Page 85 of When We Were Young

Eight Years Later

Liv

I delete the last two paragraphs I’ve written and stare at the blinking cursor. What shall I do with this final chapter? This isn’t fiction, it’s a biography. I can’t make stuff up. Will’s family will want to know what the hell I’m going on about.

So, now I have to type the truth. No mention of the word ‘otosclerosis’. Just second-album syndrome, crippling writer’s block, the overdose of a good friend, and a devastating break-up.

I type the full stop on the last sentence. It’s finished. I should pop a bottle of champagne, celebrate the colossal achievement of writing a book. All the months – years – of hard work.

But I don’t feel a sense of achievement. I’ve betrayed my mother.

My phone buzzes on the desk beside me. The screen lights up with the picture I’ve assigned to calls from Mum.

My seventeen-year-old self, Mum’s arm draped over my shoulders, standing in the atrium of an Amsterdam hotel.

We’re grinning ear-to-ear with her beautiful artwork snaking up the wall behind us, reaching so high Dad couldn’t fit it all in.

I can’t talk to her now.

The buzzing stops, the picture disappears: Missed call: Mum.

I rest my elbows on the desk and bury my face in my hands, then flinch as a hand rests on my shoulder. Ben places a mug of coffee on the desk.

‘Did you make a decision?’ he asks.

‘Yeah,’ I sigh. ‘But I’m not sure it’s the right one.’

Fresh from the shower, his hair is wet and hanging in his eyes. When we first met, I couldn’t keep my eyes off that Mr Whippy hairstyle as he showed me around the magazine building all those years ago.

After I left Luminaire , I didn’t think I’d see him again, but I bumped into him in the café on the top floor during my summer internship. He said, ‘You went for coffee and never came back. Was it something I said?’

Back then, I was drowning under the pressure of the Fragments anniversary feature and he was a welcome distraction.

On the way down in the lift, he invited me for a drink after work.

I told him I was sixteen, but undeterred, he offered to buy me coffee instead.

He was nineteen. I remember thinking that was ancient and that my mum would kill me.

We moved in together last month.

He massages my shoulders. ‘You’ll feel it in your gut, if it’s right or not.’

He’s right – I do. I get up, grab my phone, and head for the door.

‘Where are you going?’ he asks.

I snatch my keys from the table in the hall. ‘Research.’

I pull up outside Mary’s house. It hasn’t changed since I first arrived there with Tumi as an inquisitive teenager, and I’ve been here many times since then.

I remember discovering Will’s last song in that house, and a few weeks later, stumbling across the leaflet about otosclerosis.

Reading it suddenly made sense of the lyrics that had been puzzling me – I was certain Will must have had the disease.

That day, Mum wanted me home for Grandad’s birthday.

I knew stopping to ask Mary about my theory would make me late, but I couldn’t let it go.

I found her in the kitchen. ‘Did Will have any problems with his hearing?’ I asked.

‘No. What makes you think that?’

‘I found this leaflet.’

‘Let me see that.’ Mary held it at arm’s length and recognised it immediately. ‘Ah, no. That’s mine.’

‘It’s yours ?’

‘Yes. I’ve had trouble with my ears since I was pregnant with Aidan.

I had surgery but after a few years it got bad again.

The consultant said surgical techniques had improved.

They gave it another go, but it didn’t work and surgery on my other ear was too risky, so they gave me a hearing aid.

These in-ear ones are quite good if there’s not too much background noise, and you can hardly see them. ’

‘So, Will didn’t have any hearing problems?’

‘No, though you’d think he would, playing all that loud music.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘They say otosclerosis can be hereditary, but neither of my boys had it.’

‘That’s lucky,’ I said, trying to hide my disappointment. ‘Why did he have this leaflet, then?’

‘I gave it to Will because I wrote that telephone number on it.’ She points to the handwritten number along the top margin, the one I assumed was for the hospital department.

‘Will stayed with us for a few days when he got out of hospital. This man kept ringing: a songwriter the record company wanted him to work with. Will wouldn’t speak to him.

He didn’t want to play someone else’s music.

He wrote his own songs. I thought he’d thrown that leaflet away.

But if he kept it, maybe he was considering ringing that songwriter fella, after all? ’

‘But one of his songs talks about not being able to hear the things you love,’ I said. ‘About music fading.’

‘I don’t know, love, I never understood what he was singing about. I just loved his voice.’

‘Mary, can I ask you something else?’

‘Fire away.’

‘Reu and Matty spoke about Emily, Will’s girlfriend. Do you remember her?’

Mary’s face clouded, and she covered her face with her hands.

I squirmed in my seat. I shouldn’t have mentioned Mum.

‘Mary?’ I asked. ‘Are you okay?’

Mary let her hands drop. ‘That girl was nothing but trouble from the beginning. She had my boys at each other’s throats.

She tore my family apart. Once Will got together with her, we didn’t see him anymore.

And after… she wanted to come to the funeral.

Can you believe the cheek of her? As if we would want her there when it was all her fault.

‘Then I heard she’d had a baby. She moved on so quickly she mustn’t have cared for Will at all. She got on with her life and I’ll never be able to get on with mine.’

I get out of the car and walk up the path to the Bailey house with its neat front garden, a blooming wisteria growing up the side of the bricked-up garage.

I’ve kept in touch with Mary, popping over every few months to chat, but since I started writing the book, it’s been more of a weekly thing.

When she answers the door, she’s not fazed that I’ve turned up unannounced again.

I follow her to the kitchen, where she makes tea as though she has been expecting me.

‘Have you more questions for me?’ she asks, stirring milk into the mugs.

‘No, not today. I wanted to ask you a favour.’

‘Oh?’ She puts my tea in front of me and sits opposite me.

We’re sitting in the same seats as we did all those years ago, the last time I asked about Mum. Mary looks older now, her hair almost completely white.

‘Do you remember before, when we spoke about Will’s girlfriend, Emily?’

Her face darkens – just like it did the last time. ‘Ah Jaysus, do we have to talk about her? I’ll talk about anything else, but not her.’

‘There’s something you should know about Emily.’ I’m talking about my mum as if she’s a stranger. ‘She didn’t just move on and have a baby.’

Mary frowns.

‘Their split left her heartbroken. She got drunk and made some poor decisions,’ I tell Mary.

‘The news of Will’s death left her reeling.

She was so grief-ridden and racked with guilt, she was suicidal herself.

But when she found out she was pregnant, it gave her a reason to live.

That baby was her only reason to live. For years. ’

‘How do you know all this?’ asks Mary.

‘Because I’m that baby.’

Mary’s body stiffens. ‘What?’

‘Emily is my mum.’

A bright spark of anger flashes in her eyes. ‘She sent you here? Why?’

‘She didn’t know about me coming here. I kept it a secret. She never spoke about Will. She wouldn’t even admit to knowing him. It was her way of coping with the grief. I had to find out about him for myself. That’s why I offered to help with the archive. She didn’t know what I was doing.’

I tell Mary all about Mum – how she blamed herself for Will’s death, how she punished herself for years: no relationships, no friends, no art – her entire life revolving around me.

‘For those brief few minutes when I thought Will had otosclerosis, I knew it would change everything for Mum if she found out,’ I say. ‘Then you corrected me, but I couldn’t shake the thought. So, I told Mum that Will had otosclerosis. I lied.’

Mary exhales sharply.

‘And you know what?’ I continue. ‘It worked. She started living again – she let herself be happy – but only because she believed it wasn’t her fault.’

Mary’s expression remains stony.

‘And now,’ I say, ‘with the publication of this book, she’ll find out Will didn’t have otosclerosis. I’ll have to tell her the one thing that gave her a lifeline was a lie. She’ll go back to blaming herself.’

Mary’s jaw is set, her chin lifted, but tears threaten to spill onto her cheeks. ‘She split up with him, that’s why he did it…’ she whispers.

‘Nothing is ever that black and white. Matty tried to persuade her to break up with Will to give him something to write songs about. He told me himself he was worried he’d have to get a proper job.

Now, that’s pretty damning, but it’s not Matty’s fault.

And Reu thinks it’s his fault for overdosing on heroin, but it wasn’t his fault, either.

Everyone I’ve interviewed over the years, everyone I’ve spoken to, has told me they felt somehow responsible for his death.

Every single one of them. You blame yourself too, don’t you? ’

She ignores the question. ‘You lied to your mother,’ she says. ‘That’s your problem, not mine.’

‘She wasn’t to blame. You know it in your heart, Mary.

I know you do. I know because you’ve told me a hundred times how you regret the way you treated Will after they got together.

You didn’t expect their relationship to last, did you?

He loved her! And you wouldn’t let her go to the funeral.

You wouldn’t let her have any of his things.

Even though she was the most important person in his life. His soulmate.’

‘There’s nothing I can do. You’ve got yourself in this mess—’

‘There is something you could do,’ I say. ‘You have a chance to make up for the way you treated the woman your son loved.’

‘It’s too late. It won’t change anything––’

‘Let me write it in the book. Let me say Will had otosclerosis. Let my mum be happy…’