For perhaps the first time in her life, Jess held nothing back from her mother.
With Milly their constant companion, they took bracing walks along the beach and long sojourns sheltering from the wind behind the sand dunes and she told her everything: about the nightmares, the sleeplessness, the flashbacks and the uncontrolled drinking; her experience with the ambulance services; her hatred of the timewasters and despair at the plight of the old people she’d encountered; how she lost her temper with the counsellor and how she’d tried to pull herself together but had drunk too much and made a fool of herself at the wedding, embarrassing Nate at his big moment; how he had told her to leave.
‘I thought he was the one for life, Mum, but now I think it’s all over,’ she said. ‘I just can’t imagine life without him. It’s unbearable.’ The words resonated in her head. ‘My God, that’s what Rose wrote in her diary.’
‘What was that?’
‘There’s a point where Rose says she thinks her marriage to Alfie might be over and she can’t bear the thought.’
‘Every couple has bad times, and most of them get through it just fine,’ her mother said, putting an arm around her. ‘Rose and Alfie survived, didn’t they?’
‘What happened to them?’
‘They spent the rest of their lives together, thank heavens, or none of us would be here. They had your Grandfather Johnnie and his sister, my aunt Alice, and lived into their seventies, as far as I can remember.’
‘Alice? The one who lost her lover in the trenches and never married?’
‘That’s the one. Became a professional pianist and drove intrepidly around London in a Morris Minor, well into her nineties. When we get home I’ll show you the photos I found among Granny’s things.’
Jess opened the small, dog-eared album with the greatest care: sheets of black paper were held between brown cardboard covers tied together with cord that was now frayed and in danger of unravelling completely. The ancient photo corners had long since lost their stick, and the tiny black and white prints were now jumbled loosely between the pages.
She picked up one of the larger photographs, in sepia with serrated white borders and the name of the photographer embossed in gold script at the bottom, turned it over and read the words handwritten on the back: Rose and Alfie Barker, married Boxing Day 1917.
His sweet face had a faraway gaze and he looked no older than a schoolboy despite the army uniform and fierce military haircut with a parting like a white scar slitting his scalp from front to back. Rose stood as tall as her new husband, slim and wiry, in an unflattering dress and a hat that didn’t seem to match, her face fixed for the camera with a grin that had almost become a grimace. Peering more closely, Jess imagined she could recognise something of herself: the determined jaw, the eyes close-set either side of a straight nose, the widow’s peak on a high forehead.
Another photo showed the families formally posed: the newly-weds with their parents, and a young woman of Rose’s age. ‘That’s Alfie’s sister I think,’ Susan said, peering over Jess’s shoulder. Freda was shorter than her brother, slight and curvy with fashionably bobbed hair and a flirty grin. They must have looked an ill-assorted pair, Jess thought, the tall, serious-faced Rose towering over her bubbly friend.
The only person without a smile was a woman standing beside the bride, her face strained and wan. ‘Is that Rose’s mother?’
‘Betty Appleby, your great-great grandmother. Both her sons died in the trenches.’
Jess remembered how she’d cried over James; how painful it still felt to think of him even now, six years later. She couldn’t even start to imagine how much worse it would feel to lose your own child, let alone two of them.
‘And this is your grandfather Johnnie, aged about twenty.’ Susan handed her an official-looking photograph – larger than the rest – of a fresh-faced young man with a huge grin, wearing an air force uniform with the beret set on his head at a rakish angle. ‘He was a bomber pilot in the Second World War. Got shot down and spent half the war in prison camp.’
‘I’m sorry I never really knew him, Mum. Did he ever talk about it, at all?’
Susan shook her head. ‘Never. He just wanted to forget, he said.’
They turned a few more pages and found photographs of his wedding to Jess’s Granny Mary, on 11th April 1946. This was clearly a ‘proper do’ in a church, and even the small, grainy monochrome prints seemed to capture the joy of the day: everyone dressed to the nines, determined to have a great time despite post-war austerity. The sun was shining and, in the background were apple trees heavy with spring blossom.
The groom Johnnie, a tall, straight backed young man, seemed to dwarf his parents: Alfie in a smart suit, older now of course and going grey but still with a full head of curly hair, and Rose, resplendent in a smartly tailored calf-length skirt and blouse, her face shadowed by a wide-brimmed lacy hat. Her expression was hard to make out, but Jess felt sure she would have been grinning with fierce pride.
‘Was Alfie still working at the Poppy Factory by then?’ she asked.
Susan shook her head. ‘He only stayed there a couple of years, as far as I know. At some point he managed to get himself a job in a garage and they trained him up as a motor mechanic.’
‘That makes sense. Rose wrote about how much he loved driving the motor van for his father.’
‘They eventually set up their own company, somewhere on the Old Kent Road I think, and they certainly prospered, although everyone used to say that Rose was the one with the business brain. I remember he always smelled of engine oil, even as an old man.’
The bridesmaids – two hatless young women in matching floral dresses – stood arm in arm beside the bride and groom, throwing their heads back with laughter. ‘That’s auntie Alice, Johnnie’s younger sister,’ Susan said, pointing to the fairer one of the two. ‘She looks so like her pa, don’t you think?’ The other girl was tall and slim with straight dark hair blowing across her face. ‘Not sure about this one.’
‘Could that be Annie, Freda’s daughter?’ Jess asked. ‘Freda was Alfie’s sister, and Rose’s best friend.’
Susan peered at the print. ‘She must have died before I was born, or at least before I was old enough to know her.’
‘Did you know who Freda married? Rose wrote about her dating Walter, the guy Rose wrote about, who also worked at the Poppy Factory? He lost an arm in the war.’
Susan shook her head. ‘I never heard tell of that, sorry.’
They flicked through the rest of the wedding snaps until Jess’s eye was caught by a group who seemed to be sharing a joke. ‘Oh look, could this be him?’ She pointed to a man with tight wiry hair and an empty sleeve. To his side, looking up at him with a fond smile, was a small, slightly dumpy grey-haired woman. ‘And perhaps this is Freda?’ She scanned the group more carefully. Beside Freda was a young man, in his late teens or early twenties, with pale curly hair. Did Freda and Walter have a son together, perhaps?
Jess turned back to the photographs, studying the faces, eager to learn more about the people she’d grown to know through the diaries. What a resilient bunch, she thought to herself. They had endured so much, struggled with unemployment and poverty, lost family members and friends and suffered terrible setbacks yet here they all were, having a great time on this sunny day, just a year after the ending of a second terrible war. How much they must have longed for a few years of peace. Her own losses and difficulties seemed so slight in comparison, yet why did she find it so difficult to be optimistic about her own future?
Under her mother’s watchful eye Jess gave up drinking, but the nightmares returned with a vengeance. After a third night of waking to her daughter’s anguished screams, of holding her, stroking her forehead and trying to soothe her, Susan begged Jess to make an appointment with the local surgery.
The GP was an elderly, avuncular man in a three-piece suit, with thinning grey hair and a spotted bow tie. Jess’s heart sank – someone so old-school was hardly likely to understand what she’d been through. When she explained, in as casual a manner as possible, that she was only after a repeat prescription for the tranquillisers she’d been taking before, he turned from the computer screen and leaned forward in his chair.
‘It would be helpful to know why you needed them in the first place,’ he said, gently. ‘Take your time.’
She sighed, reluctant to recount the dreary story all over again, dreading the inevitable look of puzzled sympathy that would cross his face. She felt like a wimp; while her friends were trying to rebuild their lives without limbs she was sitting here trying to explain why she wanted medication for a few bad dreams.
Then, for some unknown reason, Rose’s words about Walter drifted into her mind: ‘He doesn’t try to conceal it, pretend it’s not there, or feel sorry for himself, he’s just making the best of it’.
With a jolt, she understood. For too long she’d made light of her problems, pretending to herself that they weren’t really there, that they were a kind of punishment to be endured, that she was strong enough to cope, that she could sort herself out. Deep down, she hadn’t been entirely certain that she wanted to be ‘cured’ and even, in a warped kind of way, had come to consider that the nightmares and flashbacks were the price she must pay; her penance for living when James and so many others had died. She seemed to have lost sight of that long-ago promise to herself: that she would justify the loss of his life by living her own in a way that would make him proud.
So why could she not now acknowledge that she needed help to ‘make the best of it’?
The doctor’s kindly face was still waiting. She took a deep breath, and began.
Jess left the surgery with a prescription given for a single month on the understanding that she would agree to being referred to a psychiatrist. ‘For a proper diagnosis, so that we can make sure you’re on the right medication. I honestly think it will be worth it in the long run,’ he said.
The appointment came through faster than she’d expected, and now here she was, reluctantly, at a hospital she had never visited before, in an unfamiliar town, sitting on an uncomfortable bright orange chair with a polystyrene cup of over-stewed tea from the ‘Friends’ café. Around her were a dozen other sad-eyed people of all ages and types, none of them displaying any obvious symptoms of insanity.
The psychiatrist, a tiny, elegant woman in a bright green sari, invited Jess to sit down and went straight to the point: ‘Your GP seems to think you might be suffering from post-traumatic stress after your experiences in Afghanistan, Miss Merton. Would you like to tell me more?’
The story came out more easily this time, almost as though she were talking about someone else’s experiences. It didn’t upset her or make her angry any more, as she described briefly how when they were out on tour she seemed to cope fine, even when close mates had died, even after the attack on the compound and the IED explosion, even after coming under fire in the poppy field.
She talked of how she missed the team spirit and the closeness of the unit, her pride in the job and the fact that she’d helped to save several people’s lives. And then she recounted how, when she had got back to the UK, the flashbacks and nightmares and the anger had started, the way she seemed to lash out at the people she loved, how tranquillisers had made her feel brain-dead, how alcohol had seemed to help, for a while, how she’d resigned from her job after the accident on the pavement because she felt she could no longer trust herself, and how the counselling had just made her even more angry.
The doctor listened in silence, her deep brown eyes watchful and compassionate, taking notes, nodding from time to time and prompting gently when Jess faltered: ‘tell me a bit about yourself before you joined the Army?’, ‘how did that make you feel?’, or ‘how might you have reacted to that sort of thing, before going on tour?’
When Jess finished, she sat back in her chair and said: ‘I think there is no doubt that you are suffering from symptoms of post-traumatic stress, Miss Merton. I would describe it as mild to moderate, and certainly nothing that cannot be sorted out, given time. I don’t think that the tranquillisers you’ve been using are quite right for this condition, so I’ll prescribe a different kind of anti-anxiety medication to take for at least three months, and would like to see you again after that. And I would urge you to try counselling again, a different approach this time. I will refer you to a specialist in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, or CBT, who has specific experience of working with veterans.’
Jess nodded. There was something about this quietly spoken woman that inspired confidence. ‘If you really think it will help,’ she said.
‘I do,’ the doctor replied. ‘But there’s one other thing. You said you had resigned from your job? I would urge you to reconsider this. Is there any prospect of returning to work? Having a meaningful occupation can be a critical factor for recovery.’
‘Being a medic, or a paramedic, is the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do, the only job I’m trained for,’ Jess said. ‘But I’m really not ready to go back to that, not right now.’
‘Do you have anything else in mind?’
‘Not really.’
‘It’s worth giving it some thought, you know, and there are organisations that can help.’
While the prescription was printing, the doctor picked up her pen, made a few short notes on a slip of paper and handed it to Jess. She read:
‘The Poppy Factory? That’s where my great-grandfather ended up after the First World War,’ she said, incredulous. ‘You’re not seriously suggesting I should go and make poppies?’
‘Of course not,’ the doctor said, smiling. ‘They help disabled veterans back into work of all kinds these days. “Employability”, they call it.’
‘But I’m not disabled.’
‘PTSD counts,’ she replied, simply. ‘Anyway, it is up to you to decide what kind of help you need. It’s just a suggestion.’
Later that evening, after everyone else had gone to bed, Jess braved her parents’ painfully slow broadband connection to send some emails, and found herself checking out the organisations the psychiatrist had mentioned.
The Combat Stress site provided a clear definition of PTSD and, after reading the case studies, Jess reckoned she’d got off quite lightly. CBT seemed to have been helpful for many people, and the process seemed straightforward enough: in addition to sessions with a therapist, you would be given exercises to do for yourself, which sounded practical and sensible. She remembered how shamefully she had treated Alison in that colourless room, how quickly she lost her temper, how rude she had been, and the look on the poor woman’s face as she stomped out. It’s time to grow up, she said to herself. She would give counselling another go, when the appointment came through, and this time she would stay with it, to the end.
Civvy Street listed plenty of vacancies but reading the descriptions only served to clarify her thoughts about the kind of job she really did not want: there were lots of admin and sales positions but she’d surely go crazy stuck in an office, and she’d make a lousy salesperson. She searched the database for ‘work with animals’ but it came up with no results.
She looked at the slip of paper again but something stopped her from looking up the third organisation named: The Poppy Factory. Remembering the picture Rose had painted, of men with missing limbs working at machinery to produce the red poppies for Remembrance Day, it still felt wrong, not appropriate somehow. I’m not really ‘disabled’, she thought to herself, I haven’t lost a limb like Alfie, or Scotty or Alex. It’s only in my head.
She closed the laptop and tried to sleep, but her brain wouldn’t switch off: the events of the day and the words of the psychiatrist still jangling in her head: Having a meaningful occupation can be a critical factor for recovery. Am I crazy, giving up the career I’ve always planned for myself, she thought? And anyway, what kind of job could I do now that’s not too stressful, yet isn’t going to bore me rigid?
Her thoughts turned again to Rose’s diaries. It was almost a hundred years ago, but there seemed to be so many parallels. Besides losing a leg, her great-grandfather had also displayed symptoms of what Jess now knew was PTSD: the nightmares, the fear of raw flesh, the outbursts of anger with those closest to him, and the drinking. Rose had learned from bitter experience how Alfie’s unemployment made him depressed and led him to drink. Not for them, in those days, the free healthcare and support of psychiatrists, counsellors, tranquillisers or a choice of organisations dedicated to helping veterans, all available at the touch of a button.
All Alfie got was a wooden leg, and he was too proud to ask for any further help. ‘Spare me the bleeding heart sympathy from some ruddy charity paying tuppence-halfpenny to make artificial flowers.’ Jess understood only too clearly how he felt.
Perhaps pride was a family trait, inherited down the generations? It had taken her months to accept that she needed help, and even then she’d quit the tranquillisers and walked out of the counselling sessions. Until now she had been too embarrassed to admit her frailties except to closest friends and family and, even now, too proud to admit that, in some senses, she too was disabled. But, in the end, it was The Poppy Factory that put Alfie on the road to recovery, helped him into an entirely new career as a car mechanic. Why was she so resistant to the idea?
She sat up in bed and opened the laptop again.
The website came up quickly, poppy red, cheerful and uncomplicated. She read: For nearly 90 years The Poppy Factory in Richmond, Surrey has been making poppies, crosses and wreaths for the Royal Family and the Royal British Legion’s annual Remembrance Day appeal. As well as providing work for disabled veterans at its HQ in Richmond, The Poppy Factory uses its unique expertise to help its clients find work with many commercial organisations all over the UK. The Poppy Factory has a vision that “no disabled veteran who wants to work shall be out of work”.
It sounded practical and helpful. Why not give it a try? There was a single-page registration form, which she completed in a matter of minutes. All she now needed to supply was proof of her service record and her medical condition, but a caseworker would help sort that out. She pressed the ‘submit form’ button quickly, before she could change her mind, lay back on the pillow, closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
She’d made the first step.
The next day, she felt depressed all over again. Post-traumatic stress disorder. You heard of other people suffering from it but she’d never thought it would affect her. She texted Vorny: It’s PTSD. Official diagnosis. How grim is that? x
Her phone rang almost immediately. ‘It’s just a name, Jess, not the end of the world,’ Vorny said. ‘It affects lots of people, so don’t get too hung up on it. At least getting a proper diagnosis means you’ll get the right treatment to get you back to work.’
‘They’ve given me pills and I’ve decided to try counselling again – CBT is what they suggest.’
‘Good plan. Look, we haven’t seen you for weeks. Why don’t you come and stay a couple of nights so we can talk properly? Your room’s still free – we might get moved in the New Year and it seems hardly worth letting it again. What about next weekend?’
‘Sounds good to me. My diary is completely empty.’
‘Just let me check I’m off duty.’ There was a pause at the end of the line, and then, ‘Oh hang on. It’s Remembrance Sunday.’
Remembrance Sunday. She’d almost forgotten, even though she hadn’t missed the event for ten years, not since James died. ‘I’ll be there,’ Jess said.
Later that day she had a call from a woman called Kate who described herself as an employability consultant for The Poppy Factory.
‘That was quick,’ Jess said, surprised.
‘We know it can sometimes take a lot of courage to contact us,’ Kate said, ‘so we like to get back promptly, to reassure you that we’ll do all we can to help.’ She sounded efficient but also human and friendly, someone Jess felt she could trust.
‘So,’ Kate was saying. ‘I’m sure we can help, but we just need to take a few more details from you so we can get the necessary documents sorted out, your service record, medical reports and so on. You said that you had a diagnosis of PTSD – is that right?’
‘That’s what the psychiatrist says, but I’m not sure it’s really bad enough to …’ Jess tailed off.
‘There’s really no need to be embarrassed or apologetic,’ Kate said. ‘It’s more common than you’d ever know. And believe me, it’s people like you that we are here for. Once we’ve got the paperwork sorted I’ll arrange to visit you in person, so we can get to know each other better and talk it through from there. Is that okay?’
‘Sounds great,’ Jess said. ‘Thank you.’
‘Just out of curiosity,’ Kate said. ‘Can you tell me where you heard about our employability work?’
‘It was the psychiatrist who told me – she said she’d read an article about it somewhere.’
‘That’s good, we want people to know we are not just about making poppies, these days.’
‘And I learned how the factory got started, and about Major Howson, from my great-grandmother. Her husband, my great-grandfather, was one of the very first workers, at the old collar factory premises off the Old Kent Road, just after the First World War.’
‘You knew your great-grandmother? How wonderful.’
‘Oh no. Sorry, I should have said. She wrote about this in her diaries from the end of the war when her husband came back injured, and how he eventually got a job at the factory. It’s quite a story.’
‘That’s fascinating. We’ve got a volunteer here who’s trying to write a book about our history in preparation for our centenary in a few years’ time. He’d be thrilled to hear about this; we hardly have any case studies from those early days. Perhaps you can tell me a bit more when we meet.’
‘I’d be happy to,’ Jess said.
After Kate rang off, Jess felt a surge of optimism. The Poppy Factory had put Alfie back on his feet, and there was no reason to believe they would not be able to do the same for her.
Remembrance Day dawned cool and bright. After an early morning panic of pressing uniforms, polishing badges and buffing boots, Vorny left for her shift and Hatts went to catch the train to London, where she was going to visit Alex in hospital.
Jess ate a leisurely breakfast before heading into the town centre. There was usually a good attendance in this garrison town, and the crowds were already three deep along the pavements of the wide high street. She made her way to the war memorial in a small close at the end of the street, and climbed onto a wall. From there she could glimpse Vorny, standing to attention, with the rest of the regiment. It felt odd being here among the spectators, wearing just jeans and a scruffy jacket when this time last year she’d been standing to attention beside them, scrubbed and polished.
In the distance she could hear the band leading a brisk march to a tune she recognised – The Purple Pageant? – and before long the street was filled with bandsmen and women, followed by standard bearers and veterans, some of them in motorised buggies and wheelchairs. There was even a small group of ‘Town Guards’ in civil war costume, wearing shiny helmets and carrying pikes. Finally came the great and good, the Mayor and councillors in their civic robes and silly hats. Everyone just about managed to squeeze into position before the music stopped. The standards lowered, a single gunshot was fired, and a solitary bugler began to sound the poignant notes of The Last Post, reverberating off the walls of nearby buildings.
Two minutes feels like a very long time in a crowd. Of course it wasn’t entirely silent: people coughed, babies cried, small children asked questions and were shushed by their parents, and a blackbird – or was it a robin – sang loudly in the park behind them, astonished to hear its own voice with the usual traffic stilled.
Jess closed her eyes, thinking of James, Jock, Baz and Millsie, and all those others who she didn’t know, those many thousands of dead and maimed in wars through the years, the causes of which, for the most part, people struggled to understand. At hundreds of similar ceremonies all across Britain, not to mention in Basra and Bastion, Canada, New Zealand, and other countries all over the world: millions of people coming together for this single purpose, thinking about the ones they had loved. The thought was almost overwhelmingly moving.
She opened her eyes again. It might be a sombre scene but it was beautiful, too, in its way. The bird was still singing, its long liquid notes more poignant than any words. A low wintry sun beamed between the buildings, glinting off the brass instruments of the band and illuminating the pale, grave faces of the soldiers standing to attention on the far side of the close.
A second gunshot sounded the end of the silence, people cleared their throats, the band’s conductor raised white-gloved hands and the musicians lifted their instruments to play the Reveille, followed by the slow, heart-wrenching chords of Elgar’s Nimrod.
This was the moment Jess had been dreading, as the first of the dignitaries stepped forward to lay their wreaths. She took a deep breath. Last year it had prompted painful memories of being under fire in the poppy field and the moment when that single red flower was vaporised by a bullet, leaving just the green stem trembling in front of her eyes. This time, although the memories were still clear as ever, they did not make her head swim and her stomach stayed calm.
I survived, that’s the most important thing, she thought. Then the realisation hit her: escaping from that moment in the poppy field had felt like being given a second chance at life, but recently she had spent so much time fretting about the past that she’d almost forgotten how to enjoy the present and, even more important, to make the most of her future.
The band started to play another march, turning to lead the parade back up the high street to take the salute, and the crowds dispersed. She climbed down from her wall and walked over to the war memorial to look at the wreaths, remembering how Rose and her mother had queued to place their little bunch of flowers at the foot of the new Cenotaph, all those years ago.
Vorny and Jess spent most of the afternoon drinking coffee and talking: about Jess’s visit to the psychiatrist, her determination to make the counselling work this time, and how friendly and helpful the woman from The Poppy Factory had been. They gossiped about what was happening in the regiment, who had been promoted, or demoted, and who was currently dating whom. Vorny was facing the decision whether to quit the Army or sign up for a second tour in Afghanistan.
In the early evening, Hatts arrived back, her face glowing. ‘He’s so much better,’ she said. ‘He was out of bed in a wheelchair and doing daily sessions in the gym. They’re already talking about fitting him for new legs.’
‘That’s incredible. So soon.’
‘His sense of humour’s back too, it was almost like old times. Guess what?’
‘You had wild sex in his wheelchair?’
Hatts blushed. ‘Not quite. He told me I shouldn’t wait for him because why would I want a man with no legs, and I told him to stop being so stupid and kissed him, right there in front of everyone, and they cheered.’
‘Ahhhh,’ Jess and Vorny chorused.
‘Then, before I left, he told me he loved me.’
‘Aaaaahhhh.’ Louder and longer this time, with a group hug. Hatts produced a bottle of sparkling wine from her backpack. ‘I bought this at the station, to celebrate. It’ll be a bit warm but shall we open it anyway?’
‘Just a tiny one, please,’ Jess said. ‘I’ve been dry for nearly a month.’
‘Here’s to a sober Jess,’ Vorny said, raising her glass. Their second toast was to Alex’s speedy recovery and a third to all their lost or injured friends.
Hatts broke the sombre silence that followed: ‘I nearly forgot to tell you, Jess. Guess who I saw on the station?’
‘Who?’
‘Your Nate.’
Jess took a too-large swig from her glass. ‘Not my Nate any more, remember? Was he with anyone? Someone tall and beautiful, name of Nerissa, I suppose?’
‘Nope, all on his own. He said he’d been at some sports fixture with the school and managed to avoid coming back on the coach with the little devils, so he could go straight home.’
‘You talked to him?’
‘It was mad. I was hanging around, people-watching while waiting for my platform to be announced and I’d just been ogling this tall and really fit guy across the concourse when I realised he was walking over and smiling, straight at me. It took me a second or two to realise who it was. Honestly, he was lovely, really friendly, asking after you, Jess, how were you getting on, were you back at work, had you been getting any help, that sort of thing.’
Jess sat down with a bump, light headed. ‘Well, he hasn’t bothered to ask me.’
‘Haven’t you heard from him at all?’ Vorny asked.
‘He texted the night after I got back from the wedding. But I didn’t bother texting back.’
‘You what?’ they said, in unison. ‘You bored us silly talking about him being the love of your life,’ Vorny nearly shouted. ‘And you didn’t even bother texting him back?’
‘What’s the point? He dumped me, remember? Told me it was over,’ Jess said. ‘Besides, there was that woman, Nerissa. His long lost “friend” who simpered all over him at the wedding. What else was I supposed to do?’
‘You’ll have to do better than that if you really want him,’ Hatts said.
‘But what if he’s going out with Nerissa? What if he tells me to get lost again?’
‘Trust me, today he did not sound like the sort of man who is going to tell you to get lost. He seemed genuinely concerned.’
‘The worst thing that can happen is your pride will get a bit dented if he doesn’t want to go out with you anymore,’ Vorny said. ‘But isn’t he worth fighting for, the love of your life?’
On the train back to Suffolk, Jess found herself resenting the familiar views of small towns, flint churches and wide estuaries. Charming though they were, they signalled her return to a life she should have left behind, with every mile taking her further from the friends she loved and … from Nate.
At one station she saw a black couple with their two small children, laughing together as they waited on the platform. He was tall and long-limbed with short dreads, like Nate used to have, and she felt the recognition like a sharp pain in her chest remembering how they, too, used to laugh together, oblivious of the rest of the world around them.
Why did she feel so reluctant to at least try fighting for him? Was it just the fear of being rejected again? Of finding out, once and for all, that there was no hope for their relationship or, worse, learning that he and Nerissa really were going out together?
He must have known that Hatts would relay the conversation back so if he didn’t care, why would he even have bothered to approach her? It would have been much easier for him simply to walk in the other direction if he had something to hide. And he’d even taken the trouble to ask whether she was getting any help. Surely this meant that she must still mean something to him – however small. Was this not a chink of possibility that she ought not to ignore?
Tomorrow, she had a date to meet Kate, the Poppy Factory employability consultant. She was almost looking forward to it – she had sounded so positive and encouraging on the telephone. ‘There’s a world of opportunity out there for people with your kind of training,’ Kate had said. ‘It’s just a matter of finding what suits you best, and helping you get there.’
Perhaps I really am on the threshold of a fresh chapter in my life, Jess thought, a new career working with animals, perhaps, or even – she was now daring to imagine – a way of recovering her confidence so that she could one day return to being a paramedic.
Only one thing was missing: Nate. She’d been so courageous in other ways – she had the medals to prove it – so why was she so frightened of being rebuffed by him? It was just that stupid pride again, the legacy from her great-grandfather Alfie, the pride that she’d already overcome to get herself properly diagnosed and on the road to recovery. Surely she could steel herself to face this last battle, the one that really mattered to her?
What was it Rose had written? Something about ‘… how important it is for the rest of us to go on living the best and fullest lives possible, for those who didn’t survive.’
The best and fullest life possible? She couldn’t imagine it without Nate.
She took out her phone and, with a thumping heart, began slowly to type the words, deliberately, letter by letter, ignoring the predictive text. Hatts says she saw you at the weekend. How’s things? It sounds so pathetic, she thought, like a dumped girlfriend trying to wheedle her way into his life again. That’s what I am, after all. She deleted it and put the phone away, sitting back in her seat to watch the fields and farms going by.
The train passed a village cricket match, small figures in white dotted around a wide green field. It reminded her of the day, early in their relationship, that Nate had invited her to watch him play. She had no idea how the game worked and had spent most of the time lolling around on a picnic rug making a daisy chain. When he’d returned triumphant, having clocked up forty runs, she’d hung it round his neck like a garland and he had kissed her, full on the mouth, disregarding the amused stares of his team mates. The memory made her flush with desire, even now.
She took out her phone again and typed, faster this time. Hi Nate, how’s things? I’m really on the mend now. Lots to tell. Fancy a catch-up some time, no pressure? X.
Nerissa or no Nerissa, if it was over, it was over. At least she would know. But if not, if there was an outside chance, what was she waiting for?
Quickly, she pressed ‘send’, before she could change her mind.