‘If you were a third wheel, then ShayKi is a tricycle.’
‘So, the more we interfered, the more you resented us.’
‘You could have taken me out for a drink and broken it to me gently, instead of having a go at me all the time,’ I said, feeling slightly bamboozled by their different perspective.
Shay sat back, counting off her fingers as she answered that. ‘Bar Humbug. The Frog and Fly. That spa day, when I brought it up you stalked off and sat in the sauna with the scary man.’
I sighed. ‘Okay. Maybe I didn’t give you much chance. But this wasn’t a fallout over my choice of partner. Leo died. I lost my husband. Bob’s dad.’
‘My brother,’ Kieran said, with a sharpness that jolted me. ‘I love you, Mary, but in the aftermath, you seemed to forget that. You’d known him six months. I’d helped him take his first steps. Sat with him in the wreckage of his diagnosis. Kissed him goodbye as they wheeled him to open-heart surgery. We might have had our issues over the years. But I lost my brother. We can all grow bitter about what if one of us had done things differently.’
‘You think it’s my fault?’ I sat back, stunned.
‘No more than mine, or Shay’s, or our deadbeat dad’s. No more than Leo’s, for being so blummin’ stubborn. The doctor for waiting almost a week before operating. Blind, cruel chance that he was the one to inherit the gene, not me or any of the others.’
We talked about afterwards. About why I had to leave. ShayKi had become a brutal reminder. Leo’s designs were a major feature of the autumn collection, and every meeting, every decision, was like a knife thrust into my wound. It felt wrong, living in what I still considered to be Leo’s house, but how could I move back in with Shay, when I couldn’t bear to look at her? I wasn’t strong enough to begin putting it right between us, and I would end up hating both of them if I stayed.
At that point I was also afraid that the baby would be a constant reminder. I was terrified that Leo’s child had inherited the heart defect. I’d had no idea that a child could produce enough joy, and hope and wonder, to help heal my own damaged heart. Bob would have been a new bridge between us, but I couldn’t see that then.
‘Is Bob…?’ Shay asked, taking Kieran’s hand as his eyes filled with fear.
‘He’s fine,’ I said. ‘We got the all-clear while I was still pregnant.’
They asked what my plans were now, after eventually accepting that they wouldn’t include ShayKi.
‘I don’t know. I’m giving myself a year of maternity leave, so can start deciding that in the spring. I think it’s here, though. I’m wondering if it might include making things. A small business. I know it will be something simple, that allows me as much time as I want to be with Bob.’
‘I think you should come back with us, just to double check,’ Shay said. ‘You can live with us and still do your own thing.’
They both knew that wasn’t true, so instead simply begged me to come back for a visit.
‘Just for Christmas! We’ve got the worst panto in the world this evening, then carols at the pub with a brass band tomorrow. At the very least, we’ll come and get you on Christmas Eve for the party.’
I held my ground. There was no way on earth I’d miss the carol concert that evening, I’d been invited to a festive fuddle at Li’s on Christmas Eve, and felt sure I’d be spending Christmas Day with Beckett and Gramps. Hopefully a whole lot of days after that, too.
‘You know I need to have a conversation with Beckett,’ I said, manhandling Shay in the direction of the front door. ‘Go and enjoy being all nauseatingly loved up, and I’ll maybe visit in the new year.’
‘With your gorgeous boyfriend?’
‘He’s not my boyfriend.’
‘Yet,’ Shay said, making me grin, because we both knew he soon would be.
‘It’s not too soon?’ I asked, suddenly gripped with doubt and regret.
‘Uncle Danny always said it’s not about the right time, it’s the right person that matters,’ Shay said, her frivolity evaporating. ‘You loved Leo, but you’ve admitted he wasn’t necessarily right for you. You’ve found a man who brings out the best of who you are, instead of making you try to be who he thinks you are. Personally, I’ve recently concluded that waiting around when you’ve found your person is a stupid waste of precious time.’
‘Do as I say, not as I do?’ I asked, laughing.
‘Do as I say, and as I’m doing as of now.’ She grinned back, before hugging me with the force of all those missed months, and left me to it.
By the time I needed to leave for the NLCCCCC, I had given up waiting for Beckett to reply to any of my messages, and accepted Rina’s offer to pick me up. Apart from the two missed calls, there’d been nothing. I refused to consider the possibility that, after our kiss, Beckett would suddenly ghost me. Even if it had prompted a minor freak-out, or what he’d said in the car was a lie to protect my feelings, he wouldn’t be so ignorant as to flat out ignore me. These past two days were the longest we’d been without contacting each other in ages. I was genuinely worried, and when the reserved seat beside mine in the New Life hall remained empty, I couldn’t quench the jitters. Either he genuinely couldn’t bear to be in the same room as me, even for something as significant as this – and if so, I hadn’t the faintest clue why – or something awful had happened.
A couple of minutes before the concert was due to start, I ducked outside to try calling again.
As I did, a message pinged through.
My initial relief, however, died with a splutter.
