Page 34 of Hope and Hot Chocolate on Mistletoe Lane

‘Of course. I have a whole holly range, actually.’ She looked down at her plate as she admitted that.

I raised an eyebrow. We had felt so distant the past few years but it seemed like she had thought about me like I had thought about her. I looked around the kitchen, picturing a time when we’d eaten this lasagne with my dad. He had joked that my mum’s lasagne was the reason he had married her. I had laughed a lot at that as Mum had rolled her eyes but flushed with pleasure. They’d smiled at each other and I remembered thinking that one day, I wanted to love someone as much as they loved each other.

What had happened to all that love?

Then I thought about what Paul had said to me outside the ice rink: that I should have shared with Mum what was going on at school, how tough things were when my dad left us. Maybe I had kept too much inside during that time. Maybe she didn’t fully understand why I had wanted to leave town so much.

‘How did you feel when Dad left?’ I asked before I could chicken out.

25

HOLLY

Mum’s head snapped up and our eyes met across the table. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I just feel like we never talk about it.’

‘You know I was devastated,’ she snapped. ‘Why are you bringing this up and ruining lunch?’

This was our problem: both of us shut down any discussion of the past. But it meant we never resolved anything. ‘Actually, Mum, I don’t know that. You never told me you were devastated when Dad left. In fact, you acted like nothing had happened and nothing was wrong. And told me off for not wanting to speak to him!’ I said, my voice rising in frustration. I didn’t like our relationship now. Being back in the cottage, I thought back to how things had been between us and I wished we could go back to that. Maybe talking about my dad might help.

Mum shook her head. ‘You misunderstood everything,’ she said. ‘Of course I was devastated! I loved him. He was my happy ever after. We made you. I thought we had a perfect family. His betrayal shocked me but I still had you to think about. I tried to put on a front for you so you wouldn’t see how broken I was. I didn’t want it to ruin your life as well!’

‘I thought you didn’t care,’ I whispered.

She stared at me for a moment. ‘I can’t believe you thought that. I was ashamed. He ran off with someone so much younger, and your teacher; she’d been over here for dinner. I liked her! You liked her!’ She let out a weary sigh. ‘The reason I wanted you to speak to him was because I thought you still needed your father and you’d regret it one day if you didn’t. And I suppose I thought you blamed me for it all. I didn’t want you to also blame me for losing contact with him.’

‘I thought you blamed me,’ I said, so stunned at her thinking it was the other way round that my sentence came out barely above a whisper.

‘It wasn’t your fault, Holly!’ she cried. ‘I thought I must have been a terrible wife for him to want to leave. But you did nothing wrong.’

‘We were happy once. Why did that change?’

There was a long silence. I didn’t think either of us had an answer to that. Maybe it was as simple as Dad fell in love with someone else and chose her, and a new life, over us. I had no idea what life that had turned out to be. I hadn’t done what Mum wanted; I’d cut off contact with him. Maybe I’d never know if he was happier without us. Maybe it was better not to know.

Paul’s advice about opening up to my mum came back to me. ‘Things were really hard at school.’ I broke the silence with that confession, blurting it out before I talked myself out of it. ‘I was teased and taunted about Dad running off with my teacher.’

‘What? Holly, you never said!’ She got up then and came round to my side of the table. She hesitated for a moment then leaned down to give me a quick hug. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that?’

‘Because Dad left and after that, you acted like nothing bad had happened. I thought you didn’t care. That you wouldn’t want to know. And like I said, I thought you blamed me for him going so you wouldn’t care if I was having problems at school. Maybe I thought…’ I took a deep breath before I could finish. ‘That I deserved it all.’

‘God, Holly, I haven’t been a good mother at all, have I? I’ve kept too much to myself. It sounds like we are more similar than we’d care to admit. You did the same as me and kept all that you were feeling inside.’ She walked back to her side and sank back down into her chair. ‘Is that why you left Birchbrook?’

‘There were a lot of reasons but yeah, it felt like the town was against me. And our relationship was strained. I liked the idea of a fresh start. I didn’t want to end up hating the town and resenting everyone in it like my dad obviously had.’

‘Your father was the one who wanted to move here,’ she said, surprising me again. I always thought it was my mum who had loved Birchbrook out of the two of them. ‘He had visited once with his family and always wanted to come back. Saw it as an idyllic place to start a family. And I fell in love with it too. You can’t blame a town for one person’s actions, Holly. Your dad would have left us wherever we lived. Maybe he wouldn’t have met her,’ she said, bitter about the woman, which I would never blame her for. ‘But the way he walked away without a second glance made me think he wasn’t the man I thought he was. He was never satisfied, never happy with what we had, and that would have been the case even if we hadn’t been in Birchbrook. People rallied around me. I was grateful to my friends here; I still am. Yes, I felt ashamed and there was gossip but that died down when you left. This town has really become somewhere lovely to live now.’

‘People keep telling me that,’ I replied dryly.

‘If I had known about what was going on at your school, I would have marched down there and made sure they put a stop to it all! I thought you were happy at school with Paul.’

‘He was my only ally there.’

‘He was devastated when you left. Used to come round for a cup of tea on his way home from school for the first couple of months.’

‘Really?’ The look on his face when I told him I’d liked him back then came into my mind. He’d looked so shocked but so happy. His whole face had come alive. The way he had instantly kissed me like he was unable not to had thrilled me. He was someone else that I’d kept my feelings from.

And I was still doing that with him now.