In that moment, Jasmine had pledged in her heart, if ever she had the power, that she would change things for places like Hayburn, but the arrival of the lecturer had ended the conversation. Still, it had been enough to start an enduring friendship.
Two years later, and Jasmine is about to take a step which is to change her life forever. As soon as Sean answers her call, she says, “I need help.” And her friend, the epitome of kindness, helps. She asks for a place to stay until term starts, and he offers her refuge.
That day, Jasmine packs two enormous canvas suitcases and leaves Larkford Hall, her home since birth, for good. As they stand in the late summer sunshine, neither she nor her parents understand the finality of the moment. Jasmine thinks only of escape, and they, confident of her return at Christmas, are impatient to get back to the business of the day. A quick peck on each cheek and Jasmine climbs into an ancient Land Rover driven by an Estate worker tasked with dropping her at the train station.
The journey to Hayburn is uneventful, but as the train approaches the outskirts of the town, the reality of Sean’s introductory words is laid out before her. Houses are cramped and poorly maintained. Empty shops are boarded up and occupied ones have grilles in the windows. As the train trundles over a bridge, slowing on the approach to the station, she sees an overturned shopping trolley marooned in the waters below. Here, the weather is harsh and it lends an added grimness to the surroundings.
Few stations are in a salubrious part of town, and Hayburn is no different. Jasmine, used to either the rural languor of her hometown, or the bustle of her university town, is shocked as she gathers up her laptop and slides it into its bag. She pulls her two suitcases from overhead storage, nearly decapitating a little old woman with the last, heaviest one, and worries whether she has made a mistake coming here. It is one thing to know about poverty, another entirely to be confronted with the reality of life in a town which ranks in the lowest quartile for deprivation.
Weeds grow through roads and pavements, graffiti remains to weather on walls, and litter lies unheeded. She is wary about being a lone woman traveller in surroundings such as these and she searches the car park for Sean’s familiar frame. Though it is the tail end of summer, light is beginning to fade. There is a pub on the corner of the car park, uninspiringly labelled the Railway Arms. But she discounts any thought of waiting there when she sees the ragbag of smokers gathered outside – all men, loud and menacing. Not normally one to be intimidated, today her spirit fails. She is immensely relieved to spot Sean striding towards her. He stoops and takes the handle of one of her cases, leaving her with the other. Enough to help, not enough to patronise.
They cross the car park to the car, a sedate, family-sized Ford. Sean’s father is the local Member of Parliament and probably earns a decent wage, but a man who represents a constituency as poor as Hayburn does well not to flaunt his own affluence. Jasmine appreciates the man’s tact before she has even met him, although she feels guilty at the thought; she knows her friend’s relationship with his father is prickly.
Quiet and shy, the bravest thing Sean has ever done was ask to sit beside Jasmine and even that had been finely calculated. Experience had taught him to be wary of other boys, and girls in packs were yet more dangerous. A girl sitting alone in a middle row was perfect, especially one who wasn’t dressed top to toe in designer wear, who appeared to be ordinary in all aspects. If he had heard her plummy accent before he had dropped into the seat, he would have looked elsewhere, but it had been too late. The amount of rudeness required to stand up again, muttering “My bad” was beyond him.
They had gone for coffee after the lecture and Jasmine’s early insertion of Petey’s name had put to rest any anxiety she might be flirting with him. Truthfully, he had never flirted nor been flirted with, so had no standard to judge a friendly invitation for a hot beverage. Sean had spent most of his sixth form hiding from the boys who had made his time at secondary school a misery. As an awkward thirteen-year-old, he had made one mistake: he had blushed when one of the rowdier delinquents, who roamed his school with seeming impunity, had offhandedly insulted him, calling him gay. It was enough.
From then on, the days Sean made it home intact were a rarity. His harassers had trodden a fine line – it was never enough to warrant intervention from anyone in authority, but every night he came home with an item of clothing missing (which would later turn up in Lost Property) or his glasses bent or his books defaced. He had asked once if he might move to the small private school on the outskirts of town. His mother had been supportive, but his father had exploded.Hewould not be one of those hypocritical MPs who told their constituents state education was good enough for their children while sending his children to a private institution. So Sean stayed at the local school and his suffering continued, but now he had to hide it all. His father never asked about his school again. His mother asked every day, but she was only interested in gossip about the girls in his class.
From the moment Sean met Jasmine at university, he had benefitted greatly from her friendship. She seemed to be one of those women who was not afraid of anything. Sean had pondered it. He concluded she was unafraid because no one had ever harmed her. Jasmine was protected – by money, by position. And because she could not imagine harm, she was confident. In a spiral of self-reinforcing positivity, because she was confident, no one did harm her. Bit by bit, her robustness had rubbed off on him. She held his hand as he took his first tentative steps into the gay scene; she vetted his early boyfriends, weeding out those she viewed as abusive. She helped him find a skin in which he was comfortable. And she gave him the strength to finally tell his parents about his homosexuality. Two years after befriending Jasmine, Sean is still quiet, but his shyness has diminished, replaced with an inner confidence which comes from overcoming challenges, mostly the conviction of his own inadequacy.
***
Every poor town has a few streets of prosperity, even as every affluent town has its bad areas. Hayburn is no different. The endless streets of back-to-back Victorian terraces fronting directly onto the pavements, red bricks tarred to a brindle by years of soot and grime from a decades-dead mining industry, give way to broad, tree-lined avenues. Sean turns off one of these into an estate built this century, uninspired houses of buff stone. As he pulls the car to a stop on a weed-free, paved drive, Jasmine has a chance to look around. The house is detached, carbon copies lining a cul-de-sac, homes to mid-level executives everywhere. The front garden is laid to lawn, no straggly shrubs or showy annuals allowed to blight its sharp-edged, pristine neatness. A single ornamental tree grows in a circle of pebbles and two box plants, contorted into spirals, stand guard on either side of the white front door.
While Sean unloads her cases, his mother already waiting on the doorstep, Jasmine fusses about collecting her belongings from the car. She feels awkward, aware she has imposed her company on these strangers. She should just have gone back to their rented student flat and waited for term to start. But Sean was here, and she very much does not want to be on her own. Breaking up with Petey might have been necessary, but she is not unaffected by the end of their relationship. Being with Petey had been like nestling into a warm, comfy coat in midwinter. He was a constant reassurance someone, somewhere, wanted her. But when she had thought about her own future, hopefully striding down the corridors of power in Westminster, she’d realised her happiness could only come at the cost of his. Petey is a homeboy – lacking a father seems to have strengthened his ties to the family he does have. Jasmine, who has an abundance of relatives, most of whom she tries to avoid, understands how home and family define him, even if she feels otherwise.
If she were to ask him, Petey would describe his dream as a good job (great mates, decent wage, established company), nice home (three-bedroomed semi-detached in the village he knows and loves), and his own family (picture of Jasmine, with a baby in her arms and a toddler at her feet). And there is nothing wrong with Petey’s dream – plenty of people would agree with it. The problem is, she doesn’t. She could ask him to follow her to London and she has no doubt he would come, but she knows he would never be truly happy in the noisy, traffic-clogged streets of the city, far from his family and friends.
Moreover, Jasmine has no idea if she wants children. She cannot conceive of them at the moment. That might change one day, but if it ever does, it is so far in her future there is not even one tiny trace of baby broodiness in her psyche. What if loving her ends up costing him his chance of being a father?
Is she so unfeeling she would build her own happiness on the bonfire of his? But the thought of staying in Larkford, maybe working for the Estate like her sister Eleanor, reading about the changes being wrought in the world in a newspaper every morning like her father and not being out there making them happen, feels like suffocation. A future in grey.
For each of them to be happy, they have to part. And if that is true, is it fair on Petey to keep him around just because he holds the loneliness of the world at bay? Using him as a comfort blanket is the ultimate in selfishness. He may miss out on meeting his perfect woman because she wants to keep him dangling at her tail. Much as the thought hurt, the right thing was to end their relationship. To let him move on with his life. She knew she would break both their hearts – and she did – but she also knew it would be temporary. They will both recover, find new people to love, build new lives.
Still, she misses his easy company. She misses him. There is an ache in her heart whenever she thinks of him. But, she is in Hayburn now. With one last, deep breath, she ruthlessly suppresses all thoughts of Petey and opens the car door.
Sean’s mother is practically bouncing on her toes. “You must be Jasmine!” she exclaims, a wealth of warmth in her words.
“Thank you so much for having me to stay, Mrs Exmore.” Jasmine holds out her hand, uncertain what the correct etiquette may be but falling back on tradition. She had certainly never required any formality with Petey’s mum or even Flora’s.
“Emily, please!” Ignoring Jasmine’s outstretched hand, Sean’s mother pulls the younger woman in for a hug. “Sean talks about you all the time. I feel like I already know you. Come through. I’ve got sandwiches and cake. Richard, my husband, is always hungry when he gets off the train. I thought you would be too.”
Jasmine finds herself towed into a gleaming kitchen. Every surface shines or sparkles. The white gloss surface of the table holds a crystal vase bulging with cream-coloured dahlias, a china plate of sandwiches cut into fingers and a raised cake platter with a Victoria sponge oozing buttercream under a glass dome. Her heart sinks.
“Tea?” Emily says, already spooning leaves into a teapot. “I’ve got this lovely Ceylon Orange Pekoe.”
Closing her eyes, Jasmine fortifies herself. She absolutely has to stop this on-rushing train now. “I’m sorry, Mrs Exmore—”
“Emily!” Sean’s mother interrupts.
“Emily. I’m sorry, Emily. But I’m vegan.”
“Oh, I know. Sean told me. He made me buy this dreadful stuff, margarine, I tell you. I haven’t eaten margarine since my school days. The sandwiches are cucumber. And we’ve got oat milk. I never knew there was such a thing. Tea?” Emily indicates her beautiful Royal Albert fine bone china teapot and Jasmine blanches.
“Just a glass of water, please.” She has fled from her sisters’ deliberate attempts to sabotage her vegan principles to someone who inadvertently does exactly the same. At least, she notes with some relief, the food has been placed on paper doilies. She sits at the table, spreading a napkin to catch crumbs, and waits for Sean to arrive and dig her out of trouble. Emily is still at the island unit, laying a tray with milk and sugar and cups with saucers.
“Sean’s never brought a friend home before.” Emily brings the tray to the table, pulls out a chair to sit beside her, and smiles. “I think you are very special to him.”
