Love You Better (31 page)

‘Not very long, then,’ Effie said quietly.

‘No.’ Penny leaned over to look at the photo. ‘But it was long enough.’

‘Did you love him?’

‘Like mad. It was hard not to love him.’ Penny smiled. ‘He was exactly what I needed at the time, the complete opposite to everything I’d left behind. He was exotic, daring and adventurous. He was only a year older than me, but he’d travelled through most of Europe already.’

‘So what happened?’

‘Life, I suppose. We had fun together – don’t get me wrong. We shared an experience that I think only comes along once in a lifetime. And yes, before you ask, some of it was chemically induced. But nothing could have kept him in one place. If ever there was a case of itchy feet, he had it by the bucketload. We were a constantly changing group. People came and went. I couldn’t make him stay, and I never wanted to. We spoke about meeting up again, once I’d seen a bit more of France.’

‘And?’

‘I found out I was pregnant. We spoke on the phone, but . . . Well, he was only nineteen. Can’t blame him for not wanting to settle down.’

Effie looked at the photo again, and a flash of anger surged through her. He’d turned his back on her. On them.

‘I never saw or spoke to him again.’

For a brief moment, she’d thought the point of her mum showing her his photo was to tell her she knew where he was and how she could contact him. She closed the photo album and put it down on her lap. She’d grown up thinking she was the product of a drug-hazed bunk-up. Penny had always been open about what she’d got up to, and she never had any details to share about Effie’s dad. Instead, the opposite was true. Even though they’d only been together a short time, she’d loved her dad.

‘I’m sorry,’ Effie mumbled. She didn’t have a clue what she was apologising for, but she did feel sorry.

‘Whatever for? Having you was the best thing I ever did. Okay, so it might have been the final nail in the coffin with Mum and Dad, and I had to be a single parent, but I wouldn’t change it for anything. Not even a lifetime of being with Gabriel.’

Effie blushed and looked down at her feet. Her mum had never told her that before. She’d always assumed she’d been a burden, getting in the way of the carefree lifestyle her mum had always craved. Wasn’t that why she’d left?

‘Having you made me a stronger person. I learned how to rely on myself and to trust people.’

‘I don’t see how it could make you trust people. Surely it would’ve done the opposite?’

‘When you find yourself pregnant by some lovable rogue you hardly even know, you learn to accept help where you find it. Being a single parent isn’t easy. You have to let people in; you just do it
in a
different way.’

‘Did you never try to find him?’

‘It wasn’t like it is now. We didn’t have mobile phones or
Facebook
, and he’d made his decision. The lifestyle he lived wasn’t compatible with children. He moved around too much.’

‘But you did it,’ Effie said. ‘Look how many times we went away and moved around.’

‘Don’t tell me you enjoyed it,’ Penny scoffed. ‘Because I know you didn’t.’

Effie grinned. ‘No, you’re right. I hated it.’

It had always felt like they were constantly packing and unpacking, making a home in a new place and meeting new people. She frowned and looked at the flickering flames. Her mum was cut from the same cloth as her dad. That was why they’d never stayed in one place for too long, until Effie had started secondary school. Penny always had to be on the move.

‘I was born with a strong sense of wanderlust,’ Penny said, ‘but I did try to calm it down. We stayed in Kennington for ages, didn’t we?’

It had barely been four years – hardly ages.

‘Is that why you left, because of me?’

Penny shook her head and put her arm around Effie, squeezing her arms. ‘Of course not. Why would you think that?’

Effie shrugged. ‘You said it yourself: I hated moving around all the time. I must have got in the way.’

‘I left because . . .’ Penny sighed. ‘Well, I suppose I left because you simply didn’t need me anymore. You were completely independent. You always had been. You could take care of yourself. You’re my daughter and I raised you, but you were never really mine. I don’t own you, and I never have. And you were always so vocal about hating the way we lived, I suppose I thought it was for the best.’

‘But you just upped and left. How could it have been the best for me to come home from school and find you gone?’ Effie fought to keep the anger from her voice as she remembered the day she’d walked back to an empty house to find a wad of money and a note in place of her mum.

‘I know, and I’ve always regretted that. It wasn’t an easy decision to make, and I wish I could take it back. If I’d done it differently, maybe you wouldn’t have ended up where you have. When I met Oliver’ – she shook her head – ‘I knew he was a bad egg. I could see how vulnerable you were with him. How much you wanted to be
normal
.’

Penny said it like it was a horrible-tasting thing in her mouth, and Effie grimaced because she was right. The lifestyle Oliver had offered her was all she had ever wanted, her chance at the fairy-tale ending.

‘I told myself you’d be fine and could look after yourself, but I know the way we moved around so much and my going away left you with abandonment issues. I just realised it all too late. When Lou told me about him beating you . . .’ She shook her head and looked at Effie, wrapping her hands around Effie’s. ‘I’m sorry, Sweetpea. I really am.’

Effie looked at the skin on her neck, sun-kissed and smattered with dark freckles.

‘It’s okay,’ Effie said, and it really was. For the first time, she didn’t feel angry with her anymore. She smiled at her mum, trying to look braver than she felt. ‘I’m recovering, and I’m doing it here with you. In a twisted kind of way, it’s ended up turning into something good.’

‘It has.’ Penny smiled back and patted her hand.

Effie looked around. It was a beautiful place, and she could see why her mum loved it here. It was peaceful and calming. She looked at the solar fairy lights strung up in the trees and the small wooden signposts stuck into the ground outside each of the bungalows. Instead of numbers, they all had names, and Penny’s was ‘Hope’. It felt like the bungalow name had infected her with that very feeling. She felt like everything would work out for the best. It wasn’t like last time, when she’d told Oliver to leave. This time, she felt stronger.

31.

L
ondon felt a million miles away, and Effie didn’t want to think about having to go back, especially now. She’d found out the truth about her dad, and seen him, in a manner of speaking. Not to mention how she’d started the long road to building a proper relationship with her mum. Neither of them were the failing parents she’d thought they were. They were little more than kids when Penny fell pregnant. Of course she wished her dad had stuck around, but as her mum had said, he’d made his choice. Maybe it was better for him to be absent instead of being somewhere he didn’t want to be, living a life he wasn’t cut out for.

Effie looked up as her mum propped her yoga mat up against the wall. They’d developed a routine where Effie would wake up, make coffee and sit out on the porch until Penny returned from her yoga practice. It was hardly active, but relaxing was just what she’d needed. She’d barely touched her painkillers for the past few days, only taking one when it got unbearable, and her eye almost looked normal. Her ribs still ached, but the doctor had warned her it would be a slow recovery.

When Penny returned, they’d usually sit together, talking about what to have for dinner or whether they’d walk down to the beach after her last client for the day.

‘Good practice?’ Effie asked, taking her feet off the chair so Penny could sit.

‘As always,’ Penny replied, wiping her face with a towel. ‘It’s so damned hot now. I think I’ll have to switch to doing it in the evenings.’

She took her phone from the small leather belt around her waist, looked at the screen and laughed to herself before pressing the keys. It was the oldest phone Effie had ever seen, from a time when 3G was probably even barely a concept. Penny laughed again and shook her head.

‘What?’ Effie asked, taking a sip of her coffee.

‘Oh, nothing.’

She raised an eyebrow and grinned. ‘George?’

‘Nope,’ Penny replied and took the cup from Effie’s hands. ‘Smith, actually.’

Effie frowned as her mum took a gulp of coffee. Since when was Smith sending funny texts to her mum?

‘What did he want?’

‘The same thing as always.’ Penny shrugged. ‘To see how you’re doing.’

‘Ugh.’ Effie shook her head. ‘Why won’t he just give it up?’

‘Well, I’d have thought that was obvious, Sweetpea.’ Penny handed back the cup and got up from the chair. ‘Right, I’m jumping in the shower.’

She picked up her yoga mat, dropped a kiss on the crown of Effie’s head and wandered into the house. Effie drained the coffee and scowled, tapping her foot on the floor. What was with him? She’d been explicit – she didn’t want to know. There were only so many lies she could take, and he’d exhausted his chances. It wasn’t like she hadn’t had enough to deal with lately. And anyway, why should it be obvious why Smith was checking up on her?

For the past few days, she’d focused on good things –
reducing
her painkiller intake because the pain wasn’t so acute anymore; going for walks in the fields, with the grass tickling her toes; and dippi
ng her
legs into the fresh water of the creek. She hadn’t thought about Smith once. She frowned. Okay, that was a lie. She had thought about him, but only because she was angry with him.

Inside the bungalow, the shower was running, and Effie stood up. Penny never closed the door when she showered. She’d only just started wrapping herself in a towel after using the bathroom, and that was purely because Effie insisted on it. They might have grown closer, but she didn’t need to see her mum wandering around the house naked. She leaned her back against the doorjamb as Penny showered behind the curtain.

‘Why should it be obvious?’

‘Why should what be obvious? Could you pass me another
bottle
of shower gel? This one’s finished.’ Penny’s hand shot out from behind the curtain, holding an empty bottle. ‘It’s under the sink.’

Effie took it and crouched down, looking into the small
cabinet
. She grabbed the full bottle and handed it to her mum before going back to her position in the doorway.

‘Just now, when I asked why he was texting, you said it should be obvious. What did you mean?’

‘I thought you said you didn’t want to hear anything about Smith, remember?’

‘Yeah, but I didn’t know he’d been in touch.’ She crossed
her arm
s. At the hospital, Smith had tried to visit, and she’d told her mum in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t welcome and she didn’t want to hear about anything to do with him. ‘What does he want?’

‘Like I said, he asks how you’re doing and whether you’ve remembered anything about what happened.’

‘How many times has he texted?’

‘Every day. Sometimes more.’

Effie’s heart sped as she looked at her feet. More than once a day? Her injuries wouldn’t change that dramatically from one day to the next. Why did he feel the need to get daily updates?

‘I don’t get it. He knows I don’t want to talk to him.’

The shower switched off, and Penny grabbed the towel from the rail. She stepped over the bath, her feet soaking the mat as a cloud of lavender-scented steam billowed out behind her.

‘Yes, but he isn’t talking to you, is he? He’s talking to me.’

Effie rolled her eyes. ‘You know what I mean.’

‘Sweetpea,’ Penny said, grabbing the brush from the side and raking it through her hair, ‘that boy sat with you the entire time you were unconscious. He barely ate, never mind slept.’

Her heartbeat notched up a gear as she pictured him watching her intently as she lay unconscious. ‘Did he?’

‘Well, of course. If you’d seen what you looked like, lying there all battered and bruised. And unconscious.’ Penny shuddered. ‘He was terrified you wouldn’t wake up again, or that if you did, you wouldn’t be the same. We all were. He didn’t even go home for a change of clothes. He wanted to be there when you woke up.’

‘He needn’t have bothered. He probably felt guilty for lying to me all along.’

‘Yes, he told me you argued, but, you know,’ Penny said, looking at Effie through the mirror, ‘you really ought to ask yourself why you’re so angry with Smith for lying to you, yet you won’t go to the police about the hideous man who beat you up.’

‘Because . . . because I just am,’ Effie replied, flustered.

Penny sighed and put the brush down. ‘If you ask me, you’re directing your anger at the wrong person. Smith loves you. If you’d seen what he was like for those three days, you’d know that.’

Effie’s stomach fluttered at the thought, but she shook her head. ‘He doesn’t love me. He never has, not really.’

‘Doesn’t he?’ Penny raised an eyebrow again and walked pa
st he
r.

She watched her mum pad into her bedroom and shut the door, her mind racing. She thought back to Ireland and the Sketch launch, when she’d finally admitted she still had feelings for him. She couldn’t deny there wasn’t a huge part of her that wanted it to be true. Even though she was in enough of a predicament as it was with her catastrophic marriage, she wanted Smith to love her, but she just couldn’t trust him, and she couldn’t allow herself to believe that what her mum was saying was true. She’d spent ages doing that while they were in their not-quite relationship and had ended up getting burned as a result. Why would he suddenly love her now? He might have been
jealous
that she’d married Oliver, but jealousy wasn’t love, and what Claire told her had shattered everything. And even if she hadn’t told Effie anything, Smith had lied anyway. Claire was clearly still on the scene.

She sat on the chair and shook her head again. Penny was being ridiculous, looking for a happy ending where there couldn’t be one. Effie felt she’d made a mistake listening to Oliver’s convincing lies and paid the price. She didn’t have the energy or the capacity
for mor
e.

‘Say that Smith
does
love me. What am I supposed to do about it?’ Effie asked, removing her finger from her mouth. She’d chewed her nails down as far as she could. She hated flying, and it wouldn’t be like last time when she’d been knocked out by her painkillers for the whole flight.

‘What do you
want
to do?’

She looked at her mum as they stood outside the airport. After being on the near-isolated island of Colinas Verdes for three
weeks, bein
g thrust back into the real world was disorientating, and there was a part of her that wanted to scuttle back to her mum’s little haven. A group of tired-looking teenage boys wheeled their suitcases through the doors next to them, and Effie sighed.

‘I don’t know, Mum. Smith is just wrong for me on so many levels.’

‘And Oliver wasn’t?’

‘Not on paper.’

‘And tell me when that ever counts for anything in the real world?’ Penny replied with a stern face.

She rubbed the heels of her palms over her eyes. ‘I shouldn’t even be thinking about this. I should be in bits about my marriage being an epic disaster. It’s not right.’

‘What’s with all the
shoulds
? I should be doing this, I shouldn’t be doing that. It’s nonsense. Who cares what people think?’ Penny tutted. ‘Have you ever thought that you’re not cut up about
Oliver
because he was never right for you in the first place? If you’ve learned anything from all of this, it should be that you should go with what your heart tells you, not your head.’

Effie looked at the pavement. It was easy to say, but doing it was another matter.

‘What is your heart telling you?’

She barely had time to breathe before Smith’s face flashed up in her mind.

‘I’m scared,’ she said quietly.

‘Being scared isn’t a bad thing. It just means you know how much there is to lose. Loving someone is easy. It’s the ego that makes it difficult, and right now yours is bruised. Remember you said you wanted the perfect person?’

Effie nodded.

‘He’s your perfect person. He always has been, from the moment you two became friends. I’ve always liked him, and he loves you in a way that bastard Oliver never could.’

‘Mum!’ Effie laughed. Penny never usually swore.

‘Well, he is. If you ask me, that’s putting it mildly. A more appropriate word would be c—’

Effie’s hand flew to her mum’s mouth, clamping it shut before she could finish. Penny swatted her hand away as they both burst out laughing.

‘Stop. I can’t cope with hearing you swear. It’s not right.’

‘I thought
I
was supposed to be the parent.’

‘Yeah, well.’ Effie grinned. ‘We’ve never been conventional, have we?’

Penny pulled her in for a hug and squeezed her. ‘I’m going to miss you, Sweetpea.’

Effie’s throat constricted, and all she could do was nod. If
anyone
had told her she’d be hugging her mum goodbye with tears in her eyes, she’d have told them they were mad, but as Penny squeezed her, Effie didn’t want her to let go.

‘Now you’ll come back and visit, won’t you?’ Penny said,
releasing
her.

Effie nodded and looked at her with her feather-entwined hair, black vest and bright pink tie-dyed leggings. Nobody else at the airport wore the things she wore or looked the way she did. They looked dull in comparison.

‘And promise me you won’t go back to that house.’

‘I promise. Lou took a bunch of stuff to hers when I was in hospital anyway, and I’ll sort the rest out later. There’s no need for me to go back there.’

‘Good. Let me know when you land.’ Penny scratched the back of her neck and cleared her throat. ‘Now you’d best be off, or you’ll be late.’

‘You’re not coming to the security gate?’ Effie asked, trying not to let her voice break.

‘Oh, god no. I’m awful at goodbyes. That’s why I never gave you one.’ Penny kissed her cheek and gave her one last squeeze. ‘Love you, Sweetpea. You’re going to be just fine.’

Before Effie could reply, Penny turned and left, walking towards the car park. Effie watched her as she went, trying to control the tears threatening to spill onto her cheeks. When her mum disappeared out of sight, she wiped her eyes and tightened her hold on the boarding pass in her hand.

It was time to go home.