Page 66 of The Twilight Garden

Dinner was delicious and the atmosphere companionable and friendly, just as it always had been when the four of them got together. Leo and Joe got on well, and the two of them chatted away as if the last two decades had never happened, but Gemma still couldn’t properly relax. She was acutely aware of the farm, only two and a half hours away, but which had never felt further. And the clock was still ticking.

She wanted to get up and run out of the door, drive like a maniac and get there in half the time, but she knew none of those things was possible. She must be patient. Leo was worn out, and returning to the farm this evening would mean another long drive on top of the one he’d already had. It was too much. Cat had already offered him the sofa for the night, clearly thinking along the same lines. Besides, Gemma still hadn’t come up with a proper plan for Thistledown yet. She was part of the way there, mulling over a few ideas as to how she thought things could work, but none of it was fully formed. She just needed a little while longer to⁠—

Her attention snapped back to the table as Cat waved a hand in front of her face. ‘And she’s back in the room…’

Gemma smiled. ‘Sorry, my head is going round and round thinking about the farm. I’m being terrible company.’

‘And have you come to any conclusions?’ asked Leo.

‘Some…’ She was reluctant to tell him anything until she was certain she had hold of something good. Although, hadn’t her reluctance in confiding in him been part of the problem in the past? Perhaps it was time to start trusting Leo…

‘Well, fortunately for you, I’ve just remembered that tonight is supposed to be mine and Joe’s date night,’ said Cat. ‘So as long as you two don’t mind, we can go on our merry way and leave you both to discuss… things.’

Gemma narrowed her eyes, instantly suspicious. Joe looked as surprised as she did. ‘You’ve never mentioned date night before.’

‘I don’t tell you everything, you know.’

‘Funny, but I can’t picture it.’ She slid Leo a sideways glance. ‘So how long has this been a thing?’

Cat looked at Joe. ‘Gosh… I don’t know, maybe a couple of years? Something like that.’

Joe nodded. ‘Must be, at least,’ he said.

‘Been anywhere nice?’ asked Gemma. ‘I think I know most places around here.’

‘Um… It’s mainly just the cinema, or Nando’s,’ said Joe. ‘Nothing too elaborate.’

‘Cheapskate,’ said Gemma, grinning. ‘If I give you a few more minutes, do you think you might come up with a better answer?’

Cat put her hand over her heart as if shocked. ‘Well, really… how rude.’ She pushed her chair away from the table. ‘Right, come on, Joe, that level of cheek gives us the right to delegate the washing-up.’ She stuck out her tongue at Gemma. ‘Shame we’ve eaten, really, I quite fancy a Nando’s.’

Gemma’s heart was racing as she carried two mugs of tea into the living room a little while later. She felt incredibly self-conscious all of a sudden, but that wasn’t all. ‘I feel terrible,’ she said, putting down the drinks on the coffee table. ‘I’ve caused enough trouble as it is, and now we’ve practically hounded Cat and Joe out of their own house.’

‘They didn’t have to go out,’ countered Leo. ‘And knowing Cat, I don’t think she would have suggested it if it wasn’t something she was keen to do. It’s just Cat being Cat.’

Gemma sat down. ‘I know. She’s always been such a good friend.’ She paused. ‘Although you might see that differently…’

Leo grimaced. ‘She has quite the way with words when she wants to,’ he agreed. ‘I don’t have what you’d call fond memories of our last meeting, but I do understand why she said the things she did. She was just looking out for you, trying to protect you like she’s always done. I can’t find fault with that.’

Gemma was quiet for a moment, the passage of years a wide gulf between them and a poignant reminder of all that had been.

‘A lot has changed since then,’ she said. ‘I think I’ve changed, too. At least, I hope I have. I realised something today.’

Leo laid a hand gently over hers. ‘Gemma, I know you’re going to blame yourself for what happened between us, but don’t. It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. It was just two people who couldn’t deal with what had happened in their life.’

‘I know that,’ she said quietly. ‘But I want to tell you something, not as justification, or as an excuse for my behaviour, but because you deserve to know the truth of why I behaved the way I did. It’s important, so that you know who I was, who I am. This isn’t a fairy tale, Leo, and we’re not kids any more.’ She swallowed. ‘If things are ever going to be right between us, you need to know it all…’

She turned her hand over, feeling Leo’s fingers curl around hers. She had to get this right. It was the future which was important now.

‘I didn’t know much about grief before Dad died, but like you, I found out pretty quickly. How it isn’t a straight line. How it doesn’t just lessen over time. Some parts of it do, but others only get worse. But what I also discovered, and never expected, was that it can feel like a competition – who was suffering the worst, whose grief was the biggest.’ She squeezed Leo’s fingers so he’d let her continue, so he’d know she wasn’t talking about him. ‘And let me tell you, it was Mum, hands down. And maybe that was right. But I felt cheated, because wasn’t losing a husband just as bad as losing a father? As losing a best friend, like you did? Cheated, and unable to express my own grief because there was nowhere for it to go, no room for it. And I blamed you for that, saying you’d let me down, when really it was never that at all.

‘When I popped round to Mum’s every night after work, I found she had barely eaten. Most days she wasn’t even dressed, and it took every little spare bit of me I had left just to keep her going.’

‘But you never told me that, I⁠—’

‘I know, and I should have. I should have told you lots of things, shared them with you, but knowing how much you were suffering, I chose not to. I told myself it was better that way, that I was sparing you more pain, but in the twisted maelstrom of emotions that were swirling round my head back then, somehow that became just another thing I could blame you for.’

Leo wriggled forward in his seat, turning so he could see all of her face. ‘It was a bad time for all of us, Gem. And I didn’t help. I withdrew from you before you ever pushed me away. I thought I was seeking a refuge away from the noise of everyone else’s emotions, but I didn’t understand that the biggest noise was the one inside my own head. I couldn’t outrun it. But what I should have done was face the music and learn how to turn down the volume.’