One Plus One(94)
Author: Jojo Moyes

Nicky held up the local newspaper over tea and he read the story aloud. They were all silent for a moment, unable to believe what they had heard.

‘It actually says the Fishers have to move somewhere else?’

‘That’s what it says,’ Nicky said.

‘But what will happen to them?’ Jess said, her fork still halfway to her mouth.

‘Well, it says here, they’re going to move to Surrey, to near his brother-in-law.’

‘Surrey? But –’

‘They’re not the housing association’s responsibility any more. None of them. Jason Fisher. And his cousin and his family. They’re moving in with some uncle. And, even better, there’s an exclusion order preventing them from returning to the estate. Look, there’s two pictures of his mum crying and saying they’ve always been misunderstood and Jason wouldn’t hurt a fly.’ He pushed the newspaper across the table towards her.

Jess read the story twice, just to check he’d understood it correctly. That she’d understood it correctly. ‘They actually get arrested if they come back here?’

‘See, Mum?’ he said, chewing on a piece of bread. ‘You were right. Things can change.’

Jess sat very still. She looked at the newspaper, then back at him, until he realized what he had called her, and she could see him colouring, hoping she wouldn’t make a big deal out of it. So she swallowed and then she wiped both her eyes with the heels of her palms and stared at her plate for a minute before she began eating again. ‘Right,’ she said, her voice strangled. ‘Well. That’s good news. Very good news.’

‘Do you really think things can change?’ Tanzie’s eyes were big and dark and wary.

Jess put down her knife and fork. ‘I think I do, love. I mean, we all have our down moments. But, yes, I do.’

And Tanzie looked at Nicky and back at Jess, and then she carried on eating.

Life went on. Jess walked to the Feathers on a Saturday lunchtime, hiding her limp for the last twenty yards, and pleaded for her job back. Des told her he’d taken on a girl from the City of Paris. ‘Not the actual city of Paris. That would be uneconomical.’

‘Can she take apart the pumps when they go wrong?’ Jess said. ‘Will she fix the cistern in the men’s loos?’

Des leant on the bar. ‘Probably not, Jess.’ He ran a chubby hand through his mullet. ‘But I need someone reliable. You’re not reliable.’

‘Give me a break, Des. One missed week in two years. Please. I need this. I really need this.’

He said he’d think about it.

The children went back to school. Tanzie wanted Jess there to pick her up every afternoon. Nicky got up without her having to go in six times to wake him. He was actually eating breakfast when she got out of the shower. He didn’t ask to renew his prescription of anti-anxiety medication. The flick on his eyeliner was point perfect.

‘I was thinking. I might want to do sixth form at McArthur’s after all. And then, you know, I’ll be around when Tanzie starts big school.’

Jess blinked. ‘That’s a great idea.’

She cleaned alongside Nathalie, listening to her gossip about the final days of the Fishers – how they had pulled every plug socket off the walls, and kicked holes in the plaster in the kitchen before they’d left the house on Pleasant View. Someone – she pulled a face – had set fire to a mattress outside the housing-association office on Sunday night.

‘You must feel relieved, though, eh?’ she said.

‘Sure,’ Jess said.

Nathalie straightened and rubbed her back. ‘I meant to ask you. What was it like going all the way to Scotland with Mr Nicholls? It must have been weird.’

Jess leant over the sink, and paused, gazing out of the window at the infinite crescent of the sea. ‘It was fine.’

‘Didn’t you run out of things to say to him, stuck in that car? I know I would.’

Jess’s eyes prickled with tears so that she had to pretend to be scrubbing at an invisible mark on the stainless steel. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Funnily enough. I didn’t.’

Here was the thing: Jess felt the absence of Ed like a thick blanket, smothering everything. She missed his smile, his lips, his skin, the bit where a trace of soft dark hair snaked up towards his belly button. She missed feeling like she had when he was there, that she was somehow more attractive, more sexy, more everything. She missed feeling as if anything was possible. She couldn’t believe losing someone you had known such a short time could feel like losing part of yourself, that it could make food taste wrong and colours seem dull. Some nights after Nicky went to bed she didn’t go into her too-big bed, but just dozed on the sofa in front of the television, her knees pressed into her chest to try to stop the empty feeling inside.

Jess saw now that when Marty had left, everything she had felt had been related to practical matters. She had felt unsafe. She had worried about how the children would feel with him gone. She had worried about money, about who would mind them if she had to do an evening shift at the pub, about who would take the bins out on a Thursday. But what she mostly felt was a vague relief that she was no longer governed by his moods. That she didn’t have to act as referee between him and the children. That she no longer had to try to convince herself that this was a relationship worth saving.

More than anything she hated the fact that a man who had seen only the best of her now thought the worst. To Ed she was now no better than any of the other people who had let him down or messed him up. In fact, she was probably worse. And it was all her own fault. That was the thing she could never escape from. It was entirely her own fault.

She thought about it for three nights, then she wrote him a letter.

So, in one ill-thought-out minute, I became the person I have always taught my children not to be. We are all tested eventually, and I failed.

I’m sorry.

I miss you.

PS I know you’ll never believe me. But I was always going to pay it back.

She put her phone number on it and twenty pounds in an envelope, marked First Instalment. And she gave it to Nathalie and asked her to put it with his post at Beachfront Reception. The next day, Nathalie said a for-sale sign had gone up outside number two. And she watched her reaction just slightly too closely and then she stopped asking questions about Mr Nicholls.

When five days had gone by and Jess realized he wasn’t going to respond, she spent an entire night awake, and then she told herself firmly that she could lie around feeling miserable no longer. It was time to move on. Heartbreak was a luxury too costly for the single parent.