Page 57 of The Notecard
‘I’m really happy for you,’ I say to Mum.
‘You like Michael then?’
‘Yeah, I do. I think you’re perfect for each other.’
Mum suddenly has tears in her eyes.
‘Sorry,’ says Mum, wiping a stray tear away. ‘It’s just, after your father, I never thought I’d be this happy again. It’s taken me a long time, but I’m finally happy, Nick.’
‘I’m sure Dad would approve.’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ says Mum, sort of half laughing, half crying. ‘An Eighties pop star boyfriend. Holidays to Ibiza. He’d think I was having a midlife crisis.’
‘No offence, Mum, but I think you’re a bit old for a midlife crisis.’
‘An old-life crisis then,’ says Mum, and we both laugh as the door opens.
‘Look who I found outside,’ says Michael.
In walks Michael, closely followed by Dotty.
‘I wouldn’t say found. I wasn’t lost,’ says Dotty.
Dotty and Michael come in. Michael opens another bottle of wine, and Dotty sits next to Mum on the sofa. I haven’t seen much of Dotty since she stole my notecard and gave it to Meg. I don’t have any ill feelings towards her for that. She was genuinely doing what she thought was the right thing, and it almost paid off. It wasn’t her fault it took me an age to pluck up the courage to almost tell Meg how I felt. It wasn’t her fault that for the past month, I haven’t talked to Meg about it. I have tried, but the moment has never felt right. None of it is Dotty’s fault. She’s an old lady who saw the potential for love and didn’t want to see it go to waste. You can’t fault her for that. At least her matchmaking skills helped get Mum and Michael together. One out of two isn’t bad.
We’re on the sofa, and Mum is telling Dotty all about Ibiza. I’m thrilled for her. All the hard days and nights with Dad before he passed away. All the difficult nights since lying in bed alone. She’s finally found someone to share her life with, and it turns out it’s an Eighties pop star recluse with a beach property in Ibiza. I think it was worth the wait. Patience.
‘My Derek loved the sun,’ says Dotty. ‘Every year we’d go away somewhere warm if we could. Benidorm was nice. Marbella. Anywhere in Spain. He’d lie on the beach until he was as brown as a slice of fried bread. Then he’d turn over and fry the other side. Derek loved the oil.’
Dotty and her stories. It will be a shame when she’s gone and takes all of them with her.
‘We stumbled across a nudist beach once,’ says Dotty. ‘The kids were little. Five or six. I said we should probably find somewhere else, but not Derek. He got naked like the rest of them. I’ll never forget the sight of him playing frisbee on that beach. Free as a bird, he was. Things flopping about all over the place.’
Dotty laughs to herself, a smile on her face. My phone beeps with a message. I look down and it’s from Tom, my friend in Nottingham. I get up because I want to read it on my own. I excuse myself and head into my bedroom. I won’t officially hear about the job until Monday, but Tom said he’d text me if he heard anything. I sit on my bed and open the text message. I close my eyes for a moment and take a deep breath. I open my eyes and read it.
You got the job! They’ll call on Monday to confirm, but congratulations. See you in Nottingham, buddy!
I got the job. I’m moving to Nottingham. That’s it. I reread the message once, then put my phone down and take another deep breath. I have to tell Mum my news. I have to prepare myself to move to Nottingham. This is what I wanted. A fresh start. I think about Meg, but I have to move on. It wasn’t meant to be. I’m excited for Nottingham. Perhaps it will change my life. A new city, a new position, and who knows what else. New.
I get up and walk back into the living room. I sit down and drink more wine. Mum asks if I’m alright and I say that I am. I’m excited about Nottingham. It’s something new. Something different. I can be whatever I want to be in Nottingham. I can reinvent myself. The new position is exciting. There will be more paperwork, some teaching, and fewer hours treating patients. I should have more opportunity to be off too. Perhaps I’ll take Michael up on his offer to spend a week or more at his house in Ibiza.
‘Dotty was just telling us about the time she got a tattoo,’ says Mum.
‘It was my friend Mandy that made me do it. I’d just turned seventy,’ says Dotty. ‘I wanted to do something different, and Mandy, we play Bingo together, Tuesdays and Thursdays, says why don’t we get tattoos!’
‘What did you get?’ says Mum.
‘I wanted to get something meaningful, you know. So on my upper arm, I got Derek written in French because Derek always loved France. He loved the food, the culture. Everything about it. He would eat brie all day if I let him.’
‘That’s nice,’ says Mum.
‘Yeah, I thought so,’ says Dotty, and then she takes a sip of her wine before she carries on. ‘Mandy got one of those tramp stamps on her lower back. It said, 'Bognor or bust!’
I take a long sip of wine. There’s literally nothing you can say after that.
Meg
I’m in my bedroom getting ready when my phone beeps. Mum is trying to FaceTime me. I wonder what she wants. I hope she and Dad have sorted things out. I have an awful feeling that something went wrong and I’ve made the whole situation somehow worse. I can already hear Laura’s voice in my head. Typical Meg, fucking everything up yet again. I answer tentatively.
