‘He was my husband,’ said Juliet. Her voice was tight with the effort of containing her hurt. ‘He wasn’t just a son. He was a friend, and a lover, and . . . and a dog owner.’
‘Juliet, you can marry again,’ Ruth replied dramatically, and Juliet knew she’d been looking forward to saying it for months. ‘I will never have another son. Ever.’ She started crying again, angry, gusting sobs that seemed to chide Juliet for her apparent lack of feeling.
But Juliet didn’t want to cry; she was more concerned about Ben’s stuffy bench not even commemorating their relationship.
‘I might not marry again,’ Juliet protested. ‘I won’t find another man like Ben, I know that.’
‘But you can try. My life is over! Juliet, I can’t talk any more now. I’ll be in touch.’ Ruth hung up, and Juliet was relieved.
She stood looking out of the window at the garden, her eyes not seeing the bare branches of the trees, or the ferns turning bronze against the far brick wall.
All she could hear was Ben’s voice in her head, telling her to ignore his mother, the drama queen. That his memorial was all around her, in the garden, in his dog, in their love.
So why am I decorating the house? Juliet asked herself. Why is my life moving on? Is that wrong?
The doorbell rang, and her mother’s voice called through the house. ‘Are you there? Everyone up? We’re here!’
She sounded too cheerful, as if she had to double her efforts today.
Juliet looked down at Minton and nudged him with her foot. He hadn’t run through to greet the door, as he always did.
‘Go on,’ she said to him. ‘I’m fine.’
She went through her day’s routine on autopilot, constantly aware of the time sweeping her nearer and nearer to the hour when Ben died.
Juliet wanted to do something to mark the moment, but she didn’t know what. She was scrabbling to hold on to the last remaining minutes of the year, as if tipping over that threshold would break some kind of final bond she had with him.
She walked the dogs, then came home to an empty house and read the cards from a few friends who’d remembered. It didn’t feel right to prop them on the mantelpiece, or throw them away, so they stayed on the shelf by the door, awkward reminders of awkward emotions. She made supper, fed Minton and talked listlessly to her mother when she came to collect Coco, bearing a huge box of chocolates, all the time feeling as if she had an appointment to go to at a quarter past eight.
As the light was fading, Juliet went into the back garden and looked around the leafy confusion springing out from each side of the lawn. It was embarrassing how little she’d done to it, and she apologised to Ben in her head for the shaggy hedges and overgrown borders.
There were signs, though, of what he’d started. The rose bushes that her dad had pruned by the back door offered up some late velveteen yellow and red flowers, and the herbs had thrived with no attention. As Juliet swept her hand through the mint and lavender and rosemary bushes, the air filled with scent, and for the first time in ages, she felt her nose twitch at the combination of medicinal, sweet fragrances. It had all carried on growing without him, just as she’d managed to keep going. A bit wild, but still growing.
Slowly, thinking of Ben with each plant, Juliet began to make a bouquet of stems, as he’d done for her wedding bouquet.
Rosemary, because she hadn’t forgotten how much he loved her, and never would.
Dead seed heads from her untrimmed lavender, for the lavender bags she’d talked about making for the wardrobes they never bought. Ben, you were right, she thought, sadly: I didn’t find time. But maybe I will.
Mint, for the deep-green tiles in the bathroom that was now finished, and was just how he’d have liked it.
Tiger-yellow chrysanthemums for the front sitting room, which was going to be the next project, once she got past today.
The Kellys were all out, and there was an unusual calm hanging over the dusk-shaded garden. It made Juliet feel as if she’d stepped into some sort of time bubble, where she could turn her head and see the house’s original occupant, tending the roses in a crinoline. She wondered if Ben had slipped into that half-lit world now. Maybe one day in the future someone would be picking flowers in the dark and see a handsome blond man strimming the hedge, his long muscles glowing too healthily for a ghost.
Didn’t they say that people with the most passion for life were the ones who imprinted themselves on their surroundings for ever? That would be Ben. In his garden.
Juliet braced herself for the backwash of sadness, but it didn’t come. Instead she felt a sort of peace in herself too, that Ben could choose to wander somewhere he’d been really happy, and maybe it would be here. She wanted him to be happy, wherever he was, because she was finally starting to grasp the fact that he wasn’t going to walk through her door again, telling her it had been a mistake. He’d gone.
She reached the end of the lawn, where they’d pointed to the old brick wall and talked about the sweet peas and raspberry canes, and sat down on the damp grass, looking up at the squat white façade, with its sash windows and the date plaque she’d fallen in love with on the first viewing. Someone, in 1845, had sat where she was and thought, Finished.
That’s my house, she thought, and corrected herself immediately. Our house.
The words hung in her head. No, my house, she decided, quietly. My grouting. My fuse box. We didn’t start any of the plans we made. I have. On my own. The house it’s turning into is mine. And if I think of it as ours, it means there’s always going to be someone missing.
Besides which, those magnificent plans, and the lack of movement on them, had been the tiny thorn that had started the bad feeling between her and Ben, the little resentments that had festered into something bigger under the skin of their happiness, and then finally erupted into the only serious argument they’d ever had.
Now the wash of sadness came, but instead of pushing away the memories of those final words she’d said to the love of her life, Juliet faced it. If she couldn’t face it today, when was she going to?
She felt something warm pressing against her leg and she saw Minton had woken up and run out looking for her. His eyes were worried and he licked at her hand.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, fondling his ears. ‘Today of all days. How mean of me to make you think I’d abandoned you too.’
Minton rubbed his head against her leg and rolled over, his tail tucked between his back legs. The submission broke Juliet’s heart and she tickled his tummy, trying to cheer him up.
Then she picked up her bunch of stems and got to her feet. The wet grass had soaked through her jeans, and now a fine mist of rain had started to fall. She registered that it was cold, but a sudden determination had gripped her and she barely noticed.
‘Come on, Minton,’ she said. ‘We’re going out for a walk.’
Juliet put Minton’s lead on and stepped out of the porch into the fresh evening air.
It was still raining lightly, and she pulled up the hood of her jacket, setting off down their residential street. At the end, she took a deep breath and turned the opposite way to her normal route, down the road that had once had the blacksmith, and the bakery, now the Old Forge, and the Old Bakery (Flats A, B and C). For the last year, she’d avoided walking this way, unable to see any of the landmarks without seeing Ben too.
I don’t know where I’m going, she thought, masochistically. I don’t know exactly where Ben died, because I wasn’t there.
The still image of Ben collapsing in the empty street, surrounded by blank windows and silence, went through Juliet’s heart like a knife, as it always did. It hurt even more now, because after a year of being properly alone herself, she knew what panic he must have felt, flailing like a drowning man for attention and finding nothing.
Although he hadn’t been entirely alone. He’d had Minton with him.
Juliet’s stomach lurched and she glanced down at the little terrier, trotting along at her heel as if
they were just out for a bonus night-time walk. The streetlights were making his creamy coat yellow, like unsalted butter, and she had a flashback to the nights they’d spent in Tesco’s car park, Minton chasing his light-up ball under the twenty-four-hour security lights while she threw it robotically and cried at the same time. That seemed a different lifetime now too.
They passed the big detached villa, and the painted terrace of cottages, and each time she looked to see if Minton was reacting. It was irrational, she knew, but part of her hoped he’d understand, and show her where she should direct her grief. How far down the street Ben had stormed, still stinging with anger after their row, before he’d suffered his massive, unexpected heart attack.
The ambulance man told her later that Minton had waited with Ben, barking and barking and barking, until eventually someone had come out of their house to see what the hell was going on with the bloody dog. With extraordinary bad luck, Ben had collapsed outside one of the few houses in Rosehill that belonged to someone he didn’t know, and because he’d stormed out of the house in just his football kit, with no ID, no phone, nothing, they had no way of knowing who he was.
If only Ben had put Minton’s collar on, as she was always nagging him to do, they could have phoned her immediately. She could have got there in time. Instead, she had to wait until . . .
Juliet stopped and closed her eyes to stop the image forming, but it formed anyway.
Minton, on her doorstep, alone, his tail wagging side to side in that scared, submissive fashion that told her something was wrong. She thought he’d been kicked, to begin with, he looked in so much pain.
Oh God, her first reaction had been crossness; the last dregs of her anger at Ben had been directed at poor little faithful Minton. She’d shouted at him for running off without his collar.
And then the knock on the door, the out-of-breath paramedic who’d run after Minton as he’d hared off up the road, trying to keep the white dog in sight. His expression, when she’d opened the door with her scared, exhausted dog under one arm, her face still tense and tear-streaked from the argument.
Juliet sank onto a nearby low wall and pressed the lock on Minton’s extendable lead to stop him going further. He returned to her side at once, leaning into her leg and sniffing her hand for a treat. She reached automatically into the pocket that always had a zip-lock of kibble in it now for Coco, and rewarded him, but her brain had gone on to the dot-to-dot analysis and she couldn’t stop it.
If Ben hadn’t stormed out like that, his heart wouldn’t have had that sudden spasm all alone somewhere on Longhampton Road.
If they hadn’t had a row, he wouldn’t have stormed out, pumped full of adrenalin, his mind reeling with hurt and resentment and shock that his soulmate wasn’t actually sure if she wanted to have children with him, after fifteen years.
And if she hadn’t yelled at him that if he couldn’t even get the bathroom started, when would he get round to potty-training, or paying for nursery, or any of the other boring tasks that she knew she would find herself having to do, then maybe he wouldn’t have yelled back, or stormed out, or died . . .
Juliet stuffed her hand into her mouth as a sob broke out of her.
Ben had died because they’d had a massive row about him not facing up to adult life the way she was; it wasn’t about him, it was about her.
She’d been tiptoeing around it for months, but that was the tough truth. The house wasn’t ready to have a baby in. It wasn’t even safe for their dog. Left to Ben, it never would be, and he hadn’t seemed to care that it was driving her mad. If she was really honest – the sort of honest she’d been with Louise, out of sheer desperation – Juliet had started to wonder whether maybe they were growing at different rates, like an unbalanced tree: Ben the eternal teenager, happy to do favours for other people and worry about tomorrow later, and Juliet the reluctant adult, paying the bills, worrying for two.
It was the thought that maybe they weren’t the perfectly matched couple that had made her sick and sad and angry – not him. Not Ben himself.
She was vaguely aware of a car slowing down, then stopping.
‘Hey, Juliet! Do you two want a lift? It’s raining.’
Juliet looked over and saw Lorcan leaning out of his van. Emer was in the passenger seat with Roisin squeezed between them, and from the banging in the back, she guessed the rest of the Kellys were travelling with the tool kit and using it to play steel drums.
She shook her head and tried to look normal. ‘No, you’re OK.’
‘Ah, go on,’ yelled Emer. ‘We’re going via the chipper – we’re celebrating Sal getting his first gig! Oi! Shut up in the back!’
Juliet managed a weak smile. ‘Tell him congratulations, but I’m fine, honestly.’
Lorcan leaned out a bit further, peering at her strained face. Then his door swung open, with the engine still running, and his jeans-clad leg appeared. ‘Emer, you’ll have to drive home,’ he said, jumping down. ‘I’m going for a walk.’
‘You’re not . . . Ah, Lorcan. Will I get you two some chips?’ Emer twigged something was up and slid across the seat to get behind the wheel. She didn’t look entirely confident about taking over, and the expression on Roisin’s face wasn’t too positive either.
‘Dunno. I’ll ring you,’ said Lorcan, not looking back. His gaze was fixed on Juliet, and his dark eyebrows were creased with concern.
Juliet started to protest that he really didn’t need to, but something about his solid presence made her feel better and awkward at the same time. She waved as Emer ground the gears and lurched off, to shrieks of protest from the passengers.
‘Are you going somewhere in particular?’ he asked, spotting the bouquet in her hand, as well as the dog lead. ‘Ah. OK.’
Juliet didn’t say anything.
‘Want some company? You can tell me to get lost if you’d rather be alone.’
Juliet pressed her lips together, trying to keep her emotions in check. ‘I’m . . . I don’t know. I was just going to walk around where Ben died and leave these somewhere. It’s a silly idea.’
‘No, it’s not.’ Lorcan didn’t say anything else, and Juliet realised that was one of the things she liked most about him. He just said what he thought, and left it at that, unlike so many other people around her, always telling her how she should feel, how they’d feel in her situation, and on and on until she wanted to scream.
He inclined his head towards the road, and without speaking, they set off, Minton trotting ahead of them.
Images of Ben’s last night pushed through Juliet’s head, as she saw the walls and trees along the road through his eyes. Most of the darker thoughts she’d managed to pack into the back of her mind over the last year, ‘saving’ them until she was strong enough to give them proper space, but now she made herself face them. Because if not now, when?
Had Ben been thinking of her – angrily – when he’d had his cardiac arrest? That tormented her more than anything, that his last thought of her had been pain at the hurtful things she’d said. She hoped, had bargained with God, that he’d seen some happy memory of the two of them together, before he died.
Was it really selfish to wonder that?
Juliet realised Minton had stopped and was sniffing around a lamp-post. For a mad second she wondered if this was it, if this was the place Ben had collapsed, outside . . . She peered to make out the curly iron sign. Outside the Gables.
It could well be. By the time the paramedic had banged on her door, Ben was in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, even though it was already too late, and she wasn’t in a state to ask the man exactly where it had all happened. He’d taken pity on her hysteria and removed the keys from her shaking hands, driving the van to the A&E, even though, he told her, he wasn’t really supposed to.
She stopped. Lorcan had stopped as well, and she knew he’d twigged what she was doing. Maybe it would have been better to be alone, she thought. I could have said a poem or something. Recited lyrics from
X&Y.
But as she thought it, she knew there was no point. This was more about her than Ben. She celebrated him every day in little ways, not just Grief Hour, which had shortened recently. Coldplay was wearing off. No, this was more about her, making it through a whole year without him for the first time since she was fifteen. Battered, and stunned, but still breathing.
‘I could go?’ Lorcan offered, reading her face. ‘If you want some privacy?’
Juliet slowly shook her head. Ben wasn’t here. He wasn’t going to materialise like Banquo’s ghost, and in any case, hadn’t she preferred him haunting her own garden, not some random portion of Rosehill’s residential area?
‘No. I’d only stand out here talking to myself until the owners come out. At least we look like two normal human beings having a chat.’
‘Fair enough.’ He peered at the hedge next to them, trimmed into a fat oblong. ‘This is a good-looking hedge. What’d you call this?’
‘Box,’ said Juliet. ‘Can you smell it? Always reminds me of National Trust houses, and Olde England.’ She rubbed the leaves between her fingers and inhaled the dark-green scent. ‘Ben loved box. He talked about growing some in the garden and cutting them into topiary shapes. It would have taken years.’
‘Better get some soon, then. Add it to the list. For the house,’ he added, as if she had some other list.
Juliet twisted the leaves in her fingers. He’d have stopped at this hedge to admire it. Ben always stopped to smell the flowers and plants. Maybe his last thoughts had been about dark-green hedges and shears and her in a summer dress in their garden full of box-cockerels.
Slowly she took her bunch of herbs and flowers and pushed it into the dry centre of the thick box hedge, until it vanished from sight in the scratchy twigs.
‘Goodbye, Ben,’ she whispered. ‘I love you.’
She closed her eyes as the tears pushed up her chest, and then they sank down again. Juliet had become skilled at taking the temperature of her grief, monitoring tiny fluctuations like a nurse, and now she felt a strange calm relief at the edges of it, like glimmers of light around the curtain on a winter morning.