XIII
5 years before That Day (May, 2006)
‘Do you think you’d cope if something terrible happened to me?’
‘I’d have to, everyone has to cope, but I’d be incredibly sad.’
‘I’d be sad, too.’
‘But I couldn’t mope around all the time.’
‘What? Have you already got in mind who you’ll be moving on with, then?’
‘Eh? I said I wouldn’t be moping around for ever, not that I’d be moving on.’
‘Well, why wouldn’t you move on with all the not moping around you’d be doing? I knew it’d take you no time at all to find someone else. You can’t just replace me like that, you know. I’m irreplaceable.’
‘I’m not going to replace you. Who could replace you? You’re nuts in a very special way. I mean, you’re irreplaceable as you said.’
‘You must never replace me. I want you to miss me for ever. Even if you do meet someone else, it has to be years and years and years later. And even then, you can’t love them more than you loved me. All right?’
‘Erm …’
‘All right?’
‘All right.’
‘I’m not being unfair, you can fall in love again, just remember to—’
‘Not love them more than I loved you.’
‘Absolutely. And, you know, I’ll do my best not to do it, either.’
‘Why you … Come here! You deserve a good tickling for that. Come here, come here.’
Thursday, 18 April
(For Friday, 19th)
Dear Saffron.
I hope you don’t mind me writing to you again. Like I said, I feel like I know you. It was oddly cathartic writing all that down before, knowing that you, like my mother confessor, would read it and understand.
I haven’t been able to talk about it to anyone since it happened. I tell people that I’ve been so down because I have lost someone dear to me and their reactions vary wildly, but I’m not sure which reactions I prefer, really.
Is it harder or easier, since it was so public for you? All I could do at the time it happened was say that I knew him and say it was shocking. I could never have confessed how well I knew him because I’d be forced to admit that despite how close we were I was living out of the country so hadn’t gone to the funeral.
You seem to be doing well, which is something at least. I thought your life would come to a standstill and you wouldn’t be able to function. But, I see you’re doing well.
What I meant to ask you before when I mentioned people’s reactions was how was it for you? Whose reactions did you find the worst? The people who pretend it hasn’t happened, the people who won’t let you forget and expect you to stay frozen, or the ones who expect you to get over it already cos you’ve been grieving for long enough? It’s a minefield, isn’t it, dealing with other people’s responses to your grief.
But, as I say, you seem to be doing well. I’m glad, in a way, because I don’t have to feel so guilty for how things turned out.
As an aside, I hope you aren’t going to do anything silly such as show this and the other letter to the police. It will only cause trouble and upset. However, I don’t think you would do that. If you were like that, Phoebe would have told the police what happened, wouldn’t she? I do hope I’m not speaking out of turn here. I’m sure your daughter confides everything in you and will have told you the truth already.
If she hasn’t, do please go easy on her. She’s only a child.
Thank you again for the reading eye/listening ear.
Kind regards
A
XIV
I’ve never been to this gastropub before. It’s a short walk around the corner and down towards the sea from our house. As soon as I enter to meet Mr Bromsgrove, slightly harassed because I have rushed, the smells of the food unexpectedly assault me. It feels like an assault of my nasal and taste senses because I haven’t had time to eat. After making dinner for the children and Aunty Betty, and cleaning up, and making sure Zane was OK going to bed, I only just made it here in time.
‘What are you going to talk about?’ Phoebe had asked when I told her where I was going. She probably wasn’t aware of it, but she was wringing her hands and moving anxiously from one foot to the other.
‘I don’t know. Mr Bromsgrove wants to talk about this situation from the parents’ perspective, I suppose.’
‘Right.’
‘But we’re not going to make any decisions, that’s all up to you and Curtis, if you want him involved.’
‘Right,’ she said, and left the room without further question.
*
Mr Bromsgrove arrives seconds after me and when I see him cross the threshold, I double-take: he looks like different person. His clothes have been upgraded from cords and suit jacket to navy blue designer jeans, white collarless shirt and smart black leather suit jacket, he’s also without his wire-framed glasses.
‘Don’t tell me, you have plain glass in your glasses,’ I say in lieu of a hello when we meet at the bar.
‘No, I’m wearing contacts.’
‘Why?’
‘Because glasses at school give me more gravitas, it seems. Kids expect a teacher to dress a certain way and they seem to respond better to the glasses.’
‘I see,’ I reply.
‘Would you like something to eat?’ he asks. ‘I picked this place because the food’s meant to be good.’
A swirl of the scents of curry, chips and risotto rice, which shouldn’t work together, is driving me insane – my mouth is watering like there is a tap at the base of my throat, my stomach is quietly grumbling, complaining like a teenager with all its access to the outside world stripped away. ‘No, thanks. I ate with the children earlier.’
‘Ah, right. Do you mind if I eat?’
‘If you want.’
He orders a steak (medium rare) and chips, with a beer and I order a glass of white wine from the tall, auburn-haired barmaid. Without thinking, I open my purse and pay for it all, while he still has his card mid-air.
‘Oh,’ he says. ‘I, erm, didn’t mean for you to pay.’
‘It’s no bother,’ I say.
The woman busies herself with the till and we stand at the bar waiting in a strange silence. It’s the uneasy silence of two people who’ve gone on a date a week after a one-night stand that began within half an hour of them meeting – they know ‘stuff’ about each other because they’ve had sex, but finding something to talk about is the awkward part for them. Our children have got the sex part out of the way for Mr Bromsgrove and me, now we have to talk about it.
‘Is that your husband?’ Mr Bromsgrove asks.
I have my purse open as I wait for my change, so it is not as if he is prying, but my response is to immediately shut the leather pieces together, to hide away from scrutiny the picture of my once-upon-a-time family. I forget the picture of Joel, Phoebe, Zane and me is there. I don’t look at it and I certainly don’t show it to people. When it first happened, not long after he … died, there were pictures of Joel everywhere – in the papers, on the TV, A4 sheets in shop windows – and I stopped looking. I didn’t want to look, to be reminded. Over time, the pictures went away, they stopped being published in the papers, they didn’t appear regularly to hijack me when I turned on the television, the posters in windows curled up at the edges, the Blu-Tack dried out and they were taken down. And it was back to normal, back to only snatching glimpses of him where he should be – in our photo frames, in my photo albums, on my phone, in my purse.
My fingers curl around the top of the wine glass that has been placed in front of me even though Joel taught me to only pick up a wine glass by the stem because your fingers around the bulb of the glass warmed up the wine. I take a sip and avoid looking at the man next to me.
‘I was about to ask you how you were feeling about what happened,’ he says, ‘then I realised you probably wouldn’t want to talk about it and I probably wouldn’t understand.’
r /> ‘You’re right, you probably wouldn’t,’ I say after I’ve swished the wine around my mouth. It’s Gavi, slightly tart with a hint of lemon. I only know that because two friends – Angela and Lisa – from my first job educated me on the taste of Gavi when they were on a mission to make me more sophisticated.
The pub is small, intimate, with splashes of bright colour breaking up the cream walls. Hung on the wall above the archway to the back of the pub is a black, metal-framed bike; suspended from the ceiling is a small wooden aeroplane. The bar is ringed with high-legged, multicoloured bar chairs. It’s not very busy for a Friday night, and there are seats free in the snug area at the back as well as near the area laid out with table, chairs and eating place-settings. ‘Seat?’ he asks and nods towards the restaurant-type area.
‘Yes, sure, why not?’ I reply and move in the opposite direction, to a small table and two leather armchairs. I’m too hungry to sit surrounded by lots of people eating, but I can’t eat because that would be committing to spending a longer time than necessary with my daughter’s form tutor.
‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked about your husband.’ He has a smooth tone, it matches his smooth good looks.
‘So, how about our babies making babies?’ I say in a fake bright voice to change the subject. I don’t want to talk about Joel, not with this man.
‘Yes, an easier subject,’ he says with a smile. ‘I knew they were friends, but I didn’t realise they were that close.’
‘I didn’t even know they were friends. This whole thing has served to remind me that I don’t know my daughter at all.’ I thought I did, I thought she trusted me, could tell me anything, but apparently not.
‘I thought I knew my son and it turns out, I don’t. I didn’t know he was … I’ve had “the talk” with him several times. Not only the biology, the stuff about respect, mutual affection and consideration. I’ve sat him down regularly, even though it’s been excruciatingly embarrassing for both of us, and I thought I’d drummed it home to him to always use a condom. For health protection and to prevent pregnancy.’ He sighs heavily, wearily. ‘I suppose no contraceptive is one hundred per cent effective.’
I toy with whether or not to tell him, to shatter his illusions about his son and how his chats have gone across. I remember that time, two years ago, when I thought the talk I had with Phoebe about personal responsibility had gone in. It’d ended with her begging me not to tell the police what we knew about Joel’s murder six months later.
Do I want to visit the same sort of knowledge upon this man? To let him know that you can talk all you want, but if they won’t listen they won’t listen. Want to? No. Have to? Yes. ‘According to your son, you can’t get pregnant the first time you do it,’ I say. I sound snippy, fuelled a little by the way he and Mr Newton treated me four days ago and yesterday.
Mr Bromsgrove’s handsome, chiselled features go through many shades of disbelief and shock, settling in his black-brown eyes. ‘He wouldn’t say that. He doesn’t believe that. Is that why …? No, I don’t believe he’d say that.’
‘You don’t have to believe something to say it if it’ll get you what you want. Do I really have to spell that out to a man of your age?’
‘I don’t believe my son would do that.’
‘Oooooo-Kaaayyyy,’ I say, stringing those two syllables out after they’ve been doused heavily in sarcasm.
‘I’ll wring his scrawny little neck.’
‘You mean you haven’t already?’
‘Awww, I can’t … Do you have any idea what Phoebe plans to do?’
‘I was going to ask you that question, since she seems to talk to you and pretty much anyone else on Earth apart from me.’
My entire body jumps when he rests his hand on my hand. His hand swamps mine and I stare at it, surprised. The whorls of his knuckles are dark, the skin on the back of his hands a gorgeous, delicate hazelnut-brown colour. My hand below his is very different – permanently marked, scarred and blemished, something I tend to keep hidden. I wonder if he can feel the ridges in the skin against his palm, if he’s curious how I came by them. Most people don’t notice but then, few people touch me.
‘What does your wife say about all this?’ I say, removing my hand from under his.
‘My wife,’ he says quietly, almost forlornly. His eyes become unfocused and reflective as he says those two words. As suddenly as he slipped into that reverie, he brings himself out of it again: ‘Phoebe and Curtis get on so well because they both know what it’s like to lose a parent.’
‘Oh. I’m sorry,’ I say, my apology meant to encompass my earlier sarcasm. Immediately I am uncomfortable because I’ve forgotten what it’s like to have people suddenly excuse your bad behaviour because you’re bereaved. How patronising it is to be on the receiving end of undeserved understanding. ‘I didn’t realise.’
‘It was four years ago. Not sudden, but hard on Curtis. When Phoebe came back to school after losing her father, I asked Curtis to keep an eye on her, talk to her because he knew what it was like and was further along the process. They’ve been good friends ever since, even though he’s in the year above. I see them hang out together at school, and I think they saw each other as kindred spirits. Especially when people were gossiping about her at school, he stepped up and protected her.’
I knew about the gossiping, the school kept me informed and I talked to Phoebe about it. According to her, it was fine. It was always fine. It didn’t stop me talking to her, trying to help her but, according to her, it never stopped being fine.
‘Do they still gossip about her?’ I ask, scared of the answer.
‘Not about that any more. But it’d be naive to think they won’t when they find out about this. People always find out.’
‘This is what I hate about all of this. Like last time, we can’t hide away, we can’t pretend it didn’t happen because everyone knows. I don’t know if emotionally she can stand it.’ I know emotionally I can’t stand it. ‘And there’s Zane. It’s another thing in his life he has to deal with that he shouldn’t. Sometimes I wonder who exactly “out there” has it in for me.’
‘It does feel like that sometimes.’
‘Wasn’t your wife’s death hard on you?’
‘I don’t understand what you mean.’
‘You were very careful to point out how hard it was on Curtis, and it sounded like you weren’t bothered either way.’
He blinks at me and without his glasses the up and down fluttering of his eyelashes is quite pronounced. ‘Of course I was bothered.’
‘But?’
Our gazes meet, stay locked together. He is gauging how much he can tell me. I am wondering why I’ve asked him that when I wouldn’t even entertain anyone asking me the same thing. Had the roles been reversed, I would have walked out by now.
‘So, what about our babies making babies?’ he says in the same fake bright tone I used earlier. His gaze goes to the bar, mine to the snug area through the archway at the back of the pub.
A pair of eyes are avidly watching me. I’m too far away to see the colour of them, but I know what colour they are. I’ve looked into them enough times over the years, I’ve stood beside the man whose eyes they are so many times over the years I could easily describe his face without looking.
Fynn. He is staring at me. Of course he’s seen me in a bar with a good-looking man. Of course he’s seen said good-looking man cover my hand with his. Of course he thinks I am on a date.
I want to smile at him, to maybe wave him over, but I do neither of these, I simply stare until he redirects his gaze to the person opposite him and I know from the way he holds himself, the way his face is rigidly directed towards his companion, that he will not look at me again for as long as I am sitting there.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t be here,’ I say to Mr Bromsgrove and gather into my arms my bag from beside us on the table and my jacket from over the back of the chair. ‘I can’t be here.’
Alarmed, his eyes wide
in confusion, he says, ‘But we haven’t—’
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I just can’t be here.’
My body can’t move fast enough. I can’t escape fast enough. I can feel the lingering trace of Fynn’s gaze burning into me – accusing me of cheating on Joel; denouncing me as a false widow; condemning me for being out in a pub instead of at home grieving.
The worst part of that, of course, as I run-walk my way towards home, is that I know it’s not true. Fynn wouldn’t think that. He was probably surprised to see me out with someone when I hadn’t asked him to babysit; probably confused why I didn’t smile and call him over.
The sickness that is twisting up my stomach as it churns itself round and round is from me thinking that. Because, above the sickness, blossoming in my chest like a maturing flower, is the sure and certain knowledge that I’m attracted to Mr Bromsgrove.
XV
11 years before That Day (March, 2000)
‘Do you promise you won’t laugh at me?’ he said.
‘Of course I won’t. When, apart from about your Klingon DNA showing in your forehead, have I ever laughed at you?’
As usual, he laughed and pressed his fingers against his forehead. ‘I do not have a big forehead,’ he proclaimed when he had confirmed his forehead was normal sized.
‘I know you don’t. I’m sorry, go on, what was it you wanted to tell me?’
‘For years and years I’ve wanted to write a cookbook.’
‘I can so see you doing that. You should absolutely do it.’
‘For honestly, real?’
‘Yes. What sort of cookbook?’
‘Well, this is the bit you might laugh at because it may sound a bit stupid and airy-fairy, but I want to make it about the foods that I love. Each recipe will have at least one ingredient that I absolutely love or means something to me. What do you think?’