tightened your belt and I regretted
not asking you to hit me with it,
so I could feel the buckle against my back.
Again the word beautiful came to mind.
The room was drowning in amber light.
Your face in it against the dawn.
Beautiful.
You left the housekeeper a tip.
‘Yup. You’re alive. It’s amazing.’
Why wouldn’t you ever believe me
when I told you I was dying?
No matter how carefully
I put it away,
I can never find the fairy
for the top of the
Christmas tree
until it is January,
and too late,
the tree rusting in a skip somewhere.
PART FIVE
First day back, Rebecca calls the office.
My stomach dips, dives, just as it did when you’d call.
‘Thanks for the card,’ she says.
‘It was so thoughtful of you.
You’ve been a rock. Really.’
‘How are you?’
‘We were away but back now in the scrum of it.
Washing and dinner and the usual.
I was wondering when probate is likely to wrap up.’
Helen is in my office making the sign for tea.
I nod and shoo her out.
‘It’s very close to the end,’ I say,
speaking to her like an ordinary client.
‘Last thing
is to produce estate accounts for the beneficiaries,
namely you.
I’ll set out what tax has been paid, all accounts settled,
that sort of thing.’
‘It’s so complicated.
Connor was right to choose a solicitor as executor.
I was annoyed about that for a while,
like he didn’t trust me.
Silly, I know.
Now I see it was sensible.
Mark would have taken twelve years to do it.’
She laughs. It is crinkled and false.
‘I’ll email the accounts when they’re done.’
Rebecca thanks me then says,
‘I’m having a few people over for dinner this weekend.
Would you like to come? Would that be strange?
Your partner is welcome.’
We never argued, except about The Situation.
Anything else we tried to debate
turned into resolution,
a pact to listen,
disagree.
You’d hold me and let me have my opinions.
It was new, exciting,
like everything else you brought with you.
But then I said,
‘You should make me the executor to your will,’
and I saw something sneer in you at my presumption.
‘Why would I do that?’
‘Because it’s my job.
And your darling wife wouldn’t have to worry.’
‘Don’t call her that.’
‘Sorry. Your bitch wife wouldn’t have to worry.’
You examined a crossword puzzle in the newspaper on your lap.
You didn’t have a pen.
We were in a Hampstead tea room.
The steam machine hissed and whistled.
Cups clanked.
The walls were deep red.
‘I think you should change your will.
Especially when you split up.
Why should she get it all?
Put it into trust for the kids.’
‘What are you talking about?
I’m not going to die, Ana.’
‘Everyone’s going to die, Connor.’
‘What’s this about?’
You folded the newspaper,
then your arms.
Whenever we made love, your hands in my hair,
your mouth on my collarbones, your breath in my ears,
I wanted to smash the world apart to keep you.
I would have given it all up.
But that day your eyes were cold,
and I hated you for what you were making me feel.
‘It’s me or her,’ I said.
‘Fine, be the executor,
but I’m quite sure you’re going first.’
‘Choose.’
‘What?’
‘Me or Rebecca.’
‘Don’t do this.’
‘If you choose me now but stay with her,
I’ll call her and tell her everything.’
‘Stop threatening me.’
‘Choose.’
‘Now? You want me to choose now?
This is silly. What if I don’t pick you?
Then what?’
‘We have a decision.’
‘Ana.’
‘How much longer do you need to
work out this puzzle, Connor?
You’ve had years.
Years to decide, years to explain it to Rebecca,
years to split up with me, if that’s what you wanted.’
‘Why can’t you ever see it from my perspective?
It’s worse for me, I—’
‘Stop there. I can’t listen to any more.
It’s insulting. And humiliating.’
‘Ana.’
‘Good luck, Connor.’ I stood.
I didn’t touch you or say goodbye.
It was the last time I saw you.
A ticking takes me upstairs to Ruth’s room.
The door is ajar.
Inside, my eldest is sitting up straight
at her desk,
the new monogrammed coloured pencils
she got from Santa lined up along it.
She takes each one,
snaps it in half.
Then again. Into quarters.
Sets the lot aside.
Red, snap. Red, snap, snap.
Turquoise, snap. Turquoise, snap, snap.
She is expressionless. Concentrating.
I step away so she won’t see me watching
and gaze at the floor.
But I cannot ignore the sound of it –
the snapping of my child.
My body gave away nothing.
No swelling or sickness.
No desire for Doritos
like the last two times.
Only an absence of aches and bleeding.
I spent an evening online
hunting out reasons for the delay.
Age. Possibly.
Stress. Yes.
Tiredness. Always.
I got a kit, just in case,
and there it was, a pass.
Positive.
Your fruit floating blue in plastic
but looking curiously
like an error –
X marks the mistake.
And so
I had
no choice,
no opportunity to practise even a
moderate morality.
I saw my GP,
then the chemist,
and took two pills
to wash away the life
we’d made,
the you in me.
So easy.
Sometimes I think about its little spirit,
as delicate and almost imagined
as ripples in air made by the wings of a dragonfly,
and I feel so sad
for so long.
That night Paul said, ‘You’re always somewhere else.’
‘It’s true. I’m sorry,’ I said.
I went to bed with a hot-water bottle,
not bothering to kiss the kids goodnight.
Rebecca opens the door.
She has pretty eyes. I never noticed them before.
‘Come in!’ She glances at a wall clock. ‘You’re the first.’
‘Did you say six?’
‘I did. Everyone else is late!
Late as usual. Open that, would you?
’ Rebecca says,
taking a bottle of white from the cooler
and attending to something on the hob.
She forgets to give me a corkscrew.
Your boys are in the sitting room playing a video game.
Jamie turns, sees me, waves enthusiastically.
‘Want a turn?’ he calls out,
holding the controller aloft.
I shake my head.
The doorbell rings and David hurtles into the hall to answer it.
‘Hey, trouble!’ someone says.
He skids back into the kitchen followed by a couple.
The woman is tall. Red lipstick. Sequinned skirt.
The man has a scraggy beard. He is wearing a fedora.
What the fuck? Mark mouths the words at me.
Rebecca opens her arms to them.
‘Hey, you made it without getting puked on!
How is the peanut?’
The woman, his wife Donna, rolls her eyes.
‘Not sleeping, that’s for sure.
Teething, I think. Getting on my nerves.
Why doesn’t anyone warn you about babies?
But he’s with his granny for the night.
And he’s gorgeous.’
Mark takes a glass from Rebecca, downing half of it.
‘This is Ana,’ Rebecca explains.
Mark nods. ‘Yeah, I know.
We met at the funeral, didn’t we?
I’m Mark Dahl. I was a very good friend of Connor’s.’
Rebecca frowns.
‘You were at the funeral? You never said.’
The room watches. Waits for an answer.
And somewhere you are seeing this too.
‘I was there to represent the firm,’ I say.
‘I hope that was OK.’
I taste the wine. ‘This is lovely.’
Donna clacks across the kitchen to a bowl of olives.
‘Who else is coming?’ she asks.
‘Not your bloody cousin, I hope.
She’s so clever and cultured.
I’m going to start reading again, I really am.
At the very least, I’m going to buy some books.’
Mark pulls a packet of cigarettes from his blazer pocket.
‘Join me,’ he says,
nodding at the garden.
What choice have I but to follow him?
Outside
he is standing next to the nicer-than-normal shed –
cedar wood, sedum roof.
He lights a cigarette, inhales and hands it to me.
‘I don’t know what’s going on here but after tonight
you’re to fuck off. Do you understand?’
The grass has a frosty film but I don’t feel cold
despite the sheer shirt I am wearing.
I suck on the cigarette, stagger.
‘It’s curious how you’ve suddenly acquired moral leanings
on the subject of infidelity.
You never cared before.
You condoned it.
Colluded.’
‘Do you fucking understand?’
I exhale into the night. It is black. Starry.
And I am nothing beneath it.
‘Of course, I understand.’
‘You’ve no right to be here.
I genuinely don’t get it.’
‘Me neither.’
I have looked and I have not found you here.
I have looked and you are nowhere.
You are gone.
‘The Wilsons have turned up. Don’t leave me with them.’
It’s Donna behind us, halfway up the garden.
Mark turns to me.
‘Tell Rebecca you got an emergency call from home.
You aren’t welcome.’
‘What?’ Donna shouts.
I hand Mark my wine glass and head inside.
Rebecca is laughing with a young couple –
both of them fashionable and loud,
the woman in the middle of an anecdote.
Rebecca seems slight next to the couple.
‘And I told him, it’s an Andy Warhol, you twat,’
the woman concludes.
‘I mean, an Andy Warhol!’
Everyone laughs and I momentarily consider
divulging my own story – finding something to amuse them.
‘Who’s this?’ The man turns to me.
‘This is Ana,’ Rebecca says. ‘She’s been given the night off.’
I touch her arm. The cotton is so soft
I want to keep my fingers there.
‘I have to shoot, I’m afraid.
The kids are puking.’
‘No, that’s such a shame.’
Rebecca glances at the table worriedly,
as though thinking about a seating plan.
I helped with even numbers.
But she spots my handbag on a chair,
sees my phone poking out of the pocket.
‘How do you know they’re sick?’
‘Look, Rebecca, I shouldn’t have come.’
Mark and Donna blunder back into the kitchen.
Mark stamps his feet on the mat.
‘Freezing my balls off out there,’ he says.
He looks at me. ‘Still here?’
Rebecca wags a finger. ‘Did he offend you?
He’s a knob most of the time, you should ignore him.’
‘Knob!’ Jamie shouts out, cackling,
his face smeared with pizza sauce.
‘It’s true though. He’s utterly obnoxious.
Aren’t you, Mark? It’s part of your boyish charm.’
Rebecca finds the wine bottle and refills his glass.
‘And what’s Ana’s redeeming feature?’ he asks.
‘I should go,’ I say.
‘Yeah,’ Mark mutters. ‘Before the party really gets started.’
The song on the speaker ends
and there is no music in the room
and no speaking
and everyone is examining me
apart from Rebecca, who is confused and reaching for my hands.
She takes them in her own.
‘Please come another time.
Being a mother is endless.’
There is genuine concern in her tone now
and I realise the dinner is of no consequence –
this panic is grief
and it is real,
and lasting,
and it is because she loves you
and you have left
and nothing makes sense any more.
‘Goodnight,’ I say. ‘Thank you.
I’m sorry. I really am.’
Rebecca walks me to the door.
‘Whatever it is, I hope you’re OK,’ she says,
and kisses me lightly.
Over her shoulder, Mark is eyeballing me.
And Donna is stroking his neck.
It hurt so much I couldn’t go home,
our baby bleeding out of me on to my clothes
and the desk chair.
Tanya said, ‘You look terrible.’
I was sweating, couldn’t remember much.
When everyone had gone home
I sat with my back to the wall and hugged my knees.
I woke in the early morning to silence, my skirt soaking.
And I called you.
‘I need you,’ I said. ‘I really need you.’
You whispered so you wouldn’t be overheard.
‘Where are you? What’s happened?’
I explained and you listened.
And I knew you were crying for this thing
you hadn’t realised existed and was now gone
and for my pain
and for what we had done to one another.
‘Oh, God, Ana. Oh God.’
But when I said again, ‘I need you,’
you were quiet.
And you did not come to me.
In the raw dark garden
/>
the moonbeams light me up
like I am on a stage.
But I am not singing or dancing.
I press my palms against the gnarled
bark of the fruitless plum tree
in my garden and stare into the sky.
There is nothing else.
I showered off the dried blood
that had crusted along my legs.
Paul was at work.
I was waiting for Nora,
had told her I’d miscarried.
You called and I said,
‘You’re a prick,’ by way of greeting.
I meant it.
You were cruel. A liar.
You were never leaving.
And I meant everything else too.
‘You don’t know what love looks like.
I can’t trust you.
I can’t carry on like this.’
I meant everything
in that last conversation.
What I don’t know
is whether you meant your last words too.
‘I love you, Ana.
I’m so sorry you’ve had to do this alone.
It’ll never happen again. I promise.
I’m doing my best.
I am.
It isn’t enough, but I’m trying.
And I’ll try harder.’
I put down the phone, couldn’t listen any more
to the hollow clamour of our arguments.
You tried to call back.
You tried three more times.
I didn’t answer.
If I had done, you would still be alive.
Prick.
Fifteen minutes after I’d slammed down the phone,
a van knocked you off your bike
on Alexandra Park Road
as you cycled towards my home.
If I had given you another thirty seconds.
If I had let you speak.
If I had answered a call.
It is not my fault, I have told myself.
But.
I could not listen.
I could no longer believe.
‘And one last question,’ I said. ‘How did he die?’
Rebecca told me, briefly, all about the bike accident.
I put down the phone and bought a pair of shoes online.
Then I opened up your will
and changed it,
made myself the executor,
which you never got around to doing,
so I could know your life
and befriend your wife
and keep you for a while.
Then I got back to work.
I have never worn the stupid shoes.
Your brass plaque is clean.
I press my forehead to its coldness.
I am sorry I have not visited before.
I am sorry I have left you alone here.
You will never leave, but I will.
I will catch the bus home, make dinner for my children.
Here is the Beehive Page 13
