Page 88 of The Christmas Letter

‘I shouldn’t have blamed her,’ Jack said quietly.

‘No, I shouldn’t have. And I shouldn’t have pulled you out of your life like that, even if I thought it was for the best. I couldn’t face the reminder of it.’ His mum’s voice turned pleading now. ‘I loved your dad. I know we argued, and he had his faults, like we all do, but I loved him. Afterwards, I couldn’t keep that relationship with Emma and also feel like I could move on. I needed to start afresh. I’m sorry I allowed you to not talk to her, that I encouraged that, to protect myself. I just thought it was the only way we’d heal.’

Jack sighed. ‘I’ve been blaming her for so long, holding on to that as some kind of . . .’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’ He supposed it had been a way to make himself feel better, in some weird way, a way to channel the grief outwards. ‘I kept thinking, if someone else had been driving, if Dad had been driving, then it might not have happened.’ He glanced at her. ‘I heard you say that, once. Talking to someone on the phone.’

Her face pinched together. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean it.’ She let go of his arm, pulled her hand through her blonde hair. ‘Your dad had had a drink that night, Jack. That’s why Emma took the keys.’

He stared at her as they walked, then dropped his gaze as Mia and Theo came into view, waiting for them around the corner. He lowered his voice. ‘He was drinking?’ He remembered how Emma had swiped the keys – ‘I’ll take those, don’t you think, Richard?’ – and it clicked into place. And as the knowledge settled on him, he felt any remaining resentment fade away.

‘Yes. It wasn’t like he was always drinking and driving,’ she said quickly. ‘I wouldn’t want you to think . . . It was just, he’d had a hard week at work, and it was near Christmas, and he’d had a glass of wine without really thinking about it. So Emma, she took the keys, because she hadn’t had anything to drink, and she thought it was safer that way. Just one of those things. Something that shouldn’t have meant anything, but . . .’ She broke off. ‘I’m sorry. I should have encouraged you to get in touch with Emma sooner. I shouldn’t have taken you away from her – and her away from you. I think I assumed that somewhere along the line, we’d be ready to go back, but then I started to find my own life here and—’

‘And then you met Derek.’ Jack said it with a smile, so she’d know he didn’t mean it as a bad thing. The opposite, in fact – he was glad that she’d found a way to come back from something awful, where other people might have drowned from it.

‘And then I met Derek.’ She came to a stop, took his hand in both of hers. ‘But that never meant there wasn’t room for you too, Jack.’

‘Mum!’ Mia shouted from up ahead. ‘Now you’re the one being slow.’

Jack laughed quietly as his mum squeezed his hand once more. ‘The point is, you have a family here, Jack. And we will always be here, whenever you need us.’

Chapter Twenty-nine

Jack carried two cups of tea – Earl Grey, because that was all Emma ever seemed to have in stock – through from the little kitchen. The first time he’d been back here as an adult, it had felt like slamming into something hard and unyielding. It was spookily similar to how it had been when he was a kid. Well, except that the garden was unloved and overgrown now, something he was working on.

Emma looked up at him as he came into the living room. She was sitting on her little sofa, flicking through an old newspaper on the glass coffee table. ‘Your mum called me yesterday, incidentally.’

Jack fumbled the mugs, nearly spilled the tea. ‘She did?’

‘Yes. She wanted me to know that she was sorry, that kind of thing. I take it that’s your doing.’ It wasn’t really a question, and she only half glanced up at him from her newspaper, holding out her hand for the tea.

He handed her the mug. ‘Ah . . . Well, not exactly, but probably, by way of getting her to think about it.’

‘Thank you.’ Her voice was the brisk, efficient one he’d once known so well, but there was a layer of emotion under the surface – one she wasn’t always as good at hiding as she thought she was.

‘Yeah. Sure.’ He took a sip of his tea for something to do.

‘Don’t look so awkward – we’ve not got time for that.’

He frowned. ‘Don’t make jokes about that.’

‘Well, I think I’m entitled to—’ But she was cut off by the sound of the front door opening and someone stomping in.

‘You know, you really should lock the door.’

That voice – he knew that voice. His heart leapt – actually leapt – at the sound of it.

‘Anyone could just walk right . . .’

She trailed off as she came into the living room. Her red hair was damp and she was wearing a tightly fitted bottle green jumper, which made her eyes sing. Eyes that were currently staring right at him.

‘Jack.’ The sound of his name on her lips, after so long not seeing her, sent a ripple through him.

‘Holly.’ He didn’t mean her name to come out like that, all whisper-like. Jesus.

‘Emma.’ Emma said her own name, bringing both Jack and Holly’s attention to her.

‘You didn’t tell me Holly was coming,’ Jack said accusingly. Though he supposed it made sense – if it was Theo and Mia’s half term, it might also be Holly’s. But he wasn’t prepared for it. They’d been messaging, but they hadn’t actually seen each other since Venice.

‘Didn’t I?’ But he didn’t buy the innocent tone, not when she went back to oh-so-casually flicking through her newspaper. Neither he nor Holly had told Emma the ins and outs of their . . . encounters . . . but Jack was pretty sure Emma had cottoned on anyway.