The Friends We Keep(78)

“Help yourself,” said Maggie. “I’ll even let you have the round ones in a bid to tempt you here as soon as possible. What’s your plan?”

“I’m going to get out of my condo as quickly as I can,” said Evvie, picking out all the round candies with a grin. “I never want to leave this place.”

“I was just saying the same thing to Dickie,” said Topher. “I think we should sell the apartment in New York, and maybe buy another small pied-à-terre just to keep a toehold in the city. I said I wasn’t zipping over to see my mother later,” said Topher, kicking off his shoes. “We might never leave either.”

“Where did you say your mother’s living?” asked Maggie.

“Weston-super-Mare. She was somewhere else in Somerset after my father died and she moved back here, and then had a sketchy boyfriend for a while who lived by the sea. She gave everything up to move in with him. He left her in the lurch a couple of years ago, and she’s still in the house.”

“Oh my God, that’s terrible. Is she okay?”

“She is more than okay. She’s the femme fatale of Weston-super-Mare, which is all a bit disconcerting. My father dying seemed to give her a completely new lease on life. Right now she has three boyfriends, apparently, and she’s a pensioner.”

“Your mother was so fabulous,” sighed Evvie. “The most glamorous woman I had ever seen.” Also the woman who got her hooked on diet pills, thought Evvie. An addiction that took years to break.

“She was lovely,” said Maggie. “I always liked your mother. I like having the older generation around. It keeps us grounded. I’ve barely seen my parents since they moved to Cornwall. I love the idea of having someone’s parents around, even if they’re not mine. I’ll adopt anyone’s family if I like them.”

“My mother will be delighted to hear that,” said Topher, wincing at the discomfort of what was coming between himself and his mom. “It probably would be a good thing to be close to her, not to mention, live in this fabulous house with my oldest friends.” He turned to Maggie then, noting her eyes were glistening. “Are you crying?”

“Only very slightly,” she said. “I just . . . I love you guys. I can’t believe we’re back together again. I can’t believe we lost one another for so long, and I really can’t believe that we’re considering this incredible adventure. I just feel . . . you really are the only people who know the real me, and you really are my family, the family I’ve chosen. I just wish we’d all done this years ago.”

Topher and Evvie reached out to hug Maggie.

“I’m so glad we’re all here,” Maggie said when they disengaged. “We probably couldn’t have done this years ago. We definitely couldn’t have done this when Ben was around. Or your ex-husband.” She looked at Evvie. “Perhaps we all needed to go through the stuff we went through to bring us here today. Right, Evvie?”

Evvie couldn’t meet her eye. “Right,” she said, looking past her to the house, knowing that disaster was likely to strike, but she couldn’t stop it now. It was too late. She wanted this, these people she loved, all back together, more than she wanted to keep hiding, more than she wanted to keep secrets.

It’s too late to change the past, she thought. Maybe it was time she chose happiness rather than secrets. She took a deep breath.

“What do you think?” she asked. “How soon can we make this happen? I’m going back to the States on Monday, but how soon can we all move in?”





thirty-five


- 2019 -



Weston-super-Mare was relatively quiet, the tourists having left for the summer, but the Royal Hotel was busy, filled with well-dressed people having tea.

Dickie stood up with a mild stretch and took his cane. “I’m going to leave the two of you alone while I go on a sea walk,” he said.

“Don’t go on your own,” said Topher’s mother, who had been at her most charming and gregarious, flirting with Dickie for the past hour as they had tea. “We’ll come with you.”

Dickie shot Topher a quick look before bestowing his most charming smile on Joan. “I’m going to leave you and Topher to have some mother-son time. I know he’s been wanting you all to himself.”

“We don’t mind, do we, darling?” Joan turned to Topher.

“There is something I want to talk to you about,” Topher said, much more nervous than he should be. This was no longer the loving but grand, perfect mother of his youth. She was still beautiful, still impossibly elegant, but when they picked her up he was shocked at how fragile she was.

It was the first time he had seen her as an old woman. She would be horrified to hear that, but her lipstick had twice smudged onto her cheek during tea, and he had to gently wipe it away for her, plunging into a role reversal he wasn’t expecting. He drove up here feeling nervous about confronting her, with a tinge of leftover anger, but found it had dissipated over tea to something more akin to sadness.

They bid Dickie goodbye as Joan called the waiter over. “Can you bring us our scones please?”

“You want more scones?” Topher was stunned. “You already had two scones.”

His mother looked confused. “I did?”