I pulled open my front door and my smile froze on my face. ‘Mum.’ I gripped the door catch. ‘What are you doing here?’
She rarely came here. I’d given up inviting her months ago. She always declined. It was as though she thought visiting me in my apartment would be some form of acceptance of my decision to move here.
‘I came to visit my daughter. Or is that not allowed?’
I flinched at her tone. ‘No. Yes.’ I let out a nervous laugh. ‘I mean of course it’s allowed.’
There was a time that her presence here would have filled me with joy; now, though, it just made me nervous. Why was she here? Why now?
She nodded, but her expression didn’t soften. ‘Are you going to invite me in, or just leave me standing in the corridor?’
I laughed again. ‘Yes, sure. Come in.’
I hesitated for a moment before stepping back to let her pass. I hurried to the living room while she slipped off her shoes in the hallway.
My gaze darted around the room, seeking out the incriminating evidence that I knew would be around. Adam’s sweater was draped over the back of the sofa. I grabbed it and screwed it up in a ball in my arms, before my gaze fell upon the stack of his DVDs beside the TV.
I cursed silently. I wouldn’t be able to move them in time. They would have to stay where they were and hopefully she wouldn’t notice that they weren’t things I would buy, or for that matter even watch if I had a say in it.
‘Whose shoes are those on the shoe rack?’ Mum asked as she came in behind me.
I couldn’t answer, I just clung tightly to the sweater, wishing Adam was here with me, instead of just his belongings.
‘Adam’s?’
I cringed and turned slowly to face her. She already knew the answer. There was no point trying to deny it. ‘Yes.’ I tried to keep my voice calm and steady.
‘Why are they here?’
I shrugged. ‘I guess he left them here.’
She strode towards me. ‘So I suppose you’re telling me he left here barefooted?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Then wouldn’t he need his shoes?’ Her gaze dropped to the sweater in my arms. ‘And his sweater?’
She was testing me. She knew the answer already. It was obvious. She just wanted to make me squirm. To know I was in the wrong. To feel guilty.
‘He left some of his stuff here.’ I turned to walk past her, but Mum side-stepped in front of me.
‘Why?’
I lifted my chin and met her gaze. ‘Because he stays here sometimes.’
Her eyes narrowed. Even though she’d known the truth, it was as though hearing my confession had somehow lowered her opinion of me.
‘I thought you had more sense.’
The back of my neck prickled at her insult. ‘I do have sense.’
‘Obviously not. Otherwise you wouldn’t have let that plumber move in.’
‘He’s not that plumber.’ I glared at her. ‘He’s my plumber.’ I felt a tingle of warmth surge through me, but it wasn’t embarrassment, it was pride.
She scoffed. A condescending sound that grated against me.
‘And his name is Adam,’ I added haughtily.
Her eyes widened slightly. She looked as taken back by my tone as I was. I was being disrespectful. Snapping at her. Answering her back. It wasn’t like me.
‘You’ve only known him five minutes.’
‘I’ve known him four months.’
‘That’s nothing.’
‘It’s everything.’ The certainty of my voice surprised me. I’d been hesitant when Adam had first started leaving his things in the apartment. It hadn’t been much. Just a toothbrush and a change of clothes. Little things. But somehow, they’d looked out of place in my bathroom and my wardrobe.
It was a strange in between place. He didn’t live here. And yet he sort of did. Sometimes.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t wanted him here. I had. But it was in my nature to be nervous and doubtful. Half of me was terrified that it was too much too soon. But the other half of me wanted him here all the time. I wanted my home to be our home; our lives to be combined.
I wanted certainty. Permanence.
I needed it.
I saw Mum’s shoulders sag. ‘I just don’t want you to get hurt. Not again.’
Guilt stabbed me in my heart. She was only looking out for me. She was concerned about my welfare. She’d been there for me through everything. The one constant in my life. No matter how bad it had got. She’d stayed.
When everyone else left. She’d stayed.
I reached out and squeezed her hand. ‘Adam is different, Mum. I’m different.’
‘Because of him.’
I nodded. ‘Yes.’ I stood a little straighter. ‘He helps me to see that I am better than I think I am. I’m stronger. Happier.’
‘I’m glad, Jess. I really am.’ Mum took a deep breath. ‘But what if you’re wrong?’
‘I can’t keep living my life with “what ifs”, Mum. I can’t keep second guessing every decision, just in case I make the wrong one again. It was driving me crazy.’ I laughed, a feeble hollow sound. ‘Or at least crazier.’
‘Oh, Jess.’ She wrapped her arms around me and enveloped me in a hug.
I stayed there, frozen, not really sure how to respond. She wasn’t a hugging sort of mother. Not since I was little. The memory of her hugs had faded, and I often wondered if they had ever been real. I couldn’t even recall what they had felt like. The idea of it had seemed so warm and comforting. But the reality just felt disconcerting and strange.
She pulled back and studied my face. ‘I just don’t trust him.’
I nodded. ‘I know.’ She didn’t trust anyone. She couldn’t. I smiled slightly as I gazed at her. It wasn’t her fault. Life had been cruel to her. Losing her parents, then Dad. The past had eaten away at her. Her ability to trust had been its first casualty.
It was an infliction I was familiar with. I’d suffered the same fate. Different circumstances, but the same result. My ability to trust, to love, had diminished.
Dad had been the one constant in my life. The one person I’d counted on. We’d always been close, but after Mum’s parents died, he became my lifeline. Then he’d left.
No explanations. No goodbyes. No contact. Just an emptiness that consumed me.
It was the not knowing that tormented me. The whys. The wondering what I’d done wrong, or could have done differently. But mostly it was the endless waiting for him to come back… that frail hope which dwindled a little more each day, but never entirely went away.
If it had been Mum who’d left I would have been less surprised. I would still have been hurt. I’d still have missed her. I’d still have had questions. But in many ways she had left already. Her departure had been slow. She’d pulled away gradually, until the Mum I’d known had disappeared. Physically she was still there, still going through the motions of living, present but not really there.
Dad’s departure had been such a stark contrast. The suddenness of it had jarred against me. It shook the foundations of everything I believed in. If he could leave me, then how could anyone else ever love me enough to stay?
And then I met Adam.
He’d changed me. I hadn’t even realised it was happening. But I trusted again now. I trusted in him. I trusted in us. Maybe not fully. Not yet. I was still a work in progress. But I had potential. I could see it now.
Whereas Mum…
‘I don’t want him getting my money when I’m gone.’
I flinched at her words. There was no hope that Adam would be genuine, just an expectation that he wouldn’t. It wouldn’t last. It couldn’t. It didn’t really matter who the guy was. It wasn’t really about him.
‘He stays here occasionally, Mum. That hardly qualifies him as raiding my inheritance.’
‘It’s the first step. This week it’s a few of his things here, next week he’ll be moving in boxes of his stuff, then it’ll be a ring on your finger.’
My left thumb ran across my empty ring finger. If only…
‘It’s part of his plan.’
‘Maybe. If he loves me enough.’
She snorted again. ‘If you’re gullible enough, more like.’
I bristled. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You’re too nice. You let people walk all over you. Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile.’
I cringed at the age-old cliché. She never grew tired of saying it. It was her mantra in life. She always assumed everyone was only out for themselves.
‘You let everyone take advantage of you.’
It seemed wrong hearing it from her. She was the person who’d encouraged me to be helpful. It’s what she’d taught me when I was a child. It’s what she expected from me even now.
But then perhaps she wasn’t being contradictory at all. It wasn’t my personality and helpfulness she wanted to change; only the scope of it. It should be more focused – on her.
I lay cocooned in Adam’s arms, staring at the clothes he’d tossed carelessly on the chair in front of my dressing table. He never folded his clothes. He said it was a waste of time, they would only have to be unfolded in the morning to put them back on.
I tilted my head up to look at him. ‘Why don’t we ever go to your apartment?’
‘You wouldn’t like it there. I don’t even like it there.’ He snuggled closer to me. ‘It’s not what you’re accustomed to.’
‘How do you know what I’m accustomed to?’
He opened one eye and peered at me for a second before closing it again. ‘It’s not this.’
I stared at the wall. ‘I didn’t always have this. I didn’t even want it. This was Mum’s choice. Mum’s money.’
Adam pulled away as he propped himself up on his elbow and stared at me. ‘She bought it?’
‘Most of it. I couldn’t have afforded it on my own. I’d wanted something smaller.’
‘Why?’ His eyebrows knotted together. ‘This apartment is amazing.’
‘But it’s not mine. It’s too perfect. It’s fake and artificial.’
Like my life.
‘It is perfect. Believe me, when you don’t have money you appreciate things like this more.’
‘I appreciate it. I do.’ I felt chastised. He thought I was spoilt and ungrateful. I wasn’t. I just had smaller dreams. ‘Besides, we didn’t always have money.’
‘Really? I mean, I have seen the house you grew up in, Jess.’
‘It was my grandparents’ house. It was their money.’ I shuffled up in bed, and tugged the duvet up higher as the cool air chilled my shoulders. ‘Before they died we lived very differently.’
‘You’re lucky.’
My body went rigid. ‘Lucky?’
Adam rolled his eyes. ‘They gave you a way out.’
I frowned. Had it been a way out? Or had it just been an expensive trap?