The End is Where We Begin by Maria Goodin (open ebook .txt) 📕

“I still do. Although Will won’t watch them with me, so I just don’t bother normally. It’s no fun watching films on your own, is it?”

I disagree with her, but I don’t say so. I’ve spent hours sitting in the dark watching films in blissful solitude, so long I can’t imagine it being any other way.

“Well,” I say, searching for something that will take us back to where we were a minute ago, pre-Will, pre-the-stress-of-adulthood, “I never did get to find out what happened at the start of X-Men, so if you ever find out—”

“You’ll be the first to know,” she laughs.

We paint quietly for a while. Josh has his headphones in, and he’s painting slowly, sloppily, with the same minimum effort he affords most tasks.

“So,” starts up Libby again, “when you moved out of your house, what did you do? Where did you and Josh go?”

“Well, at that point Brenda moved in. And she had a little flat on the outskirts of Woodside – right down the road from where Michael grew up actually – and the mortgage was paid off and everything, so she let me and Josh move in there. The primary school was one of the best in the county.”

“Yeah, that’s a nice part of town.”

“Really nice. The flat was tiny. Just one bedroom, so I spent the next four years sleeping in the lounge, but I don’t really know what we would have done otherwise. I mean, even once I started working, I wasn’t earning anything near enough to rent somewhere.”

“But how did you manage? I mean, with work and childcare…”

“Actually my sister was…” Argumentative? Erratic? A bitch? “…amazing, if you can believe that.”

Libby eyes me like I’ve lost my mind.

“Yeah, I know! But, seriously, she adjusted her working hours to do school drop-offs, she covered sports days if I couldn’t be there. I honestly don’t know what I would have done without her. Or Michael. I mean, without the two of them…”

I don’t mention the ups and downs, the fact that Michael was sometimes like a second dad to Josh – chipping in with school pick-ups, taking him to the park on the weekends when I had to work – and at other times incapable of getting out of bed or lifting his head off the floor. I know other people might question my judgement, but he was one of the few people I always trusted with my son. The only person Michael had ever been a risk to was himself.

“And your mum?”

I shake my head and no doubt make a poor job of hiding my bitterness.

“Nope. She made promises before Josh was born about how she’d help with everything, but once she’d moved out… I mean, she helped a bit at first, but then, after about a year, she followed Jack to Ireland, got a lecturing job. We barely spoke for years.”

“My God, it’s so weird how things turn out, isn’t it? How people surprise you – in good ways or bad.”

“Sure is,” I mutter, trying not to dwell on thoughts of my mum. Over the years, my anger’s dissipated, and I’ve started to see her side of things. She was right, I guess; I made my bed, it was my job to lie in it. But still, when I look at Josh now, not far off the age I was when Hellie got pregnant, I still wonder how she could have abandoned me to it.

“I mean, look at you,” piped up Libby, “who would have thought you’d cope with a child? You were just a boy who didn’t know how to boil an egg… I mean, literally!”

I nod and smile. “And you thought that was outrageous.”

“It was outrageous! Fifteen years old and no egg-boiling ability! You couldn’t work your washing machine, didn’t know how the iron worked, couldn’t read bus timetables because Mummy and Daddy used to drive you everywhere—”

“Yeah, okay, okay.”

“Couldn’t even work the oven! Do you remember when you tried to cook me a special meal for my birthday and it was still raw?”

“Yeah, all right,” I smile, “just because you were little Miss Independent. I was your average teenage boy—”

“But look at what you did!” She looks over at Josh, staring again like she’s never seen a human boy before. “You raised a son. On your own.”

“Oh no, not on my own,” I protest.

“Well, as a single parent, I mean. And he seems like a good boy. I mean, he’s here first thing on a Sunday morning—”

“Not through choice, I promise you.”

“Nevertheless. It’s impressive. I’m really proud of you.”

I turn to her, surprised, and she blushes, before quickly going back to her painting.

“I mean, you should be proud of yourself,” she says with an awkward laugh.

I watch Josh, lazily painting away, nodding his head to whichever black-eyed androgynous vocalist is attempting to burst his eardrums today. It’s never occurred to me that I should be proud of myself. Proud of him, yes, but not of myself. I’ve always seen myself as someone who screwed up, had a child too young with a girl I barely knew, wasted my education, wasted my opportunities. I dwell on the things I haven’t provided for my son – a nice home, a proper family unit, a range of horrendously expensive extracurricular activities that a lot of his friends seem to have access to. A mother. He should have had so much more.

“So, anyway,” I say, not used to talking so much about myself, “what about you?”

“What about me?”

“Well, what did you do after…” After I broke your heart? After I screwed up that great thing we had? “…you know, after you left here?”

“Well, like I said, I went to uni, flunked out of that, did various jobs, rented various rooms, moved about a bit. Then I met Will.” She shrugs, as if the rest should be self-explanatory.

“So, what about all the stuff you wanted to do?”

“Trek the Andes, traverse the desert plains on camel back, do an