by Emma Cooper
Sophie unbuckles her seat belt, leans over the hand brake and rests her head on my shoulders. The sun sweeps its arms across the horizon as Ben stirs, a bleat escaping his mouth, his eyes opening and trying to focus.
We climb out of the car; the pale indigo of the sky dips into the rising yellows and golds while the waves gently lap against the shore. The air is thick with the smell of the sea, but the wind is gentle, barely lifting my hair as Sophie unclips Ben from his seat and changes his nappy. The sand cushions our frames as we sit at the base of a dune. Sophie shifts as Ben drinks hungrily, and I can feel the tension in Sophie’s shoulders relaxing. Seagulls flap and glide above us as the sun pushes the stars back: it’s my time to shine.
Sophie stands as Ben begins to fuss, little snuffles of breath, his head frantically turning from side to side. She begins to walk, but instead of getting up, I stay seated, surrounded by the golden wheat of the dune grasses, the sand running between my fingers, and the image of Sophie and my son walking towards the water’s edge. Because I know. The tunnel is about to close.
I can hear the cement being mixed; the scrape of the trowel as the last brick is picked up. I concentrate on everything that I can see: the curve of Sophie’s waist, the way she is walking, half walk, half dance; the way her hair is being lifted at the ends and the dimples in her cheeks. She turns and smiles with our son in her arms, his hair catching the golds of the sun. The sky behind them is filled with a kaleidoscope of colour; the circle of light dazzles through the tunnel, making the shadows cringe and shy away as the darkness frames them. I smile because I know that I could go my whole life with my sight, but I doubt I would ever see anything more beautiful than the scene that is shining through the end of the tube, the scene that is about to be obscured. I ask for just one more minute: one more minute of capturing the vision in front of me as I hear the brick being picked up.
My breath is even; my heart is steady: my time is up.
The points are set, and the final brick slides into place, but I’m still smiling. My world in the shadows is over, and as the tunnel is finally closed, I get up, and walk towards my family, towards my life filled with light.
The beginning.
Epilogue
Four Years Later
Charlie
Dear Sophie,
I wake every morning with my wife lying beside me, with my son walking into the bedroom holding his toy rabbit by the arm. Every morning I wake to the pain that I feel when I know that they are not there.
My body is a machine. It functions, it walks and talks, it breathes, it sleeps, it goes about living a half-life. Like reading the end of a book without reading the beginning.
For the last four years, I have lived my life through you, have made your family mine, have begun to fill my half-life with your full one. Even my pet is yours. I sometimes wish I could have a dog that could guide me through this half-life with half a family, with half a purpose, that it could guide me to the right side of the road, could take me to the right place, because I can’t seem to find my way.
I’m glad that my last few years here have accomplished something good, something which has given me a purpose for hanging on, for staying and living with the destruction I feel every morning, when their images disintegrate no matter how hard I try to hang on to them.
I’m going to miss Ben the most. In the spare bedroom, I have left him the Thomas the Tank Engine set that he wants. There is plenty of track to build and I have boxed away new engines for the days when he begins to miss me, for the days when he asks where his ‘Chunkle’ is.
I want to thank you, Soph, for giving me a reason to live, for letting me be part of your family and most of all, for being my friend, but I know now that it’s not enough. You have stayed here because of me. I know that the mad McLaughlins want you to go to Derry every summer, how you don’t go over for Christmas because you don’t like to think of me alone, but I know how much you want it too, to be surrounded by them. For Ben to be surrounded by cousins and second cousins, by aunties and uncles, and be spoilt every day by Nanny and Grampa, especially once your new baby girl, Alice, is born.
I watch the three of you together, the way you look at your boys when they play in the garden, the way you hold on to Sam as if you’re the one that’s blind, and it fills me with grief.
I’ve been selfish, I know I have, but not any more. It’s time to let you have your family without me hanging about on the sidelines.
By the time you get this, I will be gone. No mistakes this time.
It’s time for me to start living again, to fill the other half of my life.
I’ll send you the address once I’m settled. The restaurant I’ve found needs work – just like me, and I will need time to fix us both.
See you on the other side,
Charlie.
x
Read more by Emma Cooper . . .
If Melody hadn’t run out of de-icer that day, she would never have slipped and banged her head. She wouldn’t be left with a condition that makes her sing when she’s nervous. And she definitely wouldn’t have belted out the Arctic Monkeys’ ‘I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor’ in assembly at her son’s school.
If Dev hadn’t taken the kids to the zoo that day, then the accident wouldn’t have happened. He wouldn’t have left Flynn and Rose without a dad. Or shattered the love of his life’s heart.
But if they hadn’t seen the missing person report that day, they might never have taken the trip to Cornwall. And, in the last place they expected, discovered what it really means to be ‘Us’.
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