Chapter 41

I spent Friday sifting through the kitchen cupboards, Toby following after me with a paintbrush, in between both of us keeping Hazel amused. He'd offered to babysit while I had dinner with Jonah that evening, but I'd already asked Dad.

‘He could look after this one, too, if he fancied it,' Toby said, feeding Hazel her bottle. ‘Some of my mates are heading to the pub and I think it would be good to take my mind off things, blow off a bit of steam.'

‘Leave her with me another time,' I said, unceremoniously dumping a pile of old toddler scribbles into a bin bag. ‘Dad's got a lot going on at the moment, and it's a long time since he's had any experience with teething babies.' I deliberated over an indecipherable cardboard sculpture that had been gathering grime on the windowsill for years. ‘You could try asking your mum?'

Toby looked up at me, sharply. ‘What? Have you spoken to her?'

‘No. But it's been a month. She's Hazel's grandma. Seeing my mum with Isla and Finn yesterday reminded me how deep that bond can be. I know things were bad, but I don't think she intended to end her role in Hazel's life completely.'

‘Yeah, but asking her to babysit at the last minute will just make her feel used again.'

‘Not asking might make her feel forgotten.'

He finished feeding Hazel, then sent a tentative message asking how his mum was, and whether she'd thought about seeing Hazel at some point.

Five minutes later he found me putting on my shoes, ready for the school run, and showed me the reply.

Did your babysitter cancel last minute?

He sent a quick message back.

No! If you don't want to see her, just say

Of course I want to see her!

Another message soon followed.

I was cutting your tutor's hair and she told me you were third highest on your course. You should go out and celebrate. Get Hazel's travel cot ready and she can stop the night here, give you a lie-in.

Aren't you working tomorrow?

Don't worry about that

I'd reached the school gates when he forwarded me one more message from his mum:

I'm proud of you, son

I had to turn away when Janet appeared in the playground so she didn't see my tears and start worrying about me again.

Jonah was expecting me at seven. Dad was babysitting while I had dinner with an ‘old friend', on the agreement that I was home by nine-thirty. He was going with Janet to a late showing at the Bigley Country Park outdoor cinema.

However, Mum was loitering at Nicky's house when she arrived home from the surgery, so she turned up on my doorstep just after six.

‘Has she said any more about her plans?' I asked, letting her in.

‘She managed to book a caravan at the Peace and Pigs campsite for the next couple of weeks, so I guess at least that long.' Suppressed agitation propelled her into the kitchen. ‘Hey, this is looking fantastic!'

‘Maybe that'll be long enough to determine whether she's staying.'

‘I think that depends on us.' Nicky stopped admiring my freshly painted cupboards and looked at me. ‘Let's change the subject. You have a date. Please tell me that's not what you're wearing?'

Due to the fact that it wasn't a date, but an evening spent discussing my first heartbreak with the man who did the breaking, I'd opted for my nicest pair of jeans and a simple teal T-shirt that brought out the blue in my eyes.

Nicky was having none of it, chuntering on about it being a Friday night as she ransacked my wardrobe, yanking out a cream playsuit covered in tiny daisies, which I'd forgotten existed.

‘That's years old,' I protested. ‘I was nearly a stone lighter when I bought it.'

‘It's a timeless classic. And you were too skinny when you bought it.'

It turned out that it did skim my curves far better than it used to hang off my hipbones, and I didn't hate the hint of cleavage at the square neckline. My legs had a faint tan from the hours I'd spent in the garden recently, and once Nicky had added a knotted headband and a swipe of mascara and lip gloss, I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw in the mirror.

‘It isn't too much? Jonah's only seen me in dungarees and jeans.'

‘That's Work Libby. This is Fun Libby, who happens to rock playsuits and summer dresses.'

‘I don't own any decent dresses.'

‘Not a problem. You can have some of mine. Now, I'd better go. Theo's away and I'm scared to leave Mum alone too long in case she decides to move herself in. Message me first thing in the morning to tell me how it went.'

My fears about giving the impression I was on a mission of seduction weren't helped when Isla and Finn both burst into giggles when I walked into the living room, earning a nudge of rebuke from Dad, busy helping them set up a board game.

‘She looks weird, though!' Isla squealed.

‘Like Georgie's mum.' Finn gasped.

‘Yes!'

I was making an about-turn, already undoing the belt on the playsuit when Finn said, ‘I didn't know Mum could look so pretty.'

When your eight-year-old son says you look pretty, you listen.

I slipped on my white trainers, kissed all three of them goodbye and left.

Jonah lived in a compact, new-build brick house on the edge of Hatherstone, the nearest village to Charis House, the school where he worked. I stopped by the small patch of front lawn and took a couple of steadying breaths. I didn't bother visualising my happy place to calm down because I was hoping this might become one of them.

A flowerpot stood by the black front door. That the boy I'd known as Jonah King would plant sweet peas made my heart ache. The difference our paths had taken in our twenties was disconcerting, to say the least.

‘Hey.' He opened the door the second I knocked on it. ‘I was looking out for you,' he admitted, seeing me flinch in surprise.

‘I can't pretend I wouldn't be doing the same if it was the other way around.'

‘Is it okay if I say how lovely you look?' he said as we walked down a short hallway to a spotless, functional kitchen.

‘As nice as Georgie's mum, apparently.'

He whistled. ‘Whew. A compliment indeed.'

I shook my head, grinning. ‘Georgie's mum had a botched facelift a couple of months ago. She tries to deflect attention from it with tiny, too-tight dresses and no underwear.'

Jonah kept his gaze firmly on my non-botched face as he offered me a drink. He looked pretty lovely himself, in a navy shirt and faded jeans, hair slightly mussed. I made a mental note to ask when he started wearing colour.

We swapped updates on Mum turning up and how Ellis was doing – in summary: not great – while Jonah added prawns to a wok of fragrant vegetables and noodles and dished up what I realised with a tingle of pleasure was a sticky chilli prawn dish, my teenage favourite.

‘I can't believe you remembered.'

Jonah put the plates on the square table, and we sat down opposite each other. ‘I can't believe you'd think I'd forget.'

I grimaced. ‘Well, you seemed to instantly forget about me…'

‘I already told you, I never stopped thinking about you. Not once. The paltry number of crappy relationships I've had since all fizzled out after a few months – weeks, usually – because dating other women only made me miss you harder.'

‘You disappearing the day you left kind of makes that hard to believe.' I took a slow sip of my drink. I was driving home but had permitted myself one low-alcohol beer.

Jonah took a moment while we both started eating, then he began to speak. ‘That day, I was driven hours to a residential unit in Shropshire. I wasn't allowed anywhere on my own for the rest of the summer because I was considered a flight risk. I might have dabbled in teenage delinquency, but I didn't have the skills to sneak out of there and back to Sherwood Forest without getting caught.' He paused for a moment. ‘Were you expecting me to show up?'

‘Well, maybe. I was sixteen and madly in love. I liked to think I'd have found a way to get to you if I'd known where you were. Said goodbye properly, at least.'

He stabbed at a chunk of pepper. ‘If I had, what then? They'd have only dragged me back and made things even worse.'

‘Okay. I get that you couldn't come back. But why didn't you reply to my messages or call me? Were you mad at me?' It was ridiculous, but I had to force the words past the ache clogging up my throat. I'd been married since then. How could I possibly still be so upset?

There was a horrible silence.

‘You messaged?'

I sucked in a painful breath. ‘Of course I messaged! I was frantic with worry. Drowning in guilt at being yet another person who'd ruined your life. I was desperate to know if you hated me or not.'

‘I tried to call you in the car, but my phone was dead. By the time we got to the new place it was late, and they wouldn't allow phones in the bedrooms past curfew. When I asked for it back the next morning they said there'd been no calls or messages, you didn't want to speak to me and I wasn't allowed to contact you. When I kicked off about them deleting your number, they confiscated it. After I complained to my social worker, she got me a new one, but it was a crappy pay-as-you-go with no Internet.'

‘Oh, Jonah. I'm so sorry.'

Phones weren't such a lifeline back then as they were now, but for a teenager in a strange part of the country, with no family, friends or anything familiar, having a few numbers in your phone, access to the Internet and social media was one of the ways to survive.

‘Things were savage at that place. I don't want to go into it, but some of the other kids… getting through each day was bad enough. They wouldn't let me have contact with Ellis and Billy unless I kept the rules.' He rubbed his hand over his face. ‘I'd like to tell you that if I'd known you were waiting, I'd have done anything to get to you. But surviving took everything I'd got.'

‘I had to wonder if Mum was right.' Jonah had set the table with paper napkins, and I grabbed one, pressing it against each eye before I could keep going. ‘I was simply a momentary distraction from everything else that was going on.'

‘I hate that you thought that about me.' He winced. ‘That you might still think that.'

‘I didn't. I couldn't. When I remembered what it was really like, I knew it was real. But you ghosted me, Jonah. The only logical conclusion was that either you'd played me or you blamed me for getting sent miles away from your brother and sister. Maybe both?'

He leant forwards across the small table, his meal forgotten. ‘Now you know it was neither. But you don't seem very relieved.'

‘I might be. If I didn't know that for five years you were living at the Green House.' My voice disintegrated. ‘You were an adult by then. No having to listen to social workers any more. If you really loved me, why didn't you contact me?'

That hung between us for a long moment. ‘I was going to.' He slid his beer bottle closer and started picking at the label. ‘I moved there a year after being in the other place. A space came up in one of the annexes for eighteen-year-olds, and because Ellis and Billy were still local, they offered it to me. It was like getting dropped off in paradise. Only after so long living in hell, I'd grown to resemble a demon.' He rolled his shoulders. ‘I couldn't bear for you to see me like that. But you know the Green House. It's impossible to be there long and not start to hope. I was going to give it a bit of time, get enrolled in college, wait until I could get through the day without smashing something. Then they had this Christmas party.'

It felt as if every drop of air suddenly vanished from the room.

‘It seemed like a miracle. Like maybe Ellis was right, and God did care after all. Because suddenly, standing underneath that massive, ridiculously over-the-top Christmas tree they'd had me help set up on the back terrace, there you were.'

‘Oh, no.' I closed my eyes, in an attempt to soften the blow I knew was coming.

‘Holding hands,' Jonah went on, slowly, the anguish he must have felt in every syllable, ‘with some perfect-looking, smiling, Christmas-chuffing-angel.' He sighed. ‘Which is just as it should have been. I'd have been pleased for you if I hadn't been too busy wrestling the urge to rip his arm off.'

‘It was our first date,' I rasped. ‘If I'd known you were there, I'd have ditched him in a heartbeat.'

‘Yeah. Like I'd offer you a mess like me over someone like him.'

‘I was seventeen. The chances were it wouldn't have lasted. What about when things started to get better for you?'

‘I saw you again. Two years later. It was Christmas again, and I'd been thinking about you more than usual, so I had to catch myself when you walked into the Charis House Christmas Spectacular.'

The school where Jonah now worked held an infamous talent show every Boxing Day. A few children living with us had performed there over the years, so we all went to cheer them on. I guessed Jonah had been doing the same for children from the Green House. If he'd been on stage, I'd have noticed. I couldn't believe I hadn't noticed him anyway.

‘You were with him again. Showing off your ring. Talking about your midwifery course. I made sure you didn't see me.'

I wanted to say that it still wouldn't have been too late. I'd have picked Jonah over Brayden on the morning of my wedding. But who knew what I'd have done back then, when for a brief chapter I'd felt as if I'd finally started to atone for the mess I'd made?

‘I was happy for you, honestly.'

‘You could have come and said hi anyway. We might have ended up friends.'

He looked up from the bottle. ‘I couldn't ever be friends with you, Libby. I told you how I feel.'

‘So what's this, then?'

‘This is me trying to convince you to give me another shot.'

He waited for me to look at him.

‘This is me telling you that you were right. It was real. I wouldn't have believed it was possible to love you more than I did back then.' He shook his head in amazement. ‘I love you more every time we speak. You are the most incredible person I've ever met.'

‘I'm really not,' I said, laughing through my tears. ‘Honestly, I've been mostly a total flop since Brayden left. A neurotic mum, lousy sister. My dad is my only real friend.'

‘An amazing antenatal teacher, businesswoman and creator of a successful charity? Unofficial big sister to dozens of Bloomers, auntie to their babies and not to mention stand-in mum to one very lucky young man and his daughter? Who still has time to renovate her house and go on eight-mile hikes on her days off. I heard you won your team the tiebreaker at the pub quiz.'

I pressed my fingers into my hair, knocking the headband sideways, befuddled by this turn in conversation. ‘Yeah, well. Things have been improving since… well, now that I think about it, since you showed up again.'

‘Does that mean you're ready to go on a proper date with me?'

If he kept smiling at me like that, I'd be ready to do pretty much anything.

‘Didn't you have some questions for me before we talk about that?'

He nodded. ‘I also have an eye-wateringly expensive chocolate tart I picked up from Hatherstone Hall Farm Shop.'

‘The one with a pistachio crumb?'

‘Or there's a tub of their home-made ice cream.'

‘Okay. I thought you hadn't changed that much, but now you're asking me to choose between chocolate tart and ice cream and I don't know who you are any more.'

‘Chocolate tart and ice cream coming right up.'

‘Throw in a decaf coffee and I'll answer anything.'