by Beth Moran
“Faith.”
I groaned.
“Don’t groan. I’m not here to ask how you are. Or try to cheer you up. But I’m not going away until I’ve looked you in the eye.”
I groaned again, flipping off the duvet. It was suffocating under there, anyway. I squinted at Hester in the afternoon sunshine poking round the edge of my curtains.
She squinted back at me for a few seconds before nodding firmly.
I mumbled a rude word, edging the covers back up in anticipation of what was coming.
“Right. Up you get, then. Rehearsal is in forty minutes and you know how I feel about lateness.”
“Ungh.” I let my hand flop back onto the mattress beside me.
“Come on, girl. We know how this is going to end. Spare us both some pain.”
“I can’t.” I moved my head a couple of inches to look at her, so she knew I meant it.
“Hmm. I don’t like that word. It makes my scalp itch.”
“All right. I don’t want to.”
“Why?” She sat down on the end of the bed, the gesture so tender from one so steely it knocked the grey off balance.
“You know why. Those songs. The way we sing them. I can’t feel that now. It’d kill me.”
She twitched her shoulders. “Bah. You’ve got to feel it sometime. Makes no difference to how much it’ll hurt when you do. Come and face those feelings with your friends. Start the process.”
“That’s not the only reason.”
“I know it isn’t. I want you to talk to me about the other reason.”
“I can’t see him, Hester.” I closed my eyes.
“That word again.” She lowered one eyebrow at me.
“I don’t want to see him.”
“Well, you might as well get up and put some clean clothes on then. Dylan’s on leave.”
I slowly pulled on some jeans and a short-sleeved top and accepted the cup of coffee Hester brewed. I even managed to swallow half a sandwich while she brushed my hair, an act so gentle it dissolved a dangerous amount of grey in the process.
Once we reached Brooksby, we took a sharp right turn onto a side street instead of heading to the chapel.
“Where are we going?”
“Here.” She pulled to a stop outside a modern semi-detached house, beeping the horn a couple of times before climbing out and walking round towards the pebbled driveway. As she approached, the front door opened and April gingerly stepped out. Hester offered her arm, helping her take slow, careful steps to the car.
I leaned my head against the seat rest and tried to burrow myself back into oblivion.
“Hi, Faith.” April manoeuvred herself into the back seat and promptly burst into tears. “I’m so sorry!”
“Me, too.” I reached around and patted her knee.
“It’s not the same for me as it is for you, but I miss him so much.”
“I know.”
So five minutes later, the physical and emotional casualties of Kane’s vengeance limped into Grace Chapel. We sat at the back, acknowledging the smiles and waves and expressions of sympathy with gracious nods. We kept our mouths closed, but our ears open, and found some semblance of peace in the beauty of the songs sung, took our first steps on the long road to healing as we listened to those awesome women sing them.
We did all anyone could do in the face of unbearable loss: we kept on breathing, our hearts kept beating, our brains kept thinking, and we carried on living for one more day.
Three days later the news finally arrived, as I sat drawing rainbows with Nancy and Pete on my living room floor. I wasn’t shocked. I didn’t wail, or weep, or try to explain it away. To me, this was old news, announced as the howl ripped from my soul, kneeling upon Dylan’s floor a lifetime ago.
So when I stood over my brother’s body, kissed his once-beautiful brow, and whispered my goodbye to him; as I chose his coffin, waited for the results of the post-mortem, collected his death certificate, did the hundred and one things that need to be done in these situations – to my mild surprise, my aching lungs kept breathing, my broken heart continued to beat, my mashed-up brain kept on going. I carried on living for one more day. Two days. A week. A month.
The only other thing I will say about that time is, when the choir sang my darling brother goodbye with the words of “Amazing Grace”, it sounded like the very angels were welcoming him into heaven.
I started walking again, with April as her strength returned, or with Marilyn. Sometimes heading out on sweet adventures with Nancy or Pete, joining them in examining every ladybird, or fallen leaf, or dull grey stone that looks to adult eyes like every other stone on the path, because we have lost the magic of a toddler’s world view.
I found comfort in the small things, the vulnerability of grief creating the necessity for narrow, simple, safe. I felt as though several layers of skin had been stripped away – leaving me so raw that a word, a waft of scent, a time of day, a memory would overwhelm me with the pain.
I put Sam’s flat on the market. April had decided it would be too painful to move back in, instead finding a little place to share in Brooksby with Rowan and Callie.
I revelled in choir practice – those afternoons a precious solace when I stepped out of grief for a time, became no longer a woman bereaved, ravaged, alone. I joined with my friends, my sisters, in embracing something bigger than me, than my life or my problems or my sorrow. I became a vessel, an instrument, a part in a machine that created beauty and light and hope as it freed our spirits to soar.
I returned to work, finding respite in the familiar rhythms of chinking glasses, scraping plates, the hiss of steam and impatient chefs.
I allowed my fiancé to love me, as best he could. He moved back home once I felt stronger, gradually slipping back to his workaholic hours. He showered me with gifts, compliments, and tender-hearted gestures. Listened to the hidden story of the past few months with dismay and frustration at my secrets. Heard a little, just enough, about my time as Anna.
I started to cook again, experiencing sparse pleasure of my own from what I produced in Perry’s kitchen, but finding satisfaction in his. His parents kept their distance. Wedding plans rumbled on.
But. At every step along my journey back to life, I carried the awareness that the black hole inside me was a tiny bit bigger than Sam. There was an extra space. An additional aching gap.
I missed my friend.
However angry I felt about it. However fearsome my rage towards him. However much I tried to slap the missing him feelings down, rip them to shreds, bury them under the blame. I liked walking with April – together we talked about Sam, and it helped us both. I loved that my friends were there to listen, to give me lifts, to provide distractions. It meant so much to realize Perry knew nearly all of my secrets, and still wanted me to be his wife.
But I missed my friend. I missed his eyes, his smile, his gentle teasing. I missed his stories, the smell of his truck, knowing he would catch me when I fell off a cliff. I wondered if his hair had grown back, or if he had decided to keep it short. If the reason he hadn’t come back to choir rehearsals was to avoid me, or enable me to avoid him. I wondered why he’d gone on holiday when I needed him most. If he’d believed me when I said I would never forgive him for what happened.
Two weeks before the wedding, while I was sorting through some of my meagre possessions, wondering what to pack up and what to leave behind for Polly, my phone rang. The minister who called explained he would now be conducting the wedding ceremony, if I didn’t mind, as Dylan had taken a sabbatical. I thanked him, and sat holding my phone for longer than I care to admit.
I then took out a piece of paper from my desk drawer, and wrote one more wedding invitation. Sealing it inside an old brown envelope, I tucked it back inside the drawer. I had a little bit longer to decide whether to send it.
Crunch time. After a week of tying bows around two hundred party favours, carefully inscribing names on place cards, and enduring my bridesmaids’ to
ur of beauty salons, Rosa arrived for a final dress fitting.
The bridesmaids went first, of course. Marilyn’s poofy dress now took up about half as much space, the butterflies fewer in number but still fluttering as she twirled the flowing skirts. Rosa did one final pinning, and ordered Marilyn to do no running, and eat plenty of her delicious cakes all week so the dress wouldn’t fall down and steal my thunder.
“I’m joking, of course.” She winked at me in the mirror. “Nothing is going to steal the thunder of you in your dress.”
“Depending on which dress she picks, that could be either in a really good way, or a reeeaaaally bad way,” Natasha said, already slipping out of her tiny skirt in her haste to get on the dusty aqua shell dress.
I smiled back at them all, waiting for Natasha and Catherine to check their dresses were still fantastic before giving anything away.
“Now, then.” Rosa peered at me over the top of her glasses. “What is it to be?”
I wagged a finger at her. “You know full well what it’s going to be. Give it here and stop smirking.”
I spent the night before my wedding day alone with my tears. People understood my desire to set aside this time to mourn for my lost family, both my brother and my mother and grandmother. That afternoon, Perry and I had gone over our vows with the stand-in minister. He whizzed through the content of the service, chuckling as he asked if we knew of any lawful impediment why we should not be joined together in holy matrimony.
I sucked in a lungful of grey. I had continued riding along the conveyor belt towards marriage throughout my grief, too tired, too weak, too lost to think about getting off. Also, too numb to think about the practicalities beyond packing up my things, agreeing with whatever decisions Larissa came up with, and nodding along with Perry’s plans for our future. I had no idea what was waiting for me at the end of the ride, but when the panic of my aloneness pressed in, I longed to belong to someone again. To be part of a family, with history and structure and a place for me, however lowly.
Sam had been instrumental in my decision to marry Perry. The reason I would take my fondness and determine to coax it into something I could call love. However, the loss of Sam had only strengthened my need to be Perry’s wife.
I took the extra invitation, the one sealed in a plain brown envelope, and tore it up.
Somewhere, underneath all the grey, I knew getting married was a really stupid, selfish idea.
Grief had made me stupid.
With my bridesmaids on hand, I took the morning of my wedding one step at a time. Eat breakfast. Shower. Sit for two hours while Rowan tries to work her magic on my overgrown bob and Kim vainly attempts to conceal the toll the past few weeks have taken on my face. Conjure up a smile for the photographer. Do not think. About him, or him. Get dressed. Get in the car. Get out of the car. Smooth the skirts of what is quite possibly the most beautiful dress in the universe. Lift up my head, throw back my shoulders, breathe out the bad, suck in the good. Take one step forwards, and another, and another.
Halfway down the aisle it hit me.
I had planned to have Handel’s “Arrival of the Queen of Sheba” playing as I entered the church. Something innocuous and safe. But the notes had changed, evolved into something entirely different. And as I reached the back rows, the unmistakeable sound of thirteen women singing in perfect harmony broke out from the side of the room. Glancing across I saw them, lined up in blue summer dresses along the wall. Rosa gave me a grin and a thumbs up. Melody winked. April broke all the performance rules by wiping her hands across her face.
Flicking my eyes forwards I saw Catherine and Natasha beaming at me from the front of the chapel. I felt the strength and the solidarity of Marilyn’s arm as it gripped mine, refusing to let me take this walk alone. Pete called out “Mummy ah Fai!” and clapped his pudgy hands together.
As the love bombarded me, I had to stop. My fingers sought for something more to steady me, clutching on to the back of the chair to my right. The person sat behind there placed a warm, rough hand beneath my elbow to support me.
These were my family. My sisters. My friends. I was not alone. Since I had stepped into the Grace Choir rehearsal eleven months earlier. Before then, even – since that first afternoon eating cake and giggling in the Cottage of Chaos – I had never been alone.
What on earth was I doing marrying a man I wasn’t in love with to try to fix a problem that didn’t exist?
How could I do that to him?
What had I been thinking?
“Are you okay?” A deep voice, with a gentle Northern accent, jolted me out of my whirling thoughts.
I turned to see Dylan gazing up at me. “Faith?”
“Your hair’s grown back.”
The corners of his mouth curled up, ever so slightly. It didn’t hide the sadness in his eyes. We looked at each other for a long time.
“Perry’s waiting for you…” Dylan left the sentence hanging, dropping his hand. I broke his gaze, sure something else lay behind the sadness.
I nodded, and continued what must have been the longest walk of my life.
Men are supposed to smile as their wife-to-be walks down the aisle, I think. Or maybe cry. Perry watched me as I stepped up to join him and let out a long sigh. Frowning, he took hold of my hand.
“Perry, I’m so sorry, but we need to talk –”
“I know,” he cut me off, nodding curtly. “Give me one minute.”
And then he stomped down the aisle, yanked Dylan to his feet by the scruff of his shirt, and smashed his fist into his face.
“Hooten tooten!” Marilyn whistled, as the room went deathly still. “I guess this means the wedding’s off.”
Chapter Twenty-four
Three months later, I decided one of the absolute best sounds in the entire world is the rustle of an audience from behind a stage curtain. Throw in the murmur of anticipation and the squeaks and hoots of the orchestra tuning up and you cannot beat it.
The Grace Community Choir waited on the left half of the stage, in tiered seating allowing us to perch above our competitors sat on the front three rows below. Two more choirs took up the middle section, and the final two filled up the right hand side. Melody, sitting next to me, slipped her cool hand into mine.
“Peace, woman,” she whispered out of the side of her mouth. “You’re setting my nerves all a-twitter.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so anxious. Look!” I pointed my chin at my chest. “You can see my heart thumping through my dress! How much longer?”
She elbowed Rosa on her other side. “Rosa! How much longer?”
Rosa shrugged, before twisting round to April behind her in the soprano seats. “April! What’s the time?”
But before April could answer, a hush fell over the one thousand strong crowd as the curtain began to open in the Derry Millennium Forum.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” the evening’s host announced. “Welcome to the Community Choir Sing-Off national finals!”
We were fifth to perform. A good slot, according to Hester, as it left you fresh in the judges’ minds. An excruciating slot, according to the rest of the choir members, as it meant sitting and listening to four of the best community choirs in the kingdom smash it, rock it out, and bring the house down.
We had a twenty-minute interval before going on. This resulted in a sudden panic when, as we lined up in preparation to take our place centre stage, we realized Janice was missing.
“She’s in the loo again,” Millie declared. “I told her not to eat that packet of fig rolls. ‘It can only mean bad news,’ I said. But, oh no, what do I know? ‘Sound as a pound, Mille,’ she said. ‘Solid as a rock,’ she said, ‘intestines of steel’, apparently. Well, I said –”
“Enough!” Hester glowered down the line. “Can somebody please go and see what’s happening? Rowan. You’re at the back. Go.”
Rowan curled her lip up. “Urgh. No chance.”
A toot of steam escaped from Hester’s ears.
“Fine!” Rowan sprinted off, as easily as she could in a slinky red dress and six-inch heels, calling back, “I’m an Internet sensation, you know. Internet sensations aren’t supposed to sort out old ladies stuck on toilets with fig roll issues.”
Rosa shook her head. “Oh my goodness. Since she went virus that girl getting too big a head. By the time that tour finished she’ll be going Robbie Williams.”
“Eh?” April wrinkled her nose.
“Like Zayn from One Direction.” I helped her out with a twenty-first-century example of a band member leaving to pursue a solo career.
Kim shuffled in front of me. “Actually, if we’re waiting for Janice, I think I might pop to the loo…”
Hester zoned in her laser beam glare.
“I can’t help it, Hest! I’m dead nervous!”
“No one else is leaving this line.”
We muttered and wriggled for a few seconds as we waited, adjusting dress straps and tucking stray curls of hair back into place. A ripple of applause welcomed the host back on stage to announce our appearance, and we froze, all eyes on Hester.
“She’s not gonna make it,” Rowan huffed as she clacked back into the wings. “Said it’s like Mount Vesu–”
“Stop!” Mags begged. “I’m feeling sick enough as it is.”
“Well. Anyway, she isn’t leaving that bathroom anytime soon.”
A larger round of applause, and one of the stage crew beckoned Hester forwards.
“What are we going to do?” Leona gaped. “We might get away without her voice, but we’ve got to have an even number or the moves won’t work.”
“Someone else could drop out,” April said, wincing as the rest of the choir launched optical daggers at her.
Hester closed her eyes momentarily, sucked in a deep breath, and held up one finger to indicate she needed a minute.
Whipping out her phone, she jabbed at the screen. “How fast can you get here?” she barked down the line. “Make it two and you’re on.”
