Ten Years On (30 page)

What if he isn’t in love with me any more? What if I’ve left it too late? What if he’s going on this Australian trip with someone else? Maybe he has a new girlfriend. I haven’t seen him for eighteen months, anything could have happened … But it doesn’t matter any more. I have to do this.

I’m stuck behind a bus. Passengers get on and off so slowly, as if the world isn’t in a hurry.

*

Joe’s new flat is in Oram’s Arbour, close to the train station.

Flat 5B.

I take a deep breath and press the buzzer.

No answer.

I try again. He could be in the shower?

No answer.

Maybe he’s at Maison Joe.

Why didn’t I think of that?

Edoardo gives me a great welcome and wants to hear all my news. ‘Sorry, but not now,’ I tell him. ‘I need to find Joe.’ Then Adam emerges at the top of the stairs, dressed in smart trousers and a spotted tie. He gives me a big bearhug. ‘I’m working here, Rebecca,’ he says proudly. ‘Helping Joe with the wine courses.’ He sticks his thumbs up.

‘Oh, that’s wonderful, Adam,’ I say, cursing myself for sounding so rushed, but … ‘Do you know where Joe is?’ I ask both of them. ‘I’m sorry, but this is kind of an emergency.’

Edoardo shrugs. ‘Probably packing,’ he suggests. ‘He’s off to Australia early tomorrow morning. Why don’t you call him?’

Outside I call his number, my heart racing.

‘Think, Edoardo. You really don’t know where he might be?’ I ask, when I return to the bar. ‘He’s not picking up.’

Luis joins us with a couple of empty glasses, a pen tucked behind his ear. ‘Joe? I think he’s eating out tonight. Said he didn’t feel like cooking.’

‘Where?’

I race up the high street, turn right towards the library, fling open the doors to every single bar and restaurant. I scan the tables. Joe is nowhere to be seen.

It’s now close to ten. I’m sitting on the steps outside Joe’s flat.

Passers-by return from their evening, warmed up by the company of their friends and the food and wine. A group of students are singing drunkenly as they zigzag across the road. I’m losing my nerve. I can’t do this. Defeated, I head back to my car, turn on the engine. I’m about to drive home when something tells me to switch on the radio.

It’s Bob Dylan singing ‘Make You Feel My Love’.

Some might say it’s a coincidence.

I turn off the engine, taking it as a signal to stay.

47

‘Becca?’ I feel someone shaking my shoulder. I open my eyes and see Joe standing next to a tall, dark-haired woman. I stand up, flustered. I’d sat down on the steps outside Joe’s front door, can only have been asleep for a few minutes.

‘Becca,’ he repeats, ‘what are you doing here?’

‘Um, I was just passing and …’

‘It’s nearly eleven.’

‘You must be freezing,’ the woman says with concern.

‘How long have you been waiting?’ Joe asks.

‘Not long!’

He introduces me to Helen.

Helen says how much she has heard about me, and how lovely it is to meet at last. She’s nothing like Peta. I can feel that she and Joe fit together this time. Helen
kisses Joe on the cheek, says she will give us some time alone. ‘I’ll call you later,’ he promises her.

Joe unlocks the door to his flat. ‘Come in. You need warming up,’ he says, entering the sitting room. The first thing I see in Joe’s new apartment is a framed photograph of Helen on the mantelpiece. But on the wall above it is my painting of the lemon tree. He insists on making me a cup of tea. I ask him if I can use his bathroom. I see her make-up bag by the sink, along with a flowery silk dressing gown hanging on the back of the door.

When Joe hands me a mug of tea we sit side by side on the sofa. ‘Why are you here, Rebecca?’

‘I’m sorry,’ I begin. ‘So sorry for what I said to you that night.’

‘Don’t be. I shouldn’t have—’

‘Hang on. Let me say this, OK. When I said you couldn’t replace Olly, well, it was an unforgivable thing to say but the thing is, it was too soon and—’

‘I know it was too soon, and I’ve hated myself ever since. What was I thinking? I should have known better.’ Joe is pacing the sitting room. ‘It was insensitive and stupid and impulsive.’

‘Joe, sit down. Please sit.’

He joins me on the sofa again. I turn to him, hands placed awkwardly on my knees, when all I want to do is reach out and hold him. ‘I’ve missed you. I wanted to get in touch long before now …’

‘Me too.’

‘Why didn’t you?’ we both ask together.

‘I wrote to you,’ I say. I sent photographs.’

‘I didn’t get them, Becca! ‘I never received a letter, otherwise of course I would have replied. You must have sent them to my old address and they didn’t forward them on. I just assumed …’

We both speak at the same time again.

‘You first,’ he says, ‘seeing as you’ve waited outside my front door all night.’

I look at him, knowing there’s no point trying to pretend any more. ‘After the way I’d left it, I thought of a million excuses not to call you, but when I saw you today … Over the last year I’ve begun to dare to think of a life without Olly. I don’t want to waste any more time. You and I, we’ve had so much time apart already, but I’m too late, aren’t I …?’ I get stuck on the words. I daren’t look at his face. I know he is going to tell me that he has moved on.

‘Becca, look at me.’

I stumble on, terrified of hearing the truth. ‘When
I said you couldn’t replace Olly, that was a stupid thing to say, because I don’t want you to. No one can replace Olly. I just want you, Joe Lawson. You’re a special person in your own right. But I see you’ve met someone else.’ I smile. ‘I had to say it, otherwise I’d never have forgiven myself for being such a coward, for being so scared of falling in love again. Because I do love you, Joe.’ I reach out and stroke his cheek, look into his eyes. ‘There … I’ve said it. Now I’ll go.’ I attempt to stand up, but Joe grabs my arm, pulls me back down on to the sofa.

‘Becca. I haven’t met anyone else. Helen’s my half-sister.’

‘Your half-sister?’

‘My family has doubled in the last eighteen months. She’s the product of one of my father’s affairs, but I’ll tell you all about that later. It’s a long story.’

‘She’s your half-sister,’ I repeat, unable to disguise my relief.

He nods. ‘She’s staying here while I’m away, looking after the flat and working in the bar. You’ll like her, Becca, and the reason she feels she knows you already is because –’ he runs a hand through his hair – ‘all I talk about is you. I’ve been out with her this evening, talking about you again, the poor long-suffering girl, asking her advice because after today I didn’t know
what to do.’ He edges towards me, brushing a strand of hair away from my eyes.

‘When I saw you today, at the church, all my feelings came back. I don’t think they’d ever gone away, but I didn’t know how to deal with them this time.’

Our faces are only inches apart. ‘And what advice did she give you?’

‘To tell you how I feel a second time, because if I didn’t, then I’m an idiot for giving up. I haven’t met anyone else. You know me. I’m a messed-up soul, can’t commit to anyone.’ He holds my face in both hands. ‘How can I when I’m still in love with you?’

48

San Miniato al Monte, Florence: a Year Later

Alfie runs up the steps, Joe close behind. I walk past artists in floppy hats, sun-worshippers and photographers taking pictures of the spectacular view across the city.

I’d talked to Kitty about returning to Florence. Was it strange to come back here? Something told me to revisit our special place; it was time for me to say goodbye to Olly properly.

As we get closer to the top I see Olly and me all those years ago, when he’d flown out to see me after his finals. We were young and carefree twenty-one-year-olds.

‘This is the place I was telling you about,’ I’d called over my shoulder to him, running up the steps. ‘Where my Great-Aunt Cecily painted. Isn’t it beautiful up here?’

‘Hang on!’ Olly was saying breathlessly behind me.

‘Come on, you old-age pensioner!’

Olly and I sat inside the church and listened to the peaceful music. ‘I love it here. This is where I come to think,’ I whispered, holding his hand.

‘Becca, I’m going to marry you.’

‘I know.’

‘And we’ll be so happy.’

‘Have children and a lovely big house.’

‘We’ll have wild parties with our arty bohemian friends …’

‘Barbecues with pigs roasting on a spit.’

‘Snail!’ shouts Alfie, way ahead of me, jolting me back to reality.

I take out my bottle of water, dehydrated from the heat. It’s a scorching day. I watch Joe playing with my son. This past year has flown by so quickly that at times I have wanted to press ‘pause’ because I have felt so happy.

Joe and I don’t live together. I spend most of my week in London, painting for my new agent, who holds exhibitions. Alfie goes to a morning nursery round the corner from home, called the ‘Little Ladybirds’. We spend each weekend with Joe, at his flat. Slowly I have left an imprint of myself at number 5B so that it feels like my
home, rather than just a place I stay. ‘As long as we don’t have too much pink,’ Joe had laughed, ‘I don’t mind what you do.’

Joe gives Alfie a piggyback up the final steps. I hear them laughing together.

Joe has been happy too. ‘You’re the reason,’ he says to me. His relationship with his half-sister has also opened up another chapter in his life. Out of the blue, Helen’s mother had told her that her father wasn’t her real dad. She’d met someone at a conference in Nice, a man called Francis Lawson. He was an eminent breast-cancer surgeon. Helen was too late to get to know her father; his illness was too far advanced for him to understand. He barely recognized Joe towards the end. But Helen and Joe have become close, especially when they supported one another after Francis’s funeral, a year ago.

I look down to my hand. Today I’m wearing Janet’s aquamarine ring that she left me in her will. ‘Olly would not want you to mourn forever,’ she’d said to me the very last time I saw her. ‘I loved my fiancé, but he died in the war, Becca. After Gregory, I fell in love, in a different way, with Michel. There came a time when I no longer felt sad about Gregory, only lucky to have known him.’

*

I wonder what Olly would think of Joe and me. I’ve asked him many times, but it’s been four years now since I’ve heard his voice. All I can hope is to have his blessing.

‘I want someone to kick a ball around with Alfie. You never had any coordination skills.’

I stop short. ‘Olly?’

‘Joe makes a great dad, Becca.’

‘Olly,’ I repeat, choked with tears.

‘Alfie’s the best. Don’t make him play the piano. Don’t force him to be anything but himself.’

‘I won’t.’ I look at my son with pride. ‘He’s his own little person.’

‘I’m proud of you. I knew you’d be OK.’

‘I’ll always love you, Olly. You know that, don’t you?’

‘Even though I didn’t tell you about my job and—’

‘It doesn’t matter, Olly. I don’t care. We’ve both done things we regret.’

‘I didn’t want you to think I’d failed you.’

‘Never. I love you. None of this means—’

‘I know. I love you too. Now, you tell Joe he’d better look after you, and please tell Alfie I love him.’ I stand still. I can’t walk on. There’s something about the way he says it. He really is saying goodbye to me this time. ‘Catch up with them, Becca. Life is for here and now.’

*

Joe is at the top of the hill. He’s pointing out the view of Florence to Alfie, the Duomo always taking first prize in the picture.

‘Wait! I’m coming!’ I shout, running as fast as I can, the sun shining on my face. I almost trip up on the final step before throwing my arms around them.

‘What’s Mummy in such a rush about?’

‘I have something I want to tell you both.’ I recover my breath before standing in between them and taking their hands. ‘Alfie, this is where your father and I began our adventure together, a long time before you were born. We came here on our honeymoon.’

‘Mummy, I’m thirsty,’ Alfie says, and Joe and I smile at one another.

‘You’re too young to understand, but one of these days we’ll come back here again –’ I bend down to him – ‘and I will tell you all about your wonderful daddy, I promise,’ I say, before handing him a carton of apple juice with a straw.

I get up, brush the dust off my knees. ‘Hang on, Joe, I have a question for you.’

Joe takes his sunglasses off, looks at me curiously. I dig into my pocket to find the small box, with a gold wedding band inside. ‘Will you start a new adventure with me?’

49

Six Months Later

‘Is that Rebecca Lawson?’ says a curt voice.

‘Speaking,’ I say. I’m in Maison Joe, having a birthday lunch with my parents, Olly’s parents, Alfie (now aged three), Joe, Kitty, Annie and Pippa. Tonight a large group of us, husbands and all, even Todd, are going out for supper and dancing. Carolyn and Victor are staying with Mum and Dad for the weekend. I’ve told Joe that turning thirty-five is a big deal and we
have
to dance.

‘It’s Nathalie Jackson calling.’

Nathalie Jackson, I think to myself. Nathalie Jackson?

‘You sent a script to me. I’m a literary agent,’ she reminds me, when it’s crystal clear I don’t recognize her name.

‘Oh yes, of course. I’m so sorry,’ I say, getting up from
the table and walking towards the bar. The truth is, I’d lost heart with Olly’s novel. I’d sent it to publishers, and over the course of the year we’d had ten rejections, the script returned each time with a comp slip, so I decided to try and find an agent, but I hadn’t had much luck in that area either.

‘Well, it was a long time ago.’ I can hear paper shuffling. ‘Yes, you sent Oliver’s script months ago, but as it was unsolicited it went straight to the bottom of my slush pile. I was about to throw it away, but I have to say, your covering letter moved me.’

My heart is beating fast. Does she like it? Why is she calling? Is she going to represent us? I try to keep calm.