Page 21 of The Art of Loving You

Here was here. Hurt. I couldn’t find him. Couldn’t reach him. I was stuck in a never-ending loop.

Jack!

‘Libby.’ His voice soft in my ear. His fingers touching my cheek.

‘Jack.’ My eyes snapped open. For a second I was disorientated. The walls unfamiliar. Grey morning light filtered through the bare window which was framing the country view like one of Jack’s oil paintings.I burst into noisy tears, curling into a ball on my side.

‘It’s okay. I’m here.’ He rhythmically stroked my back while I cried it out. I didn’t need to share the details of my nightmare with him. He just knew. I reached for a tissue and while I blew my nose Jack shifted back against his pillows, covering his abdomen with both hands.

‘Does it hurt a lot?’

‘It … burns. It’s like I can still feel it there. The knife.’

I shuffled closer to him. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘No, I don’t. What I would like to do is take some painkillers and go to the studio.’

‘Jack, no. You’re supposed to be resting.’

‘There’s something I need to finish.’

A message beeped its arrival and I checked my mobile, sighed. ‘Mum’s coming round.’ I spoke just three words, laced with disappointment and edged with irritation. The last thing I needed today was Mum’s doom and gloom. Not while a blizzard of fearful what-ifs was still whirling fiercely around my mind. I could still feel it, that insistent quiver of fear in my stomach that had been ever present since the hospital had called, and perhaps now it would always be there.

‘Then I’ll stay here, with you.’ Jack held me against him and my heart beat outthank you, thank you, thank you, against his chest.

The house was the best I could make it in the forty-five minutes between Mum’s message and her arrival. I shouldn’t have felt so apprehensive that she was coming but I was agitated as I plumped the cushions in the snug for the fifth time, scanning the room, momentarily removing the hopeful lenses our eyes saw it through and noticing it for what it was.Tired. Run-down. In need of more than a sprinkling of fairy dust and a vague idea of what it could be.

‘Relax,’ Jack said but I couldn’t. Partly, I think, because I wanted Mum’s approval and I’d never felt like I’d had it. I wanted to feel like the centre of her world, like me and Alice were the centre of her world, but she loved to talk about other people more than she did about us as though everyone else was more interesting than her own children. She worked in a bakery and spent so much time – too much time – telling us the ins and outs of the customers’ lives. She knew them in a way she didn’t know us – her own daughters – and I found that sad. Our father had been absent while we were growing up and sometimes it felt that Mum was missing too. Rationally, I knew that was unfair. It wasn’t her fault that she had had to work full-time when other mothers picked their kids up from school, but even when she had been at home she didn’t talk to us properly and I had never felt as close to her as I’d have liked.

There was a knock at the door but it wasn’t Mum. It was Faith and Michael.

‘Ta-da!’ From behind their backs they both produced a pineapple.

I laughed. ‘Mr “I’ve-been-stabbed” will be pleased.’

‘How many times have you heard that then?’

‘Oh, only when he wanted another cup of tea, to choose what he wanted to watch, to pick the first room to be decorated … Do you want to come in?’

‘If that’s okay? I’d like to see Jack,’ Faith said.

‘She’s done nothing but worry about him,’ Michael said. ‘It’ll put her mind at rest.’ His concern for her was touching. They’d been together since they met at uni, twenty years ago. I’d never heard them argue.

But before they could step inside, Mum’s car pulled up.

‘Libby.’ She pulled me into a quick hug before turning to Faith. ‘Lovely to see you again, and is this your husband?’

‘Michael,’ Faith said, introducing them, ‘this is Caroline, Libby’s mum.’

‘We should go.’ Michael gently tugged Faith’s hand. ‘We don’t want to overwhelm Jack.’

‘You’re right,’ Faith said. ‘Can you give Jack my … my best?’

By the time I’d waved them goodbye, Mum had gone inside to find Jack. When I joined them in the snug he had the imprint of her orange lipstick on his cheek and she was holding his hand. I hovered in the doorway, holding both pineapples, feeling like Baby did as she’d carried a watermelon inDirty Dancing. Out of place.

‘Are your mum and dad coming, Jack? They must have been frantic when they heard?’ Mum asked.

‘It’s a long way for them to travel.’

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