We look at each other for a moment. I search for how I feel. Torn. Because I like him. He seems straight, uncomplicated. And he looks at Mum like she’s a precious jewel. And though I can see she feels uncertain about that, I can also see she likes it. And maybe needs it. It’s not as weird as I thought it would be. It doesn’t feel wrong. But all that in itself is somehow contradictory. I try to find something to say in return, but there must be too long a gap because Mum fills it first.

‘Goodness, I don’t think I could eat another thing.’ She pushes her bowl away, leaning back with her hands on her belly.

‘Me too, love. I’m stuffed.’ Derek pushes his chair away from the table, dropping his napkin to the side. ‘Excuse me a minute,’ he says, squeezing her shoulder before disappearing in the direction of the toilet.

Mum watches him retreat before turning her attention back to me. ‘How are you feeling?’ she asks.

‘I’m okay, Mum,’ I say, picking at what remains of the food in front of us. ‘He’s nice,’ I mumble into a prawn cracker.

‘I know,’ she agrees. ‘But I meant about what we discussed earlier. I keep thinking about how long you’ve kept that to yourself, and why you felt you couldn’t talk to me.’ She takes a deep breath, reaching for my hand. ‘I’m so sorry if you felt I was too wrapped up in David to hear you.’ There’s a tear in her eye, a gentle wobble in her chin, and the guilt swallows me whole. ‘You should never feel that I’m not here for you, Rhys. You’re my boy and there is nothing more important.’ She sits back a second, regaining some composure.

‘Mum—’

‘You don’t have to say anything, love. Just know I am here for you, no matter what else is going off.’ She motions to Derek’s place just as he makes his way back through the restaurant. ‘Hello, love.’ She smiles at him as he takes his seat back beside her.

She reaches out and rests her hand on his knee. He picks up her hand and kisses it, then puts it back on the table, half nodding towards me. I appreciate that he doesn’t reject her, but that he doesn’t expose me to any more of their affection than I really need on our first meeting. And I realise that though she hasn’t told me that she loves him, it’s obvious that’s what she really wants me to know.

So the three that became two is now a three again, and I need to work out how to make the adjustment, for her sake.

Chapter Thirty-Six

SUSAN

We can store a memory away, but it never truly dies. We can ignore its existence, we can hide from the emotions it provokes, but it will return when the soil of life is overturned. For too many years I tried to hide, and for as many years the truth refused to die. I simply buried it again, daily.That these memories have now returned to play out in my mind with such crystal clarity reminds me of what I always knew: I will never escape the choice I made when the suffocating tidal wave of pain became the sting, then a gulp, then a cry. Confusion lay before me. A thing I knew, yet did not, became true.