Page 124 of The Art of Loving You

It’s finished.

‘You can be happy and that is my wish for you. I want you to remember that,’ Jack had said in the hospital immediately before my surgery.

‘I’ll try,’ I had replied.

‘I’ll leave you a reminder,’ he had said, and here it was. My reminder.

The painting of the beach, the glistening sea, the white lighthouse and the barely visible entrance to the bunker, a hidden world.

Finished.

‘Will you please be happy?’ painted in Jack’s cursive script. It isn’t a question, it is a statement. A command. No, gentler than that, it is forgiveness. Permission to move on. Let go of the guilt.

Proof.

It is proof that Jack didn’t blame me for any of it. Not him going out for Lemsip, for me not checking his dressing, for not realising just how sick he was.

Will you please be happy?

It doesn’t cross my mind to call Faith to double-check that the painting hadn’t been finished. To confirm that the wording was incomplete when she brought it here. To check that perhaps it isn’t a blip in my memory. After all, I had been ill then, the mass in my brain growing.

But I don’t need confirmation, explanation.

I know with certainty.

Jackhadbeen here all along, and if it wasn’t real, any of it, then I don’t want to know.

Will you please be happy?

I nod. Smile through my tears.

Happy.

I know, for Jack, I will try. I will try and be that butterfly and see the world as brimming with possibilities, the sky limitless.

I know what I’m going to do. I reach for my phone, scroll until I find exactly the right app to download.

Chapter Forty-Two

On my phone I download a journal app and write my first entry, marking the date, and then Liam’s name and one word. Home. My digital version of Norma’s kindness book. And then, as intimidating as I’d found Liam’s mum, I call a cab. Knock on her front door, hoping Liam is home and not still out with his mates.

‘You again?’ she sneers. ‘What do you want?’

‘To talk about Liam.’

‘Dunno why you’re so obsessed with my boy. Like some kind of weirdo.’

‘If by obsessed you mean taking an interest in and caring about him, then yes, I suppose I am obsessed.’

‘Caring about? You gave him a job, some hope, and then you dumped him.’

‘I didn’t …’ I lower my voice. ‘I didn’tdumphim. I’ve been in hospital.’

She shrugs, uninterested. ‘Whatever.’

‘Look.’ I take a moment to swallow the irritation that’s on the tip of my tongue. ‘Do you think he’s happy?’

I expect her to shout, to scream, to tell me to get lost but instead she says quietly, ‘It ain’t easy bringing up a teenager.’

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