The Day I lost You

by Fionnuala Kearney

  ‘Hertfordshire,’ he says. ‘And no, we’ve never met.’

  Max. I’m racking my brain to try and remember him. ‘Do you work with her?’

  He stares at me a moment as I roll Anna’s phone over and over in my hand.

  ‘I did,’ he says. ‘We worked together.’

  Past tense. ‘Were you … were you?’

  We’re standing in the hallway. I point him to the back of the house, to the kitchen-diner that would fit in my parents’ larder. ‘Were you …?’ I try again. My heart thumps a rapid clip-clop beat in my ribcage. My lips are dry.

  ‘I was on the ski-trip,’ he says, meeting my eyes.

  8. Anna

  Raw Honey Blogspot 15/10/2014

  Mama’s just been screaming at me to ‘move my shit from the front door’. It’s her standard rant and I’ll do it – I’ll move them but can’t promise the pile of shoes won’t build again. I’m a messy cow. One moment Mama tells me I get it from my father, and the next she’s shouting, telling me that laziness is not genetic.

  She’s mad! She’s the best mother in the world and I adore her, but, she’s a tough act to follow; sees things in a very black-and-white way, whereas I seem to live in grey. In my world, nothing is crystal clear and I don’t believe in spending too much time figuring shit out. She’d say that if my world is muddy, it’s because of choices I’ve made. And (tough act to follow?) she’s right, of course.

  But there’s still something about mothers and daughters – sounds crappy happy – but it is a special bond. Mama and I have it and I have it with DD. It’s there and nothing can ever break it. (Keep telling yourself that, Honey.)

  When I was little, before Dad left, I remember Mama and Dad as if they were one, inseparable. If I have a memory, they’re both there: rock pooling in France on a camping holiday, peering up at me from the audience at the nativity play. He left when I was twelve and apparently I should be damaged by that but, honestly? How bad can it have been when all I can remember is good stuff. At least, that’s how I recall it, but maybe, maybe when we look back, we just make people seem better than they actually were?

  Anyway, suddenly, there was just the two of us, Mama and me. Sure, she’s had lovers over the years, but she never introduced any to me. She kept our home a sanctuary and I loved that. If Dad had to be gone, then I loved growing up with just her and me.

  But I don’t seem to have inherited her selfless gene. I don’t seem to have inherited the tidy gene and I certainly have no ability to see things clearly! Perhaps I am more like my father (though he has always said that leaving Mama was absolutely the right thing to do for him. Crystal. Clear. Carpe diem and all that). What I do have is a nagging conscience. It pokes me more often than friends on Facebook but I force myself to ignore it (and then, afterwards, worry I’ll go to hell in a rusty wheelbarrow).

  Comment: Solarbomb

  You said your dad left when you were twelve. Were you really not angry at him?

  Reply: Honey-girl

  I remember being upset. I remember knowing everything would be different, but no, strangely, I don’t think I was angry. I still saw a lot of him, and Mama and I, we worked well together. I missed him but … it was okay. I think I was meant to feel different, devastated, but I didn’t. I still had a mother and father who adored me and somehow we worked it out.

  Comment: Anonymous

  REMOVED BY USER

  9. Theo

  He wasn’t imagining it, the woman was flirting with him. He tried to remember her name – Jane, Janet; something beginning with a ‘J’. She offered him a slim hand. Long tapered fingers with short but manicured nails grasped his in a firm handshake. ‘Jacqueline,’ she said. ‘You’d forgotten, hadn’t you?’ She smiled, though Theo had to look down to Finn’s height to see it. She was tiny next to his own six-four frame. But that handshake had been strong and, as she stood next to Finn, all kitted out in Lycra and cleats, there was something very self-assured about her.

  ‘No, of course I hadn’t forgotten,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, he did. He forgot.’ Finn snorted. ‘Dad forgets everyone’s name.’

  ‘Jacqueline,’ she repeated. ‘Think French. Think you have to make it sound French even though I’m not. That will give you something to hook onto if you forget again.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I definitely won’t forget again. French.’ He nodded.

  ‘And talking of hooks, let’s get you set up, young man.’ Jacqueline play-punched Finn. ‘We’re doing timed races to the top tonight.’

  ‘I’ll be in the gym.’ Theo jerked his head towards the next-door building.

  ‘Great, enjoy,’ Jacqueline said, before steering Finn towards the wall.

  Forty minutes later he was rowing hard. He stretched his long body forward on the machine, straightened his arms, then angled them at the elbows, pulling his body weight forward. The digital monitor at eye level told him he had already rowed 3.9 kilometres, which meant just over one more to go. He closed his eyes and, as his body moved, he thought of the woman next door with his son. He thought of her small, rounded body, nothing like Harriet’s, who was tall and lean and angular. He thought of the breasts he had tried to avoid looking at. He thought of the way the suspension belt had wrapped around her thighs. Shit. He rowed harder, ignoring the sudden image of a naked Jacqueline as it imprinted itself in his brain.

  When the alarm sounded and Theo slowed down, he opened his eyes to find Eddie, his gym buddy and a friend since school, staring at him, a wide smile on his face.

  ‘Share, now,’ he said. ‘I want some of whatever you were thinking about.’

  Theo lifted a small towel from the front of the machine and wiped his face. ‘Wasn’t thinking anything in particular.’ His breath came in short pants.

  ‘Liar. You’re talking to someone who knows you.’

  Standing slowly, he reset the machine to start again and headed to the men’s showers in Phil’s Gym.

  ‘What’s up with you anyway?’ Eddie asked as he followed. ‘You’ve had a face like a slapped bum since you arrived.’

  ‘I’m not sure, if I’m honest.’ Theo was surprised at his frank reply. He looked back at Eddie. ‘I have an incredible urge to go out and get completely shitfaced.’

  Theo could almost hear the whirring in Eddie’s brain, trying to work out if there was any way he would get away with joining him; what excuse he could give his wife.

  ‘Stop, Ed. Jules would have you sliced and diced. Both of us have to get up for work in the morning and I have to go home with Finn.’ He rested his hand on his friend’s arm. ‘Another time …’

  When he stood under the pressured hot water, in the shower stall next to Eddie, he called in to him. ‘Stop thinking about it,’ he said, before switching the control to cold, gasping out loud with the shock.

  ‘What if I tell her you’re having a bad night and need my company?’ Eddie yelled. ‘The au pair, what’s-her-name-again, can look after Finn?’

  Theo laughed. ‘I’m going home, Ed. We’ll do it soon.’

  He listened to Ed groan. ‘Honestly, you wave it at me, like waving a lollipop at a child, then take it away. Seriously. Not. Fair.’

  Theo left Eddie drying his hair, slung his gym bag over his shoulder and exited through a series of doors and corridors to the climbing centre where Finn was already waiting.

  ‘You’re late.’ His son pointed to his digital watch.

  ‘By one minute.’

  ‘Late is late,’ he said, stepping into side by Theo. Looking up at the night sky – clear and star-laden, he added, ‘I don’t reckon aliens are ever late.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Think about it,’ Finn said. ‘More than likely they’re a highly evolved species. More than likely they’ve sorted out the annoying things in humans. Like being late.’

  ‘Right,’ Theo repeated. ‘Spag bol or chicken tonight?’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Tough.’ Theo pointed the remote at his four
-year-old Volvo. ‘Get in. Decide on the way home. You’re eating supper.’ Theo had seen too many young people – and not just girls – through the surgery with either the start of, or a fully developed, eating disorder. It was his natural instinct to want to make his son eat. He bit his lip. ‘You really not hungry?’

  Finn didn’t reply.

  ‘You understand you have to eat to give you energy to do things like your climbing … You need to eat the calories in order to have them to spend.’

  ‘So you tell me all the time.’

  Theo took in Finn’s profile as he stared through the windscreen putting his seatbelt on.

  ‘What would you like?’ he asked.

  ‘Just some tea and toast,’ Finn shrugged.

  ‘Tea and toast it is.’ He was in no mood for a spat.

  In his son’s room, Theo picked two books up from the floor and placed them on his bedside table. The top one was a young person’s guide to computer technology, his last year’s fixation. The second, a thick tome on the whole question of whether we’re alone in the universe. The laptop, closed on his bedside table, would, Theo knew, be open up to Minecraft, his digital obsession and something he often played with his school friends online.

  Theo leaned over Finn’s sleeping form, smoothed his son’s fringe away from his forehead, bent down and kissed his head. He noted the determined line of his chin, even in sleep. He got that from him. Next, the colour of that forelock he had just touched. That was exactly the same shade as his mother’s. He also smelled the faint hue of tobacco from it.

  You will be all right, he told himself, as he imagined Finn outside some shopping mall, hanging out with boys Theo didn’t recognize, pursing his lips as he pulled on a cigarette. Or, worse, having the audacity to hang out of his rear bedroom window teaching himself to inhale. You will be able to do this.

  In bed, he lay awake for a very long time. Whatever way he tried to settle, he couldn’t. On his right side, he had stared at Harriet’s pile of pillows for at least an hour, until he finally tossed them onto the floor. He moved his own two pillows and himself into the centre of the bed, then got up and rearranged the whole thing as it had been. He didn’t want Finn to see that; to see parts of his mother vanishing from the house, from his bed.

  From his left side he thought of sex; it was three months since he’d had sex. Harriet and his sex life had been brilliant; so brilliant that even when he’d known there was something wrong, he had convinced himself it didn’t matter. He sighed loudly, thumped his pillow and turned over again, stared at the narrow strip of light under the door from the landing. Beyond the door was his study, then Finn’s room and, further along, Bea’s room. He thought of her, twenty-three years old, almost the same age as Anna. He squeezed his eyes shut so hard that he was wide awake and any hope of sleep was gone.

  His watch said 01:35 when he threw back the duvet, removed a dressing gown from a hook on the back of the door and moved silently to his study. There, he switched on the light and removed a book from one of the shelves. He settled himself into the reading chair; a recliner that Harriet had bought for him years ago. The book lay open on his lap. His reading glasses lay on top of the book. She was everywhere. The life that was; the one they had together, was everywhere – in the pillows, in the chair, all around. He should move, he thought, before dismissing the idea as a bad one for Finn’s sake. This was his son’s home – he just needed to get a grip.

  Downstairs, he boiled the kettle and made himself a coffee, paced the floors of every room before settling in the front living room. He stood on a dining chair and unhooked each curtain slowly, allowing each one to curl into two separate piles on the floor flanking the window. He got down and stood back. That was better. There was, he told himself, as he attempted to fold the piles into something the charity shop would accept, no point at all to them.

  Next he climbed the stairs and, after retrieving a suitcase from under the bed, began to pack Harriet’s clothes. He had no idea of what order she would like them in, what way she would have done it, but they had to go. If anything at all was to be gained by a sleepless night, by the conversation he’d had with her yesterday rolling over and over in his head like a worn-out loop, he had to move on from that day in December. And removing her scent from their bedroom seemed like the best start. It only served as a reminder of his failure, of their failure. He slipped her shirts from their hangers one by one, placed them in the case. He removed her jumpers, already folded, put them on top. Trousers were laid, one crease only, the way Harriet liked them. He filled the suitcase quickly, moved his clothes into the empty space, took his aftershave from the en suite and sprayed it all over the inside.

  As quietly as he could, memories of many Christmas Eves in his head, he went to the landing and pulled down the loft stairs. From the top of the stairs he removed a large holdall he and Harriet had used on their skiing holidays. He pushed the full suitcase back under the bed, made sure there was enough room for the holdall on the other side – Harriet’s side. Within an hour he had removed all of his wife’s clothes from the wardrobes they shared, from the drawers she used. He placed his hand on the empty hangers, moved them left to right along the hanging rail, spaced them out to try and hide the stripped reality.

  At 03:12, he climbed into bed, knowing he had an early practice meeting at the surgery five hours later. He was exhausted as he pulled the duvet over himself one more time. His head throbbed; a steady pulsing beat. He swallowed two paracetamol, then fell into a restless sleep, where one moment he was skiing with Anna and a holdall full of Harriet’s clothes, and the next, a nameless Frenchwoman’s head was smiling at him from Harriet’s pillow.

  Five minutes before he needed to leave the next morning, Theo sat fully dressed on his son’s desk chair. He watched as Finn rubbed the sleep from his eyes and growled like a bear as his hand swiped his phone alarm off.

  ‘Morning, son,’ Theo said.

  ‘Dad! You scared me!’ Finn sat up straight, shielding his eyes with an angled arm as Theo switched on his bedside light.

  ‘There’s been more rain overnight; looks cold and wet out there,’ Theo said, before taking a seat again. ‘I have an early meeting so Bea will take you to school. Wrap up warm.’

  Finn slumped back on his pillow. ‘Right.’

  ‘Finn, I’d like you to sit up, please.’

  Something in his tone seemed to make Finn listen. He straightened up, his back against the wooden headboard, his slim pillow bunched behind him. ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘Just wanted a word,’ Theo replied as he reached across to Finn’s bedside table and lifted his laptop. Finn’s eyes widened. ‘What?’ he repeated, not before Theo had already noticed something very close to panic in his eyes.

  ‘I want to show you something.’ Theo spoke as his fingers moved on the keyboard. He kept the laptop on his knee, turned it around to face the screen at Finn. ‘See that?’

  His son leaned forward. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘That is something I deal with regularly. That is a smoke-damaged lung. It belongs to a thirty-three-year-old woman with lung cancer.’

  Finn was so silent, Theo could hear his breathing. ‘And listen, hear that? That’s you breathing slightly anxiously because you don’t know what to say. That’s your still-healthy lung breathing in and out, doing its job.’ He stood up and passed the laptop back to Finn, placed it on his long limbs stretched out under the duvet. ‘And that, Finn, is your laptop. Unless you want me to take it off you, along with your phone and climbing lessons, you will agree not to smoke again. You are eleven years old. Do you understand me?’

  Finn’s expression was one of shock.

  Theo walked towards the door. ‘I know things aren’t easy right now. I know you’re probably feeling very confused, but you talk to me, you hear?’ He turned around to a silent son hugging his laptop. ‘And Finn? I mean it about the smoking.’

  ‘I—’

  ‘Don’t.’ He raised a hand. ‘Don’t eve
n attempt to lie to me.’

  ‘I was just going to point out that I am, in fact, almost twelve.’

  Theo chomped on a cheek, wondered when exactly his son had become a smartass. ‘Yes, and if you want to make it to your birthday, you’ll chuck that packet of cigarettes in your third drawer before I get home from work this evening.’

  Theo closed the door behind him; tried to ignore the image he had of Finn sticking his tongue out or doing whatever foul gesture it was that ‘almost twelve’-year-olds did to their father when they were pissed off at the world. He checked his wrist and sighed. He was going to be late.

  10. Jess

  Watching Downton Abbey fades in importance as I listen to Max apologize for calling so late on a Sunday. I study him as he speaks. He’s tall, with tight cut hair and brooding, heavy-lidded eyes. On the third finger of his left hand there is the faint tan line of a thick wedding band. He reminds me of someone; an old college tutor of Anna’s whose name I’ve forgotten. As he shifts uncomfortably on our tatty sofa, I wonder what possessed Anna and me to bring it home. Even if we had ever got around to reupholstering it, as planned, it really is too big for one and too small for two.

  He’s taking in the room, eyes scanning left and right. They linger on a large black-and-white canvas photo of Anna and Rose that I have on the wall. Pug, delighted at new blood, is pushing a tennis ball along the floor, hoping that Max will take the hint and play with her.

  ‘How’s Anna’s little girl?’ Max asks.

  ‘She’s doing well. Considering. She’s a happy child.’

  ‘That’s good. Does she miss her, I mean obviously … can you tell if she does?’

  I’m surprised at his bluntness. There’s something refreshingly honest about it and, rather than disarming me, I’m drawn to him.

  ‘There’s times – she asks me about Mummy being with the angels.’ I raise a palm in the air. ‘Not my doing. I never told her that. It was something her father told her way too soon. A couple of weeks after … It was much too soon … Anyway, she’s away on holiday with him at the moment.’