Page 74 of One Last Thing
But now I’ve jumped from a boat into the sea. I’ve trekked the Pyrenees braless on a horse. I’ve held my daughter’s hand when she was frightened as we soared across the skies.
Suddenly, I’m open to getting to know this new version of me.
Maybe she shouldn’t be hidden away.
***
Laurence and I have a fabulous dinner at an intimate and charming restaurant that has candlesticks in wine bottles and an owner who comes out to introduce himself to the diners before sitting at the bar to chat to the staff over a beer. I ask many questions about Laurence’s career choice, desperate to know how he got into the field –it turns outto be a family affair, his father was a hot air balloon fanatic –and hear about his children, of which he has three, two boys and a girl. Two still live nearby, the other lives in Norway with his wife. Laurence is divorced and not on good terms with his ex-wife, who now lives in Barcelona with her much-younger boyfriend.
He asks me about Megan and I tell him what we’re doing here and when he asks about our strained relationship, I reveal to him my various failings and how I got married fairly young to a man who was seven years older and had a baby when I was at the height of my career. With a touch more wine, I reveal to him what Henry and I both knew. which was that I couldn’t help but feel a little resentful towards motherhood at the time, and how the guilt of that still plagues me and forever will, no matter how much making up I try to do.
That is the heaviest part of the conversation –except his reflections on his own divorce – but we also have a lot of fun and silliness, laughing at each other’s anecdotes and delightfully sharing opinions. This is a type of evening of which I’ve always beenparticularlyfond. The kind where you meet someone you may never meet again, but you find a temporary connection and feel grateful to have met them even once. The world is filled with these people.
After generously paying the bill, Laurence invites me back to his apartment. I say yes. We hold hands as we wander down the street, and I remark on the beautiful night sky.
‘You must know these skies very well,’ I add.
‘Yes,’ he says, stopping to point upwards. ‘You see that cluster of stars there, the two bright ones and the other two with them? That is a constellation visible at this time of year that is associated with the tale of two lovers who were keptapart by two mythological creatures. The lovers sacrificed themselves to be together as stars in the night sky.’
We gaze up in silence together.
‘Laurence, darling,’ I begin in a soft whisper, ‘was any of that true?’
He sighs wistfully. ‘It was all bullshit, but it sounded good, no?’
I burst out laughing, squeezing his hand, and we continue down the road. Later, when I’m lying on his bed, he kisses my neck and tells me in French how beautiful and sexy I am, and I choose to believe him, even if it’s just for tonight.
25
MEGAN
When I speak to Marisa on FaceTime early the next morning, I tell her all about the hot air balloon, but I leave out the part where Mum revealed her MS diagnosis. I’m still working through my own thoughts and feelings surrounding that and I’m not ready to talk about it yet. Mostly because if anyone asks me how I feel about it, all I’d be able to say is, ‘I don’t know, I don’t want to talk about it’, and therefore it would be a pointless, time-wasting conversation from start to finish.‘As I was saying, now is as good a time as any to tell you that I have MS.’What a way to tell me. Even the phrasing of it seems absurd. Her tone was flippant and casual. There was no weight to it, no stepping carefully, no hesitation in honour of the gravity of the statement.
I’m still on the fence as to whether that was a good way of doing it. I suppose it was always going to beherway of doing it. Maybe I’ll laugh about that later.
‘You are amazing, Megan!’ Marisa gushes as I conclude my balloon tale, propping her phone against something on her kitchen table while she sits down in front of it clasping a mug of herbal tea, looking bright and summery in a blue gingham puff-sleeved dress. ‘I can’t believe it. I mean, remember the time I suggested we go on that ride when the funfair was in Peckham and you almost threw up just looking at it?’
I try not to get distracted by how my skin looks in the little thumbnail of myself in the bottom right corner of the screen – I’ve just applied a tinted moisturiser with SPF and while others might ‘glow’ with this ‘dewy’ product as it promises in the blurb on the back of the ridiculously small but expensive bottle, I look oily and sweaty.
‘Why would youevertrust a ride that packs up onto a truck like IKEA furniture?’ I ask her in disbelief, repeating the reasoning I had back at the time.
‘You know IKEA furniture is super sturdy and also doesn’t pack back up, right? That analogy doesn’t make sense,’ she says with a smug smile.
‘I stand by it.’
She giggles. ‘Hey, I’m proud of you.’
‘Thanks. I’m proud of me, too.’
‘Sounds like you and your mum are getting along,’ she observes.
‘I know. It’s weird.’ I shuffle my lower back more into the propped-up pillows so I’m sitting straighter. ‘I’m enjoying her company. I’m usually able to see through the life-of-the-party act, but I have to admit that out here, she’s been nice.’
Marisa nods in understanding, her elbows on the table, one arm folded across the other. ‘I think it’s cool you’re reconnecting with her.’
I give a non-committal ‘Mm’, but I think I might agree. In that hot air balloon yesterday, I needed someone and, thanks to Dad’s ludicrous last wishes, it happened to be her, someone I’ve spent years teaching myself not to rely on. But, to her credit, she has a way of making bad things seem like par for the course. Mum’s always had a c’est-la-vie attitude to unexpected change and in the past I’ve found that infuriating. When you’re trying to make her take something seriouslyand she dismisses it with a ‘so be it, darling’ and a wave of her hand, probably already ordering another drink. She’s not the person I lean on or go to with a problem. She has made it clear she doesn’twantto be that person. But when I was paralysed with fear yesterday, her frivolous aura genuinely helped. She distracted me by talking about . . . well, everything. She didn’t push me to talk about Dominic, it all came spilling out before I could stop it. That distracted me, too.
Anyway, when I got out of the basket and back onto dry land where I could finally think straight again, I was glad it had been Mum who was with me.
