Halifax, Canada
January 2016

The part where the heartaches come

With an elegant stretch of his body, George jumps on the bed and comes to stand next to my head, one front paw on my pillow.

"Hello, Georgie," I greet him absent-mindedly and stretch out a hand to pet his head. He purrs, though I know it's less in appreciation of my stroking and more in an attempt to get me to give him food.

"I'm sure Dad already fed you," I tell George. "Dad always feeds you. You know fully well that you just have to look at him with those eyes of yours and he melts away. You've got him wrapped around your paw alright."

George bumps his head against my hand and purrs louder.

"You are not a starving cat, Georgie," I inform him, though it's apparent that he disagrees. As f ar as this cat is concerned, he is forever being starved and his life very lamentable indeed.

I scratch George's ears affectionately, but that's not what he is looking for. Deeming the purring and hand-bumping to be insufficiently effective, he resolves to resort to more pointed measures instead. Climbing on top of me (and putting one paw directly in my stomach in a way that has me make an involuntary oof-sound), he proceeds to lie down on my chest, his face inches away from mine, never once breaking the rhythm of his purring.

"Hello, Georgie," I repeat, unable to fight a smile.

He blinks at me.

Using one hand to stroke the length of his back, I move the other to scratch him beneath his chin. He closes his eyes and obligingly raises his head to give me better access.

"Cuddling isn't so bad, is it?" I ask him.

George briefly opens one eye as if to say that yes, cuddling is nice and well, but food is even better.

"See, Georgie, the problem with you trying to convince me to get up and give you food by lying on top of me is, well, that you're lying on top of me," I explain to him, gesturing briefly at our set-up.

In response, he opens the other eye and looks at me, thoroughly unimpressed.

"I can't dislodge you because that clearly won't do, but I've also not mastered the art of being in two places at once, so as long as you sit there, I'm physically unable to provide you with food," I elaborate, my voice apologetic.

George blinks once more, clearly of the opinion that I should learn to duplicate ASAP if that's the only thing standing between him and immediate access to food.

"Is that cat ever not hungry?" asks Mum's amused voice from somewhere behind George's ears and I crane my neck to look past him to where she's standing by the open door. (I tried to keep that door closed initially, but once George arrived, it was a futile fight. George opposes the very concept of a closed door and is not shy to vocalise his discontent.)

"In six years of knowing him, I've certainly never seen him turn his nose up at anything edible," I reply, smiling.

George, meanwhile, uses that very nose to sniff at my face, before stretching forward in a way that makes alarm bells ring in my head. I just manage to get a hand between his tongue and my face to prevent myself from getting thoroughly licked. "No slobbering, Georgie," I tell him sternly. "We talked about this!"

Unperturbed, George settles on licking the back of my hand instead, which I allow with a long-suffering sigh. Hands are less of a hassle to wash than faces.

Mum has watched the spectacle from her place near the door and I can see her smile at our antics. "He's really quite the character," she remarks and comes closer.

"That he is," I agree as I scoot over to make space for her to sit on the edge of the bed. George briefly stops washing my hand to eye Mum, but when she reaches out to scratch that particular spot on front of his tail he seems to decide that she can stay and returns to his ministrations of my left hand.

"He's settling in well?" Mum asks, meaning George.

I shrug as best as I can in my lying position with a cat sitting heavily on my chest. "Reasonably well. He dislikes not being able to go outside and of course he's starving, but when is he ever not?"

"Your father suggested building him a ladder so he can go outside from the kitchen window," Mum tells me. "He and Jem are almost finished with Zoe's crib and I think they're looking for a new project anyway."

My father and oldest brother, it has turned out, have become quite enthusiastic do-it-yourselfers in recent months. When it became clear that Jem and Faith would add to the family, the father- and grandfather-to-be set out to build the entire furniture for the nursery with their very own hands, much to the not-so-secret amusement of their wives. Amusement aside though, they did a pretty great job and the furniture looks to be pretty and quite sturdy, which I guess shouldn't be as a much of a surprise as it is. I mean, what is a surgeon, after all, but a glorified handyman?

"Sure, sounds good," I agree. "I'll keep him inside for a while longer so he can get settled here, but I always planned for him to go outside in the future. We might as well make it safe and easy for him."

Mum looks at me a little weirdly and too late I realise what I just walked into.

"So, the two of you plan on staying here for the time being?" she asks carefully.

I silently curse myself. I really should have seen that question coming!

Instead of answering directly, I look at George, who has apparently deemed my hand to be sufficiently clean now and has turned to washing his own front paw with an expression of deep concentration on his handsome little face.

"Are you tired of us already?" I finally ask Mum, trying to turn the question into a joke by accompanying it with an unconvincing laugh.

"I could never tire of having one of my children with me!" she exclaims, almost indignant. "And that cat of yours is a right little charmer as well, so I'm certainly not tired of having him around. I was merely wondering…"

She trails off. I smile wryly. George starts cleaning the other paw.

"I know what you were wondering," I reply soberly. "I wish I could give you an answer that's more than to say that yes, we're here now and there's nowhere else for us to go."

Mum nods thoughtfully. "Returning to England is out of the question, I take it?"

I gesture at George, who is just settling his head on his paw and closing his eyes, his purring intensifying when Mum starts stroking his back.

"I brought him here," I point out. "That should be a hint."

"It is," acknowledges Mum. "I was just thinking… well, England has been your home for the past three years and New York before that. You haven't lived in Canada full-time since graduating high school."

"If you're implying I have been a bad Canadian, I'd like to inform you that they haven't revoked my passport yet," I joke, though like the last one, this, too, falls flat.

Mum raises a polite smile, but her furrowed brow tells me I'm far from off the hook. "You're a perfectly respectable Canadian, if a little squeamish about the cold recently," she assures me. "My point was just that your home has been England for so long that it might still be, with or without him in the picture."

I make a sceptical sound. George, thus disturbed, opens one eye slightly to glare at me.

"It didn't feel like there was much for me in England without him in the picture," I reply finally, trying and failing to keep my tone nonchalant.

"You had your job, your home, your charity work, your friends…" Mum lists, ticking off the different aspects on her fingers.

"I had my friends," I correct. "In fact, I still have them. Lucy and Dev have been nothing short of amazing throughout all of this. That's where it ends though. They're all I've still got in England."

"Your job –" begins Mum, but breaks off when I shake my head. George shifts slightly on my chest, the claws of his right paw lightly digging into the skin at my shoulder and making me wince.

"I got that job because I was dating him, same as I got the house because I was dating him," I explain, carefully composed. "Even some of my friends only became my friends because of the connection to him, to say nothing of his family. They all assured me they want to keep in touch with me, but it's… not the same. The only things I really had for myself were my Oxford friends and the youth centre and that…" I trail off and shake my head briefly. "That is more Sam's than mine, so it's out of the question as well," I finish.

As I talk, I keep my eyes on George, but I can feel Mum looking at me. I know she's trying to decide which of the information I just gave her to hone in on first. Finally, she asks, "What about this Sam? Have you heard from him?"

I grimace. "I certainly did. He went to elaborate length to message me and beg for a chance to explain. Apparently, he thought the song would be a tribute to me and a way to show the world that I'm more than what they see in me. He says he didn't realise it would look like he was using me to sell his music and that he certainly didn't mean to do it."

"Do you believe him?" Mum wants to know.

I blow out a puff of air. George's fur vibrates slightly and he shoots me another glare.

"I don't know," I answer. "His record company certainly did it on purpose and while part of me thinks he's too nice to have knowingly agreed to it, another part can't help wondering whether he really is so naïve not to have realised it. Either way though, it doesn't matter."

"No?" asks Mum, raising both eyebrows.

I shake my head. "Sometimes, it doesn't matter why someone did something, it just matters that they did it in the first place. I increasingly feel this is one of those situations."

"That is certainly your decision to make," acknowledges Mum and I incline my head slightly.

We briefly fall silent after that, me stroking George and her watching me closely. I can feel her eyes on my face, not wavering even when she asks, "What about Ken? Have you heard from him?"

My hand stills on George's back as my heart clenches painfully. My chest suddenly feels tight and with the extra weight of the cat, it's hard to breath. Carefully, I transfer George to lie next to me on the bed and sit up, coming eye-to-eye with Mum. George, not well-pleased with having his rest disturbed, uncurls his body and jumps from the bed with the same elegance with which he jumped on it, before proceeding to stalk out of the room, undoubtedly in search of Dad and a tin of cat food.

"Not a word since I left KP on the night we… well, ended things," I tell Mum tightly. "Complete radio silence."

"How does that make you feel?" she asks cautiously.

I smile wryly. That's really the million dollar question, isn't it?

"I know it's the right thing not to get in touch," I reply, though that's not quite what she asked. "We need this to be… clean. A clean cut."

Once again, Mum studies me for a long moment. "So, it's over for good?"

Swallowing heavily, I try to get my feelings under control. "I quit my job, I gave notice to my landlords, I boxed up all my belongings and I'm having them shipped here later this month," I point out, my voice too strained to hit the nonchalance I was aiming for. "I'd say that's for good, wouldn't you?"

"I say that you're not answering my question and you know it," Mum replies, somehow managing to sound both stern and sympathetic at the same time.

I frown at her, but know better to protest. Instead, I silently nod my head, not quite trusting myself to speak the words, just like I don't trust myself to say his name.

I didn't notice it at first, but while I still think of him as Ken, I don't speak of him as such anymore and haven't done so in weeks, perhaps not since that fateful night at Wren House. My avoidance of calling him by his name hasn't gone unnoticed either, with Dad jokingly referring to him as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, which at least succeeded in raising a smile from me. I rarely feel like smiling these days.

"I won't ask how this makes you feel," Mum remarks after a long moment. "It would be a foolish question."

"Yes," I manage through my constricted throat. "Yes, it would be." After all, it doesn't take a genius to know I'm far from well.

"I won't pretend to know how you feel either," Mum continues. "That would be preposterous."

I nod. Mum, like Joy, has never experienced heartbreak, at least not of the romantic kind. There were flirtations before Dad, but he was her first and only love. Once they were together, neither of them ever looked back and while I would certainly not begrudge anyone that happiness, it gives me a pang to know how easy it can be for some people, this love business.

"It bloody hurts," I mutter, frowning. "You'd think it would start getting better after a month, but if anything, it's feeling worse. In the beginning, it was like I was… numb. Now I've had time to think and… it's still no good. And that's even though I've tried every cliché in the book! Too much chocolate, cheap wine, sad music, bad rom-coms… nothing helps!"

(Secretly reading every scrap of information I can find of Ken on the internet and trying to discern how he feels from pictures of him also doesn't help, but however much I know that, I can't make myself stop.)

Mum makes a sympathetic noise. "You don't overcome five years in five short weeks."

"I wish I could," I grumble. "I'd like all of this to be behind me, please."

"Maybe it would be easier if you distracted yourself," Mum suggests cautiously. "With something more than movies and chocolate, I mean. If you had less time to think, maybe there'd be less time for it to hurt so."

I jerk my head impatiently to the side at that suggestion. "What could I possibly distract myself with?"

"We could try and think of something," Mum replies and I know she's intentionally making her voice sound encouraging. "What would you enjoy doing?"

Slumping against the headboard of my parents' guest bed, I turn my head away and glare at the wall. "I don't know."

"It doesn't have to be anything big," Mum insists. "Just something that you think might be fun."

Abruptly, I turn back to look at her and while I try to lose the glare, I'm not sure I manage completely. "I have nothing, okay? Nothing. I lost my entire sodding life and I have no idea what to do. Not for fun and not in any other way!"

There's a certain irony to it that is not lost on me. I left Ken to look for something else, something more, and now that I have the freedom to do so, I have no idea where to find it or even where to begin looking. Instead of like an opportunity, it feels like I had the very floor ripped from under my feet. Instead of getting to know myself better, I feel like I don't know myself at all anymore.

With a frustrated sigh, I shake my head. "My entire life revolved around him and I didn't want that anymore, but now it's like… like I lost my tether. I'm all adrift and I don't know… I don't know. It all feels so empty. Like there's nothing left in my life."

Mum reaches out to stroke my hair. "Oh, honey."

I sniff loudly, but allow her touch. There's no-one to comfort you like Mum.

"There's plenty left in your life," she assures me gently. "For one, you're clever, accomplished and kind, not to mention very pretty –"

Holding up a hand, I interrupt her right there. "I'm not clever, I'm not accomplished and I don't really know about kind. I am pretty, but that's not something you can build a life on unless you're Gisele sodding Bündchen!"

Mum looks at me with sad eyes. "That's not true, darling."

"But it is!" I insist. "I'm the family's resident dunce and I'd thank you not to insult what limited intelligence I have by telling me otherwise. I'm clever enough to know that."

Again, Mum considers me with that look that is sadness and disappointment and that I can't bear. Unwilling, I lower my own gaze and stare down at my hands

"You're so much more than you believe, sweetheart, and I just wish I could make you see that," Mum tells me carefully. "You just came out of a relationship that defined the major part of your adult life so far and I know that cannot be easy. It's perfectly normal to have to reorient yourself, but you definitely aren't nothing without him and though it might not feel that way right now, there's plenty in your life still."

"And what would that be?" I ask sullenly

"For one, there's George," she reminds me with a smile in her voice.

Reluctantly, I look at her out of the corner of my eye and, though I try my utmost to fight it, feel the left corner of my mouth lift in an approximation of a half-smile. "There is George," I concede.

"There is also your family and I assure you we all love you very much," Mum adds, now more earnest.

I nod my head up and down abruptly to acknowledge her point.

"And there are your friends, who I imagine are very worried about you and the way you've been shutting yourself away from them," she finishes, sounding very sure of it indeed.

Slowly, I turn my head to look at her. "Lucy and Dev have been great," I admit. "They totally propped me up during those last weeks in London. Josh would have, too, had he been there. I've not been shutting myself away from them though. I mean, Lucy wouldn't let me if I tried!"

"I like that Lucy of yours," Mum remarks with a smile.

"Everyone loves Lucy," I inform her. "And if they don't, they should. She's certainly well-named."

Mum smiles approvingly at the weak joke, though it's probably more that I made a joke at all that she approves of. Lucy herself would certainly have allowed it only grudgingly and only because I'm an emotional train wreck right now and can't be expected to make better jokes. The I Love Lucy references are the bane of her existence, as she's lamented about many times before.

"I've also been in touch with Seraphina and Nia," I tell Mum to make my point (and conveniently ignoring the fact that in fact, they have been in touch with me). "Though Nia maybe counts as family now?"

"She can be both," Mum decides generously and I suppose that covers all our bases.

Mum, alas, has already moved on. "What about your other friends in England?" she wants to know and peers at me curiously.

I purse my lips unhappily. "Tatty and Katie, you mean?" For, of all my acquaintances in England, those two certainly belong firmly in the 'friends' bracket, right alongside the Oxford trio.

"For example." Mum nods.

Shifting slightly, I pick up a corner of the quilt on the bed and start folding it into itself. "They were nice about it," I answer slowly. "They didn't ask many questions, which I'm sure must have killed Tatty, but I think they didn't want to pry. They assured me they were not taking sides – which no-one would want them to either – and that they count me as their friends regardless of what happens between me and… me and him."

"That is very nice of them," Mum remarks, but her tone tells me she knows this isn't everything.

I sigh and let go of the quilt. "It is. They are nice, incredibly so. They are, however, also his. Katie is his cousin, Tatty is the oldest friend he has. I only met them because of him in the first place. Don't you think it would be… well, weird to continue to be friends with them when they're so close to him?"

Mum makes a hmm-sound as she takes her time to think this over. Finally, she answers, "I don't think it would be weird, no. You developed your own friendship with them and I don't see why that should be invalid now. Besides, don't they also get to decide who they want to be friends with?"

We-ell… That's a good point, actually.

I don't answer, but my thoughts must be evident enough on my face, because Mum nods, satisfied. "Glad we cleared that up," she declares. "Now, what about his family?"

And just like that, I'm back to being cautious. "What about them?"

My mother, however, just gives me one of her looks that tells me very plainly not to be cute. I know her better than to try and assert myself in the light of such a look, so I hurry to give her more information, "They basically said the same thing Katie and Tatty did about not wanting to miss me from their lives and they were equally lovely about it. Leslie called, Teddy messaged and Owen wrote a very nice letter. Persis even turned up on my doorstep and made it very clear that she disapproves of the… development."

The memory raises the ghost of a smile on my face. Everyone else was very understanding about the situation and very nice about offering their support, but Persis left little doubt that if it was up to her, Ken and I would get back together immediately. At the time, I didn't know how to handle it and was grateful for Lucy stepping in, but looking back, there's something touching about the vehemence with which she tried to convince me that things could be patched over.

"So, yet more people you're important to," Mum points out, clearly pleased with herself. "And if you give me more of that nonsense about them belonging to Ken and you not having the right to a relationship with them, then I swear to God –"

I shake my head and she breaks off.

"It's not that," I tell her.

When she gives me another look, I amend, "Well, it's not only that. It's more… they remind me of him and being reminded of him hurts like… like… like you wouldn't believe."

It doesn't sound right, but I've long given up trying to find words for the kind of hurt I feel when I think of Ken. All I have are overused metaphors and they just sound silly. The truth is, it hurts more than anything else ever hurt before and it certainly hurts enough to still make me cry myself to sleep every night.

"Oh, sweetie," sighs Mum.

She extends an arm to slip around my shoulders and draw me close. Briefly, the more recalcitrant part of me considers resisting, but the bigger part simply craves comfort, so I allow her to pull me into a hug. We sit like that for several minutes, Mum holding me close and me burying my face against her chest and doing my very best not to cry. After all, I'll do enough of that tonight, when it's dark and there's no Mum to hold me.

It takes several minutes until Mum lets go of me and even then, it's only to grasp my shoulders and turn me firmly towards her. When I try to avoid her gaze by lowering my eyes, she gives me a brief shake so that I end up looking her directly in the eye.

"I know you won't like hearing this, but everything you just said really proved my point," she informs me.

I incline my head warily.

"You, my darling, need distraction," Mum continues bluntly. "It breaks my heart to see you hurt like this and I know it won't get better as long as you hide away from the world in our guest room and keep thinking of nothing else but this."

She's making sense, maddeningly enough. The very thought of crawling out of bed to face the world out there is utterly exhausting, but I can't deny that over a month of wallowing hasn't exactly succeeded in making me feel better. And since we're talking about exhaustion, I'm so, so exhausted of feeling like this.

"What do you suggest?" I ask slowly.

Mum smiles, clearly pleased. "Much as I otherwise resent it, there are some advantages to having most of my brood spread all over North America, the main advantage being the fact that they are spread all over North America. You can chose which sibling I will dispatch you to first, but you will go visit one of them. It's decided."

Yes. It's also impossible to argue with Mum when she's like this. She's terrifyingly like her own mother when in such a mood, though no-one dares say that to her face.

"Your father and I will, of course, look after that cat of yours," she adds as an afterthought.

That would have been my main protest and I know she knows me well enough to know that. It also leaves me with fairly few other arguments to make besides pointing out that I'm tired, that the world is scary and that I wouldn't mind staying curled up in her guest bed forever – none of which, I know, will do anything to convince Mum. This was a lost battle before it even began.

I sigh in marked exasperation. "Dad will spoil him rotten, won't he?"

Mum just grins.


The title of this chapter is taken from the song 'If You Could Read My Mind' (written by Gordon Lightfoot, released by him in 1970).


To Guest:
Well, the one advantage of the breakup is that it moves Rilla back to the same continent as her family ;). Also, Anne is certainly correct to say that their family setup lends itself to lots of visits, so you can look forward to more stays with various family members (or almost family members) in the upcoming chapters! It'll be a little while before we see Jake again, but I hope the other characters we meet and re-meet will make up for it. I'm certainly very pleased to hear that you like Jake, because I have a very soft spot for him myself!

To Mammu:
Hello, hello! I'm glad to hear from you again and glad that you're well, though sorry to hear that you've been sick. I hope it wasn't too bad and that you're fully recovered now! You don't have long to go now until the little one makes her appearance, right? I'm having my fingers crossed it all goes well - and doesn't take too long ;).
I had to laugh at mummy brain, because that's absolutely a thing. I seem to remember that there's a real biological explanation for it, so it really does exist. It's also easily observed and as you might find out, it is often accompanied by a complete lack of squeamishness when it comes to talking about very intimate details. A good friend had a baby last month and you better believe I know
all about the birth, including all the gory bits. And no, I definitely didn't ask for them ;).
You were, of course, justified in your annoyance with Rilla. She didn't behave very maturely in these past chapters and absolutely needed a good shake a couple of times. Alas, she did finally end up communicating her struggles and even though it did lead directly to the breakup, I also think it was much needed. They had to take that step back to get a chance to re-evaluate their situation, so that they can figure out what went wrong - and maybe, hopefully, do better when the times comes for a second chance...