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I pulled her to her feet and into my arms, and she weighed nothing, just hollow bones and skin. It broke my fucking heart.
She flailed pathetically, shrieking through sobs that her mum was there, and she’d tell her dad and it would ruin everything, but I was done with her ridiculously sweet ideas of nobility. And I was done with Helen’s dad, too.
I wrapped my arm around her waist, and tipped her chin up and made her look at me and I said what I should have said weeks ago.
“Enough,” I said. “This is enough. It finishes here.”
“But…”
“No,” I said. “Absolutely enough, I mean it, Helen.” I fished the envelope from my pocket and slammed it on the table and it was the greatest relief of my life.
For once she didn’t even argue. She buried her face in my chest, and she was nothing but sobs and arms, and it felt so good, even though it was so sad. Just to feel her against me was the only thing that mattered. The only thing I cared about.
“I’m going to hand in that letter first thing tomorrow morning, and you’d better start thinking, Helen Palmer. You’d better start thinking about what we’re going to do with the rest of time.”
I hoped she was smiling, but I couldn’t tell, she was still a heaving mass of tears.
I felt them, too, and I didn’t want to. I choked my own back with a laugh, and pressed my mouth to her hair.
“You can stop it with this stubbornness as well, I mean it, Helen, this crap will drive me to an early grave. You’ve aged me ten years already. They’ll be thinking I’m your bloody granddad next time we go to Birmingham.”
And she did laugh then. She laughed and I’m pretty sure she snotted all over my shirt, and that was funny, too.
But I was serious, deadly serious.
“I’ll put the house on the market, and we’ll move. Wherever you want. You can pick. We’ll make a whole house full of memories, a brand new house, and it will be ours, with no ghosts, and no memories in cupboards, just ours. Do we have a deal?”
She nodded against my chest, and I breathed in relief. I exhaled every bit of air in my lungs, and it choked me. The relief fucking choked me.
“I’m sorry,” she cried. “I was trying to do the right thing, but it was wrong… it was the wrong thing… but I felt so bad…”
“It doesn’t matter now,” I said. “It’s over.”
“But I made you so sad…”
“No,” I said. “You make me so happy.”
I breathed her in until she calmed, until the heaving of her chest stopped and she was quiet. She clung onto me, as though we’d never be separated again, and in that moment I was glad Helen’s dad had found out about us. For all the pain and the anguish I was glad it had come to a head enough to set us free. It was the most perverse favour of all time, but he’d done it for us.
I lifted my face from Helen’s hair and her mum was staring, eyes wide and hand over her mouth. Her cheeks were tear-streaked, and she made a wretched sound as she met my eyes.
“It’s done,” I said to her, and my voice was kind and calm. “I’m resigning. I’ll leave town, it’s fine.”
Helen struggled in my grip, struggled to face her mum. “I’m going…” she said, and her resilience had turned tail, rushing straight back to roost. “I’m going wherever Mark goes and I don’t care what Dad has to say about it. I just don’t care.”
Her mum’s face crumpled into tears, and then she stepped forward and picked up my letter. She turned it in her hands, stared at it as though she’d never seen an envelope before.
“I’ve been carrying that around for weeks,” I said. “I’d have handed it in a long time ago if your daughter wasn’t so determined to be stubbornly noble.”
The faintest smile crept across her lips. “She gets that from her dad.” She put the letter back down and looked at Helen. “Go and wait for me in the car, love.”
Helen shook her head. “No.”
“Please, love. I’ll be right out, I just want to have a word with Mr Roberts.”
“Why?”
Her mother sighed, and I felt bad for her. I kissed Helen’s head. “Maybe you should let your mum have a minute,” I said. “It can’t hurt, Helen.”
She tipped her head from side to side. “No. It can’t. It’s already hurt enough.” She pulled herself from my arms, but it was a slow affair. She raised herself on her toes and kissed my mouth, and she was clammy and beautiful and perfect. She walked to the door slowly. “I’ll be in the car,” she said.
***
“This should never have happened!” Helen’s mum said. And I agreed with her. I told her so.
