Page 81 of The Happy Hour
‘He walked out on Mum, Dylan and me when I was twelve. He went back to Italy for the most part, though I know he travelled around, too. We got sporadic birthday cards, occasional phone calls, but it devastated Mum. She brought us up, working long hours, while he did whatever he wanted, running money-making schemes that usually failed. When they succeeded, Mum didn’t see any money. No child support. No emotional support. No Dad, really.’
‘That’s terrible.’ She felt sick that she’d forced it out of him this way.
‘Now he’s in Greenwich, in a private hospice, dying of lung cancer. Mum can’t bear to see him, but she thinks he should havesomeone, some family, in his last few months, and Dylan’s not here. So. It’s me. I come here every Sunday and, after you, I spend an hour with him. Sometimes he talks, sometimes he can’t get the words out or he’s too drugged up. The last couple of weeks, he’s mostly been asleep.’
He leaned against the doorframe, looking as exhausted as she felt. ‘And I can’t tell him how angry I am – how much he hurt Mum, how he fucked up my childhood – because he’s sick. But I still have to sit there. Peggy, who we bumped into – she’s one of the nurses. She’s looked after me.’
Jess could only nod. He still came, even though his dad had abandoned him? Even though it was clearly torture. ‘You could tell him, though.’
‘What would be the point? Who would feel better if I did that?’
‘You might,’ Jess said, but Ash shook his head.
‘I wouldn’t. Maybe I’d feel better for a second, then the guilt would be even worse. And I didn’t want you to know, because you were this sudden, bright part of my Sundays. I could look forward to coming here, because I got to see you before him. I still had to see him, but there was more – a better reason for being here.’
‘You could have told me.’
‘I didn’t want him to leach out of Cherry Blossom Lodge and fuck this up for me, too. I’ve tried so hardto stop him fucking me up now, as much as he did then. And I know that’s a shit way to think about a dying man, but I do.’
She walked over to him. ‘You could just stop going. Spend Sundays with me. I’ll speak to Wendy, change my work days. Braden’s ready to take on more responsibility anyway.’
‘I have to see him,’ Ash said.
‘Why?’
‘Because I promised Mum.’
‘If she really wants someone to see him, then why doesn’tshedo it?’
‘Because he ruined her life,’ Ash said. ‘He broke up our family for some whim, some scheme back in Italy. Mum wouldn’t go because we were settled in school, in our house, and she knew it wouldn’t work anyway. He left her to struggle, so I get why she doesn’t want to drag it all up again with him.’
‘But she’s happy for you to have to go through that, even though you were only twelve when he stopped being your dad?’
‘I’m stronger than she is.’
‘But you’re allowed to be weak, too.’ She put her hands on his shoulders, but he didn’t relax into her touch.
‘Not with this. It’s my responsibility.’
‘Itisn’t, Ash.My parents said some things about me that I wasn’t meant to hear, and it changed the way I saw them. So I still speak to them sometimes, but I don’tneedthem, and I don’t feel any kind of responsibility towards them, and you shouldn’t either. Your dad – you don’t need to see him, and your mum shouldn’t have asked you to go. It’s not fair.’
‘Life isn’t fair,’ he said again. ‘You might feel no loyalty to your parents, and I understand why, but my mum did everything for me and Dylan when he was gone. This is the leastI can do for her.’
Jess shook her head. ‘What about you? What about looking after yourself? Who doyoutalk to about all this? Because it hasn’t been me, has it?’
‘I’m fine on—’
‘On your own?’ Jess finished. ‘That’s what I said to you, but you still turned up here, insisting that I was wrong. Am I allowed to tell you that you’re wrong, or is this another example where I have to do what you say?’
He stared at her. ‘This isdifferent.’
Jess circled back to her bed, picked up her yellow yeti cushion and squeezed it. It was going to take all her strength to put his anger aside, to tuck her own fears away so she could examine them later, but she was going to, because what Ash was dealing with was awful. They were both stubborn, they both wanted to survive by themselves, but the truth was, they’d found each other; they cared about each other. She could let him in, and if she did that, then surelyhe would do the same for her?
‘Come here.’ She put her cushion down and stepped towards him, giving into her wants: to kiss him and wrap him up, lethim bury his head in her neck just as he’d done in Felicity’s garden all those weeks ago. ‘Let me take care of
you, Ash.’
A flicker of longing crossed his face.
