Very Nearly Normal

by Hannah Sunderland

The beep sounded.

  ‘Hey, it’s Effie. I know that you didn’t want me to get in touch and that you probably let this ring out because you didn’t want to speak to me and lead me on any more than you did.’ I paused, swallowed, carried on. ‘I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t hate you a little, but I guess that’s only because I loved you so much.’ I paused again, my voice wavering. ‘I finished the list, or I finished it as much as it’s possible to anyway. I moved out, I did something that really matters and I love doing it, I even went on a date with someone I like a lot, and I would have done none of those things if you hadn’t stalked me that day.’

  I laughed a sad little laugh, a single tear falling to my cheek. ‘I found my favourite film. I made a friend and I lost a friend. I even went back to the gym and Mason’s training me, and you’ll never guess who my sparring partner is.’ I stopped, realising that I was babbling and brought myself back into the present. ‘What I’m saying, or trying to say at least, is that I would never have done all of those things without you pushing me to do them. So, I guess that, as well as a goodbye, this is thank you. Thank you for pulling me out of myself and forcing me back into life. Thank you for convincing me to do things that I would never have done and, I guess, thank you for breaking my heart when you did, although a little sooner wouldn’t have been a bad idea. That way you could have broken it off before I fell for you.’

  I took a breath and readied myself for goodbye, the last goodbye. ‘“Ashes to Ashes” came on the radio the other day at work and one of the lines stuck with me because it made me think of you and what I wanted to say. So, in the words of the man himself, “I’m happy, hope you’re happy too”. Merry Christmas, Theodore Alwyn Morgan. Thanks for the memories.’

  I hung up the phone and gasped for air. For a moment I thought that I would suffocate and die, right there in the treehouse beside the cat who wouldn’t even care if I did. My eyes blurred and my hands shook so much that I dropped the phone to my lap. But then I felt my lungs expand, the air filling them up and calming my trembling hands. The words were gone now, the clog of unsaid things no longer blocking my throat. I breathed. In. Out. In. Out. And after a while it wasn’t torture anymore.

  Felicity took my old bed and so I slept on the sofa in my parents’ living room, with Otis lying on his back in the crook of my arm. He was smelling sweeter after Dad and I had given him a bath and I was beginning to suspect that Dad was falling in love with him already. The light from the TV turned the room a pale shade of blue as I watched an old black and white movie that I’d never seen before. I wondered if Theo had listened to my voicemail yet. Maybe he had and it had made him cry or maybe it had made him feel nothing. Maybe he had just deleted it and never listened to a word. It didn’t matter really. I had said the words that had been slowly choking me and now I was free.

  I heard a quiet knock on the door and a second later it opened and Mum’s nose poked in.

  ‘Do you mind if I come in?’ she asked. I beckoned her in and she joined me on the sofa, placing a bottle of port and two glasses down on the table. She pulled out the cork and filled the glasses. Otis roused and moved to see what she was doing, laying his heavy head on her lap. She stiffened and held up her hands. She’d always been wary of any dog that wasn’t a Labrador. He knew how to work it though, turning onto his back and looking up at her with those huge buffoon’s eyes. She tentatively stroked his belly and was soon smiling and as enamoured with him as I was.

  She handed me one of the glasses and held hers up in the air. ‘What shall we toast to?’

  I pondered the question for a moment then raised my glass. ‘To forgiveness and to Ali.’

  She smiled and we touched our glasses together with a chink!

  We swigged it down and she topped them up again.

  ‘What are we watching?’ she asked.

  ‘Some Like It Hot,’ I replied.

  ‘Oh, I haven’t seen this in years.’ She settled down, her hand resting on Otis’s chest as she sipped at her port. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d sat together in a room and felt something other than resentment for each other. It was nice. So much nicer than holding grudges.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Life as a mostly sober person was absolute purgatory, for a while.

  I threw out the bottles of wine that had accumulated over the dark period of my life and replaced them with soft drinks and those chewy butter mints, which I quickly became addicted to instead. Alcohol had always been like a Zorb that kept me at a distance from the world. It hid me away, dampened the noise and protected me from the sharp edges of life. But I was now learning to live with the sharpness and the noise.

  I lay in bed in the flat with Otis splayed out beside me in a pose that reminded me of that line from Titanic:

  Draw me like one of your French girls.

  I’d grown so attached to Otis that I’d asked if I could adopt him and I’d paid for another dog to be given to one of the homeless people that I still went out and helped three times a week. It was strange to think that he’d lived most of his life on the street and now, because of something terrible, he had a soft bed to hog and heating to keep him warm.

  I looked at the clock; I had twenty minutes before I had to open the shop. I got up and dressed in a flash, smearing on a little make-up and letting Amy in to set up. I was halfway up a ladder changing a light bulb when my phone started to ring. I had almost got the bulb in and Amy was off in the back, so I let it ring out. I climbed down the ladder and went to price up the post-Christmas bargains, forgetting entirely about the call I’d missed.

  As I pushed the books onto the shelves, I wondered where my novel was now. I had been so angry the last time it had been returned to me, so hurt and appalled that they couldn’t see my genius. Now I knew that it wasn’t genius at all – just a jumbled, garbled idea that I hadn’t explained well. This time I knew that what I’d sent was good. It was really good. I was nervous about what they would respond with. I’d put everything into this book and if this wasn’t enough, then I didn’t know what would be.

  The shop was quiet, the lull between Christmas and New Year had hit particularly hard this year, so Amy and I cleaned the whole shop. By the time we’d finished it was almost three and I told Amy that she could go.

  ‘What are you doing for New Year’s?’ she asked as she pulled on her parka.

  ‘Caleb’s invited me to his parents’ place. His family do this annual New Year’s extravaganza, but Mum’s invited me home as well,’ I replied.

  ‘You’re cutting it close, aren’t you? New Year’s Eve is tomorrow.’

  ‘I know.’ I sighed. I didn’t want to bail on Caleb but I had actually enjoyed spending time with my parents since we’d made up. ‘I guess I’ll have to flip a coin.’

  It wasn’t until I closed up the shop that I looked at my phone and saw the missed call. It was a number I didn’t recognise, but they’d left a message. I dialled voicemail and played it.

  ‘Effie, it’s Tessa.’ Something jolted in my chest.

  No! I’m over this. I’m getting over him. Don’t drag me back in.

  ‘Rhys told me not to call but you asked us to let you know about Theo and I don’t think it’s fair to not tell you.’ She sounded exhausted, her voice cracking as she spoke. ‘There’s so much to tell you that I think it’s best if you come down to the house, so I can tell you in person. That’s if you want to, of course.’ She hung up abruptly and left me holding the phone to my ear and staring off into nothing.

  I will not go.

  I’d spent months trying to forget that bloody family and I would not be drawn back in now.

  What could she want to tell me?

  I’d been warring with myself for over three hours, staring at the phone and then trying to ignore it, then staring at it again.

  Why did she have to call?

  I’d accepted what had happened. I’d left him the voicemail that had said all I needed to say. I was on my way to going a full day
without thinking of the blond-haired, blue-eyed bastard and now she’d wrenched me out of my new life and back into theirs like I was some patchwork doll that two children were fighting over and tearing apart.

  ‘I’m not going. It’s too far and how dare she think that I have so little going on in my life that I can just drop everything on New Year’s Eve and drive to Wales,’ I said, turning to Otis, who stared up at me like he was waiting for something. ‘I’ll call back and ask her to tell me now.’

  I called the number and waited for her to answer but it went straight to voicemail. ‘Shit!’ I threw the phone across the room, Otis looking from the discarded phone to me and back again, his brows drawn up in confusion. ‘I am not going, Otis. I’m not – stop looking at me like that – I’m not going.’

  At 4 a.m. I found myself driving to Wales in Arthur’s car, the sounds of Noughties emo rock – which matched my mood – playing from the speakers and Otis sitting up in the passenger’s seat.

  ‘This doesn’t mean I’m going to their house,’ I said. He turned as if listening. ‘I might just veer off course and go to the beach for the day. The fact that I’m driving to Wales does not mean that I am going to that house.’

  I began to feel sleepy as I entered Wales and when I was a few miles away from the Morgans’ I pulled over into a lay-by and slept with Otis curled up beside me to keep warm. He slept better than I did. I suppose he was more used to sleeping rough than I was. When I eventually woke, groggy and aching, it was almost eight. The sky was a pale pink that kissed the tops of the trees as the sun made its way up and birds sang their loud little songs into the morning.

  I dialled Tessa’s number and called again. It went straight to voicemail … again.

  ‘Tessa, I’m in Wales. I’ll be at yours in ten minutes, but I can’t stay long.’ I hung up and felt Otis’s eyes on me. ‘I’ll only be as long as it takes her to tell me what she needs to. Then we can go home and I’ll never have to see any of them ever again.’

  I turned the key in the ignition. The radio kicked into action and the sound of My Chemical Romance made us both jump. Otis growled at the disembodied voice (he was more of a Fall Out Boy fan) before I turned the radio off and pulled onto the road.

  The gates were open when I arrived and it took all the willpower I had to stop myself from driving past and heading home. I saw Theo’s car in the driveway and the bottom fell out of my stomach.

  Was he here? Would I have to see him, be in the same room as him?

  I parked up beside it, the tyres hemmed in by moss and grass that was sprouting from between the gravel.

  It hadn’t been moved in a while.

  I cracked the window for Otis. The weather was neither warm nor cold so I left him snoozing on the front seat.

  As I turned towards the house, I saw that the door was open and Tessa was standing in the doorway, thin and pale as a ghost.

  I wanted to turn and run. Why was I here? Why was I torturing myself and prising open old wounds that hadn’t fully healed yet?

  I cursed under my breath and walked towards her; she stepped back as I neared her and I passed through the door. The moment I walked in I knew that it was a mistake. The smell that lingered in the air was his smell; the one I’d inhaled as I’d lain on his chest.

  Stop it! Don’t think about his smell or his chest or anything else about him for that matter. You are here to talk to Tessa and leave. You’ll have no more thoughts of how solid he felt as he slept beside you or how he’d kissed you in the room just upstairs. STOP IT!

  ‘Hi.’ I spoke only to stop myself from thinking.

  She shut the door and walked over to me, her hands clasped in front of her. She looked older. Her skin was pallid, her red-lined eyes glistening. An air of exhaustion hung around her. ‘I’m glad you came.’

  She walked through into the kitchen and I made to follow her, but as I did, I caught a glimpse of something that made me feel sick.

  There was something about the abandoned wheelchair at the bottom of the stairs that made me terrified. The way that the wheels weren’t in line, the seat that was fraying in places and had clearly been used a great deal but now sat unused in the hallway.

  I swallowed the fear in my throat and wondered if I could take it. I thought I was only being dramatic when I feared that he might be dead, but was that actually the case? From the look of Tessa, it was a possibility.

  She sat on a stool at the counter and waited for me to join her. A pot of tea steamed between us as I ungracefully hoisted myself up onto the too-tall stool.

  I couldn’t ask her outright. I couldn’t even put the word dead in the same sentence as his name, so instead I just asked, ‘Is he here?’

  She looked down at her hands and cleared the emotion from her throat. ‘No.’

  I felt the crude stitching in my heart ping away. Her shaking hands took the teapot and poured two china cups full of the yellow-brown liquid. She handed one to me. I added milk and two sugars before sipping; the sugar calming my nerves as I drank.

  ‘Rhys didn’t want me to call you,’ she began. ‘He said that we’d already caused you enough pain and it wasn’t fair to drag you back in, but if I were you, I’d want to know. I couldn’t leave you not knowing what happened to him.’ When I didn’t speak, she carried on. ‘Theo got a lot worse after he was moved. His illness came back harder than it had before.’

  ‘Illness? You mean his anxiety?’

  She shook her head. ‘That was never what it was. The doctors got it wrong.’

  I wished I hadn’t drunk the tea. It swilled around in my gut and made me want to sick it back up into the cup.

  ‘Jenny said they sent him home a few days after he fell ill.’ My voice was a whisper.

  ‘You spoke to Jenny?’ Her face turned red; her pupils grew small. ‘She had some nerve coming back here and letting herself in like she was still part of this family. It was all I could do not to drag her out back and drown her in the lake.’ She composed herself and carried on. ‘They sent him away because they were convinced that it was all in his head. We told them it wasn’t, but they wouldn’t believe us and, in the end, he had to go back in to hospital.’

  I couldn’t help but wince at her choice of words: in the end. My breaths came faster, my chest aching and stinging all at once.

  ‘When did he …?’ I asked, my voice quavering as a tear found its way to my cheek. I couldn’t say the word die; my tongue had forgotten it. I waited for her to say something to contradict me, to tell me that he was alive and upstairs watching that ridiculous film he loved.

  ‘Three weeks ago.’ She looked down at her hands. ‘It was such a relief after seeing him in that place for so long, with people poking him and puncturing him and taking every bit of him that they wanted.’ She was crying now. It was strange to see her, strong, fearless Tessa, being anything but strong and fearless. ‘He grew so thin and became severely anaemic. Then his joints began to seize up and …’ her tears dislodged my own ‘… his skin turned grey. His throat kept swelling and we had to sit there, Dad and I, watching as he gasped for air while the doctors told us that there was nothing wrong with him.’

  All the stitching fell loose, my heart tearing open again as everything I’d tried to lock away came back to me.

  I thought of the first moment I’d met him, how angry I’d been that he’d been listening, and the time he’d pulled me towards him, taking a photograph at the top of that mountain, the photograph that had haunted me ever since. All of the hatred I’d felt towards him fell away and I’d have given anything to feel him in my arms again.

  She handed me a tissue and looked up as a car pulled into the driveway. ‘Crap! That man is a quick driver. Rhys is going to be angry that I asked you here.’ She looked towards the door as we heard it open.

  I wiped the mascara stains from my eyes and caught my breath. ‘Did I miss the funeral?’

  ‘Funeral?’ Tessa looked confused as the sound of slowly approaching footsteps and a quiet clicking so
und travelled down the hallway. I turned to the archway and saw Rhys come into view, a paper prescription bag in his hand. ‘Whose is that car in the driveway?’ he asked, his eyes landing on mine and his body tensing.

  The clicking noise came again and then I saw someone else arrive beside him, leaning heavily on a crutch.

  I stopped breathing. The man in the doorway looked like Theo, only thinner, greyer, younger and older all at the same time. I saw that his skin was the colour of ash as he came into the light, his clothes hanging off him like they were two sizes too big. He looked up when he realised that his father had stopped walking and his eyes found me. He was alive. Theo was alive and here in the same room as me.

  ‘Effie?’ His voice was gravelly and thin as he shuffled forward into the kitchen. Rhys helped him along, waiting to catch him if he fell. He stopped a couple of metres away and attempted a smile. ‘You look so different.’

  I looked so different?

  Tessa stood and walked to my side. ‘I’m so sorry, Effie, I didn’t mean to make you think that … that he was … He came home three weeks ago – that’s what I meant.’ She squeezed my shoulder as I caught my breath and she told Rhys to give us some space. He smiled apologetically at me before they left us.

  I would have stood but I didn’t trust my legs to hold me, so I just sat and stared at the ghost of the man I used to love … still loved.

  A second ago, when I’d thought he was dead, I’d thrown all of my anger away and all I’d wanted was to hold him one more time. But now that I saw him, the pain of the betrayal was back.

  ‘How … how are you?’ he asked, his body swaying as he leaned against the wall.

  ‘I’m okay,’ I lied. ‘You look like shit.’

  His lips drew up into what I presume was meant to be a smile, but it was not the smile it had once been, stripped of its magic. ‘There’s the Effie we all know and love.’

  I stood now, the anger suddenly powering me. ‘But you don’t love me. You made that very clear in your letter.’

  ‘Effie, I …’ He took a step forward, his weight leaving the wall as he tumbled forward and fell towards me. I lunged, out of instinct, and grabbed him, my wrist prickling as he landed on me. He leaned on the crutch and stabilised himself while I tried not to think about how good it felt to touch him again, to feel the familiar weight of him against me.