The Day I lost You

by Fionnuala Kearney

  ‘The receptionist,’ I say. ‘She thinks we’re up here having a quickie.’

  I can feel him smile into my hair.

  ‘She thinks we’re just another average couple, wanting a little afternoon delight,’ I add.

  He smooths out the back of my head. ‘I’d forgotten how your hair gets up my nose.’

  ‘I thought it was only my intense love did that.’

  He angles me around to him. ‘Enough. Okay? It’s not funny.’

  ‘No.’ I swallow hard. ‘Nothing’s funny.’ Tears fall again and he wipes them away with his fingertips. ‘She’s really dead, isn’t she?’ I say.

  He nods, silently.

  ‘She was just so beautiful,’ I say, and he pulls me to his chest. Lying there on his Lacoste jumper, which Carol probably bought, we whisper nonstop memories of Anna. We cry. We smile. And by the time we leave for the airport, Doug with her blue jumper under his arm, we agree that, somehow, we have to fight Sean to ensure Rose stays with me.

  22. Jess

  I’m cold. It’s as if I have the opposite of a fever. I’m shaking a lot, have a clammy sweat all over, and feel as though I will never be warm again. The heating’s on full and Rose is running around half naked after her shower. I tell her to get her school uniform on quickly or she’ll die of the cold and, when I realize what I’ve said, I burst into tears.

  She approaches, wraps her tiny arms around my neck. ‘Don’t cry, Nanny,’ she says. ‘It’s ’cause of Mummy, isn’t it?’

  I’m unable to say or do anything, so I grab the nearby towel to wrap around her.

  ‘Finn says,’ she whispers in a low voice, ‘Finn says that Mummy can keep singing with the angels.’

  ‘Finn?’ My brow creases.

  ‘Nanny, you know Finn! From your class!’

  I nod my head. Of course. School. Finn. Theo’s Finn.

  ‘Remember the singers Mummy was in?’

  I nod again, know she’s talking about the choir Anna sometimes sang with. I’m grateful for the chat of my gorgeous girl, grateful that she’s here.

  ‘She can always sing because heaven has lots of singers,’ she says. ‘Finn told me – for the angels.’

  Today is not the day to tell my granddaughter that I do not believe in heaven and angels. Today is not the day to even think that I do not believe in heaven and angels.

  I’m on automatic pilot when I fill her lunch box, when I drop her off, when I kiss her goodbye and nod to my colleagues who all smile sympathetically, some of them approaching to give me a wordless hug. Helen, the head, has been brilliant, telling me to take my time. They have a supply assistant in and I’ve been told to take ‘whatever I need’. In the playground I spot Finn, just as the bell peals.

  I call his name and he turns around, walks back to me. ‘You’re keeping an eye on Rose. Thank you.’

  He shrugs, a nonchalant movement of his shoulders that only pre-pubescent boys can give. I know, though, I know he’s a sensitive soul under the bravado.

  ‘She told me that you’ve said Anna’s still singing.’

  ‘I hope she is,’ he says, then looks as if he’s doubting his own words. ‘I’m not sure she is. I sort of believe more in aliens and spaceships.’ His eyes glance up towards the sky. ‘But I remember her at the Christmas service singing, and Rose likes the idea.’

  I bite my lower lip, reach across and give him a quick hug, which he accepts reluctantly.

  ‘Singing,’ I nod. ‘You’re right. It’s good to remember her singing.’

  I head back to the car and sit in it, unable to start the ignition. Anna’s voice. I can hear it as if a radio has been turned up loudly. She’s singing an aria – one I can’t remember the name of, but I went to hear her and the other girls from college sing it in some church years ago. Her voice fills the car and I head for home. Doug will be here in an hour. We have what we both want to be a small private funeral to plan. I haven’t yet told him that I’ve had over fifty emails asking me for the details. It looks as if Anna will be getting a bigger send-off than any of us had planned.

  ‘I don’t care.’ This is Doug’s response when I tell him later about the many messages. ‘We need to get this done quickly and privately.’

  At first I say nothing. I agree with him, but feel we cannot ignore her friends. ‘We need to acknowledge the other people who loved her,’ I say quietly.

  He stands up from the tatty sofa, looks out of the window onto the back garden. ‘I still can’t believe this is happening,’ he says.

  ‘Nor me.’ I join him by the window. He puts his arm around my shoulder. ‘She was the one thing we did perfectly.’ He seems choked by his own words.

  ‘She was,’ I breathe deep, lean into him.

  ‘I’ve already spoken to the crematorium.’ He breaks away from me and blows his nose. ‘We can keep that small and private. It’s booked for next Monday. She arrives from France on Friday then straight to the local funeral directors.’

  I nod. It’s as if we’re having a conversation about Anna having been away and needing collecting from the airport.

  ‘Let’s just go down the road and see if the church will let us hold a memorial service there,’ Doug says. ‘If they can do the Monday morning, then we’ll take it as a sign that this thing should be bigger than either of us wants.’

  We are not churchgoers, either of us. I don’t know the name of the vicar at St John’s. The last time I was there was a couple of years ago for a Christmas carol service, and only then because Anna’s college choir, who still came together a few times a year, were singing. But I find myself agreeing with Doug, and before I know it we’re parked in his car in the car park at St John’s.

  ‘Do you know where to go?’ he asks.

  I look around. ‘There must be a house, I—’

  ‘There.’ He points to a Victorian red-brick building tucked behind the right-hand side of the church. ‘Okay, let’s do this.’

  I want to but my legs won’t move. They feel suddenly leaden, as though I’ve been planted in concrete. ‘I—’

  ‘You all right?’

  ‘I don’t think …’

  He places a hand on my arm. ‘You wait here. I’ll do it.’

  He is gone for almost twenty minutes. Each of them, I spend trying to wriggle my toes. They move but my legs don’t want to. I’m consumed by the notion that maybe I’m temporarily crippled and I laugh out loud. Of course I’m crippled. Grief has finally felled me. Filled my legs with concrete and rendered me still for ever.

  I look at the church, at the bell tower on its roof. I ask the God who presides over it to please let my legs work. I tell Him that I really need my legs to move. I need to move for Rose. Rose needs me to move. I tell this God that Anna was a good person and ask Him if he’s real, to welcome her, to welcome her with love and kisses and open arms and … By the time Doug returns to the car, I am sobbing. I cannot speak. Any word I try to form comes out a guttural sound. Snot pours from my nostrils; big, globby tears fall, and even when I think the well must be dry, more come.

  Doug holds me. There, in his car, with me stretched across the handbrake into his arms, I shake uncontrollably. And he holds me, kisses my hair, says nothing; just holds me until it subsides.

  ‘He’ll do it,’ Doug whispers. ‘Name is John, believe it or not. John at St John’s. Monday morning at ten thirty. Should take about an hour. He’s told us we can have whatever music we want. I have his email.’

  ‘We should see if we can get the old choir.’ I sniff.

  Doug holds me out in front of him. ‘Do you want me to do this?’

  I know he means, do I want him to make all of the arrangements? I know he’d like it if we could do it together, but the lead in my legs stops me. ‘Can you? I mean, are you able to? I’d just want a couple of songs she loved, otherwise …’ I don’t finish the sentence, but he understands that otherwise I’d like him to sort it all. Come next Monday, I want to pretend that we’re going to a surprise party for Anna. />
  ‘I’ll do it. I’ll call her office too, deal with the insurance claim, to make sure they have everything they need so that you and Rose are sorted soon.’

  And I know he will. He’ll do Anna proud because – despite anything that passed between him and me – he has been a wonderful father to Anna, and his eyes, red raw at their edges, tell me that his tears are not spent either.

  Back at mine, we share a sandwich. Doug is copying the emails that have been sent to me over to his phone so that he knows who to contact. My iPad and his phone ping at the same time and we look at each other, surprised. On the screen, I see we have a message from the French authorities confirming the release of the body. It attaches a copy of the post-mortem report. Two documents: the first a one-page summary and the other a more lengthy report.

  ‘We should read them,’ he says, not sounding convinced.

  I shake my head. I need to believe she died in the fall. I don’t want to know if she struggled to breathe in some underground tomb for days. He opens the summary. Thankfully it’s in French and I don’t speak a word. Doug studied French at university.

  ‘She died in the fall,’ he whispers, and I let go of the breath I wasn’t aware I’d been holding. I’m watching him and his expression turns from one of relief to one of instant confusion. Below his creased brow, his eyes look directly at me. ‘Who was Anna seeing?’ he asks. There is almost an accusation in the question.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A boyfriend?’

  ‘I don’t know. No one, why?’ I cannot fathom why he’d ask such a stupid question at this moment in time. ‘Maybe the Max guy, but I don’t think so …’ I watch Doug’s face pale and feel the blood drain from my own.

  He looks up from the screen. ‘She was nine weeks pregnant.’

  I’ve opened the vodka again and we’re sharing the tumbler I poured. Doug put some ice in it and took the first slug. I’m not letting go of the glass. The clock on the oven flashes neon yellow, warning me I have an hour and a half before I need to collect Rose from school. I allow myself two mouthfuls in quick succession, let it slide down. I will it to turn left and cut through my heart. Just slice right through it. At least it would account for the pain I feel – as if someone has formed a fist around it and is squeezing it with the tightest of grips.

  Anna started work at the bank a year ago. Since then, to my knowledge, she has had no boyfriends. If she was seeing someone, if she was sleeping with someone, she would have told me. There is Max, but they were just friends. ‘Anna would have told me,’ I say this aloud to a distraught Doug. ‘She just would have told me if there was someone.’

  He shrugs. ‘A one-night stand?’

  ‘Or a mistake. There might be a mistake in the report.’

  ‘Jess, these people don’t make mistakes like this.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I’m now pacing the length and breadth of the kitchen-diner, the width of my house. Twenty-two steps each way. ‘Maybe your French?’ I stop walking.

  He shakes his head. ‘She was pregnant. Again.’

  I hear it then, a trace of resentment, anger even, but don’t react. Doug and I have not spent this much time together since we were married, and I think we probably both need to process this in our own way.

  ‘I need to get Rose soon.’ Code for: leave now, please. Thank you for your help but now I need to be alone.

  ‘And I need to get home.’ Code for: I want Carol to hold me now. Thanks for today, but I need the woman I love to help me with this.

  We look at each other, both of us desperate.

  ‘I’ll call you. We need to talk about Sean, his letter, what we do … we never did.’ Doug sighs.

  ‘Leah has it. She has someone in work looking at our options.’ I decide not to relay that she has already told me that the word ‘father’ trumps ‘grandparent’ in any court, and our chances of keeping Rose are slim. I’ve been pretending Leah never said it at all, and I have no intention of repeating it. Not today.

  He nods, leans over and kisses my cheek. ‘I’ll call you,’ he repeats, and then he is gone.

  I see Theo at the school and he waves, comes over to me as I get out of the car.

  ‘You not in work?’ I ask.

  ‘I am, just having a very late lunch. I’m in for evening surgery.’ He takes hold of my shoulders. ‘Was it as awful as I imagine? Stupid question, of course it was. I’m sorry, Jess. Come here.’ He pulls me into a hug.

  ‘You wanted to talk to me before, before I left for France. What was it?’ I pull away from him. The low sun is shining in my eyes and I raise my right hand to shield them from the glare. He looks great; a new suit and shoes, and something like a designer stubble on the end of his chin. That’s it – he just looks different. All scrubbed up and shiny. A quick thought that he’s seeing someone circles my brain. ‘You look really well.’ I reach up and touch his face. ‘I like this look.’ We are here, Theo and I, having this moment in the school car park – me telling him I like his new look, when all I want to do is scream, ‘Anna was pregnant!’ I’m like a bird on a nearby branch, watching the scene below unfold – two friends having a nice moment together.

  Theo blushes lightly, unconsciously raises his hand to his face.

  ‘Come over later,’ I say. ‘Let’s have a takeaway.’

  ‘Good idea. I do need to talk to you. What time?’

  ‘When Rose is in bed. After eight?’

  ‘Right, see you then.’

  He turns away and I watch him retreat to his car. Normally we would stand here together if we meet at the school gate, but today is different. That thought returns and my breath catches a little when I realize what he might want to say to me. I wonder if he’s sleeping with someone; how long it’s been going on and whether I know her. I wonder who Anna was sleeping with, how long it was going on and whether I know him. My stomach contracts with all of it, and it takes everything I have not to throw up on the grass verge at the school gate.

  I hear Rose call my name and paint a smile on my face. Whatever happens, Rose is now my reason for breathing in and out.

  23. Jess

  Ginger has a way of getting up my nose. Theo texted earlier to say he’d bring the takeaway, took my order and now he’s here, unloading enough food from a large brown paper bag to feed an army.

  ‘I just asked for a savoury rice.’ I help him unload, my head shaking at the waste. Pug yaps around our feet, sensing food scraps.

  ‘I thought if you saw more food, it might tempt you to eat,’ Theo says.

  I keep quiet the fact that the scent of ginger is already putting me off.

  Within minutes, we’re settled with our laptop suppers, him in the tatty sofa and me in the armchair.

  ‘Jane is being made a partner at the practice,’ he says.

  ‘Oh.’ I know Theo has had his eye on that ball for some time.

  ‘Yep, Marsha took me in and told me how important I am to them, how the patients love me, how vital I am, yet somehow Jane is the one being offered a partnership. Bottom line is she has the money to buy in and they know it.’

  We’re having one of those conversations that Theo and I have where one of us does all the talking. I let him get on with it, content to listen and nod for now, until he eventually asks me how I’m doing.

  ‘My parents are coming down here at the weekend.’ I ignore the question he’s actually asked.

  ‘They are?’

  ‘I haven’t had the chance to tell you yet, but we’re having a memorial service on Monday. Down the road in St John’s.’ I place my plate on the coffee table in front of me.

  Theo just stares at the floor, as if he doesn’t believe I’m telling him we’re holding a service for Anna. I don’t believe it either.

  ‘So yes, Mum and Dad are here from Sunday until Tuesday.’

  ‘Do you need any help? I can—’

  ‘We’ll be fine. Thanks. Look, Theo, nice as this is when we play happy married people with a takeaway, what’s up? You didn’t see
m yourself at the school earlier.’

  He puts his cutlery down, stops eating, and wipes his mouth with a paper napkin. ‘I suppose I just know I’m talking about anything but the obvious. France, Anna … I don’t know whether to ask you how it was, or pretend you didn’t have to do it at all.’

  ‘She was pregnant!’ I blurt it out. ‘Nine weeks. I had no idea; didn’t even know she was seeing someone. It could be that bloke Max she works with – worked with …’ My hand goes to my chest. ‘It could be anyone. I don’t know. If it was Sean, I’m probably in deeper shit than I thought.’

  He is silent, but I can almost see his brain working behind his eyes.

  ‘Jess.’ He clears his throat.

  I have noodles tripping from my mouth. ‘Theo?’ The word sounds like ‘Fee-ooh’. ‘What?’

  ‘There’s something I’ve wanted to talk to you about,’ he says, before breathing deep. ‘You know Anna was my patient.’

  ‘Jesus, you knew.’ I let the noodles escape onto the plate. ‘Of course you did—’

  ‘Jess, let me talk.’

  I catch his eye, tilt my head in annoyance. He has been talking all bloody evening. He knew Anna was pregnant. I clamp my mouth shut.

  ‘She was my patient and so anything we talked about is confidential. She came to me …’

  Patient confidentiality. He’s hiding behind not telling me things because he swore some oath twenty years ago. His mouth is still moving and I stop the image of me slapping his face becoming reality when I hear the word ‘termination’.

  ‘What?’ I say. ‘Rewind?’

  ‘She had booked a termination for her return. And look, before you go getting all pissed off, Anna was entitled to her own choices and expectant that I’d never discuss them.’ He almost whispers his next words. ‘Confidentiality continues after death.’

  A termination. ‘Why tell me now?’ I shake my head.

  ‘Because I can tell you now and because of Sean …’

  I unfold my legs from underneath myself, lean forward in the chair. ‘What has Sean got to do with anything? Was it his? Was the baby Sean’s?’