Three days have passed since Sophie suggested talking to Aiden for me. Seventy-two hours have never felt so long, and I plod along on autopilot, sick with anxiety, unable to focus on anything but my urgent need to be with my daughter. And the fact that I’m running out of time. There is a clock ticking; the emails are evidence of that. There’s barely a moment when my eyes aren’t glued to my phone, waiting for the next one, and now I’m also desperate for news from Sophie.
‘I’m going up to the Lake District at the weekend,’ Jamie is saying. ‘To visit my parents. It’s been so long since I’ve been to see them – life just seems to get in the way, doesn’t it?’
‘It’s good that you’re making time for them,’ I say, staring out of the café window.
‘Do you realise we’ve never actually done this before?’ Jamie says.
I turn to him. ‘What?’
‘Met up for a coffee during the day. It’s always evenings, isn’t it?’ He winks. ‘This is nice, though. And it feels apt to be sitting in a coffee shop with you – together this time.’
Jamie’s reference to how we met might make me return his smile, if I weren’t so distracted. When I see how his face lights up with that smile, I realise that, despite everything, I want Jamie to be happy. That’s what made me agree to meet up with him this afternoon, even though I’m about to crack open at any moment.
‘Anyway, I was thinking,’ he continues, ‘maybe you could come with me?’
‘To meet your parents?’ I can’t hide the horror on my face, and Jamie’s happy expression quickly vanishes.
‘Yeah. They’re nice people, Eve, you’ll love them. Have you ever been to the Lake District? It’s amazing there. Especially if you’re just used to this concrete jungle.’ He gestures around us.
‘I, um…’
‘Just say yes. Don’t overthink it. It’ll be nice. I think you could do with a break. I don’t know what’s been going on in your life but you seem… a bit stressed or something.’
‘I don’t know, Jamie.’
‘Look, I don’t know what will happen with us, if there even can be an us, but it could just be a weekend away. A break for you. Don’t think of it as meeting my parents; we’d just be staying with them. Or we could do a hotel if you don’t want to stay at their house?’
I’m about to say it’s probably not a good idea when I see a familiar figure across the road. Although I’m instantly aware that it’s someone I know, it takes me a moment to work out that it’s Maya, my pregnant student. It always takes me by surprise when I see a student outside of a tutoring session, or outside of school when I used to work in one, almost as though they don’t exist in any other setting.
She’s standing in the middle of the pavement, having what seems like an argument with a boy. He’s gesticulating wildly, and Maya is shouting at him, her own face creased in anger. I’ve never witnessed her like this before and I wonder if I ought to go to check she is okay, but before I can move she is walking away, leaving the boy standing there shaking his head.
‘So that’s a yes, then?’ Jamie is saying, oblivious to what’s happening outside.
I nod, without remembering what I’m agreeing to, because right now all my focus is on Maya.
‘Great! I’ll let them know we’re coming.’
As I turn back to Jamie, it sinks in that I’ve just agreed to spend the weekend at his parents’ house. Miles away from Kayla. ‘I, um—’
His phone rings, and with a quick apology he rushes to answer it.
I whisper that I’ll be back in a minute and leave the café to see if there’s any sign of Maya. She’s long gone, though, and so is the boy she was arguing with. I check my appointments on my phone and see that she’s not due a session until Friday. I text her and ask if she’s okay, explaining that I’ve just seen her in the high street, and that I’m here if she needs to talk.
Back inside the café, Jamie has finished his call and is at the till paying for our drinks. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says when he spots me, ‘emergency at work, I have to go.’
‘Don’t worry.’
He kisses my forehead. ‘I’ll call you later. So glad you’re coming next weekend,’ he says, and then he has gone, and I’m left wondering how I just agreed to this when Kayla is slipping further away from me.
‘What are you doing here?’ Sophie asks. Her tone isn’t unkind, just fused with shock at the sight of me standing on her doorstep when she is the one who was meant to contact me.
‘I’m sorry, but I’ve been going out of my mind. I know you, Sophie, and I know you will have spoken to him by now, so what aren’t you telling me?’ As I stare at her, I feel certain that I cannot trust her; how can I when I don’t even know if I can trust myself?
‘You’d better come in,’ she says. ‘The twins are in bed, and Damien’s out with his work friends.’
Stepping into Sophie’s house after all this time is like travelling back in time. Not much has changed; it’s still got Sophie’s stamp all over it, her way of matching colours, picking the decorative accessories that perfectly complement each room. She always used to joke that if she ever got fed up of teaching she’d go into interior design.
‘He won’t see me, will he?’ As soon as I’ve said it, I know it’s the truth. I’ve spent so many hours imagining my first conversation with Aiden, planning to defend myself, that it never occurred to me that Aiden might refuse to see me.
‘I’m sorry.’ Sophie heads to the living room, and I follow her, surprised to find toys scattered all over the floor, even though the twins must have gone to bed a while ago.
‘What did he say?’
She starts clearing away the mess, only stopping when I grab her arm.
‘Please, Sophie, just talk to me.’
‘I decided to ask him to meet me for a drink. I thought it might be better if I spoke to him in person. We used to meet for drinks sometimes after… you know.’ She waits for my reaction, as if I might object.
‘Okay. What happened?’
She sighs. ‘Oh, I don’t know if I handled it right at all. I mean, it’s not a normal kind of situation, is it? There’s no advice anywhere for how to deal with something like this.’ She looks flustered, out of her comfort zone. I’d always thought that nothing could faze her. Unless there is another reason her usual confidence is absent.
‘Aiden seemed on edge even before we started talking, so looking back, maybe it wasn’t the right time. I began by asking if he ever thought about you.’
I don’t want to hear the answer to this.
‘He said that yes, he did. Even though he tried not to, every time he looked at Kayla he saw you in her. Those were his words, Eve.’
My breath catches in my throat. I haven’t been expecting this. All signs pointed to Aiden having completely eradicated any sign or thought of me from his life. But not our daughter. She is always there.
‘Then I just came straight out with it and told him that I’d seen you. He fell completely silent. I mean, for ages. He just didn’t seem to know what to say. I really hated being the one to do that to him.’ She stares at her feet. ‘I care about him, Eve. He and I became close when you left. Good friends. I don’t want to see him hurt, and I definitely don’t want to be the one to hurt him.’
‘It’s not you who’s done anything to him,’ I offer. ‘Only me.’
She shakes her head. ‘I’m involved now, though, aren’t I? Anyway, eventually he just said he didn’t want to know. He said you were in the past and he had a new life now. That was it.’
It is a shock to find out that Aiden didn’t ask any questions, didn’t need the huge gaps to be filled in. ‘And what did you say?’
‘I tried to defend you, Eve. I know that’s hard to believe after how I reacted to seeing you, but I did my best. I told him everyone deserved a second chance. And do you know his response? He told me quite calmly that this isn’t true – that murderers, for one, don’t deserve a second chance, and neither do people who can be cruel enough to walk away from their babies.’
I try to push aside the hurt I feel at being compared to a murderer by the man I once loved. Who once loved me. ‘Maybe Aiden’s right,’ I say. ‘But this isn’t just about giving me a chance. This is about giving Kayla a chance to know her mother.’
Sophie holds up her hands. ‘A mother doesn’t walk away from her child.’ She turns from me and begins clearing the toys away, piling them into a basket in the corner of the room.
I ignore her comment, storing it away to analyse later. ‘I just want to see Kayla. She’s the only person who matters.’
Sophie sighs. ‘Maybe Aiden just needs some time to get his head around it all. I did just spring it on him. Like I said, I think I handled it all wrong. So, what will you do now?’
‘I’m not sure. But I’m not giving up, Sophie. I know this will sound strange, because I’m the one who left, but being away from her for these years has almost killed me.’
Sophie frowns at me, trying to work out the enigma that I am, that this whole situation is.
She must see that I will do whatever it takes to have my daughter in my life, and neither she nor Aiden are going to stop me. And now, this is more important than ever.