The Day I lost You

by Fionnuala Kearney

  Within a couple of hours, Dad has been diagnosed with a urine infection. Leah has already been to the chemist, got his prescription for antibiotics and given him the first dose. My mother looks like my mother again and Leah has told her that there are two carers coming later today to meet her. If she likes them, they start a job-share tomorrow. Mum hasn’t argued once, just nodded, and I’m embarrassed that though we knew she needed help, neither of us realized quite how near the end of her rope she was.

  Rose is looking at children’s television, and it’s almost four o’clock before I think of the phone. I sit on the edge of my childhood bed, remove it from my bag. Turned on, the date of Anna’s accident keyed in, it comes to life immediately. I scroll through her photos first and God, there are so many of them from the holiday. My heart quickens as I see her shining face fill the screen, those brilliant white teeth that cost me a fortune when she was thirteen; her body long and lean in that bloody red suit – so full of vibrancy, so full of life. How can it be?

  The charge is almost dead, so I plug it in just as the carers arrive. By the time I get there, Leah has greeted them and ushered them into the lake-view room. It’s clear from the outset that she has this and I’m merely an onlooker. She leaves them chatting with Mum and beckons me into the kitchen to get drinks. Behind the door she taps her chest quickly with the palm of her hand, rolls her eyes and then looks back through a crack in the door. She grabs my hand and squeezes, forces me to peer through. ‘Daniel fucking Craig,’ she whispers, ‘who the hell knew?’ She giggles like a small child as we both look at the male carer, who does bear more than a passing resemblance to the actor. ‘Just watch Mum getting her flirt on.’

  I laugh, take Rose out into the back garden to give them some privacy. She asks me when we can take the boat out with Gramps. ‘Soon,’ I tell her. ‘As soon as summer comes.’

  I’m aware I don’t want to be saying no to her. I’m aware I can’t be explaining things to her all of the time, things that shouldn’t bother children – like the fact that my dad may never take her out in a boat again. She sits on my lap on one of the steps leading down to the lake. Though we have our coats on, it’s cold now, the sun having disappeared behind cloud for the day. I hold her close and her flyaway hair tickles my nose. I breathe deep and, no matter how hard I try and imagine it, can’t get the slightest whiff of coconut. I get the scent of the Lakes; a fresh, crisp, pine-like scent. I press my nose into her hair further – a vague hint of oranges from the last shampoo. This is Rose. I tell myself. She’s not Anna. She’s Rose. You have to do it all over again, Jess.

  Rose turns to me and shivers. ‘Let’s go inside, Nanny,’ she says, climbing from my lap and offering me her hand.

  ‘Before we do,’ I frame her face with both of mine. ‘You told Nanny a little lie earlier, when your clothes got wet, didn’t you?’

  She frowns, a strange sight on her tiny features. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I just did. You know it’s wrong to tell lies, don’t you?’ I’m on my feet, clutching her hand as we walk back to the house.

  ‘Yes. But I wanted to wear my new jeans and you wouldn’t let me.’

  So simple. And I hear her mother’s voice in it. But I wanted to be with this married man and I knew you’d never approve.

  ‘You still can’t tell lies to get what you want, Rose.’

  ‘Okay, Nanny. Sorry.’

  The circle of life. And round and round I go again.

  31. Anna

  Raw Honey Blogspot 04/09/2010

  I made a birthday cake today for T, my little half-brother. He’s seven years old tomorrow, and though he’s her uncle, DD has just started to talk and insists he’s her ‘brudda’. It’s so sweet.

  We’re at the Lakes and when the cake was in the oven, we headed out to the end of the garden, where Gramps was all set up on the deck. He was so excited, the thought of introducing another child to his love of sailing just written all over his wide grin. I was less enthusiastic, my heart thumping in my chest. We dressed DD in the hut; head-to-toe in wet gear, her tiny little life-vest wrapped around her with three strong straps. She almost leapt off the deck into the sail dinghy with him.

  I tried to stop myself leaping onto the boat after her, and though they set off happily, DD tucked safely between Gramps’s legs, I didn’t relax until she was back at shore, in my arms again.

  She loved it. Everyone fussed over her. We were all there today – Mama, her sister L (L’s husband G was at work), Nanny, Gramps; all clapped wildly when she got back. DD just kept yelling ‘More! More!’ and pulling away from me, veering towards the dinghy. It was only ‘helping’ Mummy to ice T’s cake that finally distracted her. I suspect sailing with Gramps may become her thing. He’s not up for skiing any more – has a bit of sciatica – so he tells me it’ll be up to me to get her to love the slopes.

  When I iced the cake, I asked Mama how I’m supposed to control the fear when I see her doing something that I know she’ll enjoy but might be dangerous. Mama laughed and told me to get used to it; that DD is just like me and that I’ll spend half of my life practising how to smile with my heart wedged in the back of my throat.

  Something to look forward to?!

  Dad brought T and his younger brother E around for a pre-birthday-let’s-eat-cake time by the lake. They played with Rose in the garden, enjoying the end of the summer. We ate the cake and the grown-ups sang along with my karaoke machine. Nanny B won the prize for her worryingly drunken rendition of Whitney’s ‘I Will Always Love You’.

  It was a brilliant day.

  I’m typing this a little bit pissed myself.

  And I will always love them all …

  32. Jess

  Rose and I have been baking. It has never been my forte, but it was something she loved to do with Anna and … I want to try. My mother, who has for the first time had help feeding and settling my father down, is sitting by the muted television in the next room, her eyes closed. Leah is seated right by her going through old photographs.

  I’m happy to be in the kitchen. Rose, flour in her hair, seems content to be here with me. She’s standing on a chair, has already cracked the eggs into the sugar-and-butter mix and she’s now beating it with a wooden spoon. I offer to help but she’s determined, her face all scrunched up in concentration. Finally, she hands it to me, sighs as if she’s exhausted. ‘This is the bit Mummy does,’ she says. So, I take it and beat it, her standing on the chair beside me, both hands on her hips, ready to tell me when to stop. I laugh and she looks up at me. ‘What’s funny, Nanny?’

  ‘You are,’ I tell her, and dab a bit of the mix from the spoon onto the end of her nose.

  ‘Hey!’ she says and wipes it off with her finger before licking it.

  When the cakes are in the oven and I’m cleaning the inevitable mess, she’s still standing on the chair and staring in through the glass door at them. The buns are small and surprisingly they rise. ‘Look at that,’ I say, my arm around her.

  ‘They look just like Mummy’s,’ she says proudly.

  I kiss her head. ‘They do, don’t they?’

  ‘Mummy would say, “Well done, Rose! Well done, Nanny!” if she could see them.’ She jumps down from the chair and heads to the window over the sink, looks outside. ‘See them, Mummy?’ She talks to the night sky and her tiny forefinger points back to the oven.

  I cross over and scoop her up in my arms. Together we stare at the heavens. ‘Which one is she?’ I ask Rose.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she says. ‘Sometimes she moves around.’

  I nod into her head, squeeze her. ‘But she’s up there somewhere,’ she says, cuddling into me, then fixes her thumb firmly in her mouth.

  By the time we are both lying down in our childhood bedroom, Rose tucked into a pull-up bed between ours, Leah and I have a list. She has made this into some sort of game, as only my sister can. She’s the one who has us sticking pins on donkeys in the summer, sacks on Santa in December, charades during both se
asons; and she’s the only person I know who can complete a Rubik’s Cube while singing Madonna’s ‘Like A Virgin’. Tonight, she’s humouring me with a ‘Who’s the Daddy?’ diversion. She’s in my bed, both of us huddled under the duvet, which is pulled up over our heads. Leah has a pencil-thin torch stuck between her teeth.

  The light shines on our list. It’s a short list – three possibilities. We have both come up with two names, one in common. Her offerings are Sean and James. I think from what Theo has told me, from what Anna always believed, Sean’s DNA will come back negative. I offer up James and Theo. James is the common denominator, but Leah’s brow has developed new ridges since seeing Theo’s name there.

  He’s married, I tell her; he’s the one who held back telling me the truth until Anna’s funeral, until her letter authorized him to speak – a letter, I remind her, that I haven’t seen yet. He’s the one she went to see before she died. Anna used to babysit Finn for years. Theo usually drove her home. It could have started back then. I stop talking, feel nauseous even whispering the words.

  ‘It’s not Theo.’ She shakes her head. ‘Integrity runs through Theo like a stick of rock.’

  She climbs out of my bed and gets into her own, quiet since I raised his name. ‘That’s why you’re not speaking to him,’ she says. ‘Nothing to do with a kiss, but you suspect someone you say is your best friend slept with your daughter.’

  I squeeze my eyes shut.

  ‘She had a hanky.’ I turn on my side towards Leah. ‘In her ski suit. A man’s hanky. Theo is the only man in the world who still uses handkerchiefs.’

  Her head shakes in the darkness. ‘You’d better have more than a hanky before you accuse him of anything. Good friends are hard to come by.’

  ‘You think I want it to be him?’ I slump onto my pillow, remember the sweet-and-sour kiss, which forces me to think of that Christmas party kiss years ago. He ended up telling Harriet about it last summer. They were having an honesty session – a confessional – during the time they were trying to save their marriage. Harriet confessed to having feelings for another man. Theo confessed to one drunken kiss with me. Of course, now I know it happened around the same time Anna was starting a relationship with her lover. A sound like a low moan escapes me and Leah reaches her hand across the divide of Rose’s pull-up bed. I clasp it. ‘I can’t bear the thought that it might be him.’

  ‘I tried to say it earlier, Jess.’ She holds my hand. ‘You need to decide what happens if you pursue this. Theo? What if it’s not him and you lose a friend? James? What if it is him and he didn’t know? If Anna lied about one thing, maybe she lied about others. God knows you could rattle a hornet’s nest in a man’s marriage, and for what? He’d then have rights over Rose? You could risk losing her to someone you don’t even know.’

  ‘I know you’re right.’ I retreat into the duvet. ‘Mum thinks the same. She overheard you and me talking about Sean the other day, told me to “let sleeping dogs lie”.’

  ‘Anna’s gone. Nothing will bring her back.’

  Within minutes, her hand has slipped and I’m listening to Leah’s throaty snores. I reach out and touch Rose. She shifts slightly in her sleep. I turn on my side and stare at her. It’s when I look at her – when I feel that primal link to Anna – that I can find myself submerged. It’s like being underwater and not being able to breathe. Anna is gone, and to endure her loss is enough without questioning everything I thought I knew about her.

  I am dazed with sleeplessness the next day. It’s early afternoon and Leah has gone for a walk with Pug on the lead and Mum is keeping an eye on Rose for me. I’m hiding away; seated at the far end of the garden in what Dad calls his ‘hut’. It’s a small, raised, decked area with an empty garden shed in it – empty but for Dad’s rocking chair. The door has been removed, allowing a permanent view over the lake. Today, it’s deathly quiet. No boats, no people, very few sounds, just the chatter of random birds above my head and in the bushes next to the shed. The water is mirror smooth, just a tiny ripple when you look for one. It reminds me of a mirror hanging in Anna’s room, one of those ones with wavy sides.

  I turn her phone over in my hands, then switch it on and enter the correct code. ‘Just give yourself some lone time,’ Leah had warned. Today’s the day I tackle her messages and emails. Beside me, I have a large mug of hot chocolate.

  I scan through Anna’s texts, find the last thread before the avalanche struck. It’s from ‘Popeye’, who features heavily in her messages and, when I glance, in her emails too. I’m relieved to see the number isn’t Theo’s, though I had never really believed it would be. I have dismissed the hanky. It cannot be and is not Theo, I have told myself over and over rhythmically in my head since 04:40 this morning. I imagine Popeye to be some buffed gym freak and ignore completely the fact that Theo’s surname is Pope and squirrelled away in the name ‘Popeye’. It cannot be and is not Theo.

  I wonder who it is; know that now I have his number, that all I have to do to find out is to ring it. But, before that, I need to know who and what I’m dealing with. I open the last message from Anna, realize it makes no sense on its own, so trace it back to a week or so before she travelled. My eyes rest on a capitalized text from him. I’m irrationally irritated by his nickname. I remember the old and dated cartoon character, but Rose has a favourite DVD, a non-animated story with Robin Williams playing the spinach-loving sailor. If I only disliked the idea of the man before, I hate the image I have of him now.

  YOU ALREADY KNOW HOW I FEEL are the first words I read of his.

  Anna: I was hoping you’d had a change of heart.

  Him: No.

  Anna: WHAT ABOUT ROSE? Don’t you think I’d love her to have a sibling?

  Him: I’m sorry, honey-girl, really I am. You know I can’t change how I feel about this.

  I rest the phone on my lap. Honey-girl? Downturned smiley face? I feel nauseous. Theo would never speak or write those words. This is the married man who impregnated my daughter a second time. I don’t get that either. One ‘mistake’, yes. Two? No. Anna was careful enough to hide a relationship from me for years. She was careful enough to never get pregnant with anyone else she had ever been with. As per normal with my daughter of late, nothing makes any sense. I finish the cooling hot chocolate before scan-reading the last week of Popeye and his honey-girl’s texts. Then, I stand up, walk ten paces, and heave the drink up again into the edge of the lake. I look skywards. A little too early for the stars yet, but it’s still as if she’s sulking, as if she knows I’m reading her stuff.

  An hour later, the light is changing. I have learned that no matter how I hoped otherwise, the truth is Anna was someone’s mistress. I roll the word around my tongue and nothing about it fits. Nothing about the woman whose texts I’m reading feels like Anna. Shadows dance across the edge of the water and it’s no longer still. A wind has appeared from the east and waves ripple across the lake like dominoes. Sailing boats have emerged, some of them yet stationary, some of them being carried along swiftly, left to right.

  The phone is on the decked floor next to me while I mull some of this over. Without thinking too much, I bend down, grab it, and dial the number in her contacts before I can talk myself out of it. All I hear is an automated message telling me that Popeye’s phone is switched off.

  I’m leaning forward on the rocking chair, the curved arch tilted to the front, my feet planted flat to ground me. My head is in my hands. I’m shivering and it takes her calling my name several times before I realize my mother is standing beside me.

  ‘Come inside,’ she orders, her voice angry, as if I were a six-year-old who had left the house midwinter with no coat on.

  I can’t move.

  ‘Jess, you’re freezing. You’ll catch your death. Inside, now.’

  I start to laugh, at first a low chuckle, then something louder that makes me break into a coughing fit. ‘Death can’t be caught, Mum,’ I whisper. ‘It just jumps up and catches you unawares when you’re out skii
ng.’

  Mum bends down to me, rubs both my arms. ‘Inside, please, now. Come on.’ She puts her hands on my shoulders and tugs, and I only move for fear of my elderly mother falling over. We walk slowly back up the garden. She has one arm around my shoulder and her free hand rubs mine as if she’s trying to increase the blood flow. I bend into her crook, want her to rub it away, this resident ache in my heart.

  ‘I’d take it from you if I could,’ she whispers, and yet again I wonder how my mother seems to read my mind. And yet again, I wonder how I thought I could read my daughter’s, and how I’d got it so, so, spectacularly wrong …

  The next morning, just after Mum has gone to the shops with Rose, I’ve finished giving Dad some breakfast in bed and Doug drops by with his sons. They run around the back garden, their shoes squelching in the wet ground as Doug and I look on from the terrace. One of them looks so like him, but with his wife’s dark brown, intense eyes. The older one is a facsimile of Carol.

  ‘Sean called,’ he says. ‘The test results are back. He’s definitely not Rose’s father and he’s taken it badly.’

  Whatever sleeping giant I have kicked is now wide awake. Two clear facts emerge. Anna definitely lied and Anna, in doing so, has left a string of misery behind her. Sean, his parents, Rose – all of them; all of us – are going to have to find a way to readjust to this truth. Popeye is for now shelved.

  ‘He’s coming up to tell his parents today.’ Doug keeps his voice low. ‘Doesn’t want to do it on the phone.’

  ‘Jesus …’

  ‘It’s a mess.’

  ‘Do you think I should—’

  ‘No, Jess, stay away.’

  ‘But they’re not too far from here. I feel responsible.’

  ‘Jess, you are responsible!’

  I flinch.

  ‘What I mean is you are, we are, we all are, but I tell you one thing, one person who’s not responsible, who always did the right thing by Anna, is Sean, and he’s the one hurting now.’