It Had To Be You

ELEVEN

For days Jess threw herself into heavy manual work, forcing her body into uncompromising situations just to forget, to stop the pain. For so many years Alex had been to blame, everything was due to him and the bastard she remembered. That was until he acted as though she was the most desirable woman he’d ever met, and the way he talked about the past...well it was all in stark contrast to everything she’d believed!

Everything had whirled around in her head in the hours since he’d left, but nothing was any clearer. She had wanted answers, the whole time he’d been back in her life, even before, she’d wanted him to feel her pain, to make him understand how she felt, and to find out why. That had been so important, why he’d betrayed her, why he’d not been there for her. And the moment the opportunity arose to deal with that, she bottled it, backed out.

Now she had to understand why. Was it because she was scared of what he’d say? Or that she no longer cared? Or was it that she would find out that all that she believed was wrong?

He was right, she was burying her head in the sand, and he wasn’t coming back until she’d dealt with the past. But would that see everything change?

She tried to live on, but she knew that something had to change. She avoided Evelyn, and couldn’t even think of calling Alex. Her heart felt like it was breaking all over again, but as the cold chilled her fingers to the bone and the weights she lugged around beat up her body, she started to realise that only she could dig herself out of this hole, no one else.

By Friday she wasapproaching insanity, there was only one thing she could do. So that afternoon she finished work early and got in her van, and drove all the way to Martinwood. She needed to speak to her parents. There was nothing else for it.

Jess sat in the car on the road outside the idyllic vicarage for ten minutes before she plucked up the courage to walk to the door. The whole of the village was picture postcard perfect, and the house nestled between oak trees, covered in ivy, her mother’s prize roses bare in the winter, flanking the stepping stone path that led to the front door. As she delayed walking up to the door, she knew one thing. It wasn’t her parents that she feared anymore, she’d got over her fear of her father, of his disdain many years ago, but it was what they might say that scared her.

Eventually she walked the path that was so familiar to her, but every few steps she paused, to calm her pounding heart and take a steadying breath. Reaching out a hand, fighting the shake in her fingers, she rang the doorbell, an old fashioned device, where a coil of metal actually pulled a small brass bell; the resulting sound was gentle, but surprisingly loud. She remembered seeing a similar device in a Victorian museum as a child, and had been intrigued by the history of her home for months after. The house was early Victorian, and she loved to hear her mother’s interpretation of the previous occupants, and the fact that her attic bedroom was originally a maid’s quarters. And then there were the ghosts...

She could just make out a figure through the frosted glass against the light from the room behind that she knew was the kitchen, it moved slowly towards her, and as the door opened she was shocked to see her mother looking much more frail and so much older than she ever remembered. She quickly ransacked her brain to work out when she’d last seen her, and was embarrassed to think it was more than a year ago, maybe nearer two.

            “Hi Mum!” She offered quietly.

Her subdued mother’s head flicked up, eyes wide in surprise, “Jessica!” It was a soft welcome, and instantly Jess flew into an embrace, again unable to even remember when she’d last had physical contact with her mother. But finding Alex again had almost returned her mentally to being a teenager again.