would, I feel, strike seldom. But a bit of writing. Mark has taken Hannah to the cinema and out for pizza. I didn’t ask him to, but he needs to do something. Men need to fix problems, and he can’t fix this one, but he can take Hannah away and let me rest. Don’t want to rest. Can’t rest, really. Mind keeps rolling. Sometimes I get so scared, so stomach droppingly, skin crawlingly scared that I can’t keep still. I have to pace up and down. Or read. I have this teetering pile of books from a section of the bookshop I had never ventured into before. Actually, the bookshop is where I had my first taste of the new face the world was going to make at me. I’ve been going there for years—support your local independent shops, as they say. We lost the butcher and the greengrocer, but we’ve kept the bookshop, so far. I wouldn’t mind if it went a bit Waterstone