The Day I lost You

by Fionnuala Kearney

  I bite my tongue. I haven’t been able to understand her being able to leave Finn either, but the facts are it happens, and no one – not a soul – questioned Doug leaving Anna in the same manner. If I’m honest, part of me admires Harriet’s strength to do it, and another part of me is beyond angry that she could willingly walk away from her child when I’ve probably had mine stolen from me.

  ‘I’m going to see my parents tomorrow.’ I change the subject, glancing at my watch. ‘Today, later this morning.’

  ‘You’re ready to see them?’ he asks, acknowledging the fact that I’ve managed to avoid visiting for more than ten weeks.

  ‘Leah and Gus are going for the day tomorrow. It’s a lot to do in one day, but they’ve talked me into going. They’re right. Mum is constantly phoning, tries her best, and she already has her hands full looking after Dad.’ I stop to draw breath. ‘Look, I just really wanted to say thank you for being there for me and to let you know I’m here for you too.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me. You have enough on your mind.’

  My eyes rest on old school drawings pinned to the notice board next to the fridge. Frayed and yellowing, Finn’s earliest artwork, they’re years old and they make me think of Rose and how much I’ve missed her. Since Anna’s accident, I have had Rose to look after pretty much full time, apart from the days that Sean has had her for odd weekends. Having her fill my life helps me avoid thinking. Thinking about Anna, wondering where she is; wondering if I will ever have the closure of burying her; wondering if someday she’ll phone me from a bar in Brazil and explain that she’s alive and kicking – that becoming a mother at nineteen was just too much for her and that she just had to get away.

  ‘I should go,’ I say. ‘It’s late, sorry for the midnight call.’ I bend down and pick Pug up. Theo stands and we walk to the door together. ‘Just tell me one thing.’ I narrow my eyes under the hallway light. ‘Are you all right?’

  He laughs. ‘I’m not sure what’s brought this on, but I’m fine. Really.’

  ‘Your wife of twelve years left you. I remember the hole that leaves. I’m sorry it took me a while to say that.’ I attempt a weak smile, kiss his cheek. ‘I choose to believe that Anna’s alive and it keeps my lungs working. You have to find your way forward too.’

  Theo says nothing, just nods and hugs me before I leave.

  As soon as I get home, enter my own kitchen, the first thing I see is the red light of the answer machine. I place Pug on the tatty sofa at the far end of the room, go back to the car and retrieve all the puppy paraphernalia that Leah had also bought. There’s a bed-like thing; I set it up in the warmest part of the room and transfer the dog to the centre of it. I press the red light and hear Doug’s low voice.

  ‘Jess, it’s me. It’s Saturday night. Can you give me a call when you get back, doesn’t matter what time it is?’

  My stomach churns as I dial his number.

  ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Hi, I tried your mobile earlier but your phone kept ringing out.’

  ‘I was at Leah’s – it’s an awful signal there.’ My mobile service provider seems to be the only one with no mast in earshot of Leah’s.

  ‘Anyway—’

  Pug starts to howl.

  ‘Is that a dog?’ Doug asks.

  ‘It is. Say hi to Pug.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Leah’s idea, not mine.’ Pug’s sound rises to a steep crescendo. ‘It’s late, Doug.’

  ‘Yes. I—’

  ‘Oh, for crying out loud, Doug, spit it out,’ I say, instantly thinking of Anna. I had spent a whole month after the accident hoping she was spitting her way to safety. Some Discovery Channel thing I’d seen once upon a time …

  ‘They’ve found a body,’ he replies. ‘It’s the boy, Lawrence.’

  I say nothing. I can’t. His first words have made my stomach contract. His second sentence fills me with instant relief, then pain, and then Gus’s wonderful food threatens to reappear. Words will not form. Sounds will not sound.

  ‘Jess?’

  ‘I’m here.’ I force the syllables together.

  ‘I thought you should know. I was going to go over to France again but, I don’t know, Carol says there’s not much point, not if they’re sure.’

  She’s right.

  ‘It’s so late. Maybe too late to digest this. Call me tomorrow?’ he says.

  I look at the clock. It is tomorrow. ‘Do you sleep, Doug?’ Words I hadn’t expected to say, form themselves of their own accord.

  ‘Not really. Not well. Not any more,’ he replies.

  ‘Me neither. Thanks for letting me know. I’ll call you later.’

  Just as I hang up the phone, Pug howls again. She crosses the room to my feet and I’d swear she’s crying.

  Two hours later, the dog is still baying. I am sitting at my kitchen table with my head in my hands, cursing Leah. Anna and I seem to have a glass of vodka together, and as I pop another pill, I consider, just for a brief second, crushing one into Pug’s milk.

  At 3.16, Pug is Valium-free and silent. I am talking to myself, aware in the blackness of the night that Anna is not really here and I am tonight, apart from this dog, very much alone.

  5. Anna

  Raw Honey Blogspot 10/10/2012

  Once, Death thought he had me. I was there, firmly in his crosshairs. To this day, I think he came for me and just missed out. He’s probably still swearing, muttering to himself, ‘Nearly had her, that Anna Powers.’ I was ten when it happened, in town one Saturday afternoon with my best friend (BF) C and her mum, who had stopped to talk to someone about ten metres behind us.

  I heard the sound before I saw it; knew without looking that it was out of control. When I turned, there was a small car, an odd shade of mustard yellow, heading straight for us. I remember my eyes closed as I waited, just knowing it was going to hit me. In reality it can only have been a split second between the hearing, the seeing, and the breeze on my face as it skimmed right by me. I felt it, I really did. If it had been a movie moment, it would have been slowed right down for effect.

  A forty-two-year-old man with an unknown heart condition died behind the wheel. If he hadn’t managed to steer a route through the crowd, it doesn’t bear thinking about what might have happened. There were mothers and fathers and prams and babies and shopkeepers and there was BF. And there was me.

  ‘Carpe diem.’ My dad taught me that expression afterwards. Carpe diem. He used to repeat it a lot. ‘We have only today,’ Mama still says. ‘We should dance, learn, love and sing.’

  I still can’t stand the colour yellow – in clothes, flowers, anything – but I do really try to live in the moment. And I still think Death was probably quite pissed off at missing me that day.

  Comment: Heartsandkisses152

  You were lucky and what a gift it is to grow up with the ideal of living in the moment. I think the world would be a better place if we could all do it, all the time.

  Reply: Honey-girl

  You’re right!

  Comment: BlahBlahBlah1985

  Carpe every single fucking diem!

  Reply: Honey-girl

  I like that

  6. Theo

  He was up hours before anyone else, had mopped the kitchen floor and made a picnic of sorts before there was a sound from Finn’s bedroom. Bea was, as always at the weekends, sleeping in. The food he had prepared was wrapped in foil and packed in a picnic box he’d found in the garage. A tall flask of coffee completed his efforts.

  When Finn appeared, his laptop in his hand, Theo was standing on his head in the furthest corner of the kitchen.

  ‘Morning, son.’

  ‘You are so weird,’ Finn said through a stretched yawn. He removed a bowl from a cupboard and shook a box of cornflakes at it, poured half a pint of milk over it and went to take a place on the sofa in the den watching television. ‘Why do you even do that?’ he asked, glancing back over his shoulder.

  ‘Helps me think. Sometimes wh
en things feel a bit upside down, it’s good to look at them this way.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘Don’t get too comfortable. We’re going out.’ Theo lowered his legs and tucked them to his chest before rolling onto his knees.

  Finn groaned. ‘It’s Sunday.’

  ‘So it is. Lots of people are up and going to church. Lots of people are up walking their dogs. We’re going to the beach.’

  His son rolled his eyes, then peered at him over the top of his raised bowl. ‘The beach. In February.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why? It’s freezing.’

  ‘Because we can. Now shift your butt up to the shower. We should go soon.’

  ‘I really don’t want to go to the beach, Dad.’

  ‘No, Finn, you think you don’t want to go to the beach. I can promise you when you get there, you’ll want to be there.’

  ‘You don’t need to do this, you know.’ Finn spoke with a mouthful of cornflakes.

  ‘Don’t speak when you’re eating.’

  ‘This father-son crap.’

  ‘Finn!’

  ‘Really, Dad? You say “crap” all the time … I don’t get this sudden … this sudden need to spend time together.’

  Theo swallowed hard. ‘My wanting to spend time with you is hardly sudden. We always spend Sundays together. We used to—’

  ‘We used to do lots of things together when Mum was here, yes.’ Finn had walked away.

  ‘And what, we should stop that because she’s not?’ Theo stood at the door to the den and tried hard to keep his voice from rising.

  ‘Yes,’ his son nodded, and opened up his laptop to his world of Minecraft. ‘We should.’

  Theo left the room, walked slowly upstairs to his bedroom. He pulled the bedclothes up, picked yesterday’s jeans off a nearby tub chair and hung them in the wardrobe. Next to them, a jumper of Harriet’s hung on a hanger. He tugged it towards him, lowered his face and inhaled her scent. It wasn’t perfume, but the body lotion she wore, and it lingered in all her clothes. Coconut and spiced orange. He dropped the sleeve and grabbed his coat from another hanger. Downstairs he took a hat and gloves from the coat rack near the hall door. ‘I’ll be back in a bit,’ he called into Finn and closed the front door behind him.

  In between his and the next-door neighbour’s house was a path. Just wide enough for two people, it led into public woodland. Theo breathed in, blew his breath out in circles. It was cold. A thin dusting of icing-sugar-like frost lay on the ground. The only sounds around on a quiet Sunday morning were those of his heart beating and his shoe soles crunching underfoot. He shoved his gloved hands deep inside his pockets and quickened his pace. This area of green, the walking space, the rural feel of it, in what was otherwise a suburban area, only a few miles from Guildford town centre, was why he and Harriet had settled here. He pulled his phone from his pocket, removed one glove and, without thinking about it, jabbed his wife’s number with his thumb.

  ‘Theo, everything okay?’

  He did love her voice; it was one of the first things he had fallen in love with. She was softly spoken, her expression gentle, a voice that wrapped you up in a blanket. It was something he had seen her use powerfully when in work, lulling her opposition into a false sense of security.

  He put his glove back on, stopped walking, and held the phone to his ear.

  ‘Everything’s fine,’ he said.

  ‘You sound out of breath.’

  ‘Just out for a walk. Look, I called because … I have these papers.’ Theo looked skywards towards the slate-grey cloud cover through the canopy of trees. ‘I know you’re not coming back, Harriet. I think I just want to hear you say it.’

  There was a silence which made Theo wonder if she was alone.

  ‘I’m not planning on coming back, Theo.’

  His eyes blinked closed. He lowered his neck into his coat, shivered. ‘Right.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Me too. I didn’t fight for you.’ He listened to the sound of clothes rustling, imagined her getting out of bed, moving to another room in her new flat. ‘Separation documents. That’s what they are. They’re not divorce papers and I need to know if I should be moving on with my life. I’m in limbo. We’re in limbo here.’

  ‘It’s a separation, like we agreed.’

  ‘I know, but it’s not really, is it? You’re not coming back. It’s the first stage in the process.’

  ‘Are you all right, Theo?’ Harriet’s voice was edged with concern.

  ‘I will be,’ he replied honestly. ‘I just wish …’

  ‘No, no you don’t.’ She sighed loudly. ‘It’s hard, but you don’t wish – you don’t wish this was different. You don’t wish I was coming back. We are broken.’

  The wind was high. He wiped his left eye, which had begun to water, with the back of his hand.

  ‘It’s the truth, Theo,’ she continued.

  Theo bent down on his hunkers, clutched his knees with his free hand. The words of her last sentence entered his brain, rolled around like a spin cycle in a washing machine. Faced with them, he couldn’t deny them. ‘Would you mind coming and taking the rest of your clothes?’ he asked. ‘That body lotion of yours hangs around.’

  She was silent.

  ‘Harriet?’ He stood up again, stretched tall. ‘You there?’

  ‘I’m here. I’m sorry, I could take them when I pick Finn up Friday?’

  ‘No. Don’t do that. Finn going to yours for the first time with a boot full of your clothes wouldn’t be a good idea.’

  ‘You’re right. Sorry.’

  Theo turned back towards the house. ‘Stop apologizing, Harriet. If we really are both to move on, we have to find the best way forward for him. I’m not sure we’ve figured that out yet.’

  ‘No, but it’ll come. We have to stick together where he’s concerned.’

  He nodded to a dog walker coming towards him.

  ‘Are you in the woods?’ Harriet asked.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I miss them.’

  Theo laughed. ‘I’m trying not to resent that remark.’

  ‘I miss you too. Of course I do. I’m not in love with you any more, Theo, but I will always love you.’

  He felt sure he’d heard that line before – some movie or television drama; perhaps a song.

  ‘I miss my son. I miss seeing Finn.’ Harriet’s voice faltered. ‘Every day I have to convince myself that leaving him with you was the right thing if I had to go.’

  ‘I think …’ Theo ignored her underlying question. The last thing he needed was for her to fight him for Finn. ‘I think I just needed to know you’re sure. Because you need to be, Harriet. Once these papers go back, once I put them in the post …’

  ‘I’m sure. I struggle with it, but I’m sure.’

  Theo reached the path, stood aside to let the figure he could see coming in his direction pass.

  ‘Okay, then.’ With those two words, he felt his wife slip away; he felt her slip into the arms of another man he barely knew. He felt himself loosen his grip and let go. ‘We’ll see you Friday, Harriet. Take care of yourself.’

  Theo hung up the phone and stood still, the person on the pathway now only twenty feet from him.

  ‘I thought you’d be in here,’ Finn said.

  ‘And what if I hadn’t been? Did you tell Bea where you’d gone?’

  They both walked towards the house.

  ‘Of course I did. Besides, I knew you’d be in here. This is where you always sulk.’

  Theo faced his son. ‘I do not sulk.’

  ‘You do. A little bit. The beach is a good idea on one condition.’

  Theo raised his eyebrows, not much in the mood for more conditions being placed on his life. ‘And what’s that?’ he asked anyway.

  ‘We ditch the ham sandwiches and have fish and chips instead.’ Finn shivered on cue. ‘It’s too cold for sandwiches.’

  ‘We’ll take them and have them in the car on the
way down or back. We’ll have fish and chips when we’re there.’

  Finn smiled. ‘I’m ready to go. Are you?’

  An hour and a half later, they were both sitting on the highest dune at the furthest end of the stretch of strand at West Wittering. The light was dull, the sun trying to break through the abundant clouds above them. An Atlantic wind whipped around them but Theo didn’t care. The chips were hot, the fish was fresh and crispy, and his son was huddled next to him, munching.

  ‘You can just see the Isle of Wight, see the outline?’ Theo pointed and Finn nodded. ‘Do you remember the time we all camped there one summer? Your mum got drunk as a skunk!’

  Finn nodded again.

  ‘I know you miss her. You’re bound to miss her. I … I just want you to know that I know.’

  Theo noticed the chips couldn’t go into his son’s mouth quickly enough, as if Finn didn’t trust himself to reply. He pulled the blanket he had brought around Finn’s shoulders. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thanks for doing this today.’ More nodding. ‘I used to come here a lot as a boy, before my father died.’ He followed his son’s gaze, looked out to the grey surf.

  ‘Why do people have to die, Dad?’

  It was such an unexpected remark that Theo said nothing, allowed the question to linger.

  ‘Anna’s dead, isn’t she?’ Finn added.

  Theo thought some more before replying. ‘More than likely, but until a body is found …’

  ‘No one could survive seventy days buried under snow, not even if they were in a hole of some sort.’ Finn had counted the days.

  ‘The human instinct is to survive against all odds.’ Theo picked up a chip and placed it in his mouth. It was already cool.

  ‘You’re a doctor. What do you think?’

  When Finn stared up at him from his huddled stance, Theo saw fear and confusion and remembered what it was like to be young and afraid. He felt bad for not recognizing that two epic events had happened within such a close space of time. Harriet is his mother. And she had left him. Anna had been his beloved babysitter for years. And she was probably dead.