Mum's List

by St. John Greene

  “I shouldn’t tell you all this, because one day I’ll be your girlfriend and you’ll be able to read me like a book,” she joked.

  “Well, wouldn’t that be fun,” I teased.

  Even though I fancied Kate and she knew it, going out with her before she was sixteen was simply non-negotiable. I lost count of how many times I told her that, and over time she accepted it. Nevertheless, there was always a lively spark between us, fizzing away close to the surface of our skin.

  One night, months and months on, I found myself sitting alone in my dad’s house, having fallen out with my steady girlfriend. I’d just gotten back from work and I took off all my silver bangles and put them on the coffee table in front of me. The one Kate gave me rolled across the glass and performed a little spin, circling the others and stopping noisily in front of me. I picked it up and examined it, because I noticed there was something engraved on the inside. “Katie Johnson” it said, followed by her phone number and the words “Call me! x.” I laughed out loud. How cheeky was that? I dialed Kate’s number immediately, and thankfully she answered straightaway. She was breathless with excitement when I asked her how she was.

  “Fantastic! I’m sixteen at last!” she replied, trying to keep her voice down so her parents didn’t hear. “You can take me out now, Singe!”

  “It’s a date,” I told her. “When can we meet?”

  “I don’t know. My mum and dad still won’t be happy about us seeing each other,” she whispered. “We’ll have to meet up in secret.”

  I agreed, even though this wasn’t ideal, and Kate met me outside one of the rec centers I worked at after a coaching session. She’d told an elaborate tale to put her parents off the trail, and over the coming weeks we managed to meet at several other rec centers, coffee shops and even bus shelters for a kiss and a cuddle before her parents inevitably rumbled us. This time they banned Kate not only from skating, but from contacting me or ever seeing me again.

  She sobbed hysterically over the phone. “Singe, I can’t bear to not see you,” she said dramatically.

  “Don’t get in a state,” I told her. “We’ll work something out. We’ll just have to have a bit of a break, that’s all.”

  I wasn’t blowing her off. I really did want to date her, but I thought it was best to let the dust settle.

  “Give it a little bit of time, Katie, it’s not the end of the world. We’ll get back together somehow, I’m sure.”

  Kate was gutted, more than I realized, and I was quite miffed too. I was dating several other girls, but things had changed. Kate was always in the back of my mind. I found myself thinking about her often, wondering how she was and hoping I was right, that maybe we would get together properly one day.

  A few months passed before we met again by chance, on the day a traveling fairground came to Clevedon. I was with a girlfriend and another couple on the Waltzers. The sun was belting down, and “Come On Eileen” was thumping out of the speakers so loudly I could feel the beat of the music drumming on my rib cage.

  Everyone was laughing, full of fizzy drinks and cotton candy. As we spun, I watched my world turning all around me. One minute I was looking out along the rippling water of the Bristol Channel, the next I was facing the town with its busy seafront cafés and crowds of excited kids and teenagers. I didn’t know which way I’d face next. There was so much fun and so many opportunities in my life. I wanted to keep on spinning, taking a bit from here and there, never slowing down.

  I spotted the back of her head first. That veil of ultra-blonde hair was unmistakable, and it took me back to the very first time I saw her at the roller disco. Now a gentle sea breeze was making that blonde hair dance seductively in the sun. I leaped straight out of the Waltzers and slammed the safety bar shut so my girlfriend couldn’t get out. I then made a rapid beeline for Kate, pushing though the crowds with my eyes fixed on the back of her head.

  When I finally reached her I put my hands over her eyes from behind, before she had a chance to turn around and see me.

  “Hey, who’s that?” Kate giggled.

  I grinned and said nothing, enjoying the thrill of the chase.

  “Who is it?” she asked again, tugging at her friend Rachel, who was standing beside her.

  Rachel grinned and said boldly: “Who would you most like to see in the whole wide world?”

  “Singe!” Kate sang loudly, without any hesitation. “I’d love to see Singe!”

  I couldn’t believe she knew it was me. I dropped my hands and she spun round and gave me the biggest smile ever. I saw there were tears welling in her eyes, and I felt my heart swell in my chest. Something big had just happened. I fell in love with Kate right there and then. And I fell in love big time. I wanted her, and she wanted me. That was the end of it, or should I say the beginning. Inevitably, it was also the start of another battle with Kate’s parents, who were still unhappy about their daughter’s choice of boyfriend.

  * * *

  I looked down at several pages of green and yellow notepaper in my forty-four-year-old hand and let Kate’s letters remind me of the next part of our love story. Scanning the pages, I picked out phrases I could almost hear Kate whispering to me.

  I really do love you and want to share the rest of my life with you . . . My love for you, Singe, will never die . . . This is not an endless battle we are fighting. We can win in the end, and God do I want to . . . Words cannot express how much I am missing you and nothing, not even making love can prove how much I love you . . . PLEASE PLEASE, PLEASE come back and win me back. I will stand up for you.

  The letter ended with the words: “I love ‘U’ 4 ever and 2gether 4 ever. Lots and lots of love, missing you greatly. Katie xxx.”

  I felt the pain all over again. I missed her too, then and now. I missed her when her parents found out we’d finally slept together, after Kate went on the pill and didn’t make a very good job of keeping it secret. Her dad went absolutely ballistic, and once again we were banned from seeing each other. I can see it from his point of view now, but I couldn’t then. We were two young people in love, and we were being sensible and careful underneath all the incredible passion.

  “I love you so, so much,” Kate told me when she lay in my arms one evening.

  “How much?” I asked.

  “Yards and yards,” she giggled.

  “I love you miles and miles,” I replied.

  “I love you more,” she said.

  “How can you love me more?”

  “I love you acres and acres.”

  “Acres and acres.” I nodded. “I like that.”

  I kissed her, looked deep into her dreamy eyes and told her: “Acres and acres” over and over again. It became our secret code for “I love you,” one we used countless times in hushed phone calls when Kate didn’t want her parents to know who she was talking to or what she was saying. The phrase stuck, and we carried on using it when we finally managed to convince Kate’s parents nothing could keep us apart, when we eventually moved into our first flat together a year or two later, then got engaged a few years after that, and, of course, when we married, nearly a decade on.

  Now Reef and Finn used it too, and Kate wanted to make sure they would carry on using it when she was gone. “Mummy wants Daddy to use phrase ‘acres and acres.’” It was on her list; it was going to be used forever more.

  * * *

  I stayed up most of the night reading the love letters and enjoying old memories. Before I went to bed I put my head round the boys’ bedroom door. “Acres and acres,” I whispered to them both.

  Back in our bedroom I picked up Kate’s bottle of Charlie Red and sprayed it on my pillow. I was very grateful to Kate for being so thoughtful and leaving the letters for me to find and I felt glad I could reread them now whenever I wanted to. I wasn’t going to live in the past, but I needed to remember the
past to help me move on.

  The letters made me realize how important it is to treasure memories, and I decided I would gather together all the bits and pieces of Kate’s list and get everything typed on to one neat page, so I could use it as a sort of guide, to help me through. Kate would have done the same had she had the strength and the time; she told me that.

  Kate had started writing the list in her diary when she was in bed at home, but she had also left scribbled instructions on scraps of paper, and when she was too weak to write in hospital, she texted me items to add to the list. Stupidly, I deleted some texts. Even in her last days, when her life was ebbing away, I wouldn’t quite allow myself to believe she was leaving me. I remembered tutting and sighing when my phone beeped.

  “In the summer, take the boys to Llantwit Major, the beach in South Wales where Mummy spent holidays as a child . . .”

  “You’ll be here in the summer, silly bag!” I thought, pressing “delete.”

  I’d remembered most of them, if not all, and now I wanted to make sure nothing was lost or forgotten.

  The next morning I took out Kate’s diary again and looked for what I knew to be the opening item on her list. “Kiss boys two times after I have gone” was the very first thing Kate had come out with when we talked about writing down her thoughts and wishes. She was very clear that instruction had to be top of the list, and when she said it I realized she’d obviously been thinking about this long before she mentioned it to me.

  I felt a bewildering mixture of admiration and pity for Kate as I watched her bravely write those words down, starting her list. They were words no mother should ever have to write; that’s what I thought. Perhaps I would never need the list, I told myself. Perhaps we would look back one day and laugh and say: “Can you believe we wrote that list?” Kate clearly didn’t share my optimism. It was too late for hope, and she knew it. She drew in a deep breath of oxygen so she could say the words out loud as she wrote them, and so the list began.

  Now I took a new sheet of paper from the printer in my home office and began to copy Kate’s list out neatly, in full. When I’d exhausted the items in her diary, I scoured the scraps of notepaper she’d written ideas and instructions on in hospital and added those too. Finally, I copied out wishes she’d texted to me from her hospital bed, and I added a few things I had deleted when I was in denial about Kate’s condition, but had not forgotten.

  This is what I wrote:

  Kiss boys two times after I have gone

  Go to as many school activities as possible—praise assemblies etc.

  Please teach them to be on time

  Please teach them to say what they mean

  Don’t fill outside with your boats, give boys space to play

  Go camping with cousins or let boys go for long weekends

  Singe’s pepper sauce

  Joint bank accounts into your name—Dad to help with finances

  Mum arrange funeral etc

  Christen boys—Noel

  Professional memory scrapbooks/boxes/video

  Did not like windy weather

  Did not like tomatoes unless in sauce or soup

  Would like Reef to learn recorder or guitar, Finn the drums and electric keyboard

  Mummy loved Finn’s laugh and how he sucked his thumb and folded his ear in

  Mummy liked walks down the riverbank

  Mummy liked catching crabs

  Mummy wants Daddy to use phrase “acres and acres”

  Mummy liked learning butterfly and bird names and would have loved to have hand-fed a wild robin like she used to feed the squirrels

  Would love the boys to find their own four-leaf clovers

  Don’t leave Finn out—try and have quality game time with him too

  Please don’t go on off-the-beaten-track holidays as I strongly believe vaccinations in Reef and me triggered the cancer

  Need to measure me on door frame—Mummy was 5ft 1in with size 5 feet and usually weighed about 122 lbs

  Don’t let them ride a motorcycle or scooter especially on the road

  Don’t let them smoke and remind them why

  Would like them to do an after-school club, Finn Stage Coach, Reef cubs

  Would like driveway done

  Never leave more than a week before making up—life is too short

  Ruth good for parenting advice as she has two boys same age gap—if conflict between grandparent views

  Find a woman to settle down with so the boys can have a female influence and stability in their lives

  Always kiss boys good-bye and good night

  Grow a sunflower every now and again

  Want them able to swim before boating on their own: 50m without mask and snorkel

  Would like dining room table so you can have family meals once a week at least

  Would like school photos bought every year

  Take the boys to see an international rugby match

  Need to set up certificate boxes for swimming badges, school achievements etc

  Please teach them to respect women and not two-time

  Would be good if they settled down sooner rather than later so you get to see grandchildren

  Would love them to find one of those fairy mushrooms, the red ones with the white bits on

  Would like you to take them for walks along Mummy’s favorite beach where she used to go as a child

  Take the boys to Switzerland for New Year and visit the special place where Daddy proposed to Mummy

  Please use the money for a playroom for the boys as Ken would probably let you have a bit of his land to play on and call Mum’s Place or Priddy Pools

  Would like drawings (any ones from school etc), pictures of boys and clothes with me [in box with her ashes], Christmas cards, birthday cards

  Would like to go on top of the wardrobe, with the cuddly toys [in the box], to be with boys a bit longer

  Mummy loved how sparkly Reef and Finn’s eyes were in Lapland

  Mummy loved Reef cuddles at night

  Liked satellite spotting and watching for shooting stars

  Loved guinea pigs and butterflies, Walnut Whips, strawberry cheesecake

  Try not to let them go into the Forces

  Move down south if rest of family thinking of doing so

  Like wild flowers—red campion, cuckoo spit, daisies, primroses and flowers in wedding arrangement

  Would like them to have a playroom and climbing wall

  Mummy liked walks along the beach and Mendips, rock-pooling and walks in the woods and finding creatures of all kinds

  Mummy liked phrase “Infinity Elves”

  Find four-leaf clovers at usual sites

  Take lots of photos especially in your teens

  Make scrapbook of your adventures

  Pictures of us in boys’ room

  Kiss good-bye even if leaving for a short time

  School photos in last book

  Keep a record of achievements

  Always help them if they ask

  Finn’s cuddles were always very special

  Go and see Northern Lights

  Mummy loved moths, snakes and slowworms, orange Club biscuits, jam and jelly, lemon curd

  Mummy loved ivory roses, ivy, gypsophila

  See Skippy and Rachel down under

  Take boys to Lundy

  Help All Saints School and try to get Reef extra help

  Keep in touch with Maria and Lynne, Disabled Team

  Go to Egypt and snorkel in the Red Sea

  Blue Hole, Belize, when the boys are good enough divers

  Buy a boat with seats so Reef and Finn can sit and watch the sea in it

  In the summer, take the boys t
o Llantwit Major, the beach in South Wales where Mummy spent holidays as a child

  Celebrate birthdays big time

  Sort out fish tank, pebble chess set, netball center

  When I had finished it I added to the top the words: “Mum’s List.”

  Chapter 3

  “Would like to go on top of the wardrobe, with the cuddly toys, to be with boys a bit longer”

  Kate’s dad had agreed to help me sort out our finances. “Joint bank accounts into your name—Dad to help with finances” was high up on the list.

  I had rolled my eyes when Kate wrote that down.

  “You know it makes sense.” She smiled encouragingly.

  She was right. Martin was the perfect man for the job. We are like apples and oranges: Martin meticulously well organized and risk-averse, me paperwork-phobic and happier to fly by the seat of my pants.

  Kate and I never had everything in perfect order because she was more like me; too busy living to spend time micro-managing life. She was much more organized than me, though. While I would keep piles of old mail “just in case,” then lose important documents under all the junk, she could lay her hands on anything at a moment’s notice.

  Now, more than a week after her death, I felt very strongly that I wanted to put Kate’s house in order. There was so much extra paperwork to deal with now, and I could envisage it turning from a chore to a nightmare, then descending into utter chaos. Kate wouldn’t have liked that, and in any case there were many items on her list that would cost money. I needed to find out exactly where I stood financially so I could plan what to do next.

  I was advised to visit Social Services to begin with, and Martin came with me. I was very grateful to him because as we walked in I felt sick and anxious. I was going to talk about unthinkable things like a widower’s pension, and if Martin hadn’t been by my side I think I might have just sat down and had a good cry, or turned on my heels and fled. We were introduced to a kindly older lady who explained to us that she specialized in bereavement legalities, and that it was her last day before she retired.