As I handed it across, something papery fell out from inside the back cover and landed on the carpet. Scamp’s nose was on it immediately. Laura rescued it before he had a chance to chew it.
‘It’s a letter to you.’ She handed it over, puzzled.
The envelope had my name on it but no stamp. I turned it over in my hands, intrigued.
‘I think I remember him writing that,’ said Hamish, nodding thoughtfully. ‘We definitely bought paper and envelopes with the idea of writing proper letters home.’ He laughed. ‘I never did in the end. A few postcards were all I managed. It looks like Freddie might have written that and never posted it.’
It sounded plausible; and knowing Freddie, he’d have been so caught up with telling everyone about his adventures when he returned to England that the notebook and the letter within it had probably slipped his mind.
‘Shall I open it?’ I whispered. My heart had begun to race. A letter from Freddie. Written over a decade ago. It was like uncovering hidden treasure.
Hamish put an arm around my shoulders. ‘If not you, then who? As the saying goes.’
I set it on my lap, my hands already clammy, and took a calming breath. ‘OK. Right. I will then.’
Hamish got to his feet. ‘I’m ready for another cup of tea.’
‘I’ll help,’ said Laura, scampering after him.
They were giving me some privacy and I was grateful for their thoughtfulness, although part of me didn’t want to be alone.
Come on Fearne. I laughed at myself under my breath. Stop over-dramatising it; it’s probably just a bog-standard ‘wish you were here’ holiday letter.
But as I removed the flimsy sheets of paper with fluttering hands and began to read, I realised that this letter from beyond the grave might just change my life.
5 July 2004
Hey little sister!
We’ve reached Agra and it is OUT OF THIS WORLD! You have to travel. You HAVE TO! And when you do, come HERE I think you’d love it.
Being so far from home, with no one else to rely on but ourselves has opened my eyes to what a safe and cosseted life I’ve had until now. Everything here is different, even the air, the sun and definitely the food – I love it all (although what I wouldn’t give for one of Mum’s Yorkshire puddings right now). The skies are vast, the roads either gridlocked or deserted and as far as modes of transport are concerned – anything goes. The other day I saw an entire family including the dog clinging on to a scooter. Cattle pull wagons, bicycles pull carts, lorries with bald tyres are held together with string and sticky tape; every day is like some crazy episode of the Wacky Races cartoon show.
I wish you could have seen the maternity hospital we came across yesterday on the outskirts of a town. It wasn’t much more than a hut made from a patchwork of materials and a wriggly tin roof. About twenty or thirty pregnant women were squatting down calmly at the side of the road outside in the blistering heat. We stopped our bikes to have a drink and asked what they were doing. Someone told us that they were all in labour but weren’t allowed inside until the baby was actually coming, because there wasn’t room for them all. Some even had younger children with them. Imagine that!
I think about how we in Britain complain about waiting times when we go to the hospital, about the quality of the food, or the lack of nursing staff. Next time I will remember the quiet acceptance of these mothers and I will shut the hell up. We have no idea how lucky we are.
This morning, we stopped to buy fruit from a street-seller who was probably only about fifteen years old. He must have grown out of his shoes because he’d cut open the toes to give his feet room. The shoes looked so uncomfortable that I gave him my spare pair of trainers and Hamish gave him a T-shirt. The boy shouted out so loud that I thought we’d done something wrong and when two older men appeared we almost jumped back on our bikes and rode off. But they turned out to be the boy’s uncles. They shook our hands and insisted on piling as much fruit as we could carry into our rucksacks – they were so grateful for our simple gesture. Fearne, I have about eight pairs of trainers that all fit me, it was nothing to me but to them it was a massive deal. I can’t tell you how good that made me feel. This trip has thrown my own greed and vanity into sharp focus.
But that’s normal for us. Having stuff is what everyone does. You earn money and you buy stuff. You and me and millions of other British kids have been conditioned to work hard and get good grades, so we can get good jobs, so that – you’ve guessed it – we can buy more, bigger, better stuff. Leaving home to go to uni seemed like such a huge deal. I thought I owned the world when I moved out. I had the best time. Three years away from home, living with my mates and studying English. Now I realise that until I came to Asia, I knew nothing. I am twenty-two and I have spent those years wearing blinkers, staring straight ahead and sticking to the path that I am expected to be on.
Now the blinkers are off and the future I thought I wanted for myself seems far too small. The idea of coming home to start working a forty-hour week in a job which doesn’t excite me fills me with dread. I don’t want to waste my life.
And here’s the thing: I don’t have to. Because I get to choose. We get to choose. What we do, where we go, who we love, it’s all up to us and no one else.
(Are you still reading this epic letter? Are you thinking I must be drunk, or high? I bet you’re wondering why I’m telling you all this stuff!)
I’ve made a decision about the rest of my life and I’m so ecstatic and that’s why I’m writing it down. I’m ignoring what family and society and the university careers office expect of me. From now on, it’s MY moral code which matters. I’m going to live my adult life doing what makes me happy. Some of the things on my list –
Riding my motorbike through new places
Sunrise from mountain tops
Barbecues on the beach
Buying fresh food in local markets
Meeting people from other cultures
Putting a smile on someone else’s face
And a million other things I haven’t even thought of yet
So there you have it. Your big brother has a plan and it’s not the one I thought I’d have. I might be an ordinary human, but I’m determined NOT to have an ordinary life.
And I want you to promise me, little Sis, that you’ll think about this. Don’t just settle. As the saying goes, go big or go home. I think you only chose to study Business Studies at Manchester because Laura was going there.
But what does Fearne Lovage REALLY want??
If I could give you one gift it would be to choose happiness over habit every time – do things because they make you happy, not just because it’s a habit you’ve fallen into. I know it’s a cliché but we really do only get one life and you and I are only just beginning ours, so let’s live it to the max.
Be happy, Sis, don’t let me down on this.
Lots of love Your slightly crazy brother
Freddie xx
When Hamish and Laura returned with our tea I’d pulled Scamp onto my lap, my tears soaking his fur, Freddie’s letter on the floor beside me.
‘Oh, Fearney.’ Laura dropped to my side and hugged me close.
‘You need to read this.’ I handed her the letter and she and Hamish read it together while I mulled over Freddie’s words. What a powerful letter. At the age of twenty-two, Freddie had set out the code for his life. And for the rest of his time on earth, the short fourteen years which had followed, he’d lived his life exactly as he’d planned.
But as well as that, Freddie had asked me a very important question: what does Fearne Lovage want? Perhaps the time had come for me to find out.
Chapter Five
I could easily have walked to the graveyard where Freddie was buried; it would only have taken me half an hour from Pineapple Road. But Scamp was still getting used to travelling by car and the ten-minute journey was a good length for him: long enough for him to have a nap and short enough for him not to get anxious.
&
nbsp; ‘See,’ I said, releasing him from his seatbelt harness and clipping on his lead. ‘That wasn’t so bad, was it?’
I was bleary-eyed and shivery after getting very little sleep last night. Hamish and Laura had stayed with me for a couple of hours after the discovery of Freddie’s letter. We’d talked and shared our happiest memories and funny stories about Freddie and I’d woken with a sudden urge to put some flowers on his grave.
The morning had a bite to it, there was a layer of frost on the grass and I was glad I’d brought my gloves and put Scamp in his new fleecy coat. Ethel would be outraged, I thought, smiling to myself, she didn’t believe in ‘dogs being dressed up as dolls’.
I lifted the bunch of flowers I’d brought with me from the back seat, locked the car and together Scamp and I made our way to the far side of the cemetery, the new bit, the saddest bit. Scamp was delighted to be out in the fresh air; he snapped at tufts of long grass at the edge of the path and stopped every few paces to sniff something interesting.
There were a few other people about but I managed to avoid eye contact and reach Freddie’s grave without entering into conversation. There was a man on a bench deep in thought, another with a camera zooming in on a Gothic monument, an older lady kneeling in front of a newly dug grave and a woman rocking a pushchair backwards and forwards to soothe a crying infant inside it.
The floral tributes dotted here and there, on the other hand, always caught my eye: fresh funeral wreaths, little bunches with notes tucked inside, gaudy and bright artificial bouquets, bowls of narcissi. I loved the messages conveyed within the blooms – I’ll never forget you, you are still loved, we will always care. The cemetery may be a place for the deceased, but there was also a lot of life and love to be found here.
And now here I was with a message of my own. For the brother I’d never forget.
At thirty-six, with so much of life still ahead of him, or so he’d assumed, Freddie hadn’t left any special wishes about his funeral. I was sure he’d have wanted to be cremated, quick, fuss-free, efficient, or maybe that was just because it was what I wanted for myself when the time came. But Mum had insisted on having him buried. The pain of losing her child was already so much for her to deal with, I didn’t have the heart to contradict her.
But now, as I looked down on the tidy pea-gravel covered plot with its simple white granite headstone, I was glad to have a physical place to be near him. Mum had moved away from Derbyshire soon after he died. She lived by the sea in Norfolk now; ‘a new start with new faces’ had been her way of moving on with her life. That and the support group she’d set up for other women her age who had lost children.
It had been the same after their divorce. Witnessing her gradual metamorphosis from a besuited loss adjustor for an insurance firm to a purple-haired vegetarian café owner had been baffling for me as an eight-year old. The café hadn’t lasted long and since then, Freddie and I had grown used to Mum changing jobs as often as her hair colour. Perhaps that was why I’d stayed in my job so long, I mused; a subconscious rebellion against the instability I’d felt growing up.
Her current job was in a second-hand bookshop and she was so busy these days I hardly saw or spoke to her. Her efforts certainly seemed to be helping her to get over Freddie’s death. I was proud of her achievements and although Freddie and I had moaned about her at the time, I missed the way she used to interfere in our lives at every opportunity.
I didn’t especially miss Dad. He’d never featured very strongly in my life, even before he’d decided that married life wasn’t for him. Within eighteen months of leaving us, he’d moved in with a dental nurse and they were expecting their first child. I didn’t resent Dad starting again, but I’d probably never forgive him for missing Freddie’s funeral because he couldn’t get a flight back in time from his holiday.
There was a tap near the end of the row. I filled the vase I kept there and took the flowers out of their plastic bag.
‘Hello, Freddie,’ I murmured, brushing some fallen leaves from the gravel. ‘I’ve come for a chat. Hope you don’t mind.’
My breath misted the air as I arranged the bouquet in water: early tulips from the corner shop, plus daffodils, pussy willows and evergreen foliage plundered from Ethel’s garden.
Scamp lay down on the path patiently. I felt in my pocket for a treat and told him he was a good boy.
Later in the year, perhaps I’d plant some bulbs: snowdrops and tête à tête and cyclamen, or maybe grape hyacinths and perhaps sow some nigella seeds for summer flowers. Anything to detract from the stark truth: beneath this cold frozen ground lay Freddie. I took his letter out of my pocket and scanned the words, although I almost knew them by heart already.
‘So, I found your letter. Bit of a shocker.’ I spoke quietly even though there was no one within earshot. ‘I was going to say I wish I’d found it sooner, or that you’d actually posted it at the time you wrote it. But maybe it wouldn’t have had the same impact. It was a fantastic letter, it made me so happy to see your handwriting again. And I know this is a bit cheesy but it felt like the perfect gift at the perfect time. It’s made me hold a mirror up to my life and I don’t like what I see.’
I lifted up the vase to check the arrangement for symmetry and then settled it into the gravel where it would be steady. The sight of flowers brought a smile to my face as ever. Fresh flowers in the house had been a regular indulgence of mine, although I hadn’t bothered for months. Freddie had always marvelled at my creations; he loved flowers but reckoned his fingers were built for motorbike handles, not easily bruised flower stems. But now, with Hamish’s bunch of anemones brightening up the living room, it reminded me how much I missed them.
Scamp nudged my leg with his wet nose and brought me back to the moment. I squatted down beside him and felt for his wiry ears.
‘You, on the other hand, Freddie …’ My voice came out as a croak. ‘You cracked it. All my memories of you are happy. All of them. You had a bloody short life, but you lived it to the max just as you wanted. But you got one thing wrong in your letter: you weren’t an ordinary man, Freddie, you were extraordinary. And I loved you.’
I felt in my pocket for a tissue. Scamp licked his lips hopefully. I gave him another treat.
‘What do I do, Freddie? Is my grief just a habit that I can kick? I hate feeling like this. I hate that every time I think I’m taking a step forward, I manage to take an even bigger one back. My emotions are up and down like a see-saw and I’ve cut myself off from most of my friends because I’m afraid of bringing the mood down. Even Maureen the crystal lady worked out that I’ve forgotten how to be happy. I feel like I’m stuck in a rut. I wish you were here to help me. Can’t you send me a sign? Like a robin landing on your headstone or the sun breaking through the crowds or something, so I know that you’re listening?’
Scamp retched and coughed up a ball of chewed grass and I grinned.
‘Not quite the symbolic gesture I was hoping for,’ I said, bending to stroke his head. ‘But it’ll have to do.’
The dog wagged his tail, proud of himself.
‘So that’s it, Freddie, I just wanted you to know that your letter has given me plenty to think about. I don’t know what comes next, but I do know that I don’t want to let you down. I’ll come and see you soon, tell you how I got on.’
I blew a kiss into the air and turned to leave but Scamp had lifted his back paw and tried to scratch his side.
‘Is that fleece irritating you?’ I said as he pivoted on the spot to reach his itch. I unpeeled the Velcro strap under his tummy and pulled it over his head. ‘Don’t tell Ethel I made you wear this.’
Scamp’s wiry eyebrows lifted at the sound of her name and he let out a gentle woof.
‘Ooh!’ I bent and kissed his nose. ‘That, my furry boy, is a very good idea indeed.’
A visit to Ethel’s care home was just what I needed.
‘Worst thing about being stuck in here is not having a proper cup and saucer,’ said Ethel,
gazing with dismay at the two earthenware mugs I set down for us on the table. ‘Tea tastes better from bone china, and hotter.’
We were sitting in the reception area of The Beeches Care Home, she and Scamp in a large armchair and me on the end of an uncomfortable sofa. Thomas, the nice man behind the reception desk, caught my eye and smiled. He’d told me the first time I met him that most of the clients here weren’t happy unless they were moaning about something. It was visiting hour and people were coming and going all the time but nobody bothered us in our quiet corner.
‘But looking on the bright side,’ I said, pulling out a packet of chocolate digestives from my bag with a flourish, ‘there’s more room for dunking in a mug.’
I smiled to myself as Ethel’s eyes lit up. Before she’d had the fall which had put her in here, she’d been more or less housebound and I’d popped in regularly throughout the winter to have a cup of tea with her. There would always be biscuits set out on a plate and she had always polished off most of them while repeatedly saying she didn’t have much of an appetite these days.
‘Now you’re talking. What a treat. We only get plain ones here,’ she grumbled. ‘Chocolate makes a mess apparently and we get mugs because a cup and saucer makes double the amount of washing up. Efficiency rules in this place.’
‘There are worse things than efficiency,’ I pointed out, taking in all the spotless surfaces.
‘Humph,’ was Ethel’s only response to that.
Reception was the only part of the building where Scamp was allowed. I don’t know what either of the old companions would have done if he hadn’t been permitted entry at all. Ethel had been very low when she’d arrived two weeks ago after a stint in hospital. At that point she hadn’t seen her dog since the accident. I’d come over after work that same day with Scamp and pleaded with them to let her see him despite the ‘no dogs’ policy.
Their joyful reunion had had all of us in tears including the no-nonsense manager, Deidre. After that, it was clear to everyone that time spent with Scamp in her arms was the best medicine Ethel could possibly have. It was obvious that the staff at The Beeches put the residents’ happiness at the forefront of their care; and it put Ethel’s son and daughter’s minds at rest to know that Ethel was in good hands.
My Kind of Happy - Part One: A New Leaf Page 4
