Page 84 of The Happy Hour
‘She’s beginning to distance herself. We’ve tried our best, but she’s never really acted like she wants to be a part of the family, has she?’
‘She just gets by on her own, love,’ Graeme had said. ‘She’s independent, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Most twenty-five-year-olds haven’t even considered leaving home yet.’
Edie had sighed, then said the words that had branded themselves on Jess’s consciousness. ‘It’s hard to feel loved when you’re not wanted or needed.’
Jess hadn’t waited to hear more. She’d gone back upstairs, had busied herself with the shelves for another hour until Graeme had forced her to call it a day.
It had been another three months before she’d confessed what she’d overheard to Lola, when they’d gone away for a weekend to Aldeburgh, renting a tiny cottage with the money they’d saved up. Lola had been shocked, but not for the same reasons as Jess.
‘She meant it abouther, you doofus!’ Lola had thrown a cushion at her, narrowly avoiding knocking a figurine off the table. ‘She meant that you don’t want or need her, so she doesn’t know if you love her. She didn’t mean thatyouweren’t wanted.’
‘You can’t know that,’ Jess had said. ‘Maybe theyneverreally wanted me. What if they wanted to adopt a younger child and I was all that was left? A Raggy Doll from the rejects bin.’
‘No way.’ Lola had been adamant. ‘Every time we go round to theirs, it’s so obvious how much they love you. Your mum thinks you don’t need her, that you’ve always preferredbeing on your own.That’swhat she was saying.’
But Jess hadn’t been able to convince herself, and it had turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy. She had begun to do what Edie had accused her of: she’d stopped visiting and phoning as often, slowly extricating herself from the family unit. She had never confronted them because she knew they would say the same as Lola – they wouldn’t admit the truth. Instead, she’d let the rejection calcify inside her, alongside her aunt’s: another tick in the column titled,The only person you can count on isyourself.She even had that as a print in her shop, though it was one of her worst sellers. She refused to remove it out of principle.
‘You can’t just hang out with me and Wendy for the rest of your life,’ Lola said now.
‘That’s not what I do and you know it.’
‘But you really like Ash. He’s different, Jess – in a good way.’
She shrugged. ‘It’s Sunday tomorrow, so I’ll know then, won’t I?’
‘Know what?’
‘If it’s properly over. If he turns up at the usual time, we can talk about it. If he doesn’t, then that’s it.’
‘You’re going to let him dictate what happens between you?’ Lola went to get the bottle of red wine Jess had brought round. ‘I thought that was part of the problem: that he showed up when you told him not to, that he decided to go when you asked him to stay. What will you do if he doesn’t turn up? Just accept he’s in control, or do something about it?’
Jess didn’t reply. She didn’t have an answer. Instead, she closed her eyes and listened to her best friend struggling with the corkscrew, and Malik singing in the kitchen, and inhaled the delicious, tomatoey smells.
Lola squeezed her shoulder and, when Jess opened her eyes, thrust a glass of wine into her hand. ‘The best cure for heartbreak.’
‘I’m not heartbroken,’ Jess scoffed, then took a sip. ‘It’s not like Ash and I knew each other very well, anyway.’
Lola sat next to her. ‘That’s because you didn’t let him, not properly. I get that you didn’t want to rely on him, but sometimes you have to admit that people are worth holding on to. They’re worth fighting for, even when things are hard. I would bet you anythingthat he turns up tomorrow.’
‘You would?’ Jess didn’t want to admit that, since he’d left her flat on Thursday, that was the one thing she’d been hanging on to. Because she didcare about him, and she wanted to fight for what they had.
‘I would.’ Lola’s nod was firm. ‘Now, come and help me lay the table. Malik’s spag bol is worth clearing off all the piles of crap for – no eating off our knees tonight. We can celebrate the fact that you’ve found someone you really like, and that you’re prepared to do the hard graft to make it work.’
‘OK.’ Jess let herself be infected by her friend’s positivity. She let herself believe that, the following day, Ash would appear in the doorway of No Vase Like Home with two coffees and an apology, and she would tell him that he didn’t need to apologise, thatshewas the one who needed to say sorry, and they’d go to Felicity’s house together and Jess could get rid of this awful, tearing ache inside her.
With a smile, she went to help her friend clear the tiny dining table, so they could sit down and have a meal together.
Chapter Thirty
Midday on Sunday came and went without any sign of Ash, and all Jess’s hope from the previous day drained out of her like water down a sink.
He had decided that they were over, that their argument had been enough to give up not only on her, but on the other friends he’d made at the market, and on Felicity. Jess had done that with her antagonism, her challenges, her lack of sympathy for him.
‘I’m sorry,’ Wendy said, as the shelves of clocks ticked round to quarter past twelve, the time displayed whichever direction Jess looked in.
‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
Her gaze fell on her prints, the photographs of the kite she’d watched on the heath, and that was all it took for the memories to assault her: that first meeting, his grey eyes bright with humour despite the situation; the way – one week when they’d talked about Wendy’s punny shop name – he had tried out umpteen different pronunciations of the word ‘vase’, each one more ridiculous than the last; how their first kiss had felt both shocking and inevitable, the wind coming off the river contrasting with Ash’s warm palms pressed into her lower back, his body crowding hers and her melting in the middle, like a marshmallow toasting on an open fire on a frosty night. Then Thursday at her flat, and the things she’d said to him, their harshness making her wince even now, when some of the immediate horror had faded; the salt of her tears mingling with body-wash bubbles as she’d let herself cry in the shower for the last three mornings.
