We All Live Here

by Jojo Moyes

The key, I’ve found, to moving forward, is asking myself, during these moments: do I want to be right? Or do I want to be happy?

“Keep going. No feeling is final.” Something along those lines. And I always think of that, when things are a bit rough. No feeling is final. The shitty times don’t last for ever. Even if they feel like it.’

‘Celie, baby, you look around at people who are happy in themselves in their lives – they’re just busy living, having a good time. They don’t set out to be mean to other people. Their energy is going into other things. It doesn’t even occur to them to hurt someone else, or to try to make them feel small. In fact, they’re more likely to be building other people

‘It’s not a traditional family,’ Eleanor had said, earlier that evening, when Lila had commented on how much easier she was finding it, ‘but that doesn’t mean it’s not a family.’

There are periods of your life in which all that is really required is to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

This is life at this age, she muses, a million goodbyes, and you never know which are the final ones. You just absorb them, like little shocks, trusting with each one that you’ll be able to keep moving forwards.

‘Living the dream, El.’ Lila hugs her friend fiercely. ‘Don’t you dare decide to do an Eat, Pray, Love and not come back. You know I make terrible choices when you’re not around.’ She’s joking, but there’s always an undercurrent of fear. Lila is not sure she would know who she was without Eleanor around. It’s a constant revelation to her, the way these friendships become more important the older they get.

‘Lila, we all like to think we know everything about our parents, but we don’t.

‘One of the things I come up against often in my practice is the notion of forgiveness. Do you want to repeat the mistakes your parents made? Holding on to your grievances for the rest of your life? Or do you want to put that burden down?’

Life is long and complicated, Lila, and we all make mistakes. What matters is what we do beyond them.

You can hang on to anger and bitterness your whole life. But all you really do is prolong your own pain.

Lila feels herself gradually immersed in an unfamiliar sensation: peace. For months, perhaps years, she has been in permanent brace position, dipped low, her hands over her head, waiting for the next thing. The ups have been jagged, inconsistent, prone to turn abruptly into downs. Right now, for the first time she can remember, she just feels … level. As if calm is seeping into her bones. She sits back, gazing out at her garden, at the glowing kitchen at the end of the lawn, and lets out a long breath.

grass under a rock, a bit battered but ready to grow again when the rock lifts.

‘And tonight I looked at him and I thought maybe we broke our family. Because we had long stopped trying with each other. Or we stopped being curious about each other. We stopped being kind to each other. Or maybe we were two people who were never really a great match in the first place.

‘You know, I’m realizing every day that I know nothing. I’m nearly forty-three and I genuinely know nothing.’

My family look like the Waltons from outside but inside it’s just a seething mass of resentments and insecurities.’

‘Yeah. I like my madness visible from the outside.’

Lila sits at the head of the table and just enjoys it all, eating the food that has been cooked for her and watching the invisible threads reattach the different sides of her family, at first fragile, but then swiftly growing in strength, like an enormous silken web. Sometimes she thinks about her mother, and wonders what she would have made of it all. She’s pretty sure it would be something along the lines of ‘Isn’t it the most fun, Lils? Aren’t we all just ridiculously modern?’