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

“For starters.”

She laughs. “Well, it turns out you need this little thing called money.”

“Ah yes, I know it well. Or not so well, in fact.”

“Likewise. And… I don’t know… I suppose if I’d really wanted those things that much I would have worked harder, made them happen. But perhaps I changed, too. Or perhaps I was never really that person in the first place. Perhaps that was just the hippy-chick I thought my mum wanted me to be.”

“Sounds like where you are now couldn’t be more different. About to marry a City boy, settle down in a nice part of town, have a couple of kids, start shopping at Waitrose…”

I’m just toying with her, but she playfully takes the bait.

“That’s right,” she quips, “I’ll be off in my Audi to stock up on quinoa…”

“… And organic baby food…”

“… Choosing a kitchen island…”

“… For your massive house in Woodside.”

She laughs. “Will’s not that rich. We can’t all have the privilege of living in such a posh area, sending our kids to the county’s best school.”

“Yeah, well, I admit I got lucky there for a while. Although I felt like a right fraud. The parents at that school used to look at me like I was scum.”

“Seriously?”

“God, yeah. I was just some scruffy young bloke always turning up late to everything, always rushing, never seemed to have the right bag or book or paperwork…”

“Well, I promise that when I’m dropping off little Tarquin and Geraldine, I won’t look down on any teenage, single parents that cross my path.”

“You’ll just mow them down in your Audi.”

“Damn right I will.”

“Tarquin and Geraldine?”

“Well, I don’t know. What do posh people call their kids these days?”

“I have no idea. Josh used to have a Sebastian in his class at primary school. And a Portia.”

“Oh, Portia. Good one. Portia and Sebastian it is then.”

“I’m holding you to that.”

Libby chuckles.

“God, listen to me,” she sighs, “you must think I’m a right sell-out, abandoning all those ambitions for a quiet life in the suburbs. It’s certainly what my mother thinks, anyway. The idea that I’m actually marrying a man – enslaving myself to him – is bad enough, but the fact that we’re planning a nice wedding and planning on buying a house… all materialistic, capitalist blah blah blah.”

“But I thought you said she was in a house now?”

“Ah, well, that’s an interesting point, the irony of which is not lost on me, but apparently is on her. But it’s different, you see, because she rents her house with two artists and a lesbian reiki master, and apparently it was their destiny to come together, and it’s a communal living arrangement, and they grow their own organic chard…”

“Ah, well, for a minute I thought she was being hypocritical, but if she grows her own chard…”

“Yeah, that makes all the difference, doesn’t it?”

I notice she’s slapping her paint on a bit more vigorously, and it’s clear that she’s outgrown the unquestioning adoration she once had for Harmonie. I can relate to the disappointment and anger at finding out your parents were never perfect like you thought, that they were just human all along. It’s a universal rite of passage. Josh used to tell me I was the best daddy in the world. Now he rolls his eyes at me every day in distain, each of my flaws and weaknesses magnified by his critical teenage eye.

“Well, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting a bit of security in life,” I tell Libby, wanting to reassure her. “I know it was hard for you growing up. You never had much—”

“That’s not actually why I’m marrying Will,” she says, eyeing me like I’ve just accused her of being a gold-digger.

“No, God, I didn’t think… I mean, I know that. I just meant you shouldn’t let your mum make you feel guilty—”

“I don’t.”

“Oh, okay, it just sounded—”

“Well, I mean I do, obviously, because it all goes against my upbringing and she tries to make me feel guilty. But, unfortunately, I didn’t fall in love with some lentil-eating cloth-weaver – although Lord knows she tried to introduce me to enough of them – I fell in love with Will.”

I feel a stab of jealousy, followed by a flash of anger with myself. What the hell is the matter with me?! She’s not mine anymore. She’s not mine!

“Well, that’s good,” I say firmly, concentrating hard on the strokes of my brush, the white gradually covering over the brickwork, “that’s good that you’re… that you found someone who makes you happy. That’s all that really matters.”

I’m struck by how much I mean it, how much I want her happiness. She deserves it. She deserves the love, the family, the security that she always craved, and if that happens to come with a few nice things, then all the better. And no one should ever make her feel bad about it.

“If Will makes you happy, then it sounds like you’ve found what’s right for you,” I tell her.

She dips her brush in the paint pot and stirs it around again and again. I watch her out the corner of my eye. She looks lost in thought.

“Well, exactly,” she mutters, stirring slowly, “I mean, that’s what really matters.”

She keeps stirring for so long that I wonder what to say. Does she look sad?

I’m about to ask if she’s okay when she looks up, a smile plastered back on her face.

“Your tea’s getting cold,” she says.

We talk more about our families, our jobs, the changes in Timpton. It feels strange, having an adult conversation with her. We used to talk excitedly about our hopes, dreams and ambitions. Now she’s trying to explain Will’s plan to get an off-set mortgage and we’re lamenting the arrival of a Wetherspoon’s in the town. As we fill each other in on the details of our lives, it all seems so far from what we had once envisaged when we were young and the world was full of possibilities.

She