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

I need her to know, after all these years, that letting her go was one of the hardest things I ever did. “But I just… I wanted you to be happy. And free.”

“Of you?”

“Of me, of the mess I was in—”

“But that should have been my decision.”

I think of Josh this evening telling me exactly the same thing.

We sit in silence and I barely dare to breathe.

“We should go,” she says.

I look out at the dark street ahead of me, and when she doesn’t say anything more, I go to turn the key in the ignition. But then I stop. There’s so much I want to tell her: that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about her, that I’ve been flooded with memories of the past, that my dad isn’t who I thought he was, that I’m worried I’ve screwed things up with my son, that I feel like an empty vessel…

“Libby, are you happy?” I ask, because in the midst of everything else that’s going on, right now this is what I really want to know.

There’s a long pause.

“Why are you asking me that?”

“Because I want to know. And because I’m still allowed to care about you, aren’t I? I still want you to be happy.”

She opens her mouth to speak, but then turns away again.

“Can we just go?”

We drive through the dark streets in a silence so awkward and confusing that it’s almost painful. When we pull into the car park of the Canal House, she fumbles in the dark to open the van door. I reach over her and lift the latch, so close I can feel the warmth of her body, smell the scent of her hair.

“I hope you and Josh manage to sort things out,” she says, stepping onto the concrete, about to close the door behind her.

“Libby—”

We stare at each other.

“I need to go,” she tells me.

Once more I know something’s shifted between us, taken us into a place it feels forbidden to go, where sentences are left hanging and nothing seems to make sense. But I don’t understand it and I don’t know what to do with it.

I nod. “Okay. Well, thanks for coming with me.”

She offers me a weak smile, shuts the door and heads across the dark car park, leaving me wondering what the hell happened tonight.

I wait at home the next morning until Josh comes back from Michael’s, pushing past me at the front door and heading into his room without a word.

“I’m tired,” he mumbles, when I try to talk to him.

“Have you had breakfast?”

“I’m not hungry,” he says, kicking off his shoes and flopping down on the bed. “I just want to sleep. Can you shut the door?”

I stand in the doorway, uncertainly.

“Please,” he grumbles.

I close the door sadly.

That evening, I insist Josh stays home. We need to talk. But my explanations are met with stony silence, as are my apologies. I get nothing back but contemptuous glances. He simply isn’t ready to engage.

In the end, I wonder if it’s best to let the dust settle, talk things through in a couple of days when he might have calmed down. My main concern at the moment is to build a bridge between us, so the next morning I try a different tack.

“Why don’t we go to kickboxing?” I suggest, when he slopes into the kitchen. “Burn off some steam?”

He lazily flicks the kettle on, peers inside a box of Shreddies as if they disgust him, and then opens the cupboard.

“We’ll stop at McDonald’s, get some pancakes on the way.”

Josh gazes at the almost-empty shelves as if he’s longing for an alternative breakfast option to suddenly materialise in front of him, but when it doesn’t, he shrugs.

“Whatever,” he mumbles.

Josh eats his pancakes in the van just as he always eat them – drowning in syrup, rolled up and devoured in a couple of gluttonous mouthfuls. This is a good sign, I think, seeing as he refused to eat any dinner last night. But he still won’t talk to me, and we make the twenty-minute drive to the gym in silence.

“Ah, welcome back!” beams Rob as we enter his class.

Josh walks straight past him without an acknowledgement.

I open my mouth, about to call him up on his rudeness, but Rob sidles up next to me.

“Don’t worry,” he says, his Dutch accent creeping through, “let him work it out in here.”

“He might need more than the hour then,” I mutter.

Rob laughs. “I’ll make sure he works hard and burns it all off.”

Rob has a calm, reassuring presence about him that I think might be good for Josh today. Nothing ever seems to faze him. I can’t imagine what it takes to be that calm, but if it’s the punishing fitness regime, vegetarian diet and strict avoidance of caffeine, alcohol and sugar that does it, then I don’t think I have what it takes.

“Right,” shouts Rob to the class, clapping his hands, “so pair up, gloves and pads on, free pad work starting and ending with twenty straight punches. Go!”

Josh grabs his boxing gloves and gets ready to pair up with one of his usual partners – a guy called Nicco who’s about his age, or a regional champion called Steph who matches his size but could probably kick the crap out of anyone in this room.

“Hey, let’s partner up for a change,” I suggest to Josh.

He raises his eyes despairingly towards the ceiling but doesn’t protest.

I hold the pads for him and I can tell he’s wound up from the way he attacks them. This is meant to be a warm-up, but the thud of his gloves and the thwack of his feet against the pads ricochet off the walls, and I have to plant my bare soles into the floor to stop myself stumbling backwards. Within a few minutes he’s red-faced, sweat glistening on his forehead.

“Twenty straight!” Rob yells.

I hold the pads at shoulder height and Josh punches fast: left, right,