The Day She Came Back(91)

Me . . . that’s me . . . I am that little baby . . . It was a painful thing for her to grasp.

She pictured her gran, possibly sitting on this very sofa with a pen in her hand, writing the letters to Sarah – knowing that to give that baby the best chance, the stability Prim believed she needed, it meant sacrificing her own daughter.

‘You did that for me . . . you did that for me . . .’ She wept as she again went back to the beginning and read the letters through once more.

Victoria was unaware that sleep had claimed her, but clearly it had, as a knocking on the front door woke her mid-morning. She jumped up and rubbed her eyes into wakefulness, before putting the letters on the table and racing to the door, trying to look as fresh-faced as possible in case it was Gerald. The last thing she wanted was for him to think she had returned to her slatternly ways and had fallen asleep on the sofa in her clothes. Even though that was precisely what she had done.

As she pulled the front door wide, she felt the smile slip from her face and transform into a cold scowl.

‘Hi, Victoria.’

Flynn. She noticed how he preferred to look at the toes of his grubby trainers than into her eyes. The coward.

‘What do you want?’ she snapped, walking forward to block the doorway and placing her folded arms across her chest, making it very clear that he would never set foot inside her home again.

‘I just wanted to, erm . . . I just wanted to say . . .’ He took a deep breath and swallowed. ‘I just wanted to say that I’m sorry.’

‘For what?’

‘What?’ He looked up at her now, perplexed.

‘I am curious as to what it is exactly you are apologising for?’

‘Erm . . .’ Again he floundered.

‘Let me help you out, Flynn. Are you saying sorry for lying to me? Making out to be interested in me? Taking my virginity, like it was nothing? Or that bloody party, perhaps? Or having sex with Courtney in my dead grandmother’s bed after stealing the key I’d hidden in the plant pot? Or for just generally being a total prick? Or is it something else altogether? Like, did you forget to put your dirty mug in the dishwasher, or maybe leave one of your little drug sticks on the floor of the garden room for Gerald, “the courgettes guy”, to find?’

Not only did it seem she had lost the inane desire to giggle in his presence, she had also apparently found her voice. And that voice was loud and assertive, that of a woman who was not going to be curtailed by sadness but had taken the reins of her life and was going to steer her future.

He looked up at her. ‘All of it, I guess.’ He kicked at the gravel. ‘Can I come in?’ He looked past her into the hallway and she gave a dry, genuine laugh.

‘No. No, you can’t come in. Jesus!’ She tutted.

‘I also wanted to say goodbye before I left for Newcastle.’ He stared at her, seemingly waiting for a reply that never came. ‘And I wanted to say that I don’t really know what happened. I thought the party would be a good laugh, but it wasn’t, was it?’

‘No. It was not a “good laugh”!’ She shook her head at his pitiful explanation.

‘And I didn’t make out to like you. I did like you. I do like you. I really do, you are cool, you are different, and if I hadn’t been drunk . . .’

‘Oh, pur-lease!’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t you dare!’

‘It’s the truth! I never planned it! I never wanted to hurt you. I liked it when it was just you and me here, eating noodles . . . but I guess it doesn’t matter now.’

‘It doesn’t.’ She sighed, slightly irritated, if anything.

‘You said it was just sex.’ He swallowed.

‘That’s right, Flynn. Just sex.’

He looked up and took a deep breath. ‘And I wanted to say thank you for letting me stay here with you for a few days. I was wrong. This isn’t an old-lady house: it’s a wonderful house. The nicest I have ever been in. Not the stuff in it, but the way it feels. I think it must have been a very nice house to grow up in and I think you’re very lucky.’

She cursed the thickening of her throat and the tears that pricked the back of her eyes. Flynn wasn’t quite finished.

‘And I know you don’t care what I think—’

‘I don’t,’ she interjected.

‘But I think your mum coming back from the dead is the most amazing thing I have ever heard. I lied to you about Michael junior. I do care. I think about him all the time. I wonder how it was possible that I got a whole life and he only got a couple of years. It’s not fair, is it?’

‘No, Flynn.’ She gave him the beginning of a reserved smile, recognising that he, like her, was a passenger in a life where events unfurled that were way, way beyond your control. ‘It’s not fair.’

‘And I know that if my mum and dad could have him back, they would jump at it. It would be all their dreams and wishes come true.’

All she could do was nod and bite down on her lips.

‘Well,’ she sniffed, ‘good luck in Newcastle.’

‘Thanks.’ He gave her that lopsided smile that made her heart flex, just a little bit.

‘And happy birthday for the eleventh.’

‘How did you know my birthday was coming up?’

He looked surprised. ‘I used to stalk you on Facebook. For years, in fact.’