‘I can’t help it, Dad. I am so, so sad.’
‘And it breaks my heart, poppet. It takes time. My mum had us little ones and so she had to battle on, even though she was a widow, but she did it, she came out the other side and you will too. I know it, but you have to trust time. Be patient.’
‘But that’s just it, Dad; when a wife loses her husband she’s a widow, but I’ve lost my boy, I’m not a widow, so am I still a mum? What’s the word for someone like me?’
She watched the sadness steal his smile. ‘You are and always will be Oscar’s mum. Always.’ He spoke through trembling lips. ‘And he was very lucky to have a mum like you, just like you were very lucky to have a boy like him.’
‘Do you think . . .’ She swallowed. ‘Do you think I was a good mum?’ she asked softly of the man whose judgment she trusted, watching his expression for clues as James’s words rang around her head in a dull chant: You built walls of gin, tennis and having lunch with your girlfriends – and you lived within those walls, often you didn’t see him when you had the chance . . .
‘Oh, Rachel.’ He gave a tortured smile, clearly trying to keep his distress at bay. ‘That is the one thing you can take great comfort from. Oscar adored you, as you did him. That was obvious to anyone who saw you together.’
‘I keep thinking about all the times I didn’t spend time with him when I could have. I keep thinking, what if—’
‘Don’t do that. Don’t.’ He was emphatic. ‘Those what-ifs can only lead to a very dark place.’
‘I’m already in a very dark place,’ she whimpered.
‘I know.’ He squeezed her shoulder beneath the duvet.
Her mum called from the bottom of the stairs, ‘Brian, leave her be, she wants to rest!’
He stood and winked at her. ‘Coming, Jean.’
Yate was, compared to Bermuda, grey. It did, however, suit her mindset. The featureless tarmac paths, pale-brick walls, soulless cul-de-sacs and standard roads all leading to remarkably similar pale-brick housing estates, none of it required any thought or contemplation. Bermuda was by contrast a wonderful, wonderful assault on your senses, where music blared from open-topped cars, mopeds carrying tourists buzzed like bees, seeking quiet spots on secret beaches or cool drinks in the shade. The blue, blue tinge to the air made everything look different, and the sun cast a golden, lucky glow over everything it touched. It made jewels and water sparkle, teeth whiter, smiles wider and the future rosy – or so she had believed.
Here, quietly walking the pavements with her dad of a dreary, drizzle-coated evening, wrapped in a coat and scarf, there were no distractions of sea diamonds, no shards of sunlight to cast interesting shadows on the dullest of walls. No fronds of green fern to tickle your face and shins as you meandered, no wildflowers to grab your attention and ignite your interest, no bends in the narrow road with picture-postcard views waiting to take your breath away around every corner. No nods from strangers, certainly no waves from strangers, and not that many smiles.
She thought of Johnny ‘Mr Happy’ Barnes who stood each and every day at the Crow Lane roundabout wearing his straw hat, waving to commuters and tourists alike who were making their way into Hamilton, and telling people that he loved them. It made you feel good. Here in Yate, everyone seemed a little busy, a little preoccupied, and that too suited her just fine. She wondered what Johnny Barnes would make of it here.
The first time she accompanied her dad on his seven-mile hike, it had felt like a chore. Reluctantly, she had given in to his coaxing and stepped out into the cool, damp evening. Plodding with one foot in front of the other she was wary of slowing his established pace. Yet rather than speeding up, tiredness pulled at her muscles, which were out of practice and more used to sitting coiled on a wooden steamer chair with a light blanket over them, as she stared at the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean.
Her dad was right: the physical tiredness did help her sleep for a while, a couple of hours at most. But as was now routine, and paying no heed to the change in time zone, at three a.m. she was wide awake, staring out of the double-glazed window at the inky-toned night sky, crying violently until she thought her lungs might burst, and fighting to catch her breath with the pain of longing deep in her chest. At these times, she sent love and messages out across the ether to Oscar, not knowing where or when they might reach him.
She and James had spoken a couple of times since she’d arrived nearly a week ago. Their polite enquiries were punctuated with long, silent pauses when all that she was too afraid to say jumped into her mouth to be swallowed with the thick, acrid spit of cowardice. After every call she replaced the receiver with a very real sense of frustration, tinged with relief.
Peter came to visit on her third day home.
‘Here he is!’ She had almost forgotten the thrill with which her mum announced his arrival, and she had almost forgotten how very irritating she found it to see her so flustered and delighted by his lanky presence. He loped into the kitchen, his face pinched, a wool scarf at his neck, despite the rather clement day, and his hug weak.
‘Cup of tea, darling?’
‘Please.’ He, like her, knew the routine by now and took a chair opposite Rachel in the cramped breakfast nook, where Treacle had taken up one of the four seats and a combined salt-and-pepper rack and napkin-holder with a picture of Cala d’Or, Mallorca on the front, took pride of place at the end of the table. It was a souvenir from their first trip aboard, back in the days when her mum, too, had wanted to chase the sun. This was before her sense of adventure had been overwhelmed, eventually losing the battle to all that frightened her about travelling: the weather, the food, the flying . . . It had always pissed Rachel off that her mum was so content to remain within these four square walls. Now, however, she saw the sense in staying put. Safe.
‘I was going to write, but I didn’t know what to say.’ Peter gave the mealy-mouthed excuse and she thought of the dozens of letters and cards that James had secreted away in the garage – she had quite forgotten about them until that moment. None, she now knew, were from her brother.
‘That’s okay, lovey. It is hard, and no one knows what to say.’
Rachel stared at her mum, who had issued the apology that wasn’t hers to give, and Peter’s face, smiling, too easily placated by her hollow words.
‘So, how’s James doing?’ he asked, tapping the tabletop lightly with his fingertips. She considered picking up the wooden table mat and slamming it on to his hand to make it stop.
‘Erm’ – she swallowed – ‘not good.’
‘Here you go.’ Their mum placed the mug of tea in front of him and returned to the sink to find the next chore.
‘And how are you?’ He slurped.
‘Pretty rubbish actually.’
‘What happened, exactly?’ he asked with a casual air that shocked and distressed her in equal measure, as he blew over the surface of his tea with pursed lips, sending little ripples out over the surface. She thought of the water, the calm sea into which she’d plunged. Oscar! Oscaaaar! Calling until her throat was raw.
Where to begin?
She looked down. ‘I don’t know exactly and that’s one of the hardest things.’ She hoped that might be the end of his enquiry, but no.
‘Okay, so not exactly, but what happened?’
Rachel sat up straight. ‘We had gone for a three-day trip on the boat, and on the first morning out we couldn’t find Oscar.’ She swiped the tears that fell at the memory of the moment.
Rach, Oscar! Coffee’s ready . . . Do you want me to bring it up?
‘Jesus.’ Peter ran his hand over his face. ‘And what, he’d just jumped in?’
Rachel sat back and shook her head. ‘Like I said, I don’t know.’
‘Well, what did the police say?’
‘They don’t know either.’
‘I couldn’t stand that, the not knowing, and I suppose until they find a body, it could be anything.’ He exhaled and took a sip of his tea. ‘I wonde
r if he hit his head and slipped in or just went for a swim and got into difficulty.’ He let this hang.
Rachel felt the bile rise in her throat.
‘Julie works with a woman whose sister lost a child. Terrible thing. She ended up in her local equivalent of Barrow Gurney.’ He gave the name of the mental-health facility that they had mocked and taunted each other with as children, swapping invented horror stories; everyone at school had insensitively and ignorantly done it. ‘But hers wasn’t an accident or anything,’ Peter continued. ‘The kid was born with a heart defect, no one knew and they went to watch him on sports day and’ – he made a kind of clicking noise with his mouth, and demonstrated falling horizontally with his long fingers – ‘he keeled over and was gone. Just like that; only twelve. Julie still worries about that now, with Hayden and Nate, especially on sports day, but I’ve told her it’s very unlikely.’
Rachel had the forethought to plunge her head beneath the table; she closed her eyes and could smell and feel the orange bucket that she had pressed to her chest and held in her hands.
‘Jesus Christ!’ she heard Peter yell, as she vomited in the space under the table where once she had hidden from him in a game of hide-and-seek, a long, long time ago.
It was not long after Peter had left, and her mum had swabbed the floor with a wet mop and a liberal dash of disinfectant, that she decided to call James. She lay on the bed with Mr Bob at her neck and was relieved that he answered instantly, not giving her time to panic or back out.
‘How are you?’ she asked.
‘I’m at work, so . . .’ he answered, with the code that she knew well: I can’t talk; people are around me; to be discussed . . .
‘Do you want me to call back?’
‘No, no, I’m just going outside.’
She pictured him making his way through the plush offices and heard the change in background noise as he came to stand on Pitts Bay Road with its lush green lawn, huge palms, only a hop, skip and a jump from the water’s edge and the Fairmont Hamilton Princess Hotel, where he and his team were regulars for lunch and drinks and were on first-name terms with the maître d’. She looked up out of the window, over the neighbour’s roof at the grey sky of the late afternoon and thought how odd it was how the climate so quickly became normal. She knew James would be in a short-sleeved shirt and she shivered.
‘How are you?’ He returned the question.
‘I don’t know. The same.’
‘Yep,’ he conceded, matching the sentiment. ‘I saw Mackenzie outside Lindos.’ She tried to picture the two men bumping into each other at the supermarket, a setting so informal for a topic so terrible. James continued, ‘Still nothing.’
She nodded, realising she had been holding her breath. She ran Mr Bob over her cheek.
‘It goes without saying, Rachel, there is money in our joint account for whatever you need or whatever makes things easier for you. You know that.’
His customary kindness caused her tears to prick.
‘Thank you, James.’
There was an uncomfortable silence. James coughed to clear his throat and as before, she felt the weight of the awkward pause. How could they talk about the weather, traffic, what they’d had for supper, the news, the house, his job – all the things that used to fill their conversations – because there was a big, black hole in the middle of their world and everything normal, and everything that had gone before had tumbled into it.
It was as if she were trying and failing to find something in common with a stranger after all topics had been exhausted. It was hard to believe this was the man she’d slept with and whose arms she had fallen into. The man who had proposed to her one Christmas Eve with tears in his eyes and who had held her hand as she bore their beautiful son into the world. She pictured the two of them one crazy night when Oscar was small and in the care of Cee-Cee, leaving after dinner at the Reefs and heading home. They had stopped at Warwick Long Bay and run down to the water, turning right and walking in the moonlight until they reached Jobson’s Cove. It was her favourite spot on the whole island.
Laughing, they’d shed their shoes and clothes, abandoning their belongings in a neat pile and wearing nothing but underwear, they’d held hands, squealing at the naughtiness of it all as they ran down the gentle shelving of soft sand and into the warm water of the secluded narrow bay. The high rocks either side provided shelter and the moon lit the water around them like something otherworldly. They’d swum and thrashed, splashing each other and coming together to hold each other tight, kissing in the gentle ripple of the tide and lying back in the surf without a care in the world.
‘I sometimes think I am too lucky,’ she’d confessed, flipping over and treading water.
‘What do you mean?’ James laughed.
She’d swum over and wrapped her arms around him, kissing his face and holding him tight. The feel of his skin against hers in the water was exquisite.
‘My life,’ she began. ‘I’m just an ordinary girl from Yate and look at me! I live here in paradise with you, my beautiful man, and our boy and our house, and we eat dinner at the Reefs and everything we have and all that we do and’ – she’d swallowed the tears that rose in her throat – ‘I feel too lucky; like I don’t deserve it and I worry that it can’t last because it’s too perfect.’
James had reached up and taken her face inside his palms. ‘But that’s just it, Rach – you are the most extraordinary girl I have ever met.’ He’d laughed. ‘You are my mate as well as my wife, and you are the best mum. Don’t you worry, this life is just going to get better and better.’
‘Are you still there?’ His question down the line shook her from her memory.
‘Yes. I’m still here.’
‘How are your parents?’
She took a deep breath. ‘Oh, you know the same. Peter was here asking me questions about Oscar and I was sick under the table.’
‘Ignore him. Peter is and always will be a fucking knob.’
Rachel’s reaction was instant and unplanned.
She laughed.
It was a proper giggle that escaped through lips that had become conditioned to tears. She gasped and placed her hand over her mouth as the sweet taste of laughter was now replaced by the bitter tang of distress. How dare she laugh? How dare she feel even a flicker of happiness after Oscar . . .
‘I have to go,’ she offered curtly. She ended the call abruptly and gave in to the tears that helped restore the status quo: familiar, all-consuming and comforting because of it.
CEE-CEE
On the way to the linen closet with an armful of freshly laundered towels, Cee-Cee peeped in on Oscar’s room and of course it was just as she had left it. She blew in a kiss to land on his bed and quietly closed the bedroom door, thinking of the first time she had gone inside after that dreadful, dreadful phone call.
With a tremble to her lip and a twist to her heart, she had reached down to pick up the stray bricks of Lego that littered the rug, before sorting them into matching shapes and placing them in the correct boxes on the desk. A fiddly job. Next, she turned the flat Lego board so it sat at a right angle to the wall, as neat as she could make it, running her fingers over the half-built towers and buildings that he had started. She picked up and dusted the lidded Batman cup and placed it back on his nightstand. Next, she paired and lined up his trainers, school shoes and football boots, placing them by the wall next to his wardrobe. His hooded towel with his name embroidered on the back was given a shake and hung on the hook on the back of his door and she ran the duster over his bookshelf. Lifting the duvet, she let it fall and then with the palm of her hand, smoothed it into shape, before lifting the pillows to arrange them just so. It was then that she saw Mr Bob – abandoned on the mattress; it looked like he had slipped down beneath the headboard. She wondered how Oscar had managed to sleep without him by his side.
Cee-Cee reached down and pulled the knitted ted from his hiding place. Lifting Mr Bob to her face she inhaled the scent of
him, the little boy she loved. Without warning her legs folded beneath her and she collapsed on to the floor. Sitting on the rug with her knees raised and her back resting on his bed, she let out the deep, loud howl that had been building in her chest since she had taken the phone call nearly an hour ago.
‘Noooooooooooo! No! No! Please almighty God, no! Not this. Not this. Not this! Not him. No! No! No! I beg you, hear my prayer, hear me, Lord, please!’ She closed her eyes in prayer and with Mr Bob at her chest she sobbed, hot, thick tears drawn from deep inside. Her heart felt like it might break. ‘My boy. My boys . . . my baby and my little Oscar. Too much. It’s too much!’ She howled and she rocked; it was as if she could feel Willard’s tiny form in her arms and Oscar’s hand inside hers. She screwed her eyes shut and tried to picture the words in her Bible that might offer solace when she needed them the most.
And just like that, at the memory of the day, Cee-Cee was crying. She placed the towels in a neat stack in the linen closet and walked through the master bedroom out on to the balcony. She took a seat in the wooden steamer chair that had been Rachel’s refuge and stared out at the big, blue sea.
FIVE
Rachel turned carefully beneath the duvet, trying not to disturb Treacle, who had taken to sleeping illegally on the end of her bed. Far from complaining, she liked the feel of him close by, the weight of him against her legs. It was not only comforting, but it made her feel less lonely; he was the perfect companion who asked no questions and didn’t fuss when she cried.
In the throes of sleep she often, out of habit, reached for James, stretching her fingers, expecting to feel his warm skin beneath her touch. The realisation that he was thousands of miles away was a jar to her senses, and recalling the reasons why even worse.
It was early, the grey morning skies a gloomy contrast to the light-filled starts to the day on her island home. She lay in the mattress dip and listened to the sound of her dad in the bathroom through the thin wall, the flush of the loo and the sound of shower spray hitting the plastic base of the bath. His shift at the washing-machine factory started at seven and this had been his routine for as long as she could remember.
The Coordinates of Loss Page 13
