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I swallowed noisily, suddenly terribly afraid that I was going to cry. ‘This can’t be who we are.’
‘Why not? You must know how I feel about you, Maddie. How I’vealwaysfelt about you.’
I tried to shake my head, but those huge hands wouldn’t release me. My face turned into the warmth of his palm, and I kissed the skin there gently, not with passion, but the way you would a child… or a friend who you already knew you weren’t going to see again for a very long time.
‘I don’t feel that way about you, Mitch,’ I said, trying to shout down the deafening voice in my head that was screaming out‘Liar’. ‘Your friendship means more to me than you will ever know, but it can never be more than that between us.’
‘Because you’re still in love with Ryan?’ His words sounded like wounds being ripped open.
I’m not sure what shocked me the most: the unexpected question, or the look in his eyes as he’d asked it. ‘No. Of course not. That hasn’t been true for a great many years.’
‘Then why? Why won’t you at least give us a chance? There’s something here, Maddie. Iknowthere is.’
I knew it too, but I cared too much for this man to allow him to waste even more years sitting beside a hospital bed, never knowing if or when I was coming back.
‘I love you,’ I said, allowing myself to say those words for the first and last time, ‘but as a friend, a really good friend. Nothing more.’
CHAPTER 8
Some endings are inevitable. You see them coming and you prepare yourself for them – as much as you can. But others blindside you.
This would be the summer when I would lose my mother, I knew that. It broke my heart every single time I visited her. Each time I bent to kiss her goodbye – something that clearly bemused her because she seldom knew who I was – I would straighten up and wonder: was this it? Was this the last kiss I’d ever give her, was this the very last ‘goodbye’?
What I hadn’t known was that this would also be the summer when I’d lose my best friend, just when I needed him most. There was a gaping Mitch-sized hole in my life that refused to be plugged. It was there when my phone no longer rang with someone asking if I fancied ‘a cheeky takeaway’. It found me queueing up at the bakery counter for doughnuts, before remembering there was no one to share them with. Or spotting a fox boldly basking in the back garden and turning around to discover there was no one there to tell.
‘I don’t understand why we can’t still be friends,’ I said glumly to Chloe after Mitch had politely declined yet another invitation to come round. ‘The only time he sets foot in the place now is to fix things, and even then it’s only when he knows I’m out.’ I gave an unrepentant shrug. ‘To be honest, I’m running out of things in the flat to break.’
‘I’m sure you and Mitch will be friends again… eventually,’ Chloe consoled. ‘He just needs a little time to recalibrate. You don’t carry a torch for someone for that many years and then simply get over it when they turn you down flat.’
‘Was any of that sentence meant to make me feel better?’ I asked.
Chloe’s hug was warm, but hers weren’t the arms I wanted around me.
‘If you miss him that much, why don’t you just tell him?’ she’d asked, not unreasonably.
‘Because… because I just can’t,’ I said, sounding more like a petulant teenager than Hope ever did.
*
The phone call I had been expecting and dreading in equal measure came on a beautiful summer’s day, where the sun rode high in a cloudless blue sky. It wasn’t the kind of day whenanyoneshould die.
It was half past nine in the morning. The radio was playing an ABBA song; a big fat bee was investigating the roses Mitch’s grandmother had planted in her garden; and the washing machine had just begun to spin. I can remember every last detail with perfect clarity, but the moment I heard him speak I immediately forgot the colour of my mother’s eyes.That’swhy I was crying before my dad had even said a word.
‘Maddie. You need to come. Today.’
My reply was inarticulate, giving no indication that I had understood him.
‘Maddie, do you get what I’m saying to you?’
‘That it’s time to say goodbye.’ I closed my eyes and could see him, standing in the manager’s office of the care home, trying very hard not to cry in front of the people who’d looked after the only woman he’d ever loved.
‘Yes,’ he said brokenly. ‘Come now.’
I hurried to the bathroom to shower, before remembering I had already done so. Still in a daze I returned to the bedroom and flung open the wardrobe doors, throwing out item after item like a crazy woman. Green. Green was Mum’s favourite colour. Why the hell didn’t I have any green clothes? In the end I found a top in a shade of aquamarine, which was as close as I was going to get.
I hadn’t realised I was still holding the phone until it rang in my hand. I dropped it as though it was a live grenade and then wasted several moments grappling beneath the bed to retrieve it. Chloe’s name lit up the screen. I had been his first phone call, which was only right. But Chloe had been his second. I understood why. She had understudied my life in so many different roles: Ryan’s partner, Hope’s mother, and even as a surrogate daughter. But more important than any of that, she had ensured Hope had grown up knowing and loving her maternal grandparents.
‘I’m on my way to pick you up,’ she announced in lieu of ‘hello’. ‘Ryan’s leaving work right now and heading over to Hope’s school to collect her, but I figured you’d want to leave straight away. We’ll go in two cars.’
