Page 87 of The Christmas Letter

He felt her grip tighten on his arm.

‘I thought I should tell you, in case you . . .’ But he trailed off, because that sounded like some kind of superiority bullshit, when he’d only spoken to Emma for the first time two months ago. ‘Not that you have to do anything,’ he carried on quickly. ‘I don’t mean . . . I just thought you might want to know.’

‘Stage four?’ Her voice was constricted. ‘So she . . .’

‘Yes.’

‘When?’

‘We don’t know.’ Jack had gone with her to the hospital once they’d returned from Italy, had refused to let Emma shake him off, and had got the full story – or as much of it as the doctors could give him. And it turned out they couldn’t give him a straight answer – she could have four months or she could have four years. The cancer had spread from the pancreas, surgery wasn’t a viable option and she was refusing chemo. And even if she did consent, that would only buy her a little extra time – there was no curing her.

His mum took a slow breath. ‘I don’t know if I can go down that road again. I’m sorry – that probably sounds heartless. If I could change anything, you know, but it’s . . . And Emma and I, we were never close. I appreciate you telling me, though.’

‘You don’t have to explain it to me,’ Jack said, giving his mum’s hand a gentle pat. ‘Although . . .’ He might as well go there, now he’d started the conversation. ‘Why did you tell Emma I didn’t want to see her after the accident?’

His mum’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Because you told me that.’

‘I did?’

She gave a small, birdlike nod, glancing up the path to see where Theo and Mia were before looking up at Jack again. Her gaze was a little guarded, Jack thought. ‘I remember one night, after we’d moved, you were . . . you were upset.’ She swallowed, like she was trying to swallow down a painful memory. ‘You were crying in your room and I didn’t know what to do.’

Jack could remember, but only vaguely. The memories in the year after the accident had a tendency to blur into one big mass, a feeling of being lost and lonely, and of not knowing how to talk to his mum because she was lost and lonely too. Maybe that’s where the distance between them had started – not after she married Derek, but after they’d moved.

‘I didn’t know what to do and I was overwhelmed and even though it was my decision to move, it meant I had no one nearby and so . . .’

‘You suggested calling Emma.’ He could remember that now, the way his mum’s voice had quavered. What about speaking to Memma? Would that help?

‘You always had such a good relationship with her,’ his mum continued. ‘Richard and I used to joke about it. Do you remember you ran away from home once?’

Jack smiled a little. ‘Right, because you wouldn’t take me to see Matrix or something.’

‘X-Men.’

‘X-Men, right.’

‘Because you were too young,’ she said pointedly.

Jack laughed at that: the fact that she’d still bring it up, the fact that she was having the very same debate with Mia over Stranger Things.

‘And so you packed a bag – you wouldn’t be one to leave without thinking it through – and the whole time you were up in your room packing Richard was convinced you wouldn’t go through with it, but then you left the house. We had a whole ten minutes of utter panic before Emma rang us and said you were there, but that she was pretending not to call us and if we came round and revealed we knew where you’d gone she’d refuse to babysit for the next two years and we could see how we did with Mary Gregory down the road – she was the fourteen-year-old who used to babysit and there were a fair few stories about what she got up to when the parents were out.’

Jack felt another smile pull at his lips. ‘That sounds like Emma.’

‘The point is, when you felt like you wanted an escape from us, you always had her.’

He could remember that day – showing up at Emma’s with his rucksack and crisps, just in case she wasn’t there and he got hungry waiting for her to come home. Emma had told him to come in and he’d explained the whole saga to her. And what she’d said was, ‘Well, I’ve known people to run away for less.’ Then he’d told her his mum had said he was too young to go and see X-Men in the cinema, and she’d said, ‘Age is just a number, but sadly the rest of the world is a little ruled by that, so how about I send Grandad out for pizza and a blockbuster film instead.’

‘So you tried to call her, when I was upset,’ Jack said, circling back around.

‘Yes. But you didn’t want me to call her: it made you cry even more and you were saying it was her fault and you didn’t want to speak to her.’

He grimaced, not really at the childishness of the words but at the fact he’d held on to them for so long.

His mum squeezed his arm, where they were linked. ‘You were just a boy, Jack, and you’d been through something awful. You were not to blame.’

The memory of his feet, kicking Emma’s seat in front of him, flashed in his mind.

Don’t do that, Jack.