“Oh right, yes. How do I . . .”
Alex rolled her eyes and took the phone out of Meredith’s hand. “Andrew, what’s your number? Right, there. Done.”
Afterward, Rupert had suggested bringing out some “decent” brandy to toast the plan’s working so well, but the suggestion was met with only a halfhearted response. Cameron, in particular, seemed eager to leave.
“Well. That was obviously . . . what a funny old evening,” he said to Andrew. “I’m away for a few days, did I mention that? Training courses and whatnot. But we should talk properly when I’m back. About all this.”
“That could just mean he wants to talk to you and make sure you’re okay,” Peggy said as the cabbie casually veered across two lanes of traffic without signaling.
A thousand thoughts were clamoring for attention in Andrew’s mind, and he didn’t even notice that Peggy had slid across the seats until he felt her head on his shoulder.
“How are you feeling?” she said.
Andrew puffed out his cheeks.
“Like someone’s just removed a splinter I’ve had in my foot for a hundred years.”
Peggy rearranged her head on his shoulder.
“Good.”
The cabbie’s radio crackled into life—the control room telling him he could go home after this job.
“God, it’s no good, I’m falling asleep,” Peggy said. “Wake me up when we’re at Croydon, eh?”
“I think you’re the first person in history ever to have said that,” Andrew said. Peggy elbowed him halfheartedly.
“So, earlier, when you came into the kitchen,” Andrew said, feeling unusually uninhibited given all that had just gone on. “I couldn’t tell if you’d heard what I’d just said. About, well, me maybe being in love with you.”
For a moment he thought Peggy was choosing how to respond, but then he heard the soft sounds of her breathing. She was asleep. He rested his head gently against hers. It felt entirely natural, in a way that made his heart soar and ache at the same time.
He’d be lucky if he got a minute’s sleep that night, his brain was so wired. He had already sent the recording to Carl, but there had been no response. He wondered if there ever would be.
He found himself thinking of Sally—the moment where she’d handed him that beautiful green model train engine, winking at him and ruffling his hair. Maybe, if they had their time again, they’d have been able to fix things. But he shook the thought from his head. He was tired of fantasizing. He’d done enough of that for one lifetime. He drank the last dregs from the wine and raised the bottle in a silent toast to his sister.
— CHAPTER 36 —
Two mornings later Andrew woke with a start. He’d been dreaming about what had happened at Rupert’s house and for a horrible few seconds he couldn’t be quite sure what was real and what his subconscious had decided to twist. But when he checked his phone the message Carl had sent him the morning after the phone call was still there: “Fuck you, Andrew. Enjoy your guilt money.”
Andrew knew at some point he’d have to think about that guilt, and how he was going to deal with it—and what he was actually going to do with the money—but for now he was just hopelessly glad that everything with Carl was over.
He went to put the kettle on, feeling the unusual sensation of stiffness in his legs. The previous evening he’d been for what he’d ambitiously billed as a “run,” which in actual fact had been closer to a “stagger” around the block. It had been agony at the time, but there was a moment when he’d gotten back—post-shower, post–meal-made-with-something-green-in-it—where he felt a rush of endorphins (previously a thing he’d imagined were mythical, like unicorns or something) so strong that he finally understood why people put themselves through this. There was life in the old dog yet, it seemed.
He fried some bacon and looked directly into the tile-camera. “So you may have noticed I have accidentally burned this rasher, but given I’m about to put a Lake Windermere’s worth of brown sauce on it, it doesn’t really matter.”
He stretched his arms up behind his head and yawned. The whole weekend lay in front of him, and unusually, he had plans that didn’t involve Ella Fitzgerald and browsing the forum.
* * *
—
It was going to be a long journey, but he was well prepared. He had a book and his iPod and had dusted off his old camera so he could take some snaps if the mood took him. When it came to his packed lunch he had gone entirely rogue, making sandwiches with white bread and experimenting with new fillings, one of which, in a move so daring he was barely able to contain himself, was crisps.
To his dismay, he got onto his train at Paddington with time to spare, only to find his reservation meant he was slap-bang in the middle of a bachelor party, who were already getting stuck into the beers. It was three hours to Swansea, and that allowed for a lot more drinking time and wee quaffing, or whatever it was people did on these things. They had personalized T-shirts commemorating “Damo’s Stag” and already seemed quite tipsy. But, against all the odds, they actually turned out to be pleasant company, offering snacks to everyone else in the carriage, helping people put their suitcases on the overhead shelves with faux competitiveness, before breaking out crosswords and quizzes to pass the time. Andrew found himself so caught up in the general air of bonhomie that he ended up scoffing his packed lunch before midday, like a naughty schoolboy on a trip. The onward journey from Swansea was a more somber affair, although a lady with purple hair knitting a purple bobble hat offered him a purple boiled sweet from a tin, like something out of an advert from a bygone era.
* * *
—
The station was so small it barely had a platform—one of those stops where you practically walk straight out onto the street as soon as you alight. Checking the route on his phone, Andrew took a turning onto a narrow lane where the houses on opposite sides seemed to lean toward each other, and for the first time he began to truly feel the nerves that had been bubbling away under the surface ever since he’d left London.
The church was unassuming, its spire small enough to be concealed from view by two modest yews. The place had a wildness about it—the gate at its entrance covered with moss, the grass in the graveyard was overgrown—but the early autumn air felt still.
He’d prepared himself for a lengthy search. A process of elimination. He half remembered holding the phone to his ear and a voice telling him this was where the funeral was to be held, then the confusion and hurt following his mute response. The only detail he could remember was that the church was near the rugby ground where Gavin had claimed to have seen the flying saucer.
In the end, he’d barely walked past half a dozen headstones when he saw the name he was looking for.
Diane Maude Bevan.
He thrust his hands into his pockets, rocking on the balls of his feet, building up the courage to approach. Eventually he did, slowly, as if moving to the edge of a cliff. He hadn’t brought anything with him—flowers, or anything like that. That just didn’t feel right, somehow. He was in touching distance now. He dropped down to his knees and gently ran his hand across Diane’s name, tracing each letter’s contour. “Well,” he said. “I’d forgotten how much you hated your middle name. It took me a whole Sunday to get it out of you, remember?”
He took a deep breath, hearing the tremor as he let it out. He leaned forward until his forehead was resting gently against the headstone.
“I know this doesn’t count for much now, but I am so sorry for never coming to see you. And for being so scared. You probably worked this out much sooner than I did, but you know I never really was able to accept that you were gone. After Dad, and Mum . . . and then Sally leaving . . . I couldn’t let you go too. And then somehow I got the chance to build this place, this world, where you were still here, and I couldn’t resist. It wasn’t supposed to be for long, but it got out of
control so quickly. Before I knew it I was even inventing the arguments we’d have. Sometimes it was just silly stuff—you despairing about me and my silly model trains, mostly—but other times it was more serious: disagreements about how we were bringing up the kids, worrying that we’d not lived our lives to the full and hadn’t seen enough of the world. That’s the tip of the iceberg, really; I thought about everything. Because it wasn’t just one life with you I imagined, it was a million different ones, with every possible fork in the road. Of course every now and then I’d feel you pulling away from me, and I knew that was your way of telling me to let go, but that just made me cling on more. And, the thing is, it was only after the game was finally up that I was actually able to pull my stupid, self-absorbed head out of my arse and think about what you would have actually said if you knew for one single second what I was doing. I’m just sorry I didn’t think of that sooner. I just hope you can forgive me, even though I don’t deserve it.”
Andrew was aware that someone else had appeared to tend to a grave a few feet away. He lowered his voice to a whisper.
“I wrote you a letter, once, very soon after we got together, but I was too scared to give it to you because I thought you might run a mile. It started life as a poem, too, so you were really let off the hook. It was full of hopelessly romantic sentiment that you would have quite rightly laughed your head off at, but I think one bit remains true. I wrote that I knew the moment we first held each other that something in me had changed forever. Up to that point I’d never realized that life, just sometimes, can be wonderfully, beautifully simple. I only wish I’d remembered that after you’d gone.”
He had to stop to wipe his eyes with his coat sleeve, smoothing his hand along the stone again. He stayed there, quiet now, feeling a pure and strangely joyful pain wash over him, knowing that as much as it hurt, it was something he had to accept, a winter before the spring, letting its ice freeze and fracture his heart before it could heal.
* * *
—
The next train to Swansea was pulling into the station as Andrew got there, but he felt reluctant to leave so soon. He decided to stop in a pub nearby instead. As he approached the door old habits kicked in and he hesitated just outside. But he thought of Diane watching on, no doubt mouthing swear words in his direction, and he pressed on. And though the regulars looked at him somewhat curiously, and the barman poured him a pint and threw a packet of salt and vinegar on the bar without much enthusiasm, their reaction to him was benign rather than unwelcoming.
He sat in the corner with his beer and his book, and felt, for the first time in a very long while, content.
— CHAPTER 37 —
Andrew turned the pair of tights inside out and shook out a bundle of notes onto the bed.
“Bingo,” Peggy said. “Enough to cover the funeral, do you reckon?”
“Should be,” Andrew said, leafing through the money.
“Well, that’s something. Poor old . . .”
“Josephine.”
“Josephine. God, I’m the worst. It’s such a lovely name, too. Sounds like the sort of woman who’d always bring loads of food to a harvest festival.”
“Maybe she did. Did she talk about church in the diary?”
“Only when she was slagging off Songs of Praise.”
Josephine Murray had penned scores of diary entries, as she’d noted, “in an old Smith’s notebook, using a chopping board resting on my lap as a makeshift desk, much like I imagine Samuel Pepys did.”
The diary’s subject matter was largely mundane—short, spiky critiques of television programs or comments on the neighbors. Often, she combined the two: “Watched a forty-five-minute advert for Findus Crispy Pancakes interrupted sporadically by a documentary about aqueducts. Could barely hear it over the noise of Next Door Left rowing. I really wish they’d keep a lid on it.”
Occasionally though, she’d write something more reflective:
“Got in a bit of a tiz this evening. Put some food out for the birds and felt a bit dizzy. Thought about calling the quack but didn’t want to bother anyone. Silly, I know, but I just feel so embarrassed about taking up someone’s time when I know I’m probably fine. Next Door Right were out having a barbecue. Smelled delicious. Had the strongest urge—for the first time in goodness knows how long—to take a bottle of wine round there, something dry and crisp, and get a bit tiddly. Had a look in the fridge but there wasn’t anything there. In the end I decided that dizziness and tiddlyness wouldn’t have been a good mix anyway. That wasn’t the tiz, by the way, that came as I was trying to drop off to sleep when I suddenly remembered it was my birthday. And that’s why I’m writing this now in the hope it helps me to remember next year, if I haven’t kicked the bucket by then of course.”
Peggy put the diary in her bag. “I’ll have a look through this back at the office.”
“Right you are,” Andrew said. He looked at his watch. “Sandwich?”
“Sandwich,” Peggy confirmed.
They stopped off at a café near the office. “How about here?” Andrew said. “I must have walked past this place a thousand times and I’ve never been in.”
It was warm enough to sit outside. They munched their sandwiches as a group of schoolchildren in hi-vis bibs were led along by a young teacher who was just about managing to keep track of them all while taking the time to tell Daisy that Lucas might not appreciate being pinched like that.
“Give it ten years,” Peggy said. “I’ll bet Lucas will be dying to get pinched like that.”
“Was that your flirting technique back in the day?”
“Something like that. Bit of pinching, few vodka shots, can’t go wrong.”
“Classic.”
A man marched by them in an electric-blue suit, shouting incomprehensible business jargon down the phone, like a peacock who’d managed to learn English by reading Richard Branson’s autobiography. He strode out into the road, barely flinching as a bike courier flashed inches past and called him a knobhead.
Andrew felt something vibrating against his leg.
“I think your phone’s ringing,” he said, passing Peggy’s bag over to her.
She pulled out her phone, looked at the screen for a second, then dropped the phone back in the bag, where it continued to vibrate.
“I’m going to guess that was Steve again,” Andrew said.
“Mmm-hmm. At least he’s down to two calls a day now. I’m hoping he’ll get the message soon enough.”
“How are the girls doing with it all?”
“Oh, you know, about as well as you’d expect. We’ve got a long old road ahead of us. But it’s still absolutely for the best. By the way, Suze asked about you the other day.”
“Really? What did she say?” Andrew said.
“She asked me whether we’d be seeing ‘that fun Andrew man’ again.”
“Ah, I wonder which Andrew she was thinking of there, then,” Andrew said, mock-disappointed, but unable to entirely conceal how proud he really was, judging from the smile on Peggy’s face.
Peggy reached into her bag again and brought out Josephine’s diary, flicking through the pages.
“She seems like such a lively old lass, this one.”
“She does,” Andrew said. “Any mention of a family?”
“Not that I can see. There’s lots more about the neighbors, though never by name, so I’m not sure how friendly they all were. I suppose if one lot of them was always rowing then maybe she didn’t feel like talking to them. The others, though, the barbecuing lot—I might go back later and have a chat with them if I can’t find anything here. Part of me’s just intrigued as to whether she did ever decide to go round there for a drink or anything.”
Andrew shielded his face from the sun so he could look Peggy in the eye.
“I know, I know,” she said, holding her hands up defensively. “
I’m not getting too invested, honestly. It’s just . . . this is yet another person who spent their final days completely alone, right, despite the fact she was clearly a nice, normal person. And I bet if we do find a next of kin it’ll be another classic case of ‘Oh, dear, that’s a shame, we hadn’t spoken in a while, we sort of lost contact, blah blah blah.’ It just seems like such a scandal that this happens. I mean, are we all really content to say to these people, ‘Sorry, tough luck, we aren’t even going to bother trying to help you poor lonely bastards,’ without at least offering them the chance to have some company or something?”
Andrew thought about what he might have done if somewhere down the line someone had offered him companionship. All he could really picture, unhelpfully, was a Jehovah’s witness standing at his door. But that figured, because, truth be told, he’d have rejected help outright. He said as much to Peggy.
“But it doesn’t have to be like that,” she said. “I wanted to talk to you about this, actually. I mean, I haven’t exactly got it all mapped out, but . . .”
She began to rout around in her bag, producing empty water bottles, an old apple core, a half-empty bag of sweets and fistfuls of receipts. Andrew watched, mesmerized, as she swore and continued to pull things out like an angry magician. Eventually she found what she’d been looking for.
“So it’s just a rough outline,” she said, smoothing out a piece of paper. “Really rough, actually, but it’s a summary of what a campaign to help people could look like. The gist of it is that people can apply to have the option of a phone call or a visit from volunteers. And the thing is it doesn’t matter if you’re a little old lady or a thirty-something high flyer. It just gives you the option of having someone you can connect with.”
Andrew studied the paper. He was aware that Peggy was watching him anxiously.
“What?” she said. “Is it mental?”
“No. It absolutely isn’t. I love it. I just wish you’d told me about it sooner.”
Something to Live For Page 29
