Very beautiful, and a slightly painful, jab-in-the-ribs reminder of just how far I have to go in my life to start to feel like a fully functioning adult. How many years will it be before I even begin thinking about having a baby? I try to imagine it – I haven’t even really given it much thought, and yet I am turning thirty this year. God, if I had a baby at, say, thirty-seven – I start doing sums in my head, and rapidly extend them to my fingers – I’d be fifty-seven by the time it turned twenty. That sounded like a lifetime away.

I think when Gen and Soph and I were young, we’d all been quite certain that by this age we’d all be settled and happy. Domestic bliss felt like a lifetime away for me. I guess that’s what happens when you start all over again at the age of almost thirty.

Chapter Nineteen: Alex

Chapter Nineteen

Alex

10th May

I get on the train to Canterbury. Not sure why it feels like the right thing to do, but it’s been nagging at me. I dunno, maybe I’m reading too much into it, but the last couple of times we’ve spoken on the phone Mum’s sounded a bit fragile: keen to tell me how busy she is, and how much she’s got on.

I stare out of the window as the train pulls away, watching the familiar landmarks. I’ve sat on this same train countless times. An older man in an expensive-looking suit clears his throat in the chair opposite and spreads his newspaper over the table, and I feel a stab of grief. Weird how it hits you. It’s not the anniversaries or the birthdays, it’s the way a stranger shakes their newspaper open, or a song on the radio at the nurses’ station, that reminds you of what you’ve lost. I rub my face with both hands, screwing up my eyes and then opening them wide. I can’t remember not being tired. Everything’s just a blur of—

I wake up as we pull into the station at Canterbury, because someone knocks me on the shoulder with their bag as they’re pulling it down from the racks overhead.

‘Sorry, mate.’

‘You’ve done me a favour,’ I say gratefully. I stand up, blearily, and pull my ticket out of my pocket as I get off the train.

I see my mother before she sees me – she’s sitting in the car, waiting in the pick-up area beside the car park.

‘Hello, darling,’ she says, and gives me a kiss on the cheek.

‘Mum.’

‘I thought we could get a bit of lunch before we head home – go to the Red Lion?’ she says, and we pull out of the car park.

The pub’s busy, despite it being a weekday. We squeeze into a table in the corner and scan the menus.

‘I spoke to Gwen the other day,’ my mum says, casually.