Emma was so happy that Cyn came out of the accident okay. She would need a bit of physical therapy to build up her strength, but the best thing that happened was that John moved back into their house.
Emma loved happy endings, and it got her thinking more and more about her life and the road it had been leading. Though she had the money and the success, she was still missing something. But she didn’t have the time to find it. There was one thing she had to get out of the way before she made any life-altering decisions.
Emma was over at John’s for dinner one night when she sprang her idea on him. She waited until after dinner, when Cyn had gone up to bed, so she was alone with John.
It was an unusually warm night, so she and John headed outside down by the pool. They slipped off their shoes and dipped their toes into the cool, refreshing water.
Linking her arm with John’s, she leaned her head on his shoulder.
"Do you remember, when we were younger, just dreaming of being rich and famous?"
"Yeah," John responded. "In all honesty, I never thought it would turn out quite like this."
Emma smiled. "I always knew. I knew that you would be big."
"This big?"
"Yes." She sighed. "It’s so beautiful out tonight."
"Yeah, it is. Stuart would have loved a night like this."
"He would...John, speaking of Stuart, I have this idea..." She unhooked her arm and turned so she could look at him. "Remember when it was such a big deal to us that we include everyone all the time? ‘If I become famous, you’re coming with me,’ that type of thing?"
John nodded his head.
"Well, I feel like we’ve left Stuart out in some way.
John looked shocked. "You do?"
Emma nodded her head. "When you included him on the cover of Pepper, that started the wheels in my head turning. I want to exhibit his paintings."
"His paintings?"
"Yes. John, it needs to be done. He was our friend and I want to do something special for his memory. Will you help me?"
John didn’t need any convincing. "I’ll help. Just tell me what you need me to do."

It didn’t take long to get the show going. Astrid and Stuart’s mother gladly gave her Stuart’s paintings and sketches, and the Holly Gallery more that willingly lent their space.
They had to wait a few months before the space was available, and that was fine with Emma. She wanted to hold it on a special day, anyway. July 30. That was the date she first met Stuart ten years ago.
Two weeks before the show was to open, Emma was sitting on the floor of the Holly Gallery, surrounded by Stuart’s paintings.
"Need some help?"
Emma looked up and smiled. "I was wondering if you would show up."
"Hey, it’s my first show. I wouldn’t miss it for the world."
"Too long in the making."
"Thank you for doing this."
"I would never leave you behind."
He crouched down beside her, taking in all his paintings. "God, I never knew I’d painted so many!"
Emma laughed. "Neither did I!" She looked up at him. "Have any idea how I should hang these?"
"You’re doing fine. What have you come up with?"
"Well..." She surveyed the floor, picking up a small painting. "I thought we could start with your earliest paintings working down to the last painting you painted." She pointed to a large, unfinished canvas.
He looked at that one. "That’s how I would have done it."
"I’m glad you like it."
"I’d like anything you did. So when is the big opening?"
She smiled. "The thirtieth of July."
He smiled back. "That’s a perfect day."
"Do you want to stay and help me hang these?"
Stuart shook his head. "No. But I’ll be back for opening night." He gave Emma a hug. "Thank you."
Before she could respond, Stuart was gone and Emma was left to hang up the paintings.
On July 20, Jane Asher announced that her relationship with Paul was over.

Emma walked in front of the people gathered at the Holly Gallery. She stepped onto the platform and cleared her throat, garnering everyone’s attention.
"I want to start off by thanking you all for coming out here tonight. I put together this exhibition in memory of a dear friend of mine, Stuart Sutcliffe. It’s been 6 years since he was taken too soon from us. Even now, today, I find it hard to say his name without getting all choked up. But! I promised myself I would get through the speech without crying. As I look out at all your faces, when I see the people that Stuart loved, I don’t know if I will be able to do that." Her eyes locked with John’s, and she smiled. "Stuart was a brilliant painter, as you will see tonight. He was known to many as the Van Gogh of Liverpool, his talent awed and praised by many, myself included. I remember watching him paint, his eyes squinted in concentration, music softly playing in the background. What he took from his brush and painted on a canvas was absolutely brilliant. I could spend hours totally kiss-assing his work." The crowd laughed. "I’m a painter, but I know that I sure as hell wouldn’t be one if I had never moved to Liverpool. I put down my work all the time, that’s just the way I am. I would have given up painting with a snap of my finger, until I met Stuart and John. They told me I was great, and loved me, and gave me something I had always been lacking in my life, friendship." She looked directly at her group of friends from way back when. "Thank you for being my friend." She turned back to the audience. "If Stuart had lived, today he would be a famous painter, bigger than anyone else before him. I chose to showcase the work of Stuart Sutcliffe because his memory deserves this. So please, enjoy this amazing work and hopefully when you leave tonight, you will take with you the memory of an amazing man."
The room erupted into applause as Emma left the stage to join her friends.
"You made me bloody cry!" John whispered into her ear.
Everyone that she wanted was there. John and Cyn, Pattie and George, Ringo and Maureen, Astrid, Klaus and Jurgen, Mrs Sutcliffe and Stuart’s two sisters, and Paul. She was a bit surprised to see him there, but glad that he had come.
She wandered through the exhibit with John, his arm wrapped around her shoulder.
"This was a brilliant idea, Emmie."
"It was, wasn’t it?" She smiled. "You know, I thought that putting this together would make me sad, and it did, but it also gave me peace in some strange way."
"I’m glad you did it. It gave me some sort of peace, too."
Going through the exhibit, it had taken Emma and John nearly four hours. They’d stop in front of a familiar painting and stop to reminisce. Finally, they came to the end.
"That’s funny," Emma said, stopping at the last painting. "I didn’t put this one up."
She and John looked at the painting. "You must have," John insisted.
Emma shook her head. "No, the unfinished painting was the last." She looked closely at it. It was a drawing, actually, of three people, their backs to the viewer. A man was in the middle with his arms thrown around the other two people in the drawing, a man and a woman, that oddly, even though it was just the backs, looked like Emma, Stuart and John.
She looked at John and he looked at her with a funny expression on his face. "No!" he said.
Emma just raised her eyebrows. She looked to her left and she saw him. He gave her a wink and then disappeared into the shadows.