by Dani Atkins
He had me there, but embarrassment made it impossible to hear the sensible voice of reason in my head, the one that was telling me to thank him politely and walk away. ‘There was no one around. I checked. And it was a very personal conversation.’
The man sighed, and I wondered how many times he was going to end up regretting his good deed for the day. From the expression on his face, quite a few, I imagined. ‘I’ve been here for the last forty minutes.’
I rammed the tissues he’d given me into my pocket, and heard a teenage-worthy petulance in my voice, which I should have outgrown several decades ago. ‘Well, you must have been hiding, or something.’
There was something in his eyes that told me I’d crossed a line, and all at once I remembered where we were.
‘I was kneeling down,’ he said quietly. ‘Tidying my wife’s grave.’
My eyes dropped and I saw two damp circles darkening the denim of his jeans, verifying his words. ‘I… I’m so sorry,’ I said awkwardly, trying to squeeze the apology past my foot, which was firmly lodged in my mouth.
The man shook his head, and as he did I noticed the small scattering of grey threads at his temples. He was older than I had first thought, perhaps in his early forties. Although his lean frame and casual clothing gave the impression of someone younger.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said, but I got the impression he was still annoyed with me. That made two of us, because I was annoyed with me. ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘I was about to go, so I’ll leave you in peace to finish your… conversation.’
‘No, please, don’t go because of me. I feel like I’ve chased you away.’
‘Not at all.’ His mouth betrayed the polite lie. ‘I can always come back later.’
He turned to go and I felt a rush of shame. In my job, I was used to dealing with the bereaved. And never, in all my years as a florist, had I spoken to a grieving relative in such an unthinking way.
‘I really am sorry,’ I said to his fast-retreating back. For a moment, I thought he was going to carry on walking, but he slowed and then turned around.
‘Forget it,’ he said, and then his face softened as he added, ‘It sounded as if you and your… partner—’
‘Husband,’ I corrected softly.
There was empathy in his eyes as he nodded gently. ‘It sounds as if you have a lot to discuss.’
He strode away, surprisingly silently for such a big man. No wonder I hadn’t heard his approach. I dug my hands into my pockets, my fingers curling around the stranger’s gift, as I crossed back to Tim’s headstone. The grass was slightly damp, but I dropped down onto it, sitting crossed-legged as I leant forward with my forehead resting against the cool marble. ‘Don’t say a word,’ I warned my ever-silent husband. ‘Not one single word.’
*
The random encounter with the stranger in the cemetery kept popping into my head over the next few days, and I cringed every single time I remembered how I’d behaved. Of course I would apologise if our paths ever crossed again, but I really hoped they didn’t. It felt weird knowing that a total stranger was the sole keeper of a secret I hadn’t yet shared with either my family or friends.
My hands stilled their work sorting out the early morning delivery of blooms from the nursery. The baby Tim and I had hoped for felt so close, all I had to do was reach out and pull it towards me. We had one last chance to make our dream a reality. Deciding to go ahead with the IVF by myself was both terrifying and exhilarating. A baby. A tiny human who would be half Tim, and half me. It was a tangible way for him to live on in my life, in more than just my heart and memories. I pulled up the tall stool at my workbench and sank shakily onto it. It was a huge decision, a life-changing decision, and making it alone had never been my intention.
I closed my eyes, knowing when I did the cool storeroom of the florist shop would disappear and I would once again be transported back to the oncologist’s office, hearing the news that would devastate our life and shatter the future we’d dreamt of. The ringing of the shop’s doorbell was a welcome intrusion as it jerked me out of the old memory I visited far too frequently.
‘Crazy Daisy’ had always been so much more than a business to me. It was something Tim and I had dreamt up and created together; at times from his hospital bed, or during the long days between treatments, when he’d not been well or strong enough to return to his teaching job. The shop felt like our child, our firstborn, and I was fiercely protective of it.
When Tim lost his fight to stay with me, when all I’d wanted to do was curl up in a ball of misery and join him, it was the shop that dragged me from my bed each morning. To abandon it felt like I’d be abandoning him. And that was something I would never do. Without Crazy Daisy, I doubt I’d have got through those first dark months of grief and despair. But now, five years on, I was ready to create one last piece of magic with the man I loved. It wouldn’t be easy. I knew that. I was going to worry that I was doing it all wrong every single minute of the day. Without Tim’s calming influence around to dial me down, I was probably going to be an absolute nightmare of a parent. And I could hardly wait to find out.
2
Beth
After Tim died, I’d visited the cemetery every day. It hadn’t been healthy – I could see that now – although at the time I’d refused to listen to my worried parents or my sister, who’d voiced her concern all the way from Australia, where she now lived. Eventually my visits had decreased to just once or twice a week. Anything less than that still felt wrong.
There were always more people in the cemetery at the end of the day, and I recognised the faces of several ‘regulars’ as I passed them. Some looked up from tending their loved ones’ graves, and nodded like commuters who travel the same route for years but never say a word to each other.
Graveyards have their own etiquette. It’s okay to nod. Even a watery smile of recognition is permissible. But what you’re not meant to do is intrude on any conversation being held with a lost loved one. The man who’d offered me his tissues the other day had clearly never learnt that. I wondered if he was recently bereaved.
‘Hey. It’s me again,’ I said to the white plinth that had withstood so many of my tears in those early days, I’m surprised the stone hadn’t eroded away. I’d been a mess; totally unprepared for life without the man I loved beside me. You’d have thought my early premonition at that first oncology appointment would have prepared me better, but when Tim finally slipped away, after the bravest and hardest-fought battle, I was left reeling.
I lifted the bunch of flowers in my hand. ‘Don’t get excited,’ I told his headstone, ‘these aren’t for you. They’re an apology for a man whose wife lives over there somewhere,’ I explained, nodding my head in the direction the man had come from the other day. ‘Give me a minute to find her, then we can carry on with our chat. We still have a lot to discuss.’
In any other location, I’d probably be certified as crazy for talking to Tim in the way I did here. But in this place it was so normal, it was practically obligatory. Beneath our feet were our loved ones. The people we’d shared our lives, our hearts and our souls with. To not speak to them in exactly the same way as we’d always done, well, that would be the madness.
An uncanny instinct led me to the right plot. In a row of lichen-covered, weed-strewn markers, her memorial was scrubbed clean, and the surrounding ground was neatly tended and planted with small flowering shrubs. The epitaph carved into the light grey marble was simple rather than flowery, but no less poignant. It said that the woman at my feet was Anna Thomas, wife of Liam, and a quick sad sum confirmed she’d been young – exactly the same age as I was now – when her life had been cut short eight years earlier. What a waste.
I crouched beside the headstone and carefully set down the small bunch of yellow roses. Not many people understand the language of flowers anymore, but as a florist I was fluent. These said ‘sorry’, and drew a concluding line beneath my unfortunate meeting with Anna Thomas’s husban
d. Tucked among the tightly furled blooms were two things: a small card, on which I’d written Thank you, and an unopened packet of tissues. I figured he’d be able to work out who they were from.
*
‘So what’s new? What have you been up to recently?’
‘Nothing much,’ I replied. Except preparing to get pregnant. For a horrified moment I thought I’d said the words out loud, but my sister’s face on my laptop screen looked neither stunned nor shocked, so I don’t suppose I could have.
It was morning in Australia and Karen was sitting in her preferred spot for our Skype chats, on the deck of her Sydney home against a backdrop of tropical blooms. I’d long since seen through her not-so-subtle attempt to lure me subliminally to the other side of the world with exotic foliage.
Our calls were the highlight of my week. She was half a world away, but she was still my best friend, and the ache of missing her had never gone away, not even after all these years. I still longed for the smell of her shampoo when she hugged me, the graze of her lips against my cheek when she said hello, or her hand squeezing mine for those moments when words just weren’t enough. We’d always been close, even as children, and although I’m sure we must have squabbled the way siblings do, the memory of it was buried so deeply beneath missing her, I truly couldn’t recall it.
We knew each other’s secrets: first crush; first kiss; first sneaked cigarette; first time with a boy: ‘Honestly Bethie, I don’t know what all the fuss is about; it was all over in seconds.’ That one still made me smile, although one devoted husband and two small children later, I doubt she still felt the same way. But now I was keeping the biggest, boldest secret in my entire life from her, and every time I opened my mouth I was scared it was going to come tumbling out.
‘How are Mum and Dad?’ Karen asked, momentarily disappearing from my screen as she reached for her glass of orange juice.
‘The usual,’ I replied in sister shorthand. I knew she’d be able to translate that one: Mum was busy with her book club, volunteering and amateur dramatics, while Dad was trying to pretend that retirement wasn’t boring him to death, or that his arthritis hadn’t deteriorated from slightly troublesome to seriously debilitating.
Karen pulled a face that I recognised only too well. The guilt that was never far away scored a sneaky bullseye. It was no secret that my parents had always intended to spend their retirement years in Australia. The pull was perfectly understandable: the weather was better for a man with Dad’s condition; plus, fifty percent of their offspring lived there, with one hundred percent of their grandchildren. It was really all about the maths.
I’d always suspected that Karen had a secret master plan to move our entire family ‘down under’. It had been a clever long game. She’d fed our parents titbits of information about beachside retirement properties beside golf courses, and had even sent links to Tim about teaching jobs with funny notes attached: Didgeridoo skills not needed for this one!
Although we’d never pursued it, I could see Tim’s curiosity had been piqued. Karen knew I wanted to live by the coast again – and there was plenty of that in Australia. So mission (semi) accomplished. Or at least it might have been, until there was a persistent stomach spasm that wouldn’t go away, and a perpetual sickness that caused the weight to drop from Tim almost overnight… and suddenly all talk of living elsewhere disappeared. We were much more focused on just living at all.
I hadn’t expected that Tim’s illness and battle to survive would alter my parents’ plans. It had never been said – in fact, it had been actively denied many times – but everyone knew the real reason my parents had never emigrated. I was the reason. And the guilt of that weighed down heavily on me. Karen had two adorable children whose growing-up was being watched at a distance by their grandparents, and nothing anyone could do or say was ever going to make me feel better about robbing them of that. Except, perhaps, by giving them a third grandchild – one that no one was expecting.
A chorus of kookaburras chirruped noisily from a tree behind Karen as seven-year-old Aaron edged his face before the camera.
‘Are you coming to see us soon, Auntie Beth?’ Aaron asked, his question a serpent’s lisp owing to the absence of his front teeth.
‘Nice one,’ I said to his mother over the top of my nephew’s tousled blond curls. ‘Clever change of tactic.’ She knew better than anyone how much I loved her two little boys.
Karen answered with a grin that even I could see was identical to my own. ‘I figured he’d be harder to disappoint,’ she said, dropping a reward kiss onto her son’s head.
‘We’ve been through this a thousand times before. You know I can’t just shut up the shop and take off.’
‘I thought that’s why you hired your wonder woman assistant.’
My smile felt suddenly strained. For a moment, I came perilously close to letting Karen in on my secret. Very little shocked my big sister, but I bet if I said: Actually, I hired Natalie so she’d be able to look after the shop while I have a baby, I could wipe that knowing look clean off her face. But I wasn’t about to say that. Not yet. Call it superstitious, but it felt too much like counting your chickens before they’ve hatched, or the IVF equivalent: counting your embryos before they’ve thawed.
Luckily, a noise somewhere off-screen distracted Karen, and she glanced towards it with a small frown. ‘Uh-oh. Sounds like Josh has just woken up. I thought we’d be safe for another twenty minutes. Sorry, hon. I’m gonna have to cut this one short.’
‘Give him a big kiss from me,’ I said, waggling my fingers at the screen. ‘We’ll chat again next week.’
Karen’s eyebrows drew together to form a single blonde line. She was much fairer than me, and seven years in the New South Wales sunshine made her look like a native Aussie.
‘You sure everything’s okay, Bethie? You sound kind of…preoccupied.’
How did she do that, even from the other side of the world? How did she see through the distortion of pixels and look straight into my heart? Out of sight of my laptop screen I crossed my fingers like a child, to cancel out the lie.
‘I’m absolutely fine. Stop worrying.’
*
Sleep took a long time coming that night. I hated lying to my family, but after the pain of the first two failed IVF attempts in Tim’s final year, I didn’t want anyone to know what I intended to do, until I knew it had been successful. Or so they can’t talk you out of it? asked a voice in the darkness, which I recognised as mine. I turned over and thumped my pillow with an angry fist, as if the words had emerged from its memory foam filling. ‘No,’ I replied, reaching for the pillow on what I still referred to as Tim’s side of the bed. I curled my arms around it, but it was a poor substitute for the man who should be lying there. ‘I just don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up, that’s all.’
3
Izzy
Here it was again. The worst moment of the whole week. Those dreadful five minutes when I stood in front of the man I still loved and tried to pretend I was okay with this; that I couldn’t remember when ‘goodnight’ was murmured from the safety of his arms in the bed we shared, and not awkwardly on the doorstep of a house he no longer lived in.
‘His homework’s in there. It’s all done,’ Pete said, passing me the superhero-emblazoned backpack. Our fingers grazed in the transfer, and I felt his instinctive reaction of withdrawal even before I saw the flicker in his hazel eyes. Fortunately, our eight-year-old son, Noah, was happily oblivious to that reaction. He hopped impatiently on the doorstep beside his father.
‘Can I go in now, Dad? I don’t want to miss my TV programme.’
Pete’s hand came out and ruffled our son’s thick dark hair. ‘Of course you can, kiddo.’ Noah threw his spindly arms around Pete’s waist, holding on a little longer, squeezing a little tighter, than he would have done before the separation. ‘I’ll see you in two weeks,’ Pete said, his words disappearing into the shock of ebony hair, as he bent down to plant a kiss somewhere in
the region of Noah’s slightly crooked parting.
‘You’ll see him before that,’ I reminded him. ‘You are coming to the school show next week, aren’t you?’ We both heard the censure in my voice, even though he didn’t deserve it. Pete wasn’t the kind of dad who opted out of those sorts of events. I couldn’t remember him missing a single nativity play, sports day, or sharing assembly. He was the crazy parent leaping up and down on the playing field sidelines as though it was an Olympic event, or holding his phone up high (annoying everyone behind us) to record every performance. We used to watch those videos together, curled up on the settee, our hearts beating in perfect synchronicity with love for our child. Did he watch them alone now, or was there someone new in his life who he shared them with? It was a question I didn’t feel brave enough to ask.
‘I could never forget that,’ Pete assured. ‘Not when it’s your big starring role, Mr Zuko.’ Pete grinned as he took a step backwards. I knew what was coming next. You don’t spend fourteen years with someone without knowing all their party pieces. He pantomimed slicking an invisible comb through a hairline that wasn’t quite as lush as it had once been. ‘Will you still love me when I’m old and I’ve lost all my hair?’ ‘I do, hon, I do.’ The memory caught me unawares. That had been us, only a year ago.
Pete was in full swing now, his hips grinding in a way no eight-year-old wants to see, but Noah was convulsed with laughter as his father extended one arm and swept it slowly from left to right. His moves might be pure John Travolta, but his voice certainly wasn’t.
Noah and I winced. It’s safe to say that the musical talents that had secured Noah the lead role in the school production hadn’t been inherited from either of us. Dogs started howling whenever I sang, and Pete (who loved karaoke far more than a man of his age and lack of talent really ought to) was almost as bad.
