Page 60 of Forever, Maybe

Chapter forty-five

Cate and Bobby didn’t question Nell’s announcement that she’d be staying for a while when she arrived at her parents’ home late that afternoon. They simply accepted it, no questions asked—though the weight in Bobby’s eyes suggested he had plenty he wasn’t voicing.

Nell pressed her fingers to her lips, unable to look away from Cate’s deterioration.

Her mother greeted her with a beaming smile, her face lit with warmth. “Hello, my darling! I didn’t know you were coming! How long are you here for?”

“I dunno, Mum. A few weeks, maybe?”

Cate nodded as though it made perfect sense.

Nell had called the night before to remind her she’d be driving down, but it seemed the memory had slipped through her fingers like water.

Barely two minutes later, Cate asked the same question, adding, “Are you sure you should be spending so much time away from school, the college… in… in… oh, where is it again?”

Memory loss sounded simple in theory. The dementia websites listed it as a key symptom, but none of them prepared you for the jolt of watching someone nod, react and then forget the entire conversation seconds later.

“No, Mum. I’m not in art school anymore, remember?” she said gently.

“Oh, yes, of course,” Cate replied, nodding quickly, overcompensating for the slip.

Her father caught Nell’s eye, offering a sad, weary smile, the kind that said, I know. I see it too. She could tell he was holding back questions about her situation he didn’t have the energy to ask, not when he was already grappling with the weight of Cate’s decline.

“Is… thingie, oh, what’s his name?” Cate asked suddenly, her tone cheerful but her gaze unfocused.

“Danny?” Nell prompted.

“Yes, him. Where’s he?”

“Back in Glasgow, Mum.” Nell avoided her father’s gaze this time, certain he’d catch the crack in her voice.

Cate nodded again, with the same bright, agreeable smile. “Oh, yes! The sandwich man.” She seemed pleased with her ability to recall him, even if it was only as a two-word description. Jenny Curtice had mockingly dubbed Danny the Sandwich King.

There were worse things to be known as, Nell supposed.

But it wasn’t just Cate’s memory that had faded.

She was thinner than the woman who had happily swapped outfits with Stephanie months ago too, though thinner didn’t feel like the right word.

The mental picture Nell carried of her mother—a sturdy, middle-aged woman with rounded arms and soft hips—had been replaced by something unfamiliar.

Her body seemed rearranged, as though someone had tipped an hourglass upside down and shaken it, redistributing everything in the wrong places.

Her top half was painfully thin, her arms reduced to sticks with loose skin hanging from her jawline and neck.

But her bottom half seemed to hoard what little flesh remained, her legs swollen, her ankles bulbous and stretched to unnatural proportions.

The imbalance was jarring, disjointed, as though her body were betraying itself piece by piece.

Noticing these changes so starkly felt as if she were cataloguing them in an abstract, scientific way when instead every change cut her to the bone.

It was impossible to reconcile the woman in front of her with the image she’d always carried in her mind.

And though she wanted to look away, to focus on anything else, her mother’s decline was impossible to ignore.

Bobby heaved her suitcase out of the car, and Nell took hold of it.

“Am I in my old bedroom?” she asked.

He nodded, and she returned the gesture, heading inside. Behind her, Cate muttered something about the Hardys, wondering aloud if they might want to come over for dinner.

Nell paused midway up the stairs, suitcase dragging heavily behind her. The Hardys. Her mother was mentioning them again. She held her breath, waiting for her father’s reply.

“No, love. They don’t live here anymore,” Bobby said, his voice soft but firm. “They moved away, remember?”

“Yes, yes, of course. We don’t talk about them, do we?”

“No.”

Nell’s heart, which had been hammering in double time, gradually slowed. She exhaled quietly and resumed her climb, hauling the suitcase up the rest of the stairs. At the top, she pushed open the door to her former bedroom.

The mention of the Hardys had brought memories rushing back, vivid and sharp. The room had changed over the years, but not so much that it stopped her from flashing back to the 1990s—fourteen years old, lying on that bed, staring at the ceiling and wondering what on earth she should do next.

She dumped her suitcase on the floor. It tipped over immediately, one corner snagging on the edge of the single bed, which was still draped in a purple blanket.

Single beds for adults had mostly fallen out of fashion, but there was something oddly comforting about the compactness of it.

A smaller space to sleep in when there was no partner to share it with.

The view from the window was unchanged, frozen in time.

The sun, now low in the sky, cast a soft golden glow over the stark outlines of the trees.

The old willow drooped as it always had, its branches sagging toward the ground like it was mourning something unseen.

Beyond it, the weathered fence marked the border of what had once been the Hardys’ garden.

Nell knelt and unzipped her suitcase, pulling out her iMac and carefully placing it on the dressing table.

It felt strange, setting something so modern in a space that seemed determined to stay tethered to the past. But she needed the connection to her current world, even as this house and its memories pulled her back into the person she’d been long ago.

At home, she had a proper office chair, ergonomically designed to ease the discomfort of long hours hunched over a screen.

Here, in her childhood bedroom, no such luxury existed.

Eight hours spent trying to work at the old desk would be torture, sending searing pains up her back, across her shoulders and into her neck.

Nell rubbed her neck now, anticipating the ache, and closed her eyes.

Crying was a luxury she didn’t deserve. An indulgence she had no right to grant herself.

But Cate’s fragile state and the scarily fast unravelling of her own life forced hot tears to spill over.

She sank to the floor, her fingers clutching the old, familiar shag-pile pink carpet like it could anchor her.

Just a few minutes, she told herself. Mum and Dad think I’m upstairs unpacking. I’ll pull myself together, plaster on a bit of make-up and a smile, and go back downstairs…

Below, she heard movement in the living room.

The faint hum of the television flickering to life, followed by the steady, familiar cadence of Channel 4 news.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy’s voice carried through the floorboards: Sweden’s Sarah Sjostrom had shattered the world record in 55.

48 seconds to win the gold medal in the women’s 100m butterfly at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics.

The sound blurred as her thoughts shifted.

Oh, Danny. God, I miss you. Her chest ached as she thought of him. I understand. I wish—I wish with everything in me—that I’d never done what I did. But it was…

Her fist pressed into her eyes, trying to block out the memory. What was it, exactly?

What had happened with Jamie Curtice? A drunken mistake?

Yes and no. He’d just been there when the resentment she felt toward Danny and his endless work hours had reached its breaking point.

It was like all her frustration had needed an outlet, and Jamie had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And yet. And yet. And yet.

Her mind returned, as it always did, to Danny.

To the Danny who’d bolted after her that night at the student union, his desperation and sincerity so obvious they were almost laughable.

She could still picture him standing in front of her, his voice cracking as he spilled out the daft stuff he’d come out with in a bid to impress her.

She pressed her forehead against the carpet, willing the memory to go away. But it didn’t. It never did.

What’s that book all the lassies like? Circle of Friends? I’ve no’ read it, but my mate’s girlfriend has, and she read us bits o’ it. Sounded alri-wfy good. My mum, I’m nice to her! Flowers! They’re fantastic. Make-up’s brilliant too, and if you ever need me to buy you fanny pads, that’s fine!

The conviction she’d felt in that moment. It wasn’t just a thought or a feeling—it was something alive, something that pulsed through her body like a drumbeat. A truth that didn’t yet have words but moved through her cells, her arteries, her veins. It hardened, calcifying deep in her bones.

This. This is the man for me.

Another face swam into view, younger than Danny had been then. Freckled skin, an oval face framed by sandy-blonde hair, laughing eyes, and an overbite that pushed his top lip out just slightly.

Nelly-welly, fancy a trip to Cromer? I’ll buy you some chips…

She’d spent years working to bury him—his face, his voice, everything about him.

“Nell? Nell?” Bobby’s voice floated up the stairs, pulling her back to the present.

She grabbed a tissue, blew her nose, and rummaged through her handbag. Finding her face powder, she dusted it over her reddened cheeks, then applied a quick sweep of eyeliner, hoping the contrast would make her eyes look brighter, less raw.

Downstairs, she stepped into the back garden, where her parents were lounging in striped deckchairs.

The kind of late August evening Norfolk did so well stretched out around them.

The sun hung low, its golden light spilling over the garden.

The air was thick with the heady scent of honeysuckle, insects buzzing lazily around the yellow-orange blooms and sparrows chattering to each other in bursts of song.