Page 55 of The Three of Us

‘I’ll be okay, Carly. I’m made of stern stuff, you know. And it’s not as if I ever met the girl.’

‘Sad though. What’s happened to her? If you don’t mind me asking.’

‘Pneumonia, again. There’s only so much a body can take. It’s awful to say it, but I do wonder if it will end up being a happy release, for both of them. An end to all the years of pain and stress, and her slowly deteriorating like that. Her going… well, it will give him a chance of getting some sort of real life back, while he’s young enough to enjoy it.’

‘And there’s really nothing going on between you two? No hint of a future romance brewing away?’

She leans across the table and gives me a pat on the wrist. ‘No. I’ve already told you that. It was a friendship that served us both well, but to be honest I don’t think he’s going to need me long-term. Once he’s back at work, able to mix with people his own age, no longer in need of a shoulder to cry on…’

‘I’m sure you mean more to him than that.’

‘Maybe, but once she’s gone, which sounds imminent I’m sorry to say, he’s going to have a lot to deal with for a while, and after that I hope he can rebuild his life and move on. He won’t want an old biddy like me clinging to his shirt-tails then, will he?’

‘I guess we all have to let go sometimes and move on, don’t we?’

She gazes at my face. ‘Something you’re not telling me, Carly?’

‘Nothing specific. Just coming to the conclusion that you may have been right all along.’

She laughs, almost spitting a mouthful of tea all over her lap. ‘Did I just hear you say I was right? That has to be a first!’

‘Well, with all the pearls of wisdom you’ve dished out over the last thirty-odd years, you had to strike lucky eventually.’

‘And which particular pearl has struck home?’

‘The settling down one. The one that says I don’t want to end up on my own like poor old Miss Haversham, wallowing in a wedding that never was, and it’s time I found myself a nice bloke who isn’t a total dick.’

‘I’m not sure I ever used those exact words, but yes, I do recall once or twice saying something along those general lines.’

‘Once or twice?’ It’s my turn to splutter. ‘You’ve been drumming it into me ever since puberty!’

‘Glad to know it’s finally sunk in then. But I have to wonder, why now? I thought the string of no-hopers was never going to end.’

‘One no-hoper too many, that’s why. The last in a very long line fell at the final hurdle and he’s not going to get back up again.’

‘You’re talking in riddles. You do know that, don’t you?’

‘Sorry, Mum. Just that this one was different from all the others, and I really thought I could love him and live happily ever after, but I can’t, and I won’t. So that’s that. End of.’

‘Ah, I see.’

‘Do you?’

‘Married man, by any chance?’

‘How did you know?’

‘All those pearls of wisdom have to come from somewhere, you know. Call it experience. Or a mother’s intuition.’

‘Anyway, I didn’t… you know. I didn’t allow it to go too far. Only in my stupid head. So now, I’m going to do what you told me to do all along. Find a nice, steady, faithful, and most of all available man and try to find what you and Dad had.’

‘You don’t just find that, Carly. It’s not an instant thing, no matter what you might hear about all that love at first sight nonsense. You have to build it, work on it, make it what you want it to be. Yes, it helps to have the right man to do it with, but love really doesn’t grow on trees. Once you have it, though, there’s nothing else quite like it. I’d rather have comfortable and trusting over all the angst and fireworks exploding passion any day.’

I remember something Jack said a while back, about his life with Molly being comfortable and easy until I came along. He made it sound dull, lacking in some way, but suddenly it sounds very much like love, even if neither he nor I had realised it.

‘A man you can share all your hopes and dreams with,’ Mum goes on, oblivious to my brief lapse in concentration. ‘To live with side by side every day, faults and problems and all. That’s real love, Carly. What your father and I had. What Anthony has with his Pauline. And then, one day, all too soon, it’s gone, snatched away, and your life is never the same again.’

‘Poor Anthony.’ I reach for her hand and feel it shaking. ‘And poor you.’