I nod. “I’ll see you.”
Standing in the cool, fresh air outside the café, watching seagulls swoop into the waves, I realize I have forgotten something and go back inside.
I slip my arms around his neck, hug him close and kiss his cheek. “Thank you, Mal. I forgot to tell you that. Thank you for Leo, and for that last night. Thank you.”
“You know I love you, right?” he says to me.
“I love you, too. Maybe in our next lifetime we’ll get it right and get it together.”
“I don’t believe in all that nonsense,” he replies.
“Yeah, but I do. Enough for the both of us.”
“There’s no point fighting it, is there?”
“None whatsoever.”
Without thinking, without hesitating, our lips come together. And we kiss for the first time because we love each other. Because, unfortunately for us, we’ve always loved each other.
The bell behind the café door tinkles as it shuts behind me. I button up my duffel coat, and pull my bag over my shoulder.
That was the second most difficult parting I’ve ever had. When you love someone as much as I love Mal, leaving them is never easy, even if you both know it is the only way for you both to start all over again.
CHAPTER 63
H i,” he says as I enter the kitchen. “You all right?”
I stop in my tracks, startled and cautious. Is he talking to me? To me? He hasn’t asked if I’m all right in three months. He hasn’t asked me a non-rhetorical question in what feels like a lifetime. Usually he talks at or through me. Not to me. Usually he’s been crying and he can barely form words.
“Yeah, fine,” I answer, resisting the urge to look behind me to double-check he isn’t talking to a random stranger who has followed me in from the street. His eyes are even looking at me, not through me. “How are you?”
He raises and drops his broad shoulders in a brief, dismissive shrug. “You know,” he says.
I don’t. You don’t talk to me, so I don’t know. I can try to imagine, but I don’t know. I can try to put myself in your place, but I cannot fully comprehend.
“Where’ve you been?” he asks. His handsome, loving face is interested. He isn’t crying, I realize, even on the inside. He is here, in the room, waiting for an answer from me.
“I’ve—” I’m going to lie. The last thing he needs, when he seems to have made so much progress in such a short amount of time, is to hear his name, to be reminded why he was crying, to be reminded why he doesn’t want to be with me anymore. “I’ve been to take flowers to Leo.” I’ve lied enough. They end here. I cannot change the old lies without destroying everything, but I can avoid any new ones. From now on, no more lies. I owe him, and her, and Leo, and myself that. “Yellow roses. I always think yellow is his favorite color. I don’t know if it is, but every few days I take him yellow flowers.”
Mal’s russet-brown eyes study me for a moment. I cannot read them, nor his face. I cannot tell what he is thinking. If I have pushed him back a few steps, or if he wants me to remove myself from his sight.
“It was green,” he says. “His favorite color was green.”
“Oh.”
“But I’m sure he liked yellow, too.”
“Maybe.”
“Do you want to know about him?”
I nod. Of course I do. I want to know everything I can about him. Even the trivial, seemingly insignificant details, such as if he would brush his teeth before bed, I want to hear, so I can create a person, a memory that is more than the photos. So there is someone real I can picture at night before I go to sleep, when I visit him. “Yes,” I say quietly. “Yes, I do.”
“I don’t know that much,” he says, his eyes flicking to the chair opposite him, an invitation to sit down, to stay awhile. “Not as much as I’d like.”
I pull out the chair, settle myself on it as I drop my bag on the floor beside me.
“I only know what Mum and Nova and the rest of the family told me. But it’s enough.”
I nod at him, link my fingers together and prepare myself to listen.
“I sometimes wonder if it’s possible to love someone you didn’t even know,” he says. “But that’s how I feel about Leo.”
This is it. The life buoy I’ve wanted to throw him while he has been drowning. Mal’s way safely back to shore. I didn’t realize it was mine, too.
“Over the years, as Mum has been telling me things, I’ve felt an incredible bond with him. As though hearing about him, seeing his pictures, being with Mum after she’s been with him has bridged the gap between us.”
Mal and I have been drowning for more than eight years.
“Mum said Leo once showed her a picture of me as a child, and said that Nova had told him that the boy in the picture looked like him because God liked to play jokes on her sometimes. But Leo told Mum it was because he knew that the boy in the picture grew up to become his dad. He was only five at the time. Mum was thinking how clever he was when she realized that he was hustling her. He wanted to find out where babies came from and thought she’d tell him if he said he knew about dads.” Mal’s smile is wide, proud, woven with deep sorrow. “Nova said that’s what he was like: far too clever for his own good. And for her own good.”
I reach across the table and lace my fingers through his; for the first time in a lifetime, he clings back. Holding on to each other, we begin to navigate our way back to dry land.
EPILOGUE
I want you to know that I’m all right.
Yes, you.
Now you’ve heard my story, you may think that I’m still in that place of pain and sorrow, but I’m not, truly, please don’t worry about me.
At this moment, I’m sitting in a park, watching Dolly dance. She’s twenty-one months old but she insisted in her stubborn way on wearing a thick cream sweater, a blue denim skirt, yellow Wellington boots and a pair of sparkly, silver fairy wings that are far too big for her. Her black-brown corkscrew curls are flying in all directions as she dances to the tune she’s making up as she goes along.
We live in a town outside Braga, in Portugal, and I teach English lessons on a one-to-one basis to children coming up for their exams. I know some of the people in the town describe me as inglesa com o sorriso grande e olhos tristes, which means “the Englishwoman with the big smile and the sad eyes.”
So, you see, I can smile again. I don’t know when I would have been able to do that if I had stayed in England, if I hadn’t started all over again.
I still hurt. I’ll always hurt, but I had him for seven years. I feel a little sorry that you didn’t know him. You never heard his laugh. Listened to the questions he asked at the most inopportune moments. Saw how his obsession with the PlayStation paid off in the number of points he could rack up. Heard his theories on life. Watched his face open up with delight whenever I bought him something he wanted, or he heard a song he liked. Became his co-pilot in the car submarine. Reasoned with him about getting a dolphin/shark/lion/ ________ (insert wild animal as appropriate). Cried because you’d made him cry. I had all that. I had more.
I wish I still had him. But I had Leo for seven years. And I know I’ll see him again. I’ve always believed that and I believe it even more now.
So, like I say, please don’t worry about me. I am all right. Dolly and I are all right. She makes me laugh, she keeps me going and one day we’re going to go back. At the moment, I love watching her play in the sunshine, I love just being with her. I love that we’ve found a new place called home.
And, I don’t want you to worry about me because I promise you, we’re having the time of our lives.
“I love you. And it’s OK to go now,” he hears her say to him through the quiet. It’s dark here, but light, too. He can’t see but there is light.
He knows it’s Mum’s voice because no one else sounds like her. No one else is as great as his mum.
“I’ll see you again, so I won’t say goodbye. OK? I’ll see you again.”
She isn’t crying. There aren’t tears in her words, so he’s not scared. If Mum’s OK, then he isn’t scared. “I’m going to say goodnight, instead. Sleep tight, Leo, my love. Goodnight, my beautiful boy. Goodnight, beautiful.”
“Goodnight, Mum,” he replies, and then goes to see what’s going on in the light.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Goodnight, Beautiful is Dorothy Koomson’s fifth novel. Her four previous books—including My Best Friend’s Girl, a Richard & Judy Summer Read of 2006—have spent more than twenty-five weeks on the Sunday Times bestseller list. Her books have been translated into twenty-four languages around the world. Dorothy is currently working on becoming interestingly mysterious.
www.dorothykoomson.co.uk
Dorothy Koomson, Goodnight, Beautiful
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