Page 78 of Don't You Forget About Me

I could see he was genuinely affected. Ours was a big love, I thought. It reminded me of when we studiedOthellolast year, but with Lucas as Desdemona. ‘She loved me for the dangers I had passed / And I loved her that she did pity them.’ I’d forgotten at that moment thatOthellois one of the tragedies.

I drew my knees up to my chest, and said, with slightly affected world weary maturity: ‘It’s her generation, the whole mindset. She was a real “knockout” in her youth and she’s never worked, and got married to my dad at twenty-one. She thinks my prospects in life are based on my appearance, because hers were. It’s all about marrying a well-off man and firing out kids.’

I drew breath. I’d barely said this to anyone, only Jo.

‘… She’s not happy with Dad, but she won’t leave him because she doesn’t want to be a fifty-something divorcee, with a lower standard of lifestyle. She says as much when they fight. It’s not her fault – when she lashes out at me, she thinks she’s warning me, stopping me from ending up like her.’

Lucas and I sat in silence.

‘It is her fault,’ he said, eventually.

‘She made the wrong choices in life, they made her unhappy. Unhappy people take it out on others.’ That I knew all this came as a surprise to me. Lucas had a way of making me surprise myself.

‘If I made choices that made me unhappy, I’d un-make those choices,’ Lucas said. ‘Not take it out on anyone else.’

I agreed, and we beamed at each in other in the certainty and simplicity of this conviction.

After the fourth missed call from Esther, I get a terse ‘Why are you avoiding me, I haven’t done anything?’ text, and I relent, and ring her on the way to work the next morning.

‘Hi.’

‘At last!’

‘I’m walking to the pub so I’ll have to go in a minute.’

‘That’s handy.’

‘Esther, if you’re going to start on me, seriously, don’t bother. I’m never speaking to that arsehole again.’

‘By which you mean Geoff?’

‘By which I mean Geoff.’

‘What’s that noise?’

‘It’s someone’s terrier, and a bus.’

I find a quieter route, as Esther says: ‘I forget you don’t have a car.’

‘You sound like Geoff!’

‘Look, I don’t blame you for being annoyed, I would be too. But however badly done, the intentions were good …’

‘If we’re going to play the intentions-were-good game to let him off the hook, so were mine. Iintendeda choux bun, instead I got told that I’m a clueless tart who’s ruined her life.’

‘Don’t have a go at me, I’m trying to play peacemaker.’

‘If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor!’

‘Oh my GOD have you been on Twitter too much again?’

Esther laughs and I grudgingly grin into my iPhone handset. I’d thought I was going to be spluttering indignantly at her, but having slept on this helps.

I am bruised and sore but as the fog of battle clears, I don’t want to treat Esther as a punch bag and their proxy, I want her on my side. We won’t see it exactly the same way, but maybe that’s a good thing.

I can’t bring myself to speak to my mother though. I don’t want her explanations yet. I’m not ready to accept them.

‘You know what upset me the most?’ I say. ‘He had the fucking nerve to tell me that I’m a worry to Mum. In what world does he have the right to say things like that? I didn’t say, yes well, it worries us our mum married a controlling old creep.’

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