The Life We Almost Had

by Amelia Henley

  In truth, I’m not sure, but I know this is what Adam wants. What he was showing me as he stepped onto that yacht for a second time, knowing how it would all end.

  Pain sinks its fangs sharply into my heart.

  ‘Yes,’ I say quietly.

  The beeping stops. Machines are quickly pushed aside. Luis fetches a sheet and pulls it over Adam’s chest while Oliver checks his watch and scrawls on Adam’s notes and then the room empties.

  Slowly, hesitantly, I approach the table.

  ‘Adam?’ I know he will not answer. He is not here. My only hope is that he is running free with Harry and Dug. That they will look after him. That he will look after them.

  I touch his cheek. It’s losing its warmth.

  I’ve heard it said that once you’ve passed, it looks like you are sleeping.

  It doesn’t.

  In sleep, Adam was always moving, fidgeting. Slinging his arm over his head, sticking his leg out from under the duvet.

  Breathing.

  Now, there is nothing.

  My boy from the bar is no more.

  Part Five

  ‘If you love someone, set them free.’

  ADAM CURTIS

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  Anna

  When I think of funerals I think of grey skies and thunderous clouds. Crashes of lightning and rumbles of thunder. Not this. A beaming sun and bright yellow daffodils poking their hopeful heads through the earth, a painful reminder that life goes on.

  Most days I wish it didn’t.

  This is the church we married in five years ago. Instead of my gorgeous cream wedding dress, I’m wearing a black skirt and blouse. Instead of carrying a bouquet, I am weighed down by my heavy heart.

  I step inside. Beeswax and roses. The temperature is startlingly cooler than it is outside. I am alone, but not. Adam’s parents said the journey would be too much for them, his mum not coping with the shock, but those closest to me are here: Mum, Nan, Josh and his parents, Nell and Chris. Oliver has flown over with Eva, Sofia and Luis. And Adam.

  I can’t bring myself to look at the coffin.

  I won’t.

  I’ve been staying with Mum. Unable to bear sleeping alone in the bed that me and Adam once shared. She has been feeding me soup, baking scones I cannot eat. Sitting for endless hours with me, holding me when I cry. Offering to sort out the funeral if I couldn’t cope with it, but she had already been through the trauma of arranging Dad’s.

  It was my turn.

  It was torturous making the arrangements. My head fuzzy from the short course of sleeping tablets my doctor had prescribed. Making Josh and Nell check and double-check the details, convinced there was something I was forgetting. Something niggling at the edge of my mind.

  Nell slips her hand into mine and whereas before she had followed me down the aisle, holding my train, today we make the journey down the red carpet stretching towards the front of the church, shoulder to shoulder. I feel eyes on me but instead of meeting the sea of familiar faces with jolly smiles like the last time I did this slow walk, I stare at the floor.

  We sit next to Mum and Nan. The benches cold and hard. The vicar isn’t the same one who married us. He speaks about Adam as if he knew him before he introduces someone who actually did.

  Josh clears his throat. It’s the first time I look up. I’m grateful he’s agreed to speak. I have a million words tying themselves in knots inside me, but I know if they rose in my throat they would choke me.

  ‘When Adam and Anna married, I was scared about giving a speech,’ Josh begins quietly. ‘Today, I feel much the same but this time it isn’t because the thought of public speaking terrifies me but because the thought of a world without Adam terrifies me.’ He pauses. I can hear someone sitting behind me sniffing but I’m holding myself together. Just. Because I know if I allow my sobs to break free, I will never stop crying. Around my neck is the pendant Adam bought me for our first Christmas. I pinch the star between my fingers until the sharp edges penetrate my soft skin, which allows me to feel something other than the solid ball of grief that is expanding in my chest.

  Josh carries on, ‘I’ve thought long and hard about how Adam would want to be remembered. A husband. A friend. Almost a brother to me. A son to his parents who sadly couldn’t be here today, and a second son to mine.’ At this I hear an anguished moan from Josh’s mum. ‘He was many different things to many different people, but I think this one story sums him up.’

  There’s a beat. Josh tightens his grip on the lectern. I have no idea what’s coming. He had asked me if I wanted to hear what he was going to say but I couldn’t bear the thought of sitting through it twice. Once is almost destroying me.

  ‘Adam adored his grandad, Ted. It was because of him that Adam wanted to travel the world. See all the places Ted had visited during his time with the navy. Before he died, Ted gave Adam his watch. Adam treasured it. It was an antique, valuable, but he didn’t care about the monetary value, just the sentimental value. Adam wore it every day. He didn’t have time to take it off all those years ago when he had rushed into the sea to save Anna. The watch wasn’t waterproof. It stopped working that day.’

  I remembered it so clearly I could almost taste the sea water in my mouth, my throat. Coughing as we sat on the beach, thoughts clouding my mind of what might have been if Adam hadn’t saved me. Adam asking me questions about my relationship I didn’t want to answer and me changing the subject by running my fingers over the face of his watch. ‘I hope that’s waterproof?’ I had diverted the conversation away from me. ‘It looks old?’

  ‘It will be okay,’ he had said.

  ‘When we got home,’ Josh continues, ‘I had it repaired for him and again he wore it every day until, some months later, I noticed he didn’t. “Where’s your watch?” I asked him. “I’ve sold it,” he said. He’d sold it to buy Anna’s engagement ring.’

  I twist the diamond ring around on my finger. Where it once felt like a sign of love, it now felt uncomfortable. I’d have been happy with a plain ring, a Haribo even. Why had he done that?

  ‘“What did you do that for you tw– you idiot?” I asked him. “Because,” Adam had told me, “once I had asked Grandad the story of how he’d met my grandma. He’d been docked at Southampton and the second their eyes met they knew they were right for each other. Knowing Grandad had to leave in a few days, they tried to pass it off as a holiday romance, the same as me and Anna. When it was time to say goodbye, Grandad had tried to picture the future without Grandma but he couldn’t. He knew she felt the same after she’d given him the watch because on the back she’d had engraved Love will find a way.” Adam’s grandad had told him, “We both knew that somehow it would all work out and it did. You’ll know too when you’ve found the love of your life because the thought of not seeing her every single day will break your heart. When you find that, you don’t let her go. You do anything, give anything, to keep her.” Adam had said that was the way he felt the instant he met Anna. The thought of life without her was impossible. He knew that his grandad would approve. Selling his watch to pay for Anna’s engagement ring made Adam feel that Ted was part of their new life. Involved. That thought made him very happy.’

  The sparkle from my ring is blurred by the tears that film my eyes.

  ‘And that was Adam,’ Josh says. ‘Thoughtful. Generous. Loyal. Open and… certain. He was certain that what he’d found with Anna would last the distance and I know his only regret would be that it didn’t last for longer.’

  I am crying now. Josh steps down and I stand, opening my arms and we hold each other while ‘Love me Tender’ begins to play, the music barely audible over the sound of raw grief. Many of the mourners had watched Adam and I take our first dance to this song.

  The pallbearers balance the coffin on their shoulders as though it weighs nothing and for one, perfect second I believe that Adam is not inside the heavy wooden box after all, wearing his cotton anniversary shirt and his paper-plane cufflinks. T
hat all of this has been a mistake.

  It hasn’t.

  Outside, I blink in the brightness. It still isn’t raining and I hate that the sky isn’t crying for Adam the way that I am crying for him.

  ‘You’re doing amazingly well.’ Nell hooks her arm through mine, as Josh does the same to my left.

  I stem my tears as we stand at the graveside while Adam is lowered into his final resting place. I just need to hold it together for a little longer but the world is spinning. I feel my knees buckle and, if it weren’t for Nell and Josh, I would fall.

  ‘I’ll always catch you, Anna,’ Adam had said. But he isn’t catching me now and suddenly I hate him for leaving me, and then I hate myself for feeling that way.

  ‘Anna,’ Nell whispers. I am offered a red rose from a bucket; I’d chosen not to have soil. Heat spreads through me as I fight the urge to tip the flowers on the grass – if we don’t pay our last respects to Adam, surely they can’t fill in his grave?

  ‘You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,’ Josh says, but today I am doing everything I don’t want to.

  I am letting go of the man I love.

  My face is fire. Tears burning behind my eyes, pressure building in my nose. My forehead throbbing with the emotion I’m trying to contain.

  Slowly, reluctantly, I unhook my arm from Josh’s and I pluck a rose from the bucket and step forward, holding it between my fingers.

  ‘Be free.’ I let the flower fall as I say goodbye to my husband, to Harry, to the life we almost had.

  To all of it.

  I stuff my hands into my pockets, rooted to the spot, unwilling to leave him. In my pocket I find a coin. I pull it out. It’s the coin. My grandad’s. I hadn’t remembered putting it in my coat and, after running my finger over it one last time, I kiss it and let it fall into the grave.

  I’ll be thinking of you, Adam. Always.

  It is when I turn away that the circling thought that there is something I need to remember stills and becomes as clear as the bright blue sky.

  The day Adam died, before he took the fateful yacht trip for the second time, he had scrawled an address on a notepad. An address I can’t clearly remember.

  It was a message for me. It must have been.

  But what?

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  Anna

  The wake is held in The Star. I haven’t been here for years. Adam would be pleased to know they still have the same pool tables. I step inside onto the forever-sticky floor and it feels like stepping back in time. Dark wooden beams striping the ceiling. Round mahogany tables wobble on spindly legs.

  I hover uncertainly by the bar, unsure of what my place is here. What I am supposed to do. Both unwilling and unable to mingle and join one of the conversations that are too loud. Too jolly. Voices dripping with relief that the ceremony is over, and laughter. People are laughing.

  ‘Anna?’ An elderly lady I don’t recognize stands before me, a much younger man at her side. ‘I… I just wanted to say…’ Her opaque eyes fill with tears, and then I know.

  ‘You were on the yacht.’ She was the one who Adam had tried to save.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ She waits for me to speak. I don’t. I can’t.

  ‘I know it’s no consolation,’ the man speaks now, ‘but Grandma is the heart of our family. We’d all be lost without her. I’m so sorry about your husband. Adam. But we’re all very grateful to him. If he hadn’t noticed Grandma had been left behind and gone back to rescue her, no one might have noticed she was stuck. He was a brave man. A good man.’

  What can I do but agree with him? Adam was a good man. The best. Hating the old woman who shakes in front of me won’t bring him back.

  ‘He would be happy to know you are okay.’ I touch her briefly on the arm before I walk away.

  Nell thrusts a gin and tonic into my hand. I take a long drink, wanting the warm bloom of alcohol to numb me. On the bar a TV displays a slideshow of pictures of Adam. Most of the photos are Adam as an adult. I had asked his mum to email some baby ones but she said it was too painful for her to look through them.

  ‘You don’t know how awful it is to lose a child,’ she had said. Memories of Harry rendered me mute and I cut the call.

  The smell of him.

  The feel of him.

  ‘Are we okay to bring the food out?’ the landlady asks me and I nod, not caring either way. Knowing my knotted stomach won’t let me eat.

  A plate of towering sausage rolls is placed on a trestle table, warm meat and flaky pastry. My eyes meet Josh’s. I know he has chosen the menu carefully.

  ‘I’d like to name our son after Harry, my grandfather,’ I had said to Adam.

  ‘I’d like to name him Gregg,’ Adam had replied.

  ‘Is he a relation?’ Adam never talked much about his family.

  ‘No, but he makes a bloody good pastry,’ Adam had grinned.

  Bowls of Twiglets next.

  I can hear Adam’s voice, ‘Sticks of marmite, I’m in actual heaven.’

  Slices of pizza laden with greasy pepperoni and stringy cheese.

  ‘I can’t wait for Italy; the food alone will be spectacular.’

  A trifle sprinkled with hundreds and thousands.

  ‘Proper English food that I’ll miss when I travel the world.’

  Josh fiddles with his Bluetooth speaker and Simple Minds sing ‘Don’t you forget about me’. The mood lifts as, just for the next few hours, the mourners shake off their grief by tapping their feet while they queue for the buffet and just like that, this becomes a celebration of Adam’s life. He’d appreciate music and laughter more than he would tissues and tears.

  ‘You need to eat, Anna,’ Nell says.

  ‘I will. Soon.’ I can’t focus on anything except the fragments of the address Adam left on the pad, which are swirling around my mind like leaves in the wind. I can’t seem to catch them and rearrange them in the right order. The knowing that it must have been important causes my temples to throb.

  I slip outside into the beer garden for some fresh air, craving silence and peace but not yet ready to go home and be alone. Clouds are gathering in the sky. The light’s fading and the day has lost its warmth. A patio heater glows red and I slide onto a wooden bench. An ashtray piled with cigarette stubs is before me and I inhale deeply, welcoming the hit of tar in my lungs. I’ve never smoked but I’m tempted to start.

  What was the address?

  I close my eyes, travelling back to that day, back to the apartment, but all I can see is the note telling me to go to the beach. All I can feel is my panic building. The bunting. The yacht. The barbecue. The smell of sausages and burgers will always take me back to that time. Still, I can hear the music. My own anguished voice screaming for Adam to get off the yacht.

  To stay.

  I rub my eyes, desperate to replace the image with something else. Harry springs to mind, as he often does. As painful as it is, I push him away too.

  Think.

  The apartment was empty. Before I saw the note on the fridge, I had looked at the notepad.

  I know I read the address. I know the answer is nestled within my consciousness somewhere. More than anyone, I understand how powerful the mind can be.

  I take a deep breath. Clench and unclench my fists, my jaw. Slide my shoulders from their tense position near my ears to where they should naturally sit.

  Relax.

  The first spots of rain hit but I don’t move. Instead I feel them on my skin, the wetness, the temperature.

  Relax.

  Upper Harringdon.

  The words spring from nowhere, but now they are here, I remember wondering why Adam had written down the name of a town about thirty minutes from where we live. There was more, I know. Something about a saint. St Jude? St Agnes. St Mary! St Mary Street or Road or something. I feel a prickle of excitement. I try not to force another memory. The rain pelting harder now.

  62.

  Number 62. St Mary’s something in Uppe
r Harringdon.

  Immediately I am opening the taxi app on my phone. Summoning a cab. Momentarily I think about slipping back inside the pub to tell Nell and Josh where I am going but they would only insist on coming with me. But whatever is waiting is the last new thing I will ever find out about my husband and I want to be alone. Besides, I can’t face an endless round of goodbye hugs, of sympathetic smiles and tear-filled eyes, not to mention the ‘if there’s anything you need’.

  This.

  Going to Upper Harringdon is what I need.

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  Anna

  During the journey to Upper Harringdon, I deliberate over what I might find waiting for me. A shop? But it’s a long way to come to buy something you could probably get online. A pub? A restaurant? Adam loved to eat. To try new places. Perhaps he was jotting down a recommendation. My mind veers from the mundane to the unimaginable. Adam had a secret girlfriend. A secret family. Children he’d never told me about. I dismiss this but the thought keeps creeping back in. What if I’m about to come face to face with his other woman? A part of me, a large part, thinks this notion is ridiculous. I knew Adam better than anyone and he would never cheat on me, but then I feel Ross’s lips on mine. I remember I contemplated leaving Adam more than once. There are things he never knew about me. Can we every really properly know what goes on in someone else’s head? What secrets they carry?

  The last thought, as we pull into Upper Harringdon, is that I might find an empty building. Nothing at all. This would be the hardest to bear.

  ‘This is St Mary’s Street, but there’s a St Mary’s Road, do you want me—’

  ‘No.’ I shove too much money at the cab driver and stumble out of the car. I need to find out the truth and put an end to my black thoughts once and for all.

  Speculation is dangerous. I need cold, hard facts.

  Rain pours down the collar of my blouse. I run the length of the road. Lungs burning. Disappointment bitter in my mouth. The highest-numbered building is 48.