Mark
Helen’s mum gasped and let out a weird sob, but I was already over there, and I’d taken more than I could fucking bear.
Helen’s canvas was a beautiful monstrosity, her handprint the final emblem of heartache over an otherwise truly horrifying expression of grief. And I felt it.
I felt it when her fingers trailed down the canvas and she crumpled to the floor.
I pulled her to her feet and into my arms, and she weighed nothing, just hollow bones and skin. It broke my fucking heart. She flailed pathetically, shrieking through sobs that her mum was there, and she’d tell her dad and it would ruin everything,
but I was done with her ridiculously sweet ideas of nobility. And I was done with Helen’s dad, too.
I wrapped my arm around her waist, and tipped her chin up and made her look at me and I said what I should have said weeks ago.
“Enough,” I said. “This is enough. It finishes here.” “But…”
“No,” I said. “Absolutely enough, I mean it, Helen.” I fished the envelope from my pocket and slammed it on the table and it was the greatest relief of my life.
For once she didn’t even argue. She buried her face in my chest, and she was nothing but sobs and arms, and it felt so good, even though it was so sad. Just to feel her against me was the only thing that mattered. The only thing I cared about.
“I’m going to hand in that letter first thing tomorrow morning, and you’d better start thinking, Helen Palmer. You’d better start thinking about what we’re going to do with the rest of time.”
I hoped she was smiling, but I couldn’t tell, she was still a heaving mass of tears.
I felt them, too, and I didn’t want to. I choked my own back with a laugh, and pressed my mouth to her hair.
“You can stop it with this stubbornness as well, I mean it, Helen, this crap will drive me to an early grave. You’ve aged me ten years already. They’ll be thinking I’m your bloody granddad next time we go to Birmingham.”
And she did laugh then. She laughed and I’m pretty sure she snotted all over my shirt, and that was funny, too. But I was serious, deadly serious.
“I’ll put the house on the market, and we’ll move. Wherever you want. You can pick. We’ll make a whole house full of memories, a brand new house, and it will be ours, with no ghosts, and no memories in cupboards, just ours. Do we have a deal?”
She nodded against my chest, and I breathed in relief. I exhaled every bit of air in my lungs, and it choked me. The relief fucking choked me.
“I’m sorry,” she cried. “I was trying to do the right thing, but it was wrong… it was the wrong thing… but I felt so bad…” “It doesn’t matter now,” I said. “It’s over.”
“But I made you so sad…”
“No,” I said. “You make me so happy.”
I breathed her in until she calmed, until the heaving of her chest stopped and she was quiet. She clung onto me, as though we’d never be separated again, and in that moment I was glad Helen’s dad had found out about us. For all the pain and the anguish I was glad it had come to a head enough to set us free. It was the most perverse favour of all time, but he’d done it for us.
I lifted my face from Helen’s hair and her mum was staring, eyes wide and hand over her mouth. Her cheeks were tear- streaked, and she made a wretched sound as she met my eyes.
“It’s done,” I said to her, and my voice was kind and calm. “I’m resigning. I’ll leave town, it’s fine.”
Helen struggled in my grip, struggled to face her mum. “I’m going…” she said, and her resilience had turned tail, rushing straight back to roost. “I’m going wherever Mark goes and I don’t care what Dad has to say about it. I just don’t care.”
Her mum’s face crumpled into tears, and then she stepped forward and picked up my letter. She turned it in her hands, stared at it as though she’d never seen an envelope before.
“I’ve been carrying that around for weeks,” I said. “I’d have handed it in a long time ago if your daughter wasn’t so determined to be stubbornly noble.”
The faintest smile crept across her lips. “She gets that from her dad.” She put the letter back down and looked at Helen. “Go and wait for me in the car, love.”
Helen shook her head. “No.”
“Please, love. I’ll be right out, I just want to have a word with Mr Roberts.” “Why?”
Her mother sighed, and I felt bad for her. I kissed Helen’s head. “Maybe you should let your mum have a minute,” I said. “It can’t hurt, Helen.”
She tipped her head from side to side. “No. It can’t. It’s already hurt enough.” She pulled herself from my arms, but it was a slow affair. She raised herself on her toes and kissed my mouth, and she was clammy and beautiful and perfect. She walked to the door slowly. “I’ll be in the car,” she said.
***
“This should never have happened!” Helen’s mum said. And I agreed with her. I told her so.
“This isn’t right! She’s so young!” I agreed with that, too.
And then she broke, and she sobbed. I waited until she’d regained her composure without saying a word. “I hoped you’d be a pervert. That would have been easier…”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
She laughed a sad laugh. “I wanted to believe what we were doing was right, but I couldn’t.” She put a hand to her chest. “Helen was so alive, I watched her come out of herself in front of my eyes. You took my little girl,” she cried, “and you made her such a happy young woman. I could see it. She was happier than I’ve ever seen her in her life.”
It choked me up. “I’m sorry.”
She wiped her eyes. “How can you be sorry for that?” “It was inappropriate.”
“Yes, it was, but look at her now! Look at my little girl. She doesn’t eat, she doesn’t sleep, all she does is cry. And I have to say to myself, what’s worse? What’s really worse? Her being happy with someone she shouldn’t, or being devastated without them?”
The question was entirely rhetorical. Her eyes moved to Helen’s painting and filled again. “Helen’s always been an unusual child. She’s not like the others, never has been. She’s… complicated, and deep, and sensitive…”
“She’s a wonderful woman,” I said. “Helen’s a very gifted artist, and she’s a credit to you. She’s kind, and she’s smart…” “You love her, don’t you?” She sighed. “You actually love her. This is real.” She picked up the envelope again. “Enough to
toss everything in for.”
“Easily enough to toss everything in for,” I said.
She let the tears fall. “I was eighteen when I met Helen’s dad. He forgets this, of course. I had Helen at twenty. My dad thought George was too old for me, all of a five-year age gap.”
I smiled. “You’ve done a fantastic job with Helen, truly. She thinks the world of you both. If she didn’t, we wouldn’t be here.”
“Everything’s so regimented with George. He doesn’t understand. He thinks he’s doing right by her, but he’s never really understood her. I don’t either, but at least I know I don’t.”
“He’s got every right to be angry,” I said. “You both have. I respect that.”
She shook her head. “He’s so stubborn. He’s too stubborn.” She smiled. “Stupid old goat, he is, but it lasted, me and him. It really lasted.” She stared at me, and I felt myself burn up. “She’s made a right mess of you,” she laughed, and pointed to my shirt. I couldn’t help but smile at the double meaning. I looked down, and sure enough I was covered in paint and tears.
“Yes,” I laughed. “Yes, she has.”
“She really loves you, you know. We had so much trouble over the years with her little crush.” She sighed. “Thought she’d grow out of it. Only she didn’t. And now it’s real.”
“I hope so.”
“I know so, Mr Roberts. I’ve seen the way she looks at you. I’ve seen it in her eyes these past few weeks when her heart’s been breaking. I saw it in her smile when she was happy.”
“I love your daughter, very much.”
“I hope you do,” she said. “Because I’m going to have one helluva job convincing George to let you stay. It’s not going to be easy.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Sorry?”
She waggled my letter. “This,” she said. “You can take it back. You need to get my daughter through her exams.”
“You don’t need to do this.” I raised my hands. “You have every right to be angry. You have every right to want me out.” “But I don’t,” she said. “And that’s the problem. I should but I don’t.” She took a step towards me, handing me back the
letter. “The way I see it, Mr Roberts, there isn’t so much black and white in the world as there are colours. So many different colours. And sometimes things don’t fall into boxes, and what’s the point in forcing them?”
“I’m not sure, Mrs Palmer, I’ve always celebrated colour.” “You’re as old as I am, you know.”
“I’m aware of that,” I said.
“She might grow out of this. She might move on one day, get bored. She is still young.” “I’m aware of that, too,” I said.
“You won’t be able to see her all the time, George isn’t going to go for that, no matter what I say. And she needs to study, she needs to knuckle down and pass her exams.”
“I’m very aware of that,” I said. “Don’t worry, Mrs Palmer, I’ll do right by Helen, you can be sure of that.”
She smiled. “I hope so, Mr Roberts, because I’m sticking my neck right on the line for this, and my George isn’t going to take it easily.”
Her support moved me, I felt the lump in my throat. “There has never been anyone else, not like this,” I said. “I’m not in the habit of doing this. I just wanted you to know, this was purely a one-off, this was purely Helen.”
“I’m aware of that,” she said. “Despite what George would have you believe, I’m not such a bad judge of character, Mr Roberts.”
“It’s Mark,” I said. “You should call me Mark.” She smiled, and shook my hand. “Angela,” she said.