by Natasha West
And now she was lying next to me, probably asleep. Her night had been as crazy as mine, after all. She had to be as tired as I was.
On that thought, I found sleep nearing. Unconsciousness was coming, at long last.
I awoke at eleven a.m. and I might have thought I’d be confused to awake in a strange hotel room but I knew where I was straight away, and why. I was in Felton. My father was dead. Penny was here.
Or was she? I turned to an empty space. Where had she gotten to? I didn’t really think she would have snuck off and left me. After all she’d done last night, that seemed unlikely.
A knock came at the door and I jumped up, pulling on last night’s dress, opening it to Penny.
‘My hands are full. Hope I didn’t wake you?’ she said, a coffee carrier in one hand and a bag of something baked-smelling in the other.
‘No’ I assured her and she came in, putting the stuff down.
‘You still take it black?’ she asked.
‘No, in the four months since I’ve seen you, I’ve switched to vanilla soy lattes.’
She looked at me in shock. ‘You haven’t, have you?’
I laughed and grabbed one of the cups. ‘Of course not.’
She smiled and rolled her eyes. ‘Couldn’t help yourself, could you?’
I took a sip of the hot coffee and said ‘Nope. I never can.’
We both sat down on the edge of the messy bed. ‘I feel like we’re both overdressed and underdressed at the same time’ I noted, looking at our rumpled dresses.
Penny looked down at herself, saying ‘Yes, I guess I didn’t know when I bought this dress what an all-rounder it would need to be.’
‘You looked great last night. You still do.’
She looked away modestly and said ‘Thanks. You did and you do too.’
‘I hope Zara appreciated it.’
I hadn’t meant to say that so snarkily, but somehow it had come out that way. Penny had implied that it hadn’t really worked out with them, but I wasn’t all that sure if I didn’t still have good reason to be jealous, whether I had a right to be or not. Still, I’d made my comment and I fully expected Penny to give me a look, a warning. But she didn’t.
‘I think she did to start with. But then it turned out she had to sack me from the movie so I guess I should have primped a bit more. Might have saved my job.’
My mouth fell open. ‘She what? Why?’
‘Didn’t get the award, which makes me a ‘no-name’, apparently. So she decided that her name would look better on the title page’ she said with a strange calm.
I was furious. Who was Zara to decide what Penny was worth, when Penny was worth a hundred Zara’s?
‘I’m sorry, Penny. About the award. I really think you should have gotten it, for what it’s worth.’
‘I’m not. Might have taken me a lot longer to see through Zara if I’d gotten that award last night’ she paused. ‘You never liked her, did you?’
No, I hadn’t. But I didn’t want to be superior about that. Not when Penny was telling me a story that a lot of people might have found painful and humiliating to relate.
‘I wasn’t sure about her’ I said, trying to be tactful.
She laughed. ‘I guess I wanted to believe I really could write a movie.’
‘And you can’ I assured her.
She threw up her hands in a gesture of ambivalence. ‘We’ll see, we’ll see. But it won’t be Many Moons Ago, that I do know.’
‘So she owns the rights to the movie? Nothing you can do?’
‘Not a thing. Hold on! You do know you got the prize, don’t you?’ Penny said, abruptly excited.
So Jill had been right.
‘That so? Well, I guess that will help Jill out so she’ll be happy, anyway.’
‘But you’re not?’
‘It puts more pressure on me for the next book to be good, that’s all. Which I’ve written about seventy-five percent of, by the way’ I added, a little pride in my voice.
Penny stood up in her amazement. ‘Oh my god, what happened to the block?’
‘I got over it the same way I did last time. Wrote about my own life, turned it all into fiction. I guess that’s just the way I work.’
‘What’s the book about?’
I sighed. ‘A woman who goes to see her dad on his deathbed, to say goodbye. And why it takes her so long to get there.’
She nodded, unsurprised. ‘Do you think I could read it when it’s done?’
I thought about it for a moment. It was exactly like the last time we’d split up. I’d been going through something and I’d put it in a book. And the easiest thing in the world would be to simply hand that book over. She’d know everything.
Or would she?
‘Yes and no’ I finally answered her. ‘Yes, you can read it. But if it would be alright, I’d rather tell you about my dad. Just say it all. I gave you a book before to explain myself and now I think that was cowardly. I should have just talked to you from the start, told you how I felt. Instead of dressing it up as fiction.’
‘I don’t think that was cowardly’ she protested. ‘If you would rather I just read it-’
‘That’s the thing. I don’t think I would. I think I’d like to talk about him. Not because I’m trying to get you back’ I added quickly and her cheeks flushed a little. ‘But just because I wish you knew me better, that I’d let you. Even if you didn’t like the things I told you, or thought they were sad or pathetic.’
‘I would never think you were pathetic.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘Maybe I know a bit more about what happened than you think. So actually, I do know.’
I didn’t know what she could mean by that for a moment and then it hit me.
‘Teddy’ I said, shaking my head. ‘The blabbermouth.’
‘Yes. But a nice blabbermouth. And I’d still like to hear it from the horse’s mouth, if you still want?’
‘Would you?’ I said, surprised. She probably knew the rough story, that he’d cheated and left and never come back.
‘Yes. I really would’ she said and I believed her. She wanted the whole mess. My whole mess.
So I gave it to her.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Ten Days Later
It was the day of the funeral for Joe Hawke.
I hadn’t seen Julia since that day in Felton, when she’d told me about her father. And then she’d told me about her nightmares, her sleeplessness (which I’d guessed at but not the full extent) and how bad her block had really been. And that she’d been in therapy since we split up. She even told me what my mum had said to her and why it had scared her. The last part almost sent me through the roof with fury.
‘Fur coat and no knickers?! She really said that?’
Somehow, that made Julia laugh.
‘She really did.’
I wanted to wring my mother’s neck but Julia told me to sleep on it, and if I still wanted to bring it up with her in a few days, then I should let loose. I hadn’t yet. I guess I was waiting to get today out of the way first. But I wasn’t letting it slide. My mum was a bit scary at times and it was always tough to really talk to her. But I was going to set her straight about this, that was for sure. She’d gone way too far.
And even if Julia explained that my mum wasn’t really responsible for us breaking up, she’d still given it an almighty try. I wasn’t letting her get away with it. Not beyond today.
I’d wanted to see Julia in the time between her father’s death and his funeral, but she asked me for some space, that she needed to let the last few months permeate and settle. I understood. It was a lot to deal with.
But I wanted to be here today and she hadn’t argued with that. I think she was even glad.
But I wasn’t assuming anything about us. Too much had happened. I didn’t know where either of us stood. I loved her, of course I did. I’d never stopped, since the day I’d met her. Even the moments when I thought I could let her go
, they didn’t mean I’d stopped. I would always love her. Even if I never saw her after today, I would keep on loving her until I died, most likely. And that was that.
But I didn’t know what that meant anymore, if anything. Was there anything left to keep us together? Was Zara right (in her manipulative way) when she said that all that had ever held us together was illicit passion? Could we ever just be a normal couple? Would Julia really want that, after everything? She’d told me so much about herself and it had meant a lot to me that she did. But was it her way of saying goodbye to me, of explaining why we couldn’t work?
So many questions with no answers.
The service was brief, sparsely attended. I’d been going to sit at the back, to keep out of the way. But Teddy waved at me from the front, where he sat with Julia. She turned and gestured for me to join them.
‘You came’ she said with a sad smile.
‘Of course’ I told her.
‘I knew you would. I’m just glad to see you.’
I smiled and nodded and then the vicar began to speak, attempting to detail a life unknown to almost everyone in the room. But he did his best and somehow, he got through it with words that couldn’t fail to be relevant to any given person. He spoke about how every life touched a thousand more and that we should all decide what we wanted to make that mean.
Julia looked down at that. I wondered what it had made her think about.
She didn’t cry that day. I guess she felt she’d cried enough. I did, though. Discreetly, not wanting to try and ride shot gun on Julia’s very real bereavement. I was only grief adjacent, after all.
But she caught me anyway, handing me a tissue and patting my hand. She didn’t seem angry. She seemed touched.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The funeral was hard. They always are. But the hardest thing was watching people trying to make sense of a man they didn’t know. What did his life mean? What did his death mean?
And of course, it made me ask myself the same questions. What did my life mean?
I didn’t have to think about that question for long. Because the vicar gave me the answer. It was in the lives we touched, or so he said.
Who had I touched? I’m tempted to make a joke here but I won’t. Because it’s one thing to touch someone with my hands. That was easy enough. It was another to really leave your mark on a person. And who had I marked?
I started to wonder what my funeral would look like if I died today. Teddy would be there, as my last surviving relative. Jill would be there. A few friends. Old colleagues. Maybe even a couple of exes. Including Penny.
I glanced at her and saw that she was trying to pretend she wasn’t crying. It was a pure Penny moment. Too sensitive not to be moved by the funeral, too modest to let her angst steal the show.
I thought of the holiday we’d had six months ago, how everything had seemed so perfect. But it had been the end of the honeymoon and things had begun to go wrong shortly afterwards, when life had turned up unexpectedly. My dad, her parents, career ups and downs. It was the stuff reality was made of. And we’d been in the bubble, thinking it could last forever, trying to pretend we didn’t have the same cares as every other couple had.
But it couldn’t last and now we knew it. And I didn’t care. Because she was here with me now. It was one of the worst moments of my life and she was standing right next to me. And perhaps she could have been all along, if I’d let her.
A year ago, when Penny had come to my door, after reading my book, she’d told me exactly how she felt about me. I’d been planning to do the same but she’d beaten me to it, so I’d never had to be brave in the end. But now I would have to find the courage that I had put aside that day and finally use it.
I wanted Penny back.
Of course, I could have beaten myself up about everything that had happened. My failings, her failings, every screw up that had pulled us apart. It would have been easy to say ‘Well, I guess it’s just not meant to be’ like I had before.
But I was done with giving up on Penny. Done with giving up on myself. My dad had made that mistake. And if I had any hope of giving his life meaning, it would be to learn from it.
The other thing the funeral taught me? You don’t have all the time you think you do. If you want something, it’s better to go after it today. Because tomorrow might never come.
After the funeral, we were on the train together sitting on opposite seats, going back to Medford and I was anxious. I had ninety minutes alone with Penny on this quiet train to say what I wanted. But I didn’t know how to start. Words on the page were alright. But this? Words coming out of my mouth, in the right order, with the correct intonation and meaning? When it really mattered, trying to string a sentence together was the hardest job in the world.
‘Julia, are you OK?’ Penny asked and I realised I must have had something of a thousand-yard stare on my face. It was time to bite the bullet.
‘Penny, I wanted to talk to you about something.’
Her face was all dread.
‘I know, I know. It’s over. I wasn’t going to try and hang onto you or anything.’
That threw me for a loop for a second, but then it helped me to find my words.
‘Actually, I hoped you might want to hang onto me. Because I’m trying to hang onto you. Right now’ I sputtered. ‘I don’t want to get off this train and never see you again. I want us to try again. I know it’s a weird day to ask you, what with where we just came from. But that’s why I’m asking. I’m not wasting more time by waiting to tell you that I still love you.’
She frowned and I thought I’d gone too far, that she would say something terrible like ‘I think we should be friends.’ Instead, she said. ‘I’ve thought about that too, I’ll admit. I do miss you. But would it be stupid? Would we just be setting ourselves up for more pain?’
It wasn’t very encouraging. But on the other hand, it wasn’t a complete rejection.
‘I don’t know, in all honesty. Maybe.’
‘So you think there’s a good chance it might go wrong?’
‘Yes’ I admitted. ‘But I also think there’s a chance that we’d get it right this time.’
She looked away thoughtfully.
‘Both times we’ve split; you don’t know what I go through. It’s terrible to think I’ve lost you.’
‘But you haven’t lost me. You’ve never lost me. I’m right here, asking for another chance. And I go through hell too, I hope you know.’
‘But I feel like it’s happening again, the whole drama cycle. We get together in the madness and then, when we have to live in the real world, it doesn’t work. And today is… It’s your dad’s funeral. It’s a huge day full of complicated stuff. And you’re asking me to try again.’
It was a fair point. But I thought it was different this time. I know, that’s what every idiot in love thinks. But it’s got to be different sometime. Hasn’t it?
‘You’re right. It’s another crazy time’ I agreed. ‘And I can’t promise it’s any different. But I don’t know, everything we’ve gone through together teaches me something. About you, about me. And I’m still learning. So are you. But I want to keep doing it, even if it’s hard sometimes.’
She sighed. I could tell she was wrestling with this. And I didn’t want to talk her into anything she didn’t want. But I also felt that everything we both wanted was just in front of us. If she would only come with me. Choose to take it.
‘And anyway, I think we’re getting better at the break ups’ I said with a wry smile. ‘It was a year and a half the first time, this time it only took four months for me to stop acting stupid and realise what’s important. But if you’re done with it all, I could understand that.’
She licked her lips, a nervous habit. Eventually she looked at me, her green eyes full of emotion and said ‘Julia… How could I ever be done with you?’
‘Is that a… A yes?’ I asked with trepidation.
‘It means you’re right. About everything.
But can we stop messing it up? Can we just agree that no matter what happens, we won’t be stupid? We won’t forget to love each other properly? That you’re always on my side and I’m always on yours?’
I nodded and then she flew across the seating area and her lips were on mine. Her hands, my hands, were everywhere. And I found myself going from one of the worst days of my life to one of the best.
Two minutes later, a very surprised looking train conductor coughed to get our attention and we broke apart, laughing nervously. The guy didn’t know what to think, he was bright pink. He just punched our tickets without a word and left the carriage in haste.
Penny sat down next to me and took my hand. ‘Julia, if we’re really doing this, I think we’ve got to go all out. Let’s live together.’
I must have looked like a bus had hit me, because she immediately started babbling addendums.
‘Obviously, I’d have to live with you. I can’t see you moving into my student house. But maybe I’m being premature. Is this too much?’
I didn’t answer her. Instead, I pulled out my phone, scrolling through the numbers until I found the one I wanted, hitting dial. Penny looked at me bewildered as I listened to the phone ring. ‘Who are you calling?’
‘Moving company. Do you think you could pack by tomorrow?’
Penny’s face broke into a beautiful smile of pure sunshine. And then the moving company answered.
As I spoke to them, I saw Penny composing a text, which she held up for me to read. It was to her mother. It read ‘Hi Mum, I’m moving in with Julia and we wondered if you’d like to visit us in our new home? To toast the happy couple?’
She gave me a questioning look, her face telling me that she knew she was about to fire a shot over the bough, to start a battle. But it had to be fired. I gave her a thumb of approval.
