and Betty are so kind,’ Grace answered, bringing her thoughts back to Phil and his beard, which was now burrowing into the side of her neck and making her skin all irritated and itchy.
‘But you could do yourself a favour and just pack it in,’ he suggested.
‘Why would I do that?’
‘Well, it’s not like you need the money or it’s a proper career or anything! Not when you’re all set up here.’ Phil paused burrowing and glanced around the room. ‘If you play your cards right, this house will be yours one day. And you must get a fair whack in benefits and stuff, what with you being your mum’s carer. You might even get more if you didn’t work and looked after her full time.’
‘I don’t, actually. And I do need the money. Plus the house will probably be split between all four of us …’ Grace leant forward to reach another slice of pizza.
‘What?’ Phil said, aghast. ‘But that’s not fair. Surely it should be all yours seeing as you are the one doing all the work, and saving the rest of them a fortune on care-home costs? When my nan was old and had to go into a home, my dad sold her house to pay for it so there was no money left for any of us.’ Grace could see that Phil had given her mother’s care needs a great deal of thought …
‘Anyway, let’s enjoy the film while we can before Mum needs me upstairs,’ Grace said, keen to move the conversation on. Phil lifted his arm away from around her shoulders and swivelled his body on the sofa until he was facing her.
‘How about I need you upstairs?’ he grinned, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively as he picked a stray curl of red hair away from her face. ‘Come on, Gracie … bet your mum is fast asleep by now. She’s probably snoring.’ And he pressed pause on the TV remote control to cock an ear up to the ceiling, as if to prove his point. Grace swallowed her mouthful of pizza and looked at Phil. She did fancy him but, to be honest, she really didn’t feel like going to bed with him right now. She was exhausted, and with her mother in the bedroom next door of their tiny terrace house where the walls were paper thin … well, it just didn’t feel right.
‘Not tonight, Phil. It’s late and I have work in the morning. And I’m tired, I was up again with Mum last night and—’
‘You see! There you go again …’ Phil sat back and folded his arms like a petulant child.
‘What do you mean?’ Grace asked tentatively. She really wasn’t in the mood for this kind of conversation.
‘Well, I thought we had sorted all this out and agreed we would put each other first for a change, instead of you always putting your mother first. I even let you pick the film!’
‘I’m doing my best, Phil.’
‘Are you? You know, I reckon you don’t even want to put me first.’
‘Of course I do.’ Grace heard her voice jump up an octave. ‘But I can’t just not bother with my mother … what would become of her if I just did whatever I liked and wasn’t around to care for her?’ She cringed as the sense of déjà vu shot through her, for she was certain she had said the exact same words to Matthew shortly before she had found him in bed with another woman. ‘My mother can barely even move on her own, so she’d end up dying of hunger,’ she added, bleakly, desperate to make some kind of sense of the situation she was in now, and with no way out anytime soon that she could see.
‘Doubt it! The size of her,’ Phil muttered as he drained the last of a can of beer.
‘Pardon?’
‘Nothing. Only joking.’ He marshalled a swift smile on to his face before carrying on with, ‘I know you can’t just “not bother” with her and I wasn’t suggesting you abandon her or anything. But you could get someone else in to look after her. It doesn’t have to be you all the time. Anyone would think you like being the only one she can count on …’
Grace sighed and decided to fast-forward the next part of her plan to make her own life easier, and because in all honestly she really didn’t have the energy to argue with him or explain the situation any more than she already had done, umpteen times. And she could see the way the relationship was going, only this time it was worse as she was actually living with her mother. Back when Matthew had started complaining about Cora’s demands she had mostly been visiting and helping her out of an evening and at weekends. In addition to the late-night phone calls, of course. Sooner or later, Phil would have enough and find someone else too, just like Matthew had, and she really couldn’t put herself through all that again.
‘Maybe we should have a break!’ she blurted out.
Phil’s face froze.
There, she had said it, and felt a wave of relief. Better out than in is what her mother would say. Cora was a great believer in speaking your mind and had drummed it into Grace to do so too … ‘I’m only being honest,’ she would say, even if the words were spiteful and hurtful. Grace had been carrying the thought of slowing things down with Phil around inside her head for a while now. But having told him, she panicked, never having been one for confrontation, so felt the need to add, ‘It’s not fair on you. My mum needs me, and you are right, I don’t put you first …’
‘What?’ Phil spluttered. ‘Don’t be daft, Gracie. You can’t dump me.’
‘I’m not dumping you, exactly.’
‘Yes you are. Everyone knows “a break”,’ he paused to do sarcastic quote signs in the air, ‘means dumped!’
‘But I can’t put you first, Phil.’
‘That’s not what I meant. I didn’t say you need to put me first. I said we should put each other first.’
‘Did you?’ Grace felt confused now, her head crammed full of cotton wool … from the exhaustion most likely.
‘Of course, babe. Me and you. Always has been. It’s about us.’ And he stroked a finger over the back of her hand.
‘That’s just it, Phil. I don’t think I can put us first. You want more than I can give you right now …’ She dipped her head and twiddled with the butterfly pendant that hung on a delicate silver chain around her neck. She had bought it as a gift to herself on the day of her first visit to the GP to ask for help. A symbol of new beginnings. Only it hadn’t really worked out that way as she didn’t have a new life. In fact, she now felt even more trapped. Stuck in a rut as her mother’s carer, with a mediocre relationship and an old engagement ring that Matthew had refused to take back when she’d offered it on the day he came to collect the last of his belongings from the flat. ‘Why don’t you sell it and use it to pay the rent, or treat yourself to something nice … it’s the least you deserve after everything that has happened. I’m so sorry, sweetheart, for the way things have turned out between us. I never meant to hurt you, but … I guess we fell out of love with each other,’ is what he had said, followed by a hug and one of his wonderful warm smiles that had almost broken Grace in two. Only holding it together until the front door had closed behind him, when she had slumped down on to the hall carpet and sobbed. Because all the time she hated him she could cope, just about, with losing him … but he had to go and ruin it all by being nice. And she had never fallen out of love with him. Oh, she had tried to, but somehow couldn’t quite make it happen.
She never had sold the engagement ring, which was now relegated to a velvet box kept in the drawer beside her bed. Sometimes, when she was at a low ebb, usually after
