Page 76 of A Smart Girl's Guide to Second Chances
He looked completely daunted, but I could also see a glimmer of hope in his eyes.
‘I’m sure you’ll be an incredible doctor,’ I said. ‘And husband. And dad.’
‘How did you escape the family curse of becoming Dr Evans?’ Nick asked. I suppressed a laugh at hearing him invoke the C word. But maybe this washisfamily curse. Maybe ‘curse’ was just a synonym for ‘baggage from your childhood you have to undo’.
‘I wanted to study medicine so much. I think I would have loved it,’ I said slowly. ‘And that’s why I didn’t let myself do it. I didn’t want to care about something, to love my job, as much as I knew I would. It felt too dangerous.’
‘Yeah, I think Mum felt like that about losing her career,’ Nick said. ‘I don’t think she ever really got over it, wanting something so much and not getting it.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked, confused.
‘You haven’t talked to Mum about her career?’ Nick looked equally perplexed.
‘No. What happened?’ I asked. I knew everything I needed to know about Mum’s career, didn’t I? She was a GP. She worked at a women’s clinic where she helped women whose lives were being held hostage by their bodies. Her patients adored her. She ran her clinics around her life – catching up with friends, looking after Evie and Alice, travelling with Hamish.
‘Mum was the superstar. She was brilliant while Dad was... fine.’
I stared at him. This was not the narrative I’d grown up with.
‘Her dream was to be a heart surgeon,’ Nick went on. ‘She got accepted into cardio training way before Dad did. And the colleges rarely let in women back then.’
‘But she didn’t—’
‘She got pregnant with me. She had to give up her place. They didn’t hold spots for something as banal as pregnancy. Dad got to live out her dream.’
Mum had retrained as a GP when I was a toddler. I’d thought that it was admirable that she got to do it all. I hadn’t considered that it had been a compromise.
‘I didn’t know that,’ I said, as I scanned my memories for any hint of a conversation with Mum about this. But there was nothing. And we’d spent my whole childhood talking.
‘I better go see Stell, tell her the good news,’ Nick said, draining his coffee. ‘Do you want to come?’
‘I think she’d prefer to see you than hear my problems,’ I said.
‘Your problems?’ Nick studied my face, his expression all brotherly concern.
‘Another time,’ I said, forcing a smile and handing him the box of pastries. It didn’t feel like the moment to tell him that my wedding was off, and that my ex wanted to get back together, and to ask him to workshop the path forwards with me. He’d had enough life-changing decisions of his own to grapple with this week.
‘Okay. But . . . let’s do this more.’
‘Yeah, that would be good,’ I said as he wrapped his arms around me.
‘And do one thing for me,’ he said, as he let me go. ‘Go talk to Mum.’
I picked up Mum’s prescription refill on the way home from the sleep school.
As I made us both dinner, the revelations from the unexpected conversations I’d had that day kept reverberating around my head.
‘Thanks so much, darling,’ she said, when I left a bowl of soup and her pills on her bedside table. ‘I know you’ve got a lot on at the moment with work and the wedding, so this means a lot.’
In her old, faded (albeit still fairly outrageous) flannel pyjamas, and her red hair pulled back in a bun and no makeup on her pale face, she looked uncharacteristically vulnerable. She looked like the version of the mum only I ever got to see when we lived together – the mum I’d crawl into bed with during the middle of the night, the mum who woke me up for school every morning, the mum who would make pancakes on weekends when we had nowhere to rush to. The one who’d always been there.
I knew that it was now or never. I climbed onto the other side of her bed and lay down next to her.
‘What happened with you and Dad?’ I asked. Even though I was looking straight ahead I could see her turn to me. Then she moved her head into the same position mine was in, both of us staring at the ceiling.
‘What do you think happened, darling?’ she asked in a soft voice.
‘That you fell in love with another man and then left,’ I said.
