Numbered

by Amy Andrews

  ‘No,’ Jean-Paul admitted. ‘We don’t know.’

  ‘So we wait,’ Quentin said, wrapping an arm around Julia and another around Scarlett and drawing them close. His breath was hot and ragged in his chest at the thought of more waiting. ‘We wait with Poppy.’

  * * *

  Time stretched, cruel and elastic, as they kept vigil.

  Quentin mined a deep well of pessimism as he decided she would never wake up, that any goodbyes they needed to say had already been said.

  The three of them filled up the hours around Poppy’s bed, telling her things, chatting, patting her hands and her head.

  Finally, five hours later, she started to stir.

  Her breathing was shallow, and the damn prongs were still there, the gentle whoosh of the oxygen louder than it had been before, but her eyes were bright and she seemed relaxed. ‘You’re all still here.’ She smiled, her voice a reedy whisper.

  ‘I tried to boot them out,’ Quentin joked, blinking away the tears that sprang into his eyes as he heard her voice. ‘But you know what they’re like.’

  ‘I sure do.’ Poppy laughed softly. ‘Stubborn.’

  ‘Are you in pain?’ Scarlett’s face was ashen.

  ‘No,’ Poppy croaked. ‘But I’ve heard it all.’ She stopped, as though exhausted with the effort of talking. ‘Everything they’ve been telling me. I know it’s the end.’

  They waited.

  ‘Are you okay?’ she asked.

  Quentin heard the worry for them in her voice. Even now she was thinking about them, worrying if she’d done the right thing.

  ‘Yeah,’ Quentin joked, squirming in his chair. ‘Back’s a bit sore; trust you to get the good spot.’

  Poppy smiled weakly.

  ‘They’ll come in soon, to talk to you, in case you need them,’ Julia said, and Quentin had the feeling she felt small and foolish, like a kid presenting to the class, as she said it.

  Everyone was quiet.

  A tiny frown creased Poppy’s forehead as she considered them all.

  No. This should not be on her. She was not responsible for their pain right now.

  Quentin took a breath. ‘Hey, Pop.’

  ‘Mmmm?’ Her voice was dreamy.

  ‘Wanna play a game?’

  She paused and closed her eyes, and he worried she had slipped back into unconsciousness. ‘Hell yeah,’ she agreed finally.

  Scarlett whooped and Julia punched the air.

  ‘Queen for a Day?’ Poppy asked hopefully.

  ‘I had a different idea,’ Quentin said, hoping she would go for it, hoping it was the right thing to do. ‘It’s called Favourite Memory.’

  Poppy sighed, a slippery, sad sound. ‘I don’t want you all memorialising me already,’ she said.

  ‘Hah,’ Quentin admonished her. ‘That’s where you’ve got it all wrong. It’s your memories of us I want to hear.’ He hoped he was right. He knew she would need diverting, and he knew the best way, always, with Poppy was to put her focus onto others, onto the people she loved. But then something occurred to him, and he felt suddenly like a clumsy fool. ‘If you’ve got the energy for a game.’

  The room seemed to hold its breath.

  ‘Always got the energy for a game,’ Poppy sighed.

  ‘Okay.’ Quentin smiled, remembering that first night, when she had made him guess what she did for a living.

  ‘Scarlett first. What’s your favourite memory of her?’

  He crossed his fingers and hoped she could come up with one. He knew there had been some bad times, but surely …?

  They all peered intently at Poppy, huddled under the sheets. She screwed her face up as she looked at Scarlett. ‘I was four,’ she wheezed finally. ‘You wanted to do playdough art. Expressive. I wanted to play libraries.’ She stopped, and Quentin worried it had been too much, that he had exhausted her. ‘You let me,’ she said, smiling. ‘You catalogued all those books with me. Even helped me make the little cards.’

  Tears ran down Scarlett’s cheeks. ‘I should have let you do that stuff more.’

  ‘No,’ Poppy said, her voice stronger. ‘We all do what we can. Don’t, Mum.’

  Scarlett moved her chair closer and wrapped her arms around Poppy.

  When she released her, Poppy’s eyes were closed again.

  They waited.

  ‘Well,’ she whispered finally, eyes still closed. ‘Who’s next?’

  ‘Julia,’ Quentin said, even though he wanted with everything in him to say ‘me’.

  Poppy opened her eyes and beamed at him, then turned to Julia.

  ‘Juju,’ she said, sighing again. ‘Too easy. Prom night.’ Her breathing was becoming laboured. ‘That guy, remember? The tiny geeky one who adored you. What was his name?’

  ‘Barry,’ Julia offered, her voice low and hoarse. ‘I have a history of short men with big ideas about me.’

  Poppy coughed and then went on, her voice almost disappearing. ‘You went with him because he asked you. Even though you wanted Peter Olsen to ask you.’

  ‘And he would have, too.’ Julia scowled.

  ‘You’re the kindest person I know,’ Poppy breathed.

  Julia laughed. ‘You’re the maddest, to think that. I’m sure you’re the only person who does.’

  ‘Except Barry,’ Poppy countered, her voice a high whisper.

  ‘That’s enough, Poppy,’ Quentin intervened. ‘You need to rest.’

  Poppy turned to him, brown eyes luminous in her pale face.

  ‘I don’t need to tell you yours, do I?’ Her eyes shone at him from her heart-shaped face. ‘You know my memory of you, Q, because I’m thinking about it now, like I told you I would. This is the end and you are in here.’ She lifted a hand slowly, painfully, and tapped her temple.

  Quentin’s skin prickled as he thought about her, remembering their night sleeping out under the stars. He stood up and went to lie on the bed next to her, lifting the covers and nudging in close. He lifted her as gently as he could to make more room, then took off his shirt and snuggled against her under the covers.

  Scarlett and Julia each held one of Poppy’s hands, and Quentin’s chest swelled big and painful as he pressed his dying wife against him, as close as he dared. She was as soft and sweet and wholly his as she had ever been. She smelled, even now, like watermelon and Poppy, and he was glad he was here with these women, cocooned in this bubble of love and peace, waiting for Poppy’s last tide.

  ‘We’re here, Poppy,’ Julia said, her green eyes shining. ‘We’re all here.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  ‘Are you sure you want to walk it?’

  Julia turned around and glared at Ten, her feet firmly ensconced on the first of six hundred steps that would take them to the second floor of the Eiffel Tower. She was doing two of her least favourite things (three if you counted the fact they were about to hurl ashen pieces of her best friend off the top of the tower).

  One: Physical exertion that didn’t involve nudity. And two: voluntarily being out in the cold.

  This Parisian December morning was teeth-aching, toe-numbing, tits-freezing cold. Minus three degrees apparently. Lapland had been warmer!

  ‘Do I look suddenly feeble to you?’ she demanded.

  Ten, a fancy earthen urn decorated in Indian motifs and scripture tucked under his arm, held up his hands in surrender. ‘Sorry.’ Even with Julia’s height and the added advantage of the step she still had to look up to him. ‘It’s just a lot of stairs.’

  ‘Don’t think you can manage it?’ she demanded.

  ‘I’m good.’

  ‘Same goes for me,’ she snapped.

  Although she was far, far from good.

  But the truth was that now they were here, honouring Poppy in the one way they both thought she’d really appreciate, Julia didn’t want to rush it. This would be their final goodbye. Once Poppy was scattered to a Parisian wind, she truly would be gone. Forever.

  Not that Julia thought Poppy actually existed in the pile o
f ashes the crematorium had given them two weeks after the funeral. It was more symbolic than anything, but it was their last connection.

  Six weeks down the track Julia still couldn’t adjust to not having her around. There was this big void in her life now and she constantly caught herself thinking, I must remember to tell Poppy that or I’ll grab an extra doughnut for Poppy.

  Julia wished the stairs would go on endlessly and that the lift that would ferry them right to the top would take an eternity. She wanted to linger over this one last ritual. She wanted it to be a marathon, not a sprint.

  But Ten, who shot her an impatient look, clearly wanted to get it over and done with. Or maybe he just wanted to do something other than stand on the spot at the foot of a mammoth, chilly iron structure, freezing his gonads off.

  ‘Come the fuck on, Bridget,’ he said with what sounded like a fair degree of forced cheer, sidestepping around her. Julia glared at his back as she trudged up behind him, regretting now that she’d ever made him watch Bridget Jones’s Diary five times in a row with her because it had been one of her and Poppy’s favourite movies. Even Spike, who had been impressively available and unfailingly bulletproof despite her scathing rants at him over the last six weeks, had piked out at the fourth session.

  The iron staircases zigzagged up and up and up, looking like switchback roads traversing high mountain passes, and by the time Julia had hit the halfway mark to the first floor her thighs were screaming at her and she was well and truly warmed up. She paused on one of the landings, her eyes roaming over the view as she shrugged out of her long duffel coat and unwound the scarf from around her neck.

  She was not taking off her thick turtleneck jumper, no matter how bloody hot she got.

  From this vantage point she could see the many famous monuments of Paris rising out of the surrounding sea of architecture. The day was bleak and wintery, with no sun to shine off the gold dome of the Hôtel des Invalides or the many other gold-plated statues that adorned bridges, churches and fountains, but their dull sheen still stood out amid the greyness, as did the bright-green grass of the concourse below.

  Someone jostled her as she admired the view, murmuring ‘Pardon’ in that delightfully French way. Julia looked behind her to identify who it was. She and Ten had arrived early so they could beat the rush and there were few people taking the stairs at this time of day. Hell, most people took the lifts anyway – even if it meant waiting in line for hours. There was certainly no need for jostling.

  The guy, who was halfway up the next flight of stairs, looked over his shoulder and smiled at her. Cute – very cute – French boy. Or European anyway – refined, with patrician features. Twinkling his dimples at her and giving her his hey-baby-come-back-to-my-place eyes. And if it had been any other day she may well have taken him up on it. God knows she’d tried some sexual healing these last few weeks, desperate for something – anything – to deaden the grief.

  And it had worked. To a degree. It just didn’t last.

  But on this day, flirting, scoring, hooking up seemed wrong.

  Icky.

  With Poppy dead in an urn and Ten forging on ahead like he was freaking Scott of the Antarctic, this was not the day to tick off sex with a Frenchman from her recently evolving bucket list.

  ‘Jules?’

  Ten was frowning down at her from the next landing and she turned away from the open invitation in cute boy’s eyes to focus on Ten. ‘What’s the hold-up?’

  ‘I’m coming,’ she said, kicking her protesting legs into action. ‘It’s not a freaking race. There’s no prize for climbing the bloody tower the fastest.’

  Ten waited for her, his fingers drumming against his thigh. He’d lost weight. And he wasn’t exactly Mr Bulky to start with. As she walked up towards him she could see that his jeans were hanging on him, and now that he’d also removed the bulky scarf from his neck she could see the hollows beneath his prominent cheekbones.

  Someone of his height and build couldn’t afford to lose pounds. ‘You’ve lost a lot of weight,’ she said.

  He shrugged. ‘Don’t feel like eating.’ He looked out over his shoulder and she followed his gaze to the heavily populated hill of Montmartre in the distance. ‘Food tastes like dust,’ he said, looking back at her. He took the urn out from under his arm and looked at it. ‘Like ash.’

  Considering the man was a talented chef, that was a worry. She wanted to tell him it’d get better. That he had to eat. He had to go on. Poppy would have wanted it.

  Blah, blah, blah.

  But she’d heard enough platitudes to last her a lifetime – she wasn’t about to use them on Ten. Her particular favourite had come from one of Poppy’s work colleagues, who had approached Julia at the funeral to offer her condolences and said, ‘God needed another angel in heaven.’

  A mushroom cloud of pissed off had exploded inside Julia’s head at the vacuous statement. ‘Really?’ she’d snapped. ‘Don’t you think if God’s so gosh-darned, awesome-powerful and has the ability, you know, to create that he could make his own fucking angels without knocking off perfectly good human beings?’

  The woman had gawped like a fish but Julia had been beyond caring.

  ‘I don’t feel like playing my guitar.’ He looked at her. ‘Or singing.’

  Julia nodded. Nothing was the same as before. ‘I don’t feel like getting out of bed or going to work, and when I do I don’t want to be there or even feel the urge to be polite. A woman the other day at work took forty-eight minutes trying to decide between the silver lamé and the gold lamé trim for her wedding napkins because she wanted to use them afterwards to make a winter coat for her dog. Then she asked me my opinion.’

  Ten laughed unexpectedly then stopped as if even that was wrong on this day. ‘Did you tell her?’

  ‘I said, “Ma’am, please don’t take this the wrong way, but I do not give one fuck about your dog or its coat or any of your first-world problems”.’

  Ten sucked in a breath. ‘Burn!’

  ‘Yeah well,’ Julia shrugged. ‘I lost her business and probably the business of everyone she knows.’

  Ten put his arm around her shoulder and squeezed. ‘Some things are just worth it.’

  ‘Maybe. Or maybe it’s the universe’s way of telling me I should take some time off work.’

  ‘The universe is pretty damn all-knowing like that.’

  Julia nodded. ‘Somebody should tell it nobody likes a know-it-all.’

  Ten chuckled and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Come the fuck on, Bridget.’

  By the time Julia got to the first floor her legs were on fire. By the time she’d traversed the next three hundred steps to the second floor, they were like jelly, her muscles dissolved into stringy gelatinous masses.

  ‘Do you want to hang around here for a bit?’ Ten asked. ‘Get our breath back, check out the view? Buy a key ring or a t-shirt?’

  ‘Unless they have one that says My friend scattered ashes from the top of the Eiffel Tower and all I got was this lousy t-shirt I’m not interested.’

  Ten laughed. ‘I’ll get one made up for both of us when we get home.’

  Julia didn’t doubt it. ‘Actually, I think we should head up as quickly as possible. Even though it’s winter it’ll still be shoulder-to-shoulder up there before too much longer and it’d be kind of nice to be as private as possible.’

  He nodded. ‘Let’s join the queue, then.’

  Ten minutes later they were stepping out of the lift on the top level and Julia felt temporarily woozy as she looked out at Paris, all Lego-village-like far below them. She wasn’t afraid of heights and she didn’t suffer from vertigo, but she grabbed hold of Ten to steady herself. Perhaps it was just the import of what was about to happen, the reason why they were here suddenly slapping her in the face as shockingly as the brisk, cold breeze.

  And the fact that it was about ten degrees colder up top when you added in the wind-chill factor.

  ‘You okay?’ he asked.

&nbs
p; Julia nodded quickly, taking some shallow breaths as the bitter wind whipped strands of her hair across her face and wrapped icy fingers around her exposed neck.

  They stood there unmoving, adjusting to the altitude and centring themselves for what was about to come. ‘Where do you reckon we should do this?’ Julia asked eventually.

  Ten shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Let’s just walk around and see what pops.’

  Julia figured it was as good a plan as any, so they headed for the edge of the platform, which was already bustling with rugged-up tourists – clearly the ones who had taken the lift from the bottom. The platform was open to the air but caged in with sturdy wire fencing that rose up from the railing and curved over their heads, completely encasing them to prevent people from jumping or, heaven forbid, falling.

  They did three revolutions, being jostled from time to time by excitable people, all speaking a jumble of different languages. Julia barely registered them as she sought inspiration for the right spot. In reality she knew it didn’t matter. It wasn’t like Poppy’s ashes were going to hover in the air like a magic carpet in a Disney movie – not with this wind. But it suddenly seemed deadly important. They’d chosen to bring Poppy back to Paris, to scatter her ashes here because Poppy had always wanted to stand at the summit of the Eiffel Tower and had so very nearly managed it. It seemed only fitting that they at least try to pick the best vantage spot now they were here.

  ‘What about there?’ Ten said, pointing to a section vacated by a bunch of giggling Japanese girls. It looked down on the Seine and its many bridges.

  ‘Yes,’ Julia agreed. ‘Poppy always liked a water view.’

  They moved quickly to the spot before anyone else could claim it. Man, it was high up here. She’d been to the summit as a child and didn’t remember it being so bloody high.

  ‘How should we do this?’ she asked.

  He shrugged, looking down at the urn. ‘I don’t know. Which way is the wind blowing?’

  Julia blinked. ‘How should I know? Do I look like a meteorologist to you?’

  ‘Well, unless we want a dozen Japanese tourists to get a little bit extra for their Eiffel Tower experience in the form of taking home some of Poppy when the ash blows back all over them, I think we need to find out.’