'Crystal' had done what she'd set out to save for years earlier. The money accumulated through escorting paid for her course in counselling.

She'd send me the occasional email. When she'd achieved a DipHe in counselling. The time she set up her practice. A note to say she was getting married, I read with disbelief. Was the husband-to-be aware of her history? There was no accompanying invite. Perhaps she was terrified I might get drunk and blag to the guests the groom was marrying a former escort.

I didn't mind. We weren't friends in the traditional sense.

But 'Crystal' was the first person I thought of when I decided to get counselling years later. I wouldn't need to 'fess up about the path I'd taken in my early 20s. From our shared coffee shop chats, I remembered her straight talking and the way she listened and threw in useful advice.

The counselling started in March 2019. I revealed all about my family. The half-siblings, the gold-digging father, the disapproving grandfather and the mother who had died. My obsession with cleanliness and the fear of getting close to anyone.

Anyone who might ask questions about my past. Or find it if they dug deep enough. Truly, the internet is a curse.

At the end of every session, I'd curse myself. Still not confessed about Mum's last night on earth, Sophie. Stupid, given everything else Arlene knew and had gone through too. She might be a counsellor advocating honesty with others (though she didn't; only honesty with oneself), but what had she told her husband, I always wondered, especially as I found myself in a similar situation now.

Arlene would not judge the issue I was too afraid to discuss. And yet I still held back...

The answer machine picked up first. She rang me straight back. "Sophie, are you all right? I've been worried about you."

I studied her face, trying to put the image of Crystal as I'd once known her on it. Almost impossible. Arlene never wore make-up these days, favoured oversized glasses and had let her hair go grey. The red lipstick, thick dark hair twisted up on top of her head with tendrils hanging down to frame her face and eyes weighed down by two pairs of false eyelashes were long gone.

I took a deep breath. "Can we talk about my Elite Companion days? And Richard Ellison. Did you ever run into an old client in a compromising way?"

London's a gigantic city, its small geographical space crammed with streets, buildings and bodies. A person can act one way in central London and take on a new role in the suburbs. But it is still possible to take your kids to the British Museum, say, and run into a man you hoped never to see again.

As Arlene admitted now, our talk moving from professional counsellor to two people sharing niche experiences.

I repeated what I'd told Tom, the whole sorry story of my 30th birthday and the circumstances around my mother's death.

She let out an enormous sigh.

"You were right not to tell her," she said crisply. "Sophie, you made your choice. If you had confessed to absolve your conscience at the time, you would have made two people sick to the stomach instead of one. The relationship was in its early stages. Maybe it wouldn't have worked out. Don't you reckon his use of escorts in the past indicated a commitment problem?"

I nodded, all thoughts that had run through my head over the years.

"If it's any consolation, you weren't his only regular."

I winced, even if it was silly to be bothered by the idea of a man who paid for sex using more than of us.

"You'll never know peace until you've spoken to him, Sophie," Arlene added. She had taken her glasses off, the two of us inches away on our respective screens. She held her fingers up and touched the screen lightly and I did the same back, the gesture making me blink back tears.

The simple things will trip you up every time.

"And whatever the answer is," Arlene's fingers tapped out her words, "I still don't think your mum's death was your fault. Those last hours of her you worry about... for most of your life, she loved you. Thought a lot of you. And that's what you've got to remember.

"Have you still got his number or any other way of contacting him?"

Tuesday, 28 April 2020

"Today's the day," Tom told me when he got out of bed three days later, his legs nowhere near as shaky as they had been. A trace of that cough remained, but his temperature had returned to normal and he'd spent the rest of the week catching up on sleep. Most people who'd had the virus reported exhaustion like nothing you'd ever experienced before as a major symptom.

I hadn't slept in the same bed until last night. Tom stretched his arms to the ceiling, his T-shirt riding up. I winced at those far-too prominent ribs and hip bones. Again, those who recovered from the virus lost an average of seven pounds. Tom looked as if he'd dropped ten off an already lean frame.

The isolation period was officially over. Tom was allowed out of the house. He headed for a long overdue shower while I made us something to eat. As the weather forecast promised sunshine, I set up the table outside.

"Here you go—the breakfast of champions!" I said, when he joined me, rubbing his hand over dampened hair. "I've done my best to over salt it, throw in a tonne of butter and everything else you need to make food delicious."

I put the plate in front of Tom, who examined what was on it and inhaled. When I'd asked him what he wanted to eat, he answered straightaway. "A sausage buttie. Drowned in brown sauce."

He straightened up and flashed me a smile—all the better for its openness. Joy. Happiness at small pleasures, such as being able to detect what a sausage sandwich smelt like.

I held up a smoothie. Kale, spirulina, yoghurt and apple juice blended to a murky green sludge. "This will be the true test. If you drink it without grimacing, your taste buds are still AWOL."

He held out his hand, the liquid sloshing in the glass and bubbling. "It looks like pond scum," he said, sniffing it and thrusting it away. "God, no."

My persuasive efforts—it's good for you, it will help build up your battered immune system—were half-hearted. I was too delighted he found it repulsive. The sausage sandwich, on the other hand, was demolished in record quick time. Would I mind if he ate mine too...?

Not at all. I swapped his empty plate for mine—the food on it untouched. There's a lot of pleasure to be had watching someone tuck into a meal you've prepared.

Barking broke the silence. Roger had found the gap in the Leylandii again. What attracted him the most? Tom or sausages? Tom broke off a bit and tossed it in the air. Roger leapt up, mouth opening and snapping shut.

"You'll make him very fat." Mrs Whittaker emerged from that same gap—a wide smile in place. Directed solely at Tom. I told her she shouldn't come too close, just in case.

She moved the glasses she wore on a chain around her neck onto her face, all the better to peer at us more closely. "Are you quite recovered, Mr Docherty?"

"Almost there, Mrs Double-W. Enough to start walking Roger here again, come tomorrow."

Roger appeared to understand. He wagged his tail. A lot of dogs are said to know the word 'walking'.

"Splendid," Mrs Whittaker replied. "I'm so pleased you back to good health. Would it be too much trouble for you to pick up my shopping for me too?"

He shook his head, and she called for Roger, the two of them disappearing behind the bushes once more.

"Today's the day, eh?" Tom repeated, turning his attention back to me.

I stood up. "Give me ten minutes?"

He assented, saying he would stay outside enjoying the fresh air he'd missed while stuck in the upstairs room. I picked up the dirty plates and cups, dumped them in the kitchen sink and found my phone.

Took deep breaths. In one two three, out one two three. Did I do this standing up or sitting? Sitting. Just in case. I opted for the living room, first the armchair then the sofa, trying to make myself comfortable. Procrastination.

Phone him.

Thumpity-thumpity, thump. Be still my beating heart even as I make the phone call that has hung over me for years.

Tom had reiterated Arlene's advice when I told him about Tuesday's conversation. Consciences were things you needed to square in your head, a priest had once told him. That didn't mean dismissing regret and wishing with all your heart you'd never taken a course of action.

"After I'd been in Glasgow for a few years, I visited Niall O'Sullivan when I was in Ireland seeing the family."

I curled up closer. Took his hand and stroked my thumb over his palm. "That must have been hard."

"He wouldn't let me in the house. Stood at the door and yelled dog's abuse. Cursed me, me brothers, me sister. Called her a cheap tart who deserved everything she got."

Hard to believe such attitudes still existed, but Niall must have known what he was doing. Bating a man who came professing regret and apology—his own tiny, powerless bit of revenge. Tom closed his eyes briefly, opened them to meet Niall's sneer and said, 'Go n-éirí do bhóthar leat', Go with God in Gaelic.

When you come to apologise, prepare for it not to be accepted.

"Find out, Sophie," Tom urged. "Phone Richard and ask what happened. Stop living under the shadow of the worst you have imagined and discover the truth. Whatever that might be."

As I did now.

"Rich... Richard?"

He answered the phone on the second ring. I'd emailed him. Asked if he would talk to me about my mother so the phone call wasn't out of the blue.

We didn't bother with small talk. "The night my mum died," I prompted, listened to the sound of someone steeling himself at the other end. As nervous as me, then?

"Not my finest night, Sophie. And why I vanished afterwards. At the time, I thought the best course of action was to disappear. I've mulled it over a lot during the past few years. I got the virus at the end of January, though at the time it put down to pneumonia. When you'd tried to get hold of me after your mum died, I guessed why.

"You thought she had found out about us, didn't you?"

A hospital provided thinking space, Richard said. You lay in your bed, one eye on the door anticipating that moment the grim reaper walked in and announced your time on earth was over. He ended up bargaining with who/whatever. If I live, I will contact Sophie and tell her the truth.

Arlene's observation—Richard's past extensive use of escorts hinted he was a commitment-phobe, right? The type who preferred monied transactions to the complications of true intimacy.

"When I realised who I was dating, that gave me a cast-iron excuse to ditch your mother. Sophie, some of us will never be comfortable doing that IKEA visits weekend thing and watching Richard Attenborough shows on the TV night after night. I, ah, found your mother a bit clingy."

Ouch. I bristled on my mother's behalf, but I detected apology in there. My poor mother made a classic mistake. After years of living on her own, she dated a man, stuck her finger on the fast-forward button and skipped through the finding out who he really was bits.

And wasn't my father the perfect demonstration of her lousy taste in men?

On the night of her death, Richard sent her a message early on the Saturday to say he wouldn't be travelling to Wester Ross. Or seeing her any longer. To reinforce the message, he added that he'd met someone else. And fallen madly in love with her.

A lie. He reckoned telling her he found her too dull was the too-cruel option.
Wester Ross is in the Highlands. Mobile phone and wi-fi signals were not good. Alone in a room late at night post a boozy meal, my mother saw the messages. When she phoned him, he answered—reiterated the message, madly in love, etc., and hung up.

The person my mother, brain befuddled by far too much wine, was driving south to remonstrate with had been Richard all along. Not me.

The relief! Tinged with grief once more. The split-second stupid decision that cost my mother her life.

"I... uh, have dated no one since," Richard added, "and I'm very sorry."

The apology sounded sincere. Odd, though. A man not used to rolling his tongue over the sibilant s and the rs of the word. He hadn't said sorry enough over his lifetime to know how it ought to sound. But I forgave him anyway. Hung up the phone and sat there for a while, staring out the window and seeing nothing.

Outside, Tom had stripped off his T-shirt. He lay on a blanket, head on a cushion. I sat on my heels and stroked a finger from his belly to his collarbone. He caught hold of my hand and twisted around, the two of us facing each other.

"How did it go?"

I shook my head. "Not me. He dumped her that night."

"How do you feel about that?"

I dropped down too, snuggling up next to him on the blanket, the sun warm on our faces.

"At first, I wondered if my reaction was selfish," I replied. "The relief—like a nasty headache you've put up with day after day and suddenly, bam, it's gone. But my mum is still dead. And I'd much rather that wasn't the case."

I nudged his side. "She'd have loved you."

"Me with my criminal past?" Lightly put.

"Despite your criminal past," I answered. "And she would shake her head. 'Sophie, for goodness' sake! Hang onto this man.'"

Love is cheap currency these days. People love Game of Thrones, Harry Styles, the BTS boys and comedians with a gift for satirising politicians. They sign off work emails with kisses. They love, love, love, scatter their messages with hearts and use the <3 everywhere they can't find emojis.

Tell a woman they are madly in love with someone else to get rid of her.

"And I'd say to your mum," Tom said. "I'll do me best to by your daughter because I look at her and I see this damaged woman and I still think she's the most amazing woman I ever had the luck to meet."

Often, you need another word or form of them to speak love sincerely. My mum's imagined 'hang onto this man', Tom's 'most amazing woman I ever had the luck to meet' perhaps.

We were equal, then, Tom and me—our souls laid bare.

Some weeks ago, we'd lain in the park staring at the skies. At that stage, Tom knew little about me. And I didn't know that about him. What did the clouds care about what went on underneath them, we humans scrambling in our uncertainties, the sun as it rose and set every day? Same clouds, same sun now.

Did the past fly up into the sky—helium balloons, say, loosened after a party and drifting off? Never to be seen again.

Tom rolled on top of me. A kiss that made the others look like the work of amateurs—and they'd blown my mind at the time.

The sun chose that moment to disappear behind the clouds. His lips mirrored the action of mine. Every bit of my body became super sensitive—my arms goose bumping, my groin tightening as if it sensed the beginning of an orgasm already, and the tiny hairs on the back of my neck standing up.

When he broke off to suggest we take this indoors, his voice ragged, I nodded. We leapt up and ran for the house, hand in hand.