Flying on the wings of Dragons - Book 3, The Porth Kerensa Series

Chapter Sixteen

I am offered a job at a local surgery two weeks after moving to Amy’s. Graciously and enthusiastically I accept it. It is a relief not to be working in a hospital again. I like the idea of working five days a week, in a small friendly surgery, with three doctors. No desperately ill children that I might possibly have to work with if we’re extremely short staffed, as was so often the case at St. Agnes, despite how understanding my boss was.

      Amy drags me down the pub to celebrate, and to moan about how many times Mum rings a day to ask about the wedding plans. Mum knows I am at Amy’s but so far she has not bothered to talk to me. She is too preoccupied with what she’s going to wear to her daughter's wedding, or pestering Amy to invite yet someone else to the reception. I cannot help but laugh at my sister. I know that secretly she loves every minute of all of it, including Mum's nagging.

     The two of us went shopping for our dresses and I think of how beautiful Amy looked in the sleek satin white dress we eventually decided on for her. It is classy and beautifully cut. She looked so fantastic in it that we both knew it was the only dress for her. I paid for it there and then. She protested, but I told her it’s my contribution to the wedding of the century> We chose a blue cocktail dress for me. We had such a good time together and ended up coming home laden with underwear, shoes and accessories, as well as the dresses.

     I didn’t realise how much I missed my sister until I found her again.

     We stagger home the worse for wear and Steve laughs at us as we fall through the door. I tell him we’ll be worse than this on her hen night and this was a practise run. He stops smiling as the two of us help a singing drunken Amy up the stairs, and into bed. I leave them alone, shuffling into my own room and slumping onto the futon, which is a lot lower than I remembered, but at least if I fall out it won’t be too far before I hit the floor.

It is an amalgamation between London and Porth Kerensa, being in Folkestone. I walk down busy streets. and at night I hear the sound of traffic on the roads outside, all of it is accompanied by the shrieking of seagulls. The tang of the sea mingles with petrol fumes, and the scent of lots of people living near each other. I go to work every day, and in the evenings I walk down to the sea front. I watch the ships, the people, and I think of another beach that I walked along with Chloe and kissed Joe on.

     Amy asks me sometimes why I walk every evening and I tell her it is part of my new health regime. How can I tell her I stand and I imagine Joe loving another woman and having babies with her? Sometimes it is Bryony I picture him with, but mostly it is a faceless woman he holds in his arms. I have tried to imagine me loving someone else but it does not come as easily to me, making me wonder if I will ever let this love I have for him go?

     Who could have known six months ago, when I first sat next to him waiting for a train, that he would end up in my heart so completely? I thought I was not capable of feeling those emotions anymore, yet he showed me different. Now I sit alone, knowing that there is another way of life out there, but not for me. It would be disloyal to have that closeness with someone else, after Joe was the one to give me the gift in the first place.

     I could sit here and rage, trying to bargain with God, but what good would that do me? It did not work when Emily was dying and it will not work this time either. Besides, the anger I carried around in my gullet towards a deity I cannot see has gone now. Replaced by an awareness that there are things we cannot change and simply have to accept. The tears have dried up and the bitterness has gone. I love Joe and he loved me, but it is over. There is no point in crying in the shower anymore, or lying in bed wishing he was next to me. No use in the many letters I begin and throw away, or the things I wish I had said or done.