The Goodbye Gift

by Amanda Brooke

  Helen took the vacant seat immediately behind Beryl who craned her neck so they could continue talking. ‘Did you manage to get out to see your friends, then?’

  ‘Yes, I did, thanks,’ she said and immediately felt a twinge of guilt as she remembered how quick and eager she had been to leave Milly home alone that evening.

  ‘A night out with the girls, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Erm, yes.’

  ‘Still no boyfriend, then?’

  As she spoke, Beryl made eye movements to point to the man sitting quietly next to her, making Helen cringe even more than she might have done at this relative stranger’s comments alone.

  ‘Erm …’

  The man turned sharply towards Beryl and the two shared a wordless exchange.

  Helen presumed this would be where Beryl turned back around and left her in peace, but instead, Beryl said to the man, ‘This is my friend, Helen. She’s a nurse.’

  The man tried to turn but he was sitting directly in front of Helen and they only managed to share a brief look of embarrassment. ‘Hi,’ he said.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘This is Chris. He’s my youngest,’ Beryl told her.

  Helen glanced at the back of the poor man’s head, but it was the unmistakable glint in Beryl’s eye that made him immediately recognizable as the son she had been trying to palm off on Helen. Chris’s hair was a mass of short-cropped curls and his shoulders were broad. Even sitting down Helen could tell he was tall, although from his posture he looked desperate to shrink from view.

  With Chris looking straight ahead again, Beryl mouthed the word ‘divorced,’ to Helen.

  Feeling her cheeks burning, Helen scrambled in her bag for her phone, willing it to burst into life and save her from what was becoming an increasingly awkward situation.

  ‘Sorry, I’ll leave you to it,’ Beryl said, taking the hint, or so Helen thought until she saw her lean over to her son and in a loud whisper say, ‘That’s what you need. A lovely young lady like Helen.’

  Helen was still too far away from home to justify getting off the bus early so she did her best to focus on the message she was about to send Milly to let her know she was on her way home. This was something she had stopped doing when Milly started high school, where her daughter had quickly learned that replying to your parents was not the done thing. When Helen had resurrected the messages last week, she had been surprised to receive not only prompt replies, but ones that were civil and occasionally ended with an ‘x’, sometimes two.

  She was halfway through the message when the bus jolted to a halt, making her look up. The two passengers in front of her were engrossed in a whispered conversation and as Helen looked out of the window, she tried to keep her ears closed. They were on Allerton Road and had hit a queue of traffic. The night had arrived prematurely and the glare of shop displays along the busy high street stung her eyes.

  Glancing down one of the side roads, Helen watched a woman pushing a pram laden with shopping. The young mum had to manoeuvre her buggy past an obstruction that turned out to be someone sitting on a wall. Helen could make out the legs of a woman in jeans and stiletto-heeled boots, but the upper part of her body was obstructed from view by overgrown shrubbery. As the bus began to creep past, the woman on the wall leaned forward and looked up the road in Helen’s direction. The flaming orange hair caught alight beneath the beam of the streetlamp, making Phoebe’s features immediately recognizable even from a distance.

  Her friend was too far away to catch Helen’s eye and then the bus was picking up speed, leaving Helen wondering if it really had been her. For one thing, Phoebe didn’t wear stilettos and besides, Theresa was moving into the care home that afternoon and Phoebe had been expecting to stay and help her nan settle in. Helen quickly finished tapping out her message to Milly with the intention of sending another to Phoebe to see if everything was all right.

  She had been meaning to text her anyway and debated whether or not to mention she had just seen her doppelgänger. As she considered what to write, Helen turned her attention to the other side of the road where the oncoming traffic had come to a halt at a pedestrian crossing. Again there was a sense of familiarity as she spied a bright red Beetle. Paul and Julia often travelled to and from work together but with a job that required a fair amount of travel around the city, it wasn’t unusual to see Paul alone in the car, although she was surprised to see him travelling in the opposite direction to home at this time of night.

  As Helen sat mulling over this latest piece of a puzzle she was in no mood to solve, there was a message alert on her phone. Milly wanted to know if they could have takeaway pizza. This was usually a weekend treat and the Helen of old would have told her daughter in no uncertain terms that she would have what she was given. It took two seconds to type OK and three kisses, which left plenty of time for Helen to wonder again if the past was coming back to haunt her – to haunt them all.

  ‘Another dilemma?’ Beryl asked.

  Helen hadn’t even noticed that she was being watched. ‘Erm, you could say that.’

  ‘Anything we can help with? My babysitting rates are reasonable, or if you need a plus one for some party or other, I can always recommend someone.’

  Beryl did that thing with her eyes again to point to her son as if Helen hadn’t already worked out the subtext.

  Before Helen could respond, Chris had also turned around and he twisted his body to make sure they kept eye contact this time. ‘I can only apologize unreservedly for my mother. She’s like this all the time and it’s a wonder I subject myself to being out in public with her any more.’

  To Helen’s surprise, Chris had the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen with dark eyelashes that any woman would die for. His gentle smile was captivating and despite her growing unease about what may or may not be happening only a few streets away, she found herself smiling back. ‘So she’s not picky, then? There I was thinking I was special,’ she said, glancing back to Beryl.

  Beryl grinned and didn’t look in the least bit abashed. She nudged her son. ‘She’s not only beautiful, she has a sense of humour too.’

  ‘Mum, enough,’ Chris growled softly.

  ‘What? You have to grab every opportunity, son. You might not get a second chance.’

  But sometimes you might, Helen thought as her attention was pulled in the opposite direction. Chris noticed the distracted look on her face and misread it. ‘I really am sorry for this. If it helps, I’m mortified too. Next time my car’s in the garage, I’m going to insist I hire a car to take Mum on her errands,’ he said and then not only turned his back again but began to stand up, forcing his mum to do the same. ‘Come on, Mum, this is our stop.’

  ‘We’re off to see one of my friends. Did I tell you Chris is a financial adviser? He’s going to help her sort out her pension,’ she said proudly.

  ‘I wish someone would sort out my finances,’ Helen said almost to herself. She would be stepping into a financial minefield if Milly did move in with her dad and she was the one who ended up paying child support instead of receiving it.

  ‘Give her your card, quick!’ Beryl said.

  As Helen shoved the business card in her bag, she would have liked nothing better than to indulge in a little daydream about the services Chris might be able to offer, but she still had the small matter of texting Phoebe. She supposed she didn’t have to check up on her. There was enough going on in her own life, and Julia’s for that matter, without seeking out more problems. And besides, she only had to look at the evidence to rip her malicious theory to pieces. Paul couldn’t have been that interested in Phoebe in the first place because he had been quick enough to back off when Theresa had told Phoebe to stop seeing him. He would never have given up on Julia that easily, they were perfect for each other, and even if things had been rocky of late, why should that make any difference? What mattered was that Julia was Phoebe’s friend; they were practically sisters. She wouldn’t hurt her like that. She couldn’t.

  Pho
ebe was shivering and her bottom had turned numb. The stone wall she was sitting on felt more like a glacier but she had no intention of getting up until she felt the warmth from the headlights of Paul’s car. Looking up the road, she could see a sluggish trail of traffic slithering along Allerton Road. What if Paul had decided against meeting her? What would she do then? She couldn’t face going home.

  Risking frostbite, Phoebe slipped off her gloves and checked her phone in case she had somehow missed a text message. She hadn’t, and after reading Paul’s original reply once more to reassure herself that he was on his way, she looked at the message below it.

  Emergency meeting at the Elephant tonight 7.30 p.m.

  The message had a bright red background because although she had typed it out, she hadn’t sent it. She hadn’t made the emergency call to her friends because she didn’t want to burden them. She was actually being thoughtful, she told herself, preferring not to acknowledge any other motive for turning to Paul first.

  Before her mind could lead her towards dangerous territory, her phone played a jingle alert and a new message flashed up. To her shame, her heart sank a little when she realized it was a message from one of her friends and not a friend’s husband.

  How did it go today? Are you still there?

  Phoebe glanced up and down the road again. Satisfied that there were no other demands on her attention, she sent Helen a quick reply.

  Absolutely awful. Busy now but promise to catch up later. P x

  Feeling a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold, Phoebe put her phone away. A decade’s worth of guilt pressed down against her chest, but it was immediately washed away by the arc of a VW Beetle’s headlights turning the corner. Phoebe was already at the kerb when Paul pulled up in front of her.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asked, letting the car idle as Phoebe slipped into the passenger seat beside him.

  ‘I’m absolutely freezing.’

  Paul ramped up the heating then put his hand on the gearstick but didn’t drive off. ‘That wasn’t what I meant.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said, not sure if her lip was trembling because of the cold or because she felt anything but fine.

  ‘Liar,’ he said softly. ‘So, where do you want to go?’

  Phoebe didn’t have an answer and so asked, ‘Did you tell Julia you were picking me up?’

  ‘No.’

  Paul had avoided looking at her when he replied but she could see the look of doubt on his face. Like Phoebe, he didn’t really know what he was doing or, to be more precise, what he intended to do. Instead, he put the car in gear and drove away with neither of them sure where it was leading. It wasn’t until they were back on Allerton Road that Paul spoke again.

  ‘Go on, tell me what happened.’

  ‘I was convinced she was going,’ Phoebe said with a note of disbelief. ‘We had a lovely evening last night and we actually sat down and had a meal together. We stayed in the same room all evening which hasn’t happened since I don’t know when.’ Phoebe was staring out of the window as she spoke and the bright lights of a pharmacy caught her attention. She had spent half her life collecting prescriptions, becoming such a regular that the chemists knew her by sight. The irony was that Phoebe was one of the healthiest people she knew. ‘I thought I’d escaped all of that,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I know I didn’t want my nan going into care and I was fully prepared to look after her for as long as I could, it was the least I could do, but …’ She stopped staring out of the window and turned to Paul. ‘I was looking forward to being in control of my own life for once. I thought it was what she wanted and even this morning she was barking orders at me to help with the last-minute packing, not to mention giving me instructions about what she wanted me to do after she’d moved out. It was still going to be her house, whether she was there or not,’ she added with a laugh.

  ‘So what changed?’ Paul asked.

  ‘She went quiet at lunchtime, wouldn’t eat and started muttering to herself. She does that when she’s about to have an episode and I knew then that things might not go to plan. You know that feeling you get when your stomach starts twisting with a mixture of excitement and cold dread?’

  He simply shrugged, but of course Paul knew what that felt like. It was exactly how he described the monthly routine of hoping that Julia was pregnant and fearing that she wasn’t. Phoebe had found it difficult to listen when Paul voiced such intimate thoughts as if the intimacy was theirs. It could have been once, but like so many of Phoebe’s dreams, it had been no more than a tantalizing precursor to what would ultimately turn into crushing disappointment.

  ‘We were supposed to be at the home for two o’clock and I’d ordered a taxi,’ Phoebe continued, ‘but when I told Nan it was outside, she just flipped. I know the doctors had warned me that she might experience changes in her personality but I think even they would be shocked to see how bad she can get. She told me what a conniving bitch I was and that she wasn’t ill at all. She denied ever seeing a doctor and said it was all a scheme I’d dreamt up to get at her money. Then she threatened to cut me out of her will and leave everything to the cat. It wouldn’t surprise me if she already had,’ she added.

  ‘And what happens now?’

  The bright streetlamps were beginning to blur as Phoebe’s eyes filled with tears of resignation. They were driving down familiar roads and although they hadn’t agreed where to go, in a few minutes Paul would pull up outside her grandmother’s house. What other option did she have? ‘She stays, and I carry on looking after her.’

  ‘But she only refused to go because she was confused. Once your nan’s thinking straight, she’ll be as determined as ever to go and I’m sure the home will understand why there’s been a delay.’

  Phoebe sighed. She had a sinking feeling that, sensible though she knew it was, her grandmother had never wanted to go in the first place. And of course she enjoyed testing her granddaughter. ‘I’ve checked with the home and because we’ve already paid the first month’s fees, they can be flexible up to a point, but if I can’t get her there in the next few weeks then they’ll offer the place to someone else. I shouldn’t be so disappointed, I know that, but I can’t help the way I feel,’ she said, looking at Paul for the longest time.

  Paul took his eyes off the road to meet her gaze. ‘And how do you feel, Phoebe?’

  Her thawing cheeks were starting to burn as she remembered a time when she had been able to tell Paul anything. Was history about to be repeated? ‘Remember the old me? I thought I was getting her back. Well, maybe not exactly,’ she said, thinking of how hard she had been working on a new image, whereas her younger self had relied only on her youth and …

  ‘The spark,’ Paul surmised.

  ‘Yes. I think I understand what mum went through now. She took us to Manchester because she was convinced she was well enough to look after us both. She’d come out of a dark period of depression and she couldn’t face being beaten back down again by Nan. I know now that’s not how it works and she was never going to outrun her illness, but that was how she felt. And I feel the same.’

  ‘You want to run away?’

  ‘I want to stop playing it safe. I want to break out of this invisible straitjacket my nan’s made for me.’

  Paul pulled up to the kerb and switched off the engine. They were still some distance from the imposing four-bedroom house that had been the Dodd family home for four generations. In spite of this, Phoebe would have had no qualms about selling up when her nan’s savings ran out, and she had actually been looking forward to apartment hunting. That wasn’t going to happen now and in all likelihood the house that had never felt like a home would one day pass to Phoebe – or the cat, of course.

  ‘I want to help,’ Paul said. ‘We all do.’

  Thinking of the message she had drafted but not sent to her friends, Phoebe said, ‘I don’t think the others understand, not like you do.’

  ‘Then tell them, Phoebe. Tell
them what you went through in Manchester; explain what happened to your mum. I can’t believe you never told them.’

  ‘Talking about it didn’t help,’ she said, and then stopped herself from asking if it was her revelations that had frightened him off. ‘I thought it would be better to put everything behind me. It was just something that happened and I got over it.’

  ‘Except you didn’t, did you? Talk to them, Phoebe.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Phoebe said. ‘With everything else that’s going on, the last thing they need is my problems too.’

  ‘It’s not supposed to be one way. They would want to help. I know Julia would.’

  ‘Would she? What would she say if she knew you were here with me now?’

  ‘We’re not doing anything wrong,’ Paul insisted, although he didn’t sound as confident as he should.

  ‘But you won’t tell her, will you?’ Phoebe asked, feeling too tired and beaten to dance around the issue. ‘Is she worried about you and me? Is that why the driving lessons stopped?’

  ‘She’s feeling vulnerable at the moment,’ Paul explained. ‘After everything that’s been going on, I suppose it’s natural for her to feel insecure. She sees any woman as a risk, and that includes you.’

  ‘It can’t be easy for you,’ she said, making an opening for the conversation she had wanted to have with Paul for weeks. ‘You shouldn’t worry so much about the results.’

  Paul was shaking his head as he stared straight ahead. ‘Of course I should worry. I don’t know how I’ll live with myself if it turns out I’m responsible for all the pain Julia’s been put through.’

  Before Phoebe could interject, he said, ‘But I couldn’t bear it either if it turns out that Julia’s the one with fertility problems. The only thing I am sure of right now is that there is a problem and it doesn’t really matter where the fault lies. What we desperately need is someone to tell us how to fix it, which is hopefully what we’re going to hear next week.’

  ‘I hope so too,’ Phoebe said. She looked again towards the house. Theresa was all the family Phoebe had left; she had never known her father who had been little more than a passing fancy in her mother’s troubled life. Phoebe couldn’t turn her back on her grandmother and leave empty-handed, she had suffered the consequences once before when her mum had walked out. ‘I’d better go,’ she said.