‘You’re still my husband,’ I say. My hand hovers towards him, hesitating.
‘You just don’t get it,’ Vincent says. ‘I try to make it go away, Stella, but it won’t. Sometimes there are moments, seconds, when I think perhaps it will be OK again, but they hardly ever happen and, when they do, they don’t last. I didn’t get out of bed today because I didn’t want to disturb you. I got up because I couldn’t be near you. Because when I look at you, all I see is the person that I am not. I see the reason why I failed.’
I run.
CHAPTER TWENTY
HUGH
Mikey is really very good at shooting zombies.
I’ve never been much of a video gamer, or in fact any sort of gamer, so when he handed me the controller for the game he was allowed to play for thirty minutes after dinner, I was reticent. I really should have been leaving. I had planned a whole evening of research on Victorian funeral practices, but Jake was stretched out along the back of the sofa and he gave me this look that said, let the good times roll, loser. And Sarah’s living room, exactly the same in dimensions as my own, was somehow a hundred times warmer and more inviting that mine, which is really just its own little museum of my life so far. So I took the controller and flailed about miserably, dying repeatedly, while Mikey showed me the ropes, clearly laughing at me but with a surprising amount of good nature and patience. An hour later and now I can stay alive for almost five minutes.
‘Bed time, now.’ Sarah turns off the TV, clearly not prepared to be conned into letting us play for yet another ‘just ten more minutes’.
‘Ohhhh,’ Mikey and I chorus as one, and she laughs. ‘You’re as bad as each other. I already let you have twice as long as you need.’
‘But he’s just getting good,’ Mikey says. ‘If we stop now, he’ll be crap again by the next time we play. I’ve spent all this time training him.’
‘My heart bleeds,’ Sarah says, pointing at the door. Mikey throws me a look of defeat and scoops Jake up into his arms. My treacherous cat lies there like a rag doll, about as soft as an animal can be. It really is hard not to be offended.
‘Can I take Ninja?’ Mikey asks.
‘Yeah, go on,’ she says. ‘But he’ll want to go home later, so make sure you leave the window open.’
She turns back to me as Mikey disappears to his bedroom, chatting to the cat as he goes.
‘He likes to pretend he’s tough, but he loves it when Ninja is here at bedtime. I think he lets Ninja sleep on his pillow to protect him from zombies,’ she says. ‘I wonder whose cat he is. I feel bad about it sometimes. Still, he does always leave before I go to bed, so he’s probably going home, right? Maybe he gets a better breakfast there, than dinner.’
I think about my two bits of bacon that I cook every morning, and how I always feed one half of a rasher to Jake. Sarah has certainly got his number.
‘He’s my cat,’ I confess, and Sarah laughs and then bites her lip when she sees my deadpan expression.
‘Seriously? What, you’re not joking?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Well, sort of mine. A girlfriend bought him – for me, ostensibly, as a present – and got tired of me soon after, leaving me behind. I don’t think I’m Jake’s idea of a dream owner. I thought he was out all night, killing things and having sex with lots of lady cats, but it turns out that he’s just starved of the love of a little boy who is more scared of zombies than he lets on. I can’t really hold that against him, so if you want to share him, that seems OK to me. Although you must let me pay for all the food he eats here.’
‘Oh, God, we’ve nicked your cat!’ Sarah seems genuinely mortified.
‘No, you haven’t. You are sharing him, like I said, and you know what? He’s a nice cat round here. Round my house he’s just … disappointed.’
Sarah presses her lips together in a clear attempt not to laugh. ‘But he’s clearly special to you, right?’
‘Well, he’s very nice for a cat,’ I say. ‘And really it would be very unfair to hold any of his cat behaviour against him. I mean, you know, being emotionally rejected by a cat, it’s not my finest hour, but it’s not the worst, either. When I was about Mikey’s age I had a hamster. It actually killed itself. Got out of its cage and jumped out of my open bedroom window. So a cat that seems to tolerate me is definitely a step up, you see …’
Sarah guffaws, covering her mouth with her hands, although it does little to stop the laughter from coming.
‘Oh, my God, you are a sad case!’ she tells me sweetly. ‘You are an epic loser. Still, I’m a loser too. Knocked up at fifteen, no man, no family, barely two pennies to rub together. What a pair we make.’
Curiously I rather like being in a pair with her. Making her smile is giving me a strange sense of satisfaction. What I don’t really understand is why the next question escapes from my mouth before I can stop it.
‘Do you mind … I hope I am not intruding if I ask about …’ I shift from one foot to the other.’
‘Mikey’s dad?’ Sarah says the words for me. ‘Where is the fucker?’
‘Well, those weren’t the exact words I was going to use. Mikey says he’s never met him.’
‘I think that’s the way he’d like it to be,’ Sarah says sadly. ‘That’s what he tells people … the other kids at school. But it’s not true. Mikey’s dad lived with us for a long time. He was an all right bloke, just had this temper on him, and he was … easily led. Fell in with the wrong people, ended up in the nick more than once – in and out. Stupid petty stuff, you know. But he kept going back, and then he got involved with drugs and … It wasn’t like he ever hit me, or I was scared of him. I just realised one day that if I stayed with him, my life would always be the same. Me waiting. Waiting for him to get back from whatever he was doing, waiting for him to get nicked, waiting for him to come out. And Mikey was getting bigger and seeing all this going on, and I wanted something different for him. I want him to grow up decent, you know what I mean? I want him to try hard to make something of himself in the world.’
I nod. ‘Yes. I do know what you mean. My dad wanted that for me. My dad was my hero. Every day I think about him and think about how lucky I am that I had him in my life. We did so much together, you know. We were such good friends, and in the final years before he died, we took up fly fishing together. We’d make our own flies and stand up to our thighs in freezing water, and never say a word to each other. And yet, when I look back at those times, I think they were the times I felt the closest to him, the times I learned the most from him. The times I learned just to be still.’ I pause for a moment. It’s a very long time since I talked about my father at all, let alone at some length, and I realise how good it feels to remember, this way, out loud in the world.
‘I’m sorry Mikey hasn’t got that, hasn’t got a dad, like mine,’ I say. ‘But he’s got you, and you are pretty special.’
Sarah’s eyes widen for a moment, and she drops her gaze from me, blushing under her make-up.
‘Oh, God,’ I say, mortified that I have made her feel so uncomfortable. ‘I wasn’t … Did you think I was flirting with you, or trying to come on to you? I wasn’t, I swear. I wouldn’t even try, not with you, which sounds really rude and not at all what I mean, and—’
‘It’s fine.’ Sarah stops me in my tracks with a brush of her hand. ‘Don’t worry about it; it’s nice. You said a nice thing. I just … I’m not used to hearing nice things, I suppose. I liked it, though, OK?’
‘You did?’
There’s a sudden shift in the atmosphere, and I don’t feel relaxed any more but tense and confused, uncertain of what is expected of me and how I am supposed to deliver it. Only I think that, whatever it is I do, I want to say more nice things to Sarah; I want to see her laugh again. It’s a terrifying prospect. I put down my almost-full beer on the table.
‘Well, I’d better get going,’ I say cheerfully. ‘I’ve still got work to do.’
‘You never did tell me what exactly it is you do at
the museum,’ she says, smiling tentatively. Is that a welcoming look in her velvet brown eyes? I don’t know, and I don’t want to be wrong, so I choose not to dwell on this.
‘Not much to tell,’ I say. ‘It’s just boring, boring academic stuff – you’d be bored rigid by it,’ I say.
‘Because I haven’t got any GCSEs so I must be thick?’ she asks, and now somehow I’ve offended her.
‘No, no, not at all. Even well-educated people get bored by my job. It is unutterably dull. Like me.’
I’m hoping the self-deprecating remark will raise another smile, but this time her eyes are doleful and sad.
‘See you, then,’ she says, turning her back on me and heading into the kitchen, starting to fill the sink with warm water. I hover for a few moments, at a loss how to leave on a better note.
‘Good night,’ I say. ‘And thank you.’
As I step out of the front door and pull it shut, venturing out into a wet and rainy evening, I feel my world contracting back to its usual few square feet again – a tiny world, one that for the first time ever since I have been an adult feels unsatisfactory.
And then I see a stranger standing outside my house, staring at my front door, holding a letter in her hand.
Dear Adam,
I hoped and I waited and I prayed, but the letter from you never came. I don’t blame you for that, not at all. In a way I am pleased. I think it means that you are happy, content. It means you didn’t feel a hole where I was not.
I called you Adam. I don’t know what your adoptive parents called you, but for the afternoon that I was your mum, you were my Adam. That afternoon, that one short afternoon that I was a mother, I held you in my arms and watched you. And you watched me back. The feeling of how much I loved you almost drowned me – it was like I couldn’t catch my breath. I had to let you go, though, Adam, because I was very young, seventeen. I didn’t have a choice. It was the right thing to do, for me and for you. But that didn’t stop me hoping that one day you might write to me, so that I could tell you that in that one afternoon I loved you more than I have ever loved anyone since. You were my only son, my precious child.
So if one day you do decide to find out more about me, this letter will be waiting for you. It seems funny to say that I am proud of a man I have never met, but I am because I have all the faith that the tiny little person I cradled all those years ago grew up to be wise and kind and clever. I know it, somehow, as if they never really did cut that cord that joined us, as if it spins all around the world, keeping us linked, just a little, no matter what.
With all my love,
Your mum, Lucy
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
STELLA
I run. I don’t have plan.
It’s busy. It’s Friday, so of course it’s busy.
I run, weaving in and out and always in between, sidestepping other people’s lives with expert deftness and fleetness of foot.
It’s started to rain quite heavily now, but that doesn’t stop girls in short skirts, arm in arm, racing through the showers to the next bar and pub, and lads gathering on street corners in short sleeves. I dart in and out of them, and none of them really notice me. They simply step out of my way, then occupy the space I pass through a moment after I have been in it. I know the way to the address on the letter; it’s a couple of streets down from the flat I used to have – the place I lived in when I first met Vincent.
I stop at the top of the road where I once lived and catch my breath, looking down the street, wondering who now lives behind those curtains above the chippy. I wait until I have almost caught my breath, and then I start again. I can’t let my body think that it’s time to rest; I have to trick it into wanting to keep going, even though I’m wearing completely the wrong shoes for running.
The address on the letter is a quiet, suburban street: houses either side, trees spaced out neatly, residents-only parking. Ten or fifteen years ago it would have been lived in by normal local London people, but now at least half of the houses are lived in by people with money. It’s easy to tell: doors painted matt green, loft conversions, glass extensions in the side return. It’s been a long time, a very long time, since Grace walked up this street. Chances are the person she has written to isn’t here any more, so I walk down the street, watching the numbers fall away until I get to number eight. There is a door painted black, chipped to reveal that once it was red. The glass is bobbled and textured, with a crack in the corner. The front garden is caked in concrete, and there are a few abandoned pots, with nothing growing in them. There’s a light on upstairs. This little house has not been gentrified. It could be a rental; it could be anyone living here now.
I take the letter out of my pocket.
I don’t even know if Grace is still alive. Maybe after everything she poured into that letter, words tumbling out quicker than I could write them, maybe she has let go, like so many do if they feel that they have done everything they need to, or have nothing left to hold on for. She might be gone by now, and I won’t know until I clock in next, because I am supposed to be professional enough to keep a distance between myself and my patients. So I could post the letter now, through this letterbox, and perhaps I would be keeping my promise. And perhaps I would be changing everything.
‘Can I help you?’
I start. A man stands behind me.
‘Who lives here?’ I ask him. I’m surely not a threat to him, slight as I am, but he frowns and takes a step back. I frighten him.
‘Who wants to know?’ He is well spoken, confident.
‘I am looking for someone for a friend. This was their last known address.’
‘Well, this is my address,’ he says, slipping a bag off his shoulder – one of those bags you see media-type men wearing on the tube, a canvas satchel. He’s wearing something that looks like an anorak, maybe a fishing jacket – khaki with a lot of pockets – and a grey scarf around his neck, which doesn’t quite conceal a bow tie. ‘And I’ve lived here all of my life, so who’s your friend?’
It’s him. The letter is for him.
A door slams over the road. A guy rides past on his bike. A dog barks somewhere. Time moves slowly, perhaps even stops for a second, as I hand him Grace’s letter.
‘This is for you,’ I say. ‘There might still be time.’
I hope that is still true, as I turn on my heel, walking fast down his path. As I reach the street I break into a jog and then a run, finally kicking off the wrong shoes and sprinting as fast as I can in and out of the Friday-night crowd on the high street until my lungs scream and my legs tremble and I feel my heart pumping hard. I run, and, because I feel almost like I can’t stop, I run right into a wall, hard, skinning the palms of my hands. I stop dead.
Perhaps I kept my promise, and maybe I didn’t.
Dear Mrs W.,
I just want to write and say thank you for everything you did over the last few weeks. Funny, isn’t it, how you don’t know who your friends are, or who the good people really are, until push comes to shove? And we never even found out each other’s first names, and I still find your Polish surname impossible to pronounce, let alone spell.
I always thought I had so many friends, what with ballroom on a Thursday and the Cancer Research quiz night every other Sunday in the pub. But when I got ill, they all fell away, one by one. I suppose some of them just didn’t care, and some of them found it too hard. Well, it is hard, trying to make small talk with a man who looks like a walking mummy. But you came in, every day. First of all I was rude, and I told you not to bother. I was angry, I think. But you still came, and that’s a kindness that, although I don’t deserve it, I will always be grateful for. You’d make us something to eat together; you’d just be there when the drugs made me sick, or the pain got so bad. I came to rely on you and your gentle ways. I never found out if you used to be a nurse, but if not you would be a very good one.
I’m writing this knowing that, when it comes to it, you will be here at my side. And you will ho
ld my hand. I don’t suppose it’s the done thing to fall in love with a woman whose first name you still don’t know, and who you only got to know when it was all too late anyway, but that’s what happened. Dear Mrs W., I love you. You have given my final days a great deal of joy.
My name is Noel Kincade.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
STELLA
I have run and now walked very far in my tights. My feet are wet through and numb now. I walked until the crowds around the tube station thinned to nothing – around and around, until the little Turkish place closed and the damp air was as near to silent as it ever is in London. I have thought about what happened, and about what I’ve done.
About Vincent, about everything he said and the way he looked at me.
About that poor man, who will have read that letter by now.
And I wonder about the fallout, and I wonder about falling to pieces. And I wonder if I am unravelling into streams of thread so thin they are caught in the air and will be blown away into nothing.
I don’t think I realised before now that it wasn’t only Vincent who came back from war with pieces missing; it was me too. I have lost so much of what made me the woman I was, and I don’t know where to begin looking for her, because I’m not exactly sure who I was in the first place.
These last few months, I have simply been a woman waiting be loved once again, loved in a way that I let define me. But I existed before Vincent loved me. I existed before he became lodged in my heart. And if I have lost him, I must still be able to exist. What choice is there when a man stops loving you? You can’t really just let yourself be blown away on the wind, can you?
We Are All Made of Stars Page 17
