Leanne shook her head, conflicting thoughts wrestling behind bloodshot eyes.
Rather than arguing, I simply nudged her inside, slipped out and shut the door behind me.
Forty minutes later she reappeared – still in her grubby work clothes, but her wet hair was smoothed back behind her ears and her skin was almost rosy.
‘I left the glass on the side in the kitchen.’ She hovered for a moment, and before I could think of how to break the tension, she collapsed into a chair, face disintegrating into brutal, bone-jarring sobs.
Completely out of my depth, the fact that she’d accepted the bath gave me enough courage to scoot my chair closer until I could place my hand on her shoulder. After about a minute of bawling, Joan appeared at her kitchen door. I smiled, mouthing, ‘It’s okay,’ and she nodded, her eyebrows sharp angles of worry, before disappearing inside again.
‘I’ll make us some tea,’ I said, once Leanne had quietened enough to hear me, reappearing with mugs and tissues to find her sitting quietly, staring at the trees beyond the fence.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘No.’ I handed her a mug, then sat down. ‘Don’t apologise. Not for crying, or for being knackered, or having a broken shower. Or for needing some help. I don’t know the details, and I don’t need to, but I do know that these near-impossible circumstances you’ve ended up in are not your fault.’
Leanne laughed – a brittle, caustic bark of self-contempt. ‘Not true.’
I watched a pair of wood pigeons hopping along the back fence as I thought about that.
‘Wow. You must be the luckiest woman alive if you’ve never had anyone take advantage. If everything has always gone your way and you’ve never had to face stuff randomly going wrong or someone else’s bad decision making your life worse.’
I just about caught the tiniest flicker of a smile.
‘While I’ve not had much luck on my side, I’ve not exactly helped matters by making one stupid decision after another.’
‘Was leaving your boyfriend and coming here stupid?’
Leanne took a slow sip of tea. The summer air was starting to cool as the sun sank below the far edge of the forest, and she huddled further down in her seat. ‘It would have killed me, in the end, if I’d stayed. Either the violence or the drugs. So, no. Even though I’ve spent plenty of time wondering what the hell I’m doing here, and hated myself for what it’s doing to my little girl, I had to leave.’
At the mention of drugs, a tendril of anxiety slithered down the back of my neck.
‘But I brought that monster into our home in the first place. I stayed with him as long as I did. So it was still my fault.’
I took a slow breath, before deciding that I had nothing to lose in reciprocating Leanne’s honesty. ‘I’m starting to realise that my mum was emotionally abusive. She controlled my entire life, up until I moved here. I lost my twenties doing what she wanted, being who she wanted me to be. I could blame her for it, accuse her of sabotaging any chance I had at happiness, but I was an adult, responsible for my own choices. Any power she had over me was because I gave it to her.’
‘It’s not that easy, though, is it?’ Leanne shook her head. ‘Any person who’s been abused could say the same thing. Blame themselves for not walking away.’ She gave another, more vigorous shake. ‘No. I know the courage it takes to escape that, when your confidence has been shredded, one insult, one kick at a time, until you feel like less than nothing. And for me, it was some leech I’d known for five minutes. Your mum is a whole different story.’
‘I had a job, at least, and friends not too far away. Leanne, I don’t know how you’ve managed to pick yourself up from nothing, and survive this long all on your own, but I want you to know that you’ve got me as a friend.’
She raised one straggled eyebrow. ‘You might not say that if you knew me. I’m not most respectable people’s first choice of friend.’
‘Well, I don’t exactly have a lot to compare you to, so I’m prepared to take the risk. Besides,’ I added after a moment. ‘Ebenezer seems to think you’re worth looking out for. He even strung up this washing line.’
‘Ebenezer?’
‘In Middle Cottage. That’s what Joan calls him.’
Leanne slowly swivelled her head to face me. ‘Ollie, no one lives in Middle Cottage. It’s been empty for years.’
‘What?’ A spurt of adrenaline whooshed through my bloodstream as I whipped around to look at the cottage. It was when I spun back, hand clutching my chest in genuine horror, that I caught the grin on Leanne’s face.
‘You absolute cow.’
‘Told you I was a terrible friend.’
She burst out laughing, and after giving my heart a moment to start beating again, I had to join her. For no other reason than here I was, on a Saturday night, sharing a drink and a joke with yet another new person (even if I had practically forced her into it).
Here’s what I should have learnt years ago, given my job, and my disastrous family: there are imperfect, mixed-up, complicated people everywhere. People who are simply doing the best they can to shake off whatever’s been dumped on them, pick themselves up and keep on going. I’d wasted a lot of time disqualifying myself from this grand adventure called life – I might make a mistake, take a wrong turn, fail spectacularly. The truth dawned on me that summer evening, as the sunset lit up the forest in a blaze of fire and the memories that swirled around us slowly sank into the shadows –I will make a thousand mistakes, I will take many wrong turns, and I may well fail spectacularly, along with every other person who ever lived. And when these things happen, I will shake it off and get back up again – maybe accepting a helping hand, if I need it – and I will keep on going.
