Page 76 of The Happy Hour
‘You found your birth parents?’
‘My mum. Through her sister, who’d added her family tree to the site. I double- and triple-checked the details, and even when I was sure it was the right Holbrook – that’s my birth surname – it took me two months to pluck up the courage to email her. She replied a couple of days later, and we decided on a phone call, first. And I was excited, as well as terrified. But then she phoned, and she told me...’ She broke off, and stared into the dregs of her coffee.
‘Jess?’ Ash slid his hand over hers.
‘She told me my mum, Catherine, had died two years before. She was still young, but she hadn’t been well for a while.’
‘Shit. I’m so sorry, Jess.’
‘My aunt, Elizabeth, said there was no point in me meeting anyone else. Not without my mum there. She made it sound like they hadn’t been that close, and so much time had passed.’
‘Fuck,’ Ash whispered. He squeezed her hand. ‘I can’t imagine finding that out – at all. Let alone over the phone, from a stranger.’
‘The thing was, she didn’t even consider whether there was any point forme.There was none for her, because she had her family: she knew who she was, and I wasn’t worth the effort.’ Jess could remember it so well. She’d been sitting on her bedroom floor, and Lola was there beside her, cross-legged, their arms linked. After her aunt had delivered the news kindly but brusquely, as if she had only allotted a specific amount of time to speak to her long-lost niece, Jess had felt numb. It had taken longer for the anger and sadness to come, and then there had been resolve. She was better off on her own. She didn’t need anyone else. ‘It wasn’t the best day.’
Ash ran his palm up and down over the back of her hand. ‘Would you have wanted to get to know your aunt? Despite her abruptness, despite not being close with your mum, if she had agreed to see you, would you have wanted to?’
‘I don’t know,’ Jess admitted. ‘It was Mum I was looking for, and so when I found out, it just felt... it was too hard. I didn’t want to go looking for Dad and discover he was gone, too. And so – you know. I’m lucky to have Edie and Graeme. Mum and Dad.’
‘But you don’t feel that close to them? They’re not very affectionate?’
‘Oh no, they are,’ she said. ‘It’s me who struggles. I just... I feel stronger on my own.’ She pushed her toast about in the juice from the tomatoes, watching it go soggy. It had been harder to talk about than she thought, those deep parts of herself covered in rust, so rarely brought out and examined. When Ash didn’t reply, she looked up.
‘Nobody’s stronger on their own,’ he said quietly. ‘I already knew you were strong, and now... You’ve been through so much. But even if you’re happy and confident, you still need people you love and trust around you. If you don’t have anyone to reflect against, I think it’s hard to have a sense of yourself.’
‘Do you have lots of people?’ she asked, because she’d always got the impression that Ash, like her, was a bit of a lone wolf.
He took a deep breath. ‘I’m close to my brother Dylan,’ he said, ‘but he lives in New Zealand with his wife and two boys. Mum’s in Hampshire, so I see her every few weeks, and we speak on the phone. There’s my neighbour Mack, who you know about, Jay and my rugby friends, and now Felicity, and you.’
‘I’m one of your people, am I?’ Jess asked quietly. Happiness and dread coiled together inside her.
Ash lifted her hand off the table and squeezed it between both of his. ‘How could you not be?’ he said, laughing gently. They stayed like that until a server came to top up their coffees.
Jess walked with him to the jetty, where one of the sleek Clippers was waiting for passengers to board it before it headed up the river.
‘It’s a lot more fun than the DLR and the tube.’ Ash put his hands on her hips and pulled her closer. ‘One day soon, you should take time off work and come with me.’
‘I do need to see your flat,’ she told him. ‘And meet Mack. But you’re still coming tomorrow, aren’t you?’
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I could...’
‘Could what?’
‘Nothing.’ He gave her a quick smile. ‘I’d better go, or they’ll leave without me.’
On cue, the boat’s horn tooted, and Ash gave her a final, firm kiss and then let go of her, racing down the ramp to where a woman dressed in navy waited next to the open door. He went inside, then appeared on the deck, and Jess waved at him until the boat had steamed up the river, a ripple of waves in its wake, and Ash was no more than a dark silhouette, his grey eyes too far away to look in to.
The next day they tried very hard to focus on helping Felicity, but the fact that they couldn’t touch each other made Jess want to even more, and from the looks Ash kept giving her, she knew he felt the same. She was slightly concerned they might cause a fire to spark amongst the piles of clutter, but there were fewer piles, now, and though the space they’d unearthed looked tired and dirty, it also had some beautiful features.
After working this way for several weeks, Felicity had started to take control – evident by her photo frame gifts at the pub – and now Jess followed Ash’s lead, taking a step back and letting the other woman run the conversation.
‘What do you think of this?’ She held up a desktop chest of drawers that looked like an elaborate jewellery box. It was covered in green silk that was marked in some places, ripped in others. Jess opened her mouth to say something, but Felicity spoke over her. ‘It was glorious once, but now it’s ruined. I don’t even think a charity shop would want this.’
‘On the chuck pile?’ Ash asked, and when she nodded he put it with the other things that he and Jess would take with them when they left.
‘I do think, though,’ Felicity went on, her hands on her hips, ‘that a lot of these things are still good.’
Jess’s heart sank. Maybe they weren’t making as much progress as she thought. ‘But still—’
