‘Was her name Theresa?' said Lily.
Startled, Declan said, ‘Yes! How did you know that?'
‘She wrote to Mum. Warned her off.'
‘God, really? I had no idea.' He shrugged. ‘She was way too pushy. We broke up a couple of weeks later.'
Missed opportunities, sliding doors.
‘So you and Mum never saw each other again,' said Lily.
Declan hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘Well, I did see Jo. Just once. But she didn't see me.'
‘You saw her?' Coral straightened. ‘When?'
‘Halfway through second year. I'd just been missing her so much. So much.' He shook his head. ‘It was one of those spur-of-the-moment decisions.'
‘Like coming here today,' said Lily.
‘But with less of a happy outcome.' Declan was rueful. ‘I skipped a couple of lectures, borrowed some money and spent the whole of Friday travelling down on a coach from Fife to Exeter. Then I walked three miles to a pub called The Parrot, because the sister of a friend of mine had told me that Jo always went there on Friday nights.'
Coral nodded. ‘We did.'
‘Anyway, it rained. A lot. By the time I arrived, it was ten thirty and I looked as if I'd just climbed out of a pond.'
Lily drank some wine; as a story, it clearly wasn't set to end well. Across the table, Coral had the flat of her hand pressed against her sternum.
‘The place was packed,' Declan continued. ‘There were banners and balloons everywhere, celebrating someone's birthday, and at first I thought Jo wasn't there. Everyone was dancing, but I couldn't see her anywhere. Then suddenly the music stopped and the DJ said, "Come on then, where are they? Where are the lovebirds?" And that was when they appeared on the stage. It was Jo and the guy whose birthday it was. And they were kissing.'
‘Neil … ' Coral said faintly.
‘That's right.' Declan nodded. ‘He was tall, with reddish-fair hair, wearing a red rugby shirt and jeans.' The mental picture in his head was evidently as vivid now as the day he'd seen them together up on the stage. ‘They had their arms wrapped around each other and they kept kissing, and the DJ made some jokey comment about … well, never mind.' He shook his head apologetically at Lily. ‘I'm sure you can guess.'
‘I was at that party,' said Coral.
‘Well, I realised I'd chosen the wrong time to make my surprise appearance. In fact I couldn't have picked a worse night if I tried. Neil and Jo were dancing together on the stage, gazing into each other's eyes like it was their honeymoon. Jo looked amazing, just so happy.' Declan sat back on his chair, his fingers gripping his coffee cup. ‘And I felt as if my heart was being ripped out.' A muscle twitched in his jaw. ‘So I left. Spent the night on a plastic bench in the bus station and the next morning headed back up to Scotland. Not what you'd call the best weekend of my life.'
There was silence around the table for a few seconds. Then Lily said, ‘So who was Neil? Mum didn't have that many boyfriends, and I've never heard of a Neil.'
‘Oh dear,' said Coral. ‘That's because he was never her boyfriend.'
Lily frowned. ‘But why … ?'
‘Neil was a friend of ours. He'd been dumped by his last girlfriend, and his much better-looking older brother was down from Bristol Uni that weekend. You know what big brothers are like … he was always teasing Neil for not getting girls as pretty as the ones he got. So Jo and Neil pretended to be an item, to shut his brother up. And it worked like a charm,' said Coral. ‘But it was all for show; there was never anything going on between them. Neil was just a mate.'
Declan shook his head. ‘Well they fooled me too. Of all the Friday nights I could have chosen to turn up, I had to choose that one.'
‘If they hadn't done that, everything could have been different,' Lily marvelled. There were so many what-ifs; life was like a ball of string with three hundred ends.
‘And it was only a couple of weeks after that party,' said Coral, ‘that Jo met Keir.'
Just for a moment, unshed tears pricked at the backs of Lily's eyes; talk about bad timing all round. Except she really had to stop thinking like that. If Mum hadn't got together with Keir, I would never have been born.
Declan left soon after midnight. At the front door, he hugged them both. ‘Thanks for making me so welcome. It's been an amazing day.'
‘Thank you,' said Lily, ‘for driving all this way and coming to see us.' She smiled, inwardly desperate to know if they'd ever see him again, or if this was it. He'd met her now, assuaged his curiosity; maybe as far as he was concerned, that was enough. But she mustn't appear needy, mustn't ask if another visit could be on the cards …
‘It's been lovely to meet you,' Coral said. ‘Really, you don't know how much it's meant to Lily.'
‘And to me too.' Declan glanced at the bangle on Lily's wrist. ‘It's almost as if Jo meant it to happen.'
‘If you come down again, you have to meet Patsy,' said Coral. ‘Such a shame she's in Oxford tonight … she's going to be so sorry she missed you.'
Good try, thought Lily, but in all honesty, was meeting another complete stranger really that much of a draw?
‘You're looking worried,' said Declan. ‘What's wrong?'
Oh bugger, so much for not being needy. Lily spoke in a rush. ‘We might not see you again … and I haven't even shown you my birthday letters yet!'
He smiled, first at Coral, then at her. ‘Don't worry. I'll be back.'
It was three o'clock in the morning. Coral heard the grandfather clock chime downstairs in the hall and gave up on the idea of sleep. Sitting up in bed, she reached for her phone and clicked on the camera roll.
Just over two years now since Nick had died, and scrolling through the photo gallery had become her night-time comfort blanket. It was weird to think that she'd always been six months younger than him, and now she was eighteen months older than he would ever be. There were fine lines fanning out from the corners of her eyes that hadn't been there when he was alive. As the years passed, she would continue to grow old without him.
‘Oh Nick.' She lightly touched the screen where his dear familiar face smiled out at her. ‘I still miss you. So much.'
The last two and a bit years had been a trial, without doubt the very worst of her life. At first, the shock of losing him so suddenly had left her barely able to function. But gradually she'd begun to work through the stages of grief and rejoin the human race, even if she had often felt like an imposter, smiling and talking and generally behaving like a normal person on the surface, whilst inside all was joyless and frozen. The things she'd especially loved to do before – like sketching and painting – no longer interested her in the slightest. Arranging spur-of-the-moment weekends away had become a thing of the past, because the person she most wanted to go away with was no longer here. Weeks and months passed with glacial slowness and all she wanted was to begin to feel normal again, but it was turning out to be easier said than done.
Because Nick had been her first and only love. There'd never been anyone else. They'd met when she was sixteen and he was seventeen and it had been like finding each other's missing halves. People had laughed and told them they were crazy, how could they know they were right for each other if they didn't have other experiences to make comparisons with? But the idea of breaking up for no reason at all and spending time being unhappy apart, purely in order to satisfy their critics, seemed even crazier. So they'd metaphorically stuck two fingers up at their detractors and stayed together.
Till death us do part.
Bloody death. So uncompromising. So final.
Because it never gave you a second chance, did it? You couldn't apologise to God or whoever was in charge of deciding when these things should happen. You weren't allowed to strike a bargain and say, ‘Look, we knew we were happy, we just didn't always realise quite how happy. But we do now, so please could you bring him back, even if it's just for a few more years?'
It didn't work that way, sadly. Once they were gone, they were gone.
So anyway, the freeze had set in and she'd imagined it would be there for good. Over the course of the last year, people had begun making the occasional half-jokey remark about how in time she would meet someone else, but the idea was ridiculous; it was on a par with being told, ‘If you flap your arms really fast, you'll be able to fly.'