This Could Change Everything(91)

She winced. ‘Well I’m not doing that.’

Lucas wondered if his mother had phoned her male friend in a panic and told him to stay away, even though she couldn’t know they were still here. ‘Five more minutes, then we’ll go.’

Two minutes later, he saw the man walking down the road towards them and said in a voice that didn’t sound like his own, ‘Here he is now.’

‘What?’ Sitting up and leaning across to catch a glimpse, Essie said, ‘How do you know that’s him?’

A muscle jumped in Lucas’s jaw as he watched the man approach them. ‘It’s Uncle Max.’

Essie stared at Lucas. All the colour had drained from his face. And the middle-aged man currently just a few metres away from the car was Max, his father’s brother.

The next moment, he’d veered to the right and disappeared into the corner shop. Lucas exhaled.

‘What now?’ said Essie.

‘The last time I saw him, he was too drunk to stand,’ said Lucas. ‘He turned up at my eighteenth birthday and threw up all over the table with the cake on it. Which was . . . nice.’

‘Shall we drive off before he comes out?’

‘No way.’ Lucas opened the door and stepped out of the car.

Less than a minute later, Max emerged from the shop carrying a magazine and a bag of doughnuts. He almost dropped them when he saw Lucas waiting for him.

‘Hello, Max,’ said Lucas.

‘Lucas.’ Max looked dumbstruck. ‘It’s . . . good to see you again.’

‘What’s going on? What are you doing here?’

‘Your mum said you’d been to see her. She told me you’d left.’

‘Well we didn’t.’ Lucas indicated Essie, still in the car. ‘Because we wanted to know what she was hiding.’

The silence stretched between them. Finally Max nodded. ‘Of course you did. And I told her she should tell you. Come on,’ he said, ‘let’s get this done now.’

‘I’ll wait here.’ Essie shrank into her seat because he was beckoning to her.

‘No you won’t.’ Lucas opened the car and reached for her hand. ‘I want you with me. We’re going to get this thing sorted out, once and for all.’

They left the car where it was and entered the cul-de-sac on foot. Max double-rang the doorbell and Lucas’s mother pulled open the door. When she saw who was with him, she clutched the side of the door for support and whispered, ‘Oh God . . .’

Essie made coffees that no one really wanted, and listened to the story unfold.

‘We met up again at a friend’s funeral in Manchester, just under a year ago,’ said Paula Brook, ‘after not seeing each other for . . . well, so many years. And after the service, we ended up having a massive row.’

‘What about?’ said Lucas.

She shrugged. ‘God knows what started it off. We certainly can’t remember. The usual, I imagine. But it was the first time he’d seen me in that state and he told me I looked a bloody mess.’

‘And she told me I was a bigger mess,’ said Max. ‘We spent a while slinging insults at each other, drinking everything we could lay our hands on, each of us sneering at how pathetic the other one was.’

Lucas briefly closed his eyes. ‘Were you still at the funeral while this was going on?’

‘No, thank God.’ Paula shuddered. ‘We’d left as soon as they stopped serving us drinks. Ended up in some awful back-street pub. And when they kicked us out at closing time, we slept under a bridge.’

Essie marvelled at her calm tone and matter-of-fact retelling of that night’s events.

‘And when I woke up the next morning,’ said Max, ‘the first thing I did was ask the homeless guy next to us if he could lend us a tenner so we could go and buy a drink.’

‘And he did.’ Paula joined in. ‘So we spent the money on cider, and sat there drinking it, and people were walking past us on their way to work . . .’ She paused, dry-eyed. ‘That was when I saw a man stop to look at me.’ She turned to Lucas. ‘Just for a second, I thought it was your father, come back to see what I’d made of my life. And that was my rock-bottom moment. I just knew I couldn’t do this any more, because if it had been your father, he would have been so appalled . . .’

Her voice trailed away, and Max took over. ‘She was inconsolable. She told me she needed help, she wanted to stop drinking and start living again, and I could see she meant it. It really got to me, like . . . here.’ He pressed his hand to his chest. ‘I said I couldn’t do it, but good luck to her and I hoped she could.’

‘And I said we should both go for it,’ Paula chimed in, ‘because if we did it together, maybe we could help each other through it.’

‘So that’s what we did,’ said Max. ‘I still had some money left from selling my place in Spain.’

‘And I took out a loan against this house,’ said Paula.

‘We went into rehab and stuck it out for six weeks. And the amazing thing was, it wasn’t even as hellish as we’d thought it would be, because nothing was as bad as the hell we’d been living through for the last few years.’

‘We saw a counsellor, too.’ Paula was still gazing at Lucas, tears brimming in her eyes. ‘He told us it wasn’t anyone’s fault that your dad had died. I mean, so many people had told us that, but for the first time we realised it was true. It was an accident and we didn’t need to punish ourselves . . . we didn’t have to feel guilty any more.’