Valerie

by Kit Eyre

  Biddy tapped her fingers together. ‘Suspend my disbelief, you say?’

  ‘I can tell you what’ll happen if you don’t,’ Max replied.

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t, thank you.’

  ‘Right, so what’s it to be?’ Max questioned. ‘Keep your granddaughter or push her away? Because that’s what it comes down to.’

  Biddy clenched her jaw and closed her eyes. Amy held her breath for a second, wondering what the response would be, but the expression on her face when she opened her eyes again was more like resignation than anything else. She exhaled and met Biddy’s gaze.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘I still don’t like it,’ Biddy warned. ‘Any of it. And I want to see progress, young lady. You can’t sit about doing nothing all day.’

  ‘I won’t,’ she promised. ‘But it’s going to be the right kind of progress this time.’

  Chapter 45

  ‘Honestly, when was the last time you opened a window?’

  Max ignored both Valerie’s comment and Amy’s snort, though she found identical looks of disdain on their faces when she flicked the light on. She watched Amy nudge the door shut then the three of them stood motionless in the hallway.

  ‘All right, it smells,’ she conceded.

  ‘I thought I’d housetrained you,’ Valerie said. ‘Now, you get the bleach and I’m opening every window in the place. Just be grateful it’s summer and not the dead of winter.’

  ‘We could just go to a hotel,’ Max suggested.

  Valerie slipped her coat off. ‘At a hotel, we’ll be easily exposed. If you don’t mind, I want an evening where I don’t have to think about politics or the mess that my career’s in. I’d like to savour the moment, preferably without the stench of decaying pizza in the air, so, if you don’t mind . . .’

  ‘Fine, all right,’ Max said. ‘Get on with it then.’

  She watched Valerie’s little smirk as she swept through into the living room before turning back to Amy. It looked as if she was still shivering a bit, the way she had been when they’d left Clarice’s, and she wrapped an arm round her shoulders.

  ‘How you doing?’ she asked.

  ‘Okay, I think,’ Amy answered.

  ‘I think we got as far with her today as we could’ve hoped, you know.’

  ‘No, I know that, I do. I just wish . . . Well, there’s more, isn’t there? Maybe I should’ve told her everything and got it all out in the open.’

  Max shook her head. ‘Come on, you know that would’ve been the tipping point. Look, you did great. We got her from homophobia to tolerating me in half an hour – that’s a bloody miracle. She’s accepted that you’re not doing Law and that you need time to get your head straight. Much more than that –’

  ‘Much more than that and we might’ve killed her,’ Valerie interjected.

  They both looked sideways. Valerie had crept back in without them noticing and was leaning against the wall with a serious expression on her face. She trained her gaze on Amy.

  ‘This was never your mess to deal with, darling. In all the ways that count, Tim was – is – your father. Telling Clarice now would be a way of absolving your conscience, I understand that. But what good would it do you or her? Forget me – I can weather most storms one way or another. You don’t deserve to have to do it though. Of course, if you want to tell her, I’ll support you. It isn’t necessary, that’s all. Your dad adored you and you’re Clarice’s only grandchild, blood or no.’

  Amy wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘You’re right.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Valerie said instantly and all three of them laughed. ‘So, why don’t you order Chinese while we clean up? Did you say Ed was on his way over? Order enough for him.’

  The switch in tone was enough to send Amy off to the living room. Max lingered long enough to kiss Valerie then they both followed her through.

  They’d just about managed to get the flat smelling right when the buzzer went. It was Ed, breathless and sounding a bit on the crazy side. Once Max’d let him in, she called Valerie and Amy into the hallway. Ed steamed through the door with a wide grin on his face.

  ‘You landed well on your feet,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Max asked.

  He pulled out his phone and turned to Valerie. ‘This morning, you were public enemy number one, getting it from all sides. The far-right voters were throwing that traditional families crap at you and calling you a cheat, the rest of them were saying you hadn’t got the guts to be yourself. A couple of hours later . . .’

  After clicking a few buttons, he held up a video on his phone. Max squinted at it then let out a growl. From the angle, it was that little toerag who she’d taken the phone from. He’d gone and taken another video then uploaded it onto Twitter.

  ‘That little git,’ she muttered.

  ‘No, you don’t get,’ Ed replied, throwing a smile at Valerie. ‘Everyone’s gone crazy over it. Being yourself, being open. You couldn’t have planned it better if you’d tried. Apart from the usual arseholes, everyone reckons you’ve redeemed yourself.’

  Valerie’s eyes flickered as he pressed the phone into her hands.

  ‘I can assure you, it wasn’t planned,’ she said.

  ‘Scroll through that though,’ he answered. ‘You’ve probably done more for LGBT rep in one day than the rest of your party’s done in years.’

  Her hand was trembling as she looked at the Twitter feed. Max and Amy read most of it over her shoulder and, for the most part, it was all positive stuff. Yeah, there was the odd comment from a homophobe, but that was shut down by a dozen voices one after the other.

  ‘Mum, this is brilliant,’ Amy said.

  Valerie just pressed her lips together and Max cleared her throat.

  ‘Why don’t you two go find us something to watch?’ she suggested.

  Although Amy opened her mouth to argue, Ed yanked her away before she got the chance. Max steered Valerie into the bedroom and sat her down on the edge of the bed. By the time she’d shut the door and turned back, tears were streaming along her cheeks.

  Max knelt in front of her. ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’

  ‘It is,’ Max insisted, but Valerie just shook her head.

  ‘I was meant to lose. If I win – if I come out of this with no consequences – then I’ve failed.’

  ‘How have you failed?’

  ‘I deserve consequences, I deserve some punishment for what I’ve done to you and Amy. If I get to keep my job without a fight then I’ve basically got away scot-free. At least if I’d had to fight –’

  ‘You did fight,’ Max interrupted, rubbing circles into her knee. ‘You leaked your own story to the papers, you risked your career and everything else when you didn’t know what would come out of it. If that’s not fighting, I don’t know what is. What good would being punished do?’

  ‘I’d feel as though I deserved you and Amy,’ Valerie said.

  Max exhaled and moved to sit beside her on the bed, keeping one hand fixed on her leg. She felt the quivering that Valerie was trying to keep control of, so she twisted sideways and rested a hand on her cheek. She’d missed looking into these eyes that she couldn’t get to calling just blue, however long she thought about it. They were sapphire, sparkling sapphire.

  ‘It’s not for you to decide what you deserve,’ she said after a moment. ‘We’re here because we want to be, because you’ve shown us what we needed you to. That’s all it was about. Through the election, I didn’t care that you were keeping quiet about us so long as it wasn’t permanent and you weren’t being a hypocrite. What you did to Drew was the icing on the cake then seeing you with that prat . . . You deserved me walking away, I couldn’t have done anything else.’

  Valerie licked her lips and nodded. ‘I know.’

  ‘But what you’ve done this last week to try and atone for it, that’s what matters. That’s why I’m here, that’s why Amy’s here. You’ve still
got bridges to build with Drew, but he looks like he’s willing to listen. That’s all because you put yourself at risk. I didn’t think you’d do it, neither did Amy.’

  ‘I had to,’ Valerie murmured.

  ‘There you go, then,’ replied Max with a smile. ‘So, you put yourself out there and you risked losing. There’s plenty of stuff we still need to talk about, but there aren’t any secrets anymore. As long as we’re honest with each other, we’ll be right.’

  Valerie sniffed then rested their foreheads together. ‘For someone who doesn’t do relationships, you’re very good at this, you know.’

  ‘It’s not easy,’ she admitted. ‘I’ve still got this impulse to run every now and then.’

  ‘But you won’t,’ Valerie answered.

  ‘I won’t,’ Max promised. ‘If you won’t, that is.’

  A soft laugh gurgled up in Valerie’s throat. There were no mascara streaks down her cheeks this time, but she still had that open expression on her face that Max remembered from the nature reserve car park all that time ago. She couldn’t help kissing her, wrapping two arms around her waist and pulling her as close as the laws of physics would let her.

  They were both smiling when they separated and Max’s body was still tingling.

  ‘I won’t run,’ Valerie said finally. ‘If you won’t, of course.’

  Max pressed another kiss to her swollen lips. ‘Deal.’

  Coming in September 2019

  Amy

  A leadership election to decide the next prime minster is being called. Valerie wants nothing more than to stay out of it, but old enemies conspire to drag her into their webs.

  Author Bio

  Kit Eyre lives in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, with her long-suffering wife.

  Her first novel But By Degrees was published in 2016, garnering a positive reception from readers both in the UK and beyond.

  For more information about Kit, visit her website at www.kiteyre.co.uk. You can also find her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube.