Still Me (Me Before You #3) - Jojo Moyes Page 0,100

the loo while I had a bath. She wasn’t seeing Eddie until Christmas Day, and was painting her toenails a pale pink in preparation, although she wouldn’t admit as much. Out in the living room Thom had the television turned up to deafening volume and was leaping on and off the sofa in a pre-Christmas frenzy.

‘I was thinking I might just tell him I missed the flight. And that we’d speak after Christmas.’

She pulled a face. ‘You don’t just want to speak to him? He’s not going to believe that.’

‘I don’t really care what he believes right now. I just want to have Christmas with my family and no drama.’ I sank under the water so that I couldn’t hear Treena shouting at Thom to turn the sound down.

He didn’t believe me. His text message said: What? How could you miss the flight?

– I just did, I typed. I’ll see you Boxing Day.

I observed too late I hadn’t put any kisses on it. There was a long silence, and then a single word in response: Okay.

Treena drove us to Stortfold, Thom bouncing in the rear seat for the full hour and a half it took us to get there. We listened to Christmas carols on the radio and spoke little. We were a mile out of town when I thanked her for her consideration, and she whispered that it wasn’t for me: Eddie hadn’t actually met Mum and Dad either so she was feeling nauseous at the thought of Christmas Day.

‘It’ll be fine,’ I told her. The smile she flashed me wasn’t very convincing.

‘C’mon. They liked that accountant bloke you dated earlier this year. And to be honest, Treen, you’ve been single so long I think you could probably bring home anyone who wasn’t Attila the Hun right now and they’d be delighted.’

‘Well, that theory is about to be tested.’

We pulled up before I could say any more and I checked my eyes, which were still pea-sized from the amount of crying I’d done, and climbed out of the car. My mother burst out of the front door and ran down the path, like a sprinter off the starting blocks. She threw her arms around me, holding me so tightly I could feel her heart thumping.

‘Look at you!’ she exclaimed, holding me at arms’ length before pulling me in again. She pushed a lock of hair from my face and turned to my father, who stood on the step, his arms crossed, beaming. ‘How wonderful you look! Bernard! See how grand she looks! Oh, we’ve missed you so much! Have you lost weight? You look like you’ve lost weight. You look tired. You need to eat something. Come indoors. I’ll bet they didn’t give you breakfast on that plane. I’ve heard it’s all powdered egg anyhow.’

She hugged Thom, and before my father could step forward, she grabbed my bags and marched back up the path, beckoning us all to follow.

‘Hello, sweetheart,’ said Dad, softly, and I stepped into his arms. As they closed around me, I finally allowed myself to exhale.

Granddad hadn’t made it as far as the step. He had had another small stroke, Mum whispered, and now had trouble standing up or walking, so spent most of his daylight hours in the upright chair in the living room. (‘We didn’t want to worry you.’) He was dressed smartly in a shirt and pullover in honour of the occasion and smiled lopsidedly when I walked in. He held up a shaking hand and I hugged him, noting with some distant part of me how much smaller he seemed.

But, then, everything seemed smaller. My parents’ house, with its twenty-year-old wallpaper, its artwork chosen less for aesthetic reasons than because it had been given by someone nice or covered certain dents in the wall, its sagging three-piece suite, its tiny dining area, where the chairs hit the wall if you pushed them back too far, and a ceiling light that started only a few inches above my father’s head. I found myself comparing it distantly to the grand apartment with its acres of polished floors, its huge, ornate ceilings, the clamorous sweep of Manhattan outside our door. I had thought I might feel comforted at being home.

Instead I felt untethered, as if suddenly it occurred to me that, at the moment, I belonged in neither place.

We ate a light supper of roast beef, potatoes, Yorkshire puddings and trifle, just a little something Mum had ‘knocked together’ before tomorrow’s main event. Dad