Five Winters(6)

“You can’t go yet,” Mark said, flinging an arm around me. “I’ve hardly spoken to you. How’s work?” He sounded a bit drunk. I wasn’t. With Jaimie not drinking, I hadn’t drunk much myself.

Mark had always been generous with his hugs. I’d had plenty of practise at not showing how his proximity affected me. That didn’t mean it was easy, though, but somehow I did what I’d always done with Mark. Pretended. “You don’t want to hear about Sooty’s broken leg or Alfie’s impacted anal glands on your wedding day.”

“Maybe not Alfie’s anal glands, I’ll grant you that. But I do like to hear about your work, Beth. I do. It’s important work. You make a difference to people’s lives. To cute little animals’ lives. Doesn’t she, Dad?”

Richard smiled. “She does, son. You’re right, there.”

“Your work is a lot more meaningful than my work is,” said Mark.

“People would be lost without accountants.”

Mark waved his finger at me. “People would be inconvenienced without accountants, not lost. There’s a big difference. Anyway, what happened to poor Sooty’s leg?”

“He caught it in a wheel.”

“Road traffic accident?”

“No, the wheel in his cage. Sooty’s a black Syrian hamster.”

Mark smiled. “Sorry, I shouldn’t laugh.”

I did my best to sound stern. “No, you shouldn’t.”

“Has he got to wear a plaster cast and use crutches?”

I shook my head. “There wasn’t much we could do for him, really, except give him painkillers and advise his owner to keep an eye on him.”

“To make sure he doesn’t get a fever? How do you take a hamster’s temperature?”

I had no idea. “No, to make sure he doesn’t try to chew his leg off.”

Mark reeled back from me, screwing up his face. “Might he really do that?”

I nodded. “Yes, it’s quite common with rodents when they injure a leg.”

He shuddered. “That’s horrid.”

Grace and Rosie joined us just then, Grace slipping her arm possessively around Mark’s waist.

“What’s horrid?” asked Rosie.

“Beth and I were discussing the likelihood of an injured hamster chewing its leg off.”

Grace frowned. “Well, I do hope you won’t associate our wedding day with such a horrible image, darling.”

“Of course not,” Mark assured her, kissing her full on the lips.

“Get a room, you two,” said Rosie.

Mark smiled. “We have, sis. The honeymoon suite.”

It really was time for me to leave.

“Listen, I have to go,” I said, ignoring Rosie’s frown. “Have a wonderful honeymoon, won’t you? Say hello to Paris for me.”

Mark bent to kiss my cheek, and I kissed him back. “We will. See you at Christmas.”

Grace offered her cheek to me too. “Goodbye, Beth. Thanks so much for your gift.”

I wasn’t confident Grace would like the dog-themed espresso cups I’d bought from a potter friend. They would probably stay in the back of a cupboard forever. Either that or they’d be used once, then packed off to a charity shop. They’d been a stupid idea.

“See you soon, party pooper,” said Rosie.

Richard and Sylvia had gone off somewhere. Suddenly I didn’t think I was capable of finding them to say goodbye. “Listen,” I said to Rosie, “you couldn’t say goodbye to your parents for me, could you? I can feel a headache coming on.”

Mark looked concerned. “Will you be all right getting home?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ll be fine.” Well, I would have to be, wouldn’t I? Not just now, but for the rest of my life.

It was good to get home, fictitious headache or not. I loved my flat. My parents had been young when they died, but what money they did have had gone into a trust fund for me. When I’d inherited it at twenty-one, it was enough for me to get a mortgage on a two-bedroom flat in a Victorian terraced house in East London. I’d lived there ever since. It had a large, open room—part kitchen/diner, part sitting room—and, best of all, a garden. And not a concrete yard full of dustbins posing as a garden either. A proper garden with a towering London plane tree, a wild area for the foxes and the hedgehogs, and borders for my herbs and flowers. In the summer, it was filled with the fragrance of evening primroses, lily of the valley, and sweet peas. In the winter, the bare branches of the plane tree were silhouetted against the sky. There was always something to see. It was my oasis, my place for respite. Tending my plants and communing with my wild visitors balanced me.

So I suppose it was no surprise that I kept my coat on and let myself out into the garden when I got back from Mark’s wedding. It was too cold to sit down, so I stood instead, holding a mug of coffee it was far too late in the day to sensibly drink, jiggling about to keep warm, sloshing coffee onto the paving stones. I could hear the bass of someone’s music on another street. A few passing cars at the front of the house. The clatter of bare branches scraping together in the breeze. I closed my eyes and listened to it all, breathing in deeply, telling myself it was a good thing Mark was married, swiping away the tears that insisted on running down my cheeks. I had to get a grip. Move on with my life. I’d needed to do that for a very long time, and now I had no choice. If I’d done it before, I’d probably be blissfully married with 2.4 kids by now.