She deserved this job and she deserved to be happy and carefree. He wasn’t going to be the stone dragging her down, not when she was finally taking flight.
Only now, it felt like he carried a great dragging weight in his chest, but if that’s what it took for Ally to launch into the life she wanted and needed, he’d bear it for her sake, even if it meant letting go of the very best thing to happen to him. He’d have to toughen up and take it.
‘What do you say, then, Dad?’ said Jamie, thinking he might actually cry, and not just because of the intervention. ‘It’s been a long time coming, but I think it’ll help you get some things… unstuck.’
Samuel Beaton hid his face. His hands sunk into his lap.
‘Don’t be upset, Dad. It’s OK. We’ll do it together,’ Karolyn soothed, her arm on his back.
Samuel’s shoulders bobbed. Was he crying?
Maybe this was a mistake? Maybe he wasn’t ready after all? Maybe he never would be?
Yet, when their father lifted his head they saw he’d been laughing. There was a gleam of pride in his eyes, a smile, beleaguered and harangued, but not defensive or upset as the siblings had feared.
‘You pair have cooked this up yourselves, have you?’ he said looking between his kids.
They nodded.
‘I could talk to someone,’ he said. ‘If you want me to.’
‘It’d do us good, I think,’ said Karolyn.
More silence followed, and the man put his arm around his daughter and kissed her forehead, looking at her like he couldn’t quite believe he had a grown-up woman for a child.
‘I…’ Samuel began, but his feelings took over. A tear rolled down his cheek, and he didn’t swipe it away. ‘I had to be strong for you two. You were babies. Tiny wee things. And I hadnae a clue what to do with yous. Your mum, she always knew the right thing to do and say. Knew where everything was kept! I swear, it took me two weeks to find the loo rolls after she was gone! And I’m not proud of myself for having left so much to her, no, I’m not.’ He shook his head, silently admonishing himself. ‘I learned as best I could. But there was so little time! No time for thinking or feeling anything. I had school concerts and the school run and chickenpox and all those bloody clucking mothers in the schoolyard who thought I couldn’t do it, but I did do it.’
Jamie’s own tears fell, remembering his stoic hard-faced dad, determined to get it right, a man who never sat down for a second, he had the work of two parents to do and he’d be damned if he was going to let his Lucy Jayne down, even if he did occasionally forget how to do the softer side of things.
‘We know you did,’ Karolyn’s voice was barely there.
‘That day, when we picked up Holiday,’ Samuel smiled at the memory of it. ‘Something changed in me.’
Us too, Jamie wanted to say, but he couldn’t speak for the lump in his throat.
‘I’ve been thinking a lot, about your mum and us, and… all of it really, ever since.’
Karolyn nodded, swiping at her face. Her dad kissed her forehead again.
‘OK,’ their father said with a deep breath. ‘Let’s talk with this wummin. See if she can help us a bit.’ He wiped his nose. ‘It’ll be nice to talk about your mum. I’ve been remembering so many things about her recently…’
‘Me as well,’ Jamie managed to say.
‘Me too,’ Karolyn echoed.
‘There was this one time, she’d been determined to get you these wee Furby things for your Christmases,’ he said, some great, straining floodgate weakening. ‘And she needed to be in the queue for Jenner’s opening first thing in the morning. She’d heard somehow they were coming back into stock in the toy department. Well…’ his words tumbled on… ‘your mum insisted on being at their gates for six in the morning, camped out she did! Took a flask of coffee and a deckchair! And yet, she was the only person waiting when they opened at nine!’
‘But she got them,’ Karolyn said, smiling, remembering unwrapping the thing, while a new core memory unlocked in Jamie’s head.
‘That was the Christmas she wanted to try goose instead of turkey, and oh my goodness, you’ve never seen such a thing. It arrived from the butcher, feathers and all! And that’s why we have nut roast every Christmas, kids.’
He talked on while his children listened, adding in their own scant memories, even before the counsellor had been booked. This was good practice.
With the relief of releasing words unspoken for far too long, the Beaton family took another big step towards healing.
24
He’d left his packed suitcase zipped and upright by the door of his flat. He’d cleaned the place until it gleamed in the August sun streaming through the window. There’d be no deposits lost to landlords for the fastidious, disciplined Jamie Beaton.
