Sean, whatever else I have ever said about him, has proved to be a good man. To his credit, he has managed to sell his move to Blackpool as the ‘best idea in the world’ to Rose. He took her to his place for supper and they ate pizza amongst the boxes. And now she’s full of chatter about the ‘holidays’ she’s going to spend there. I search her eyes as she speaks; search for any tell-tale sign that I had been expecting – tears over potentially losing her daddy too. Then it hits me. In her six years she has already learned what really losing someone means. In her own little way she has figured out that Blackpool – it’s just geography.
We’re going through her memory box on her bedroom floor. Her babble includes ‘Anny Leah’ at least a hundred times and it feels as if there’s a woodpecker tap-tap-tapping her name in my brain. I check my phone – nothing from her. And Theo has definitely gone to ground too. I cross my arms over my chest and hug myself.
‘Know what, Nanny?’ Rose says. Anna’s eyes, Doug’s eyes, just chipping away at what’s left of me.
‘What, darling?’
‘I love this one best.’ I never did get involved in contributing to this box for Rose. I never did go through photos or bits that I thought would make it even better than it already seemed. Leah didn’t bother reminding me, seemed to know that it was something I just couldn’t do. There are still moments, and Leah understood that. The moments, they seem to have a life of their own; they come upon me, steep themselves around me, a ghost-like beckoning, drawing me close. And I have to stop. I have to recognize them, send them on their way, and disperse them into nothing, because if I move a fraction towards them, they will swallow me whole.
Rose hands me a photo. Leah took it last summer, here in the garden. There’s a rug on the grass and Anna is sprawled on her back, her sunglasses on and her hair fanned out above her. Sean is sitting next to her, his feet touching one another, his legs dropped down, and Rose is tucked into the well. Sean is laughing at something Rose said. And there in the background is me, just my face tucked into the top left-hand corner. I remember photo-bombing the shot and thinking I was hilarious. ‘Why is this one your favourite?’ I ask.
‘It’s my family,’ she says with a tiny shrug. She’s just short of saying ‘Duh, Nanny, really?’
I hand it back to her, the shot of Sean and Anna who were not an item but were her ‘parents’. The shot with her crazy grandmother in the corner. Her family.
The next day I meet Theo for lunch in Costa. I make sure I’m early; get some sandwiches in, the favoured coffees, and I’m sitting in the booth at the back when he arrives, looking harried.
‘I have to be back in forty minutes,’ he says, reaching down to kiss my cheek.
‘That’s okay, it won’t take you that long to say what you have to say.’
He frowns, removes his jacket. He’s in casual mode today – a pale blue sweater over navy chinos. He lifts his coffee, removes the lid and I smile. He always drinks his coffee without it, lets it cool a while and then gulps, whereas I quite like the tiny hole in the lid, the tiny sips I can take. I want it to last.
He rips open the chicken sandwich packing, tucks into the middle of the first triangle and stares at me.
‘You just have to apologize,’ I tell him. ‘It won’t take long.’
The eyes stretch as he pauses chewing.
‘You just have to say “Sorry, Jess. I didn’t mean to sulk for ages over the fact that you may have decided to move away. I realize you have a lot to think through. It can’t be easy for you. Let’s face it, you were already floating in a sea of grief and now you have this to deal with too. And I understand, I understand you have to do what’s best for Rose.”’
He swallows, places the half-eaten sandwich back on the packaging. ‘I don’t sulk,’ he says, ‘but yes, all of that. I’m sorry.’
‘And I, I have to say – “Theo, you mean the world to me, have always been there for me. If you and I are a ‘thing’, we will work it out. I don’t know how or where, but we will work it out. If you and I are not a thing, then what we did have will always be very special to me.” See?’ I check my watch. ‘Two minutes, that’s all.’
He picks the sandwich up and I open mine. Together, we eat, all around us the buzz of people coming and going in their lives. It seems as if there is a camera speeding up those around us and we remain; we remain here, at a normal pace, silent.
I’m first to speak. ‘Leah knows. Jen told her and Leah’s gone to the Lakes, won’t take my calls.’
His eyes widen. He struggles to find the right reply, places an elbow on the table and cups his face with his hand.
‘Speechless?’
‘What can I say?’ He sighs a deep sigh, reaches for my hand and tugs it towards him, wraps it up in both of his. ‘I’m sorry.’
For a while we sit, both of us lost in our thoughts, before he checks the time.
‘I have to think about getting back.’
I nod.
He squeezes my hand. ‘What do you want, Jess?’
Nerves make me laugh, a jittery, anxious sound. If I’m honest all I want is my daughter back. I want the life I had. The family I had. ‘I’m not really sure,’ I tell him.
He shrugs. ‘It’s not complicated. Do you want to move or do you feel you have to move? Do you want a relationship or not? What do you want?’
According to my daughter I’m a tough act to follow, black or white, with little grey. She does, at least, say I’m not quick to judge, but adds it to the fact that I could be controlling. She wanted to move out and I made sure she couldn’t. I don’t want that. I don’t want to be that person.
‘I want to raise Rose in a way that she has roots and wings. I think I got the roots right with Anna but I might have stunted her flight.’
‘None of us is perfect.’
‘No. You’re a sulker …’ I smile.
‘Okay. Maybe,’ he concedes.
‘I’ll need help, Theo. That’s the truth of it. I think being nearer Sean would be good for Rose. I think being near Doug and his boys would be good for Rose. I think being at the Lakes, having that upbringing, would be good for Rose. I think being near Granma and Gramps would be good for Rose. And I think, if I can’t have Leah near me, it would be good for me. I need the support network, can’t do it on my own.’
‘If we were a thing, you wouldn’t be alone.’
‘If we’re a thing, geography wouldn’t matter.’
He nods. ‘Rose,’ he says. ‘Rose is your priority. Finn is mine.’
Theo is telling me his home is here with his son, that there will be no running into the sunset with me up North. I wouldn’t want it any other way.
‘There will be times when Sean has Rose and Finn is with Harriet. We could try it, see. If it’s a thing, it’ll survive, if not …’ I shrug, squeeze his hand.
I drive back via the M&S at the petrol station, stock up on ready-made soup and bread. At home, I throw it on the worktop and almost have a heart attack when I turn around. Leah is sitting on the tatty sofa. My heart thumps against my ribcage as I glance towards the front of the house.
‘I walked over, no car,’ she explains. ‘A long drive back first thing this morning so I needed the air. Are you up for going out? Well enough, I mean?’
I nod. My keys are still in my hand.
‘Let’s go, there’s somewhere I want to show you.’
I drive; she gives me directions to the local park. We haven’t hugged; we haven’t kissed. She’s not talking. This is completely unfamiliar territory, yet I know to keep quiet. Let her be the one to speak.
Just inside the wrought-iron gates, there’s a large pond about a hundred metres in. It’s obviously where we’re headed. I try to keep up with her, try to hide the fact that my lungs feel like exploding. We take a seat at the nearest bench. Anna and I used to come here to feed the ducks. I don’t speak this memory aloud.
‘It was here, a few years ago. I never told you at the time.’
Those words,
alien to us. ‘I never told you at the time.’ Seven words, and I know this won’t be good. Leah tells me everything.
‘I was sitting here,’ she says. ‘I’d figured out that I would leave him if he didn’t want to … that it was worth leaving him for.’ She gazes into the distance, tears brimming in her eyes. I don’t know what’s coming but I’m finding it hard to keep it together. I reach towards her and she backs away. ‘No. I need you to listen. I was pregnant. This was the spot I started to bleed. Right here, right here on this bench.’
I swallow the lump in my throat.
‘I was on my way home to tell him, to persuade him that we could have a child together. And I lost it. Just like that.’
I hold my shallow breath.
‘I worked it out in my head last night that it was eight months later Rose was born.’
I gasp, need air.
‘He must have had a particularly virile month,’ she says. Again her eyes cast towards the horizon.
I try to take her hand, but she refuses.
‘You have to understand,’ she says, ‘I’ll never forgive him. It’s over between us. But, more than that, I will never forgive her. You need to know that.’
No words will come out. Some spill in my brain like, ‘Please’, ‘In time’, but they don’t make it to my mouth. Nothing does.
‘I’ll always love you, Jess. You’re my only sister, my best friend.’ She shakes her head and breaks down. The sound of her guttural crying snaps my heart into pieces. ‘I’ll always love Rose,’ she sobs, ‘because I can’t turn that off. I won’t let her be blamed for this mess. But that’s it. That’s the best I can do.’ She falls into my arms and I hold her tight for a very long time.
At home we eat soup. I tell her she has to eat. She tells me that I do too. She lets me know that she’s moving in with a friend from work who has a spare bedroom and will stay there until she decides what to do.
‘Your home,’ I can’t help myself saying it. I think of the excitement she felt when she and Gus had found such a gorgeous house near us. That’s the thing: Leah had wanted to live near her sister. Near me and Anna. ‘Your beautiful home …’
She shrugs. ‘Turns out it’s only a house. And houses get sold.’
She comes with me to collect Rose and Rose leaps into her arms. ‘Anny Leah!’ She has never been able to say ‘Auntie’ properly. Together they walk back to the car, hand in hand. Finn walks by me, his backpack slung high on his shoulder, his face angled to ground level.
‘Finn?’ I say. ‘Walking home today?’
‘Yeah, Dad agrees it’s time. You coming back soon, Mrs Powers?’
‘Next week,’ I say, without realizing it was even in my sights. ‘I need some normality.’
His head jerks towards the school. ‘They’re all crazies in there,’ he grins. I point the remote and Leah and Rose climb in the back seat. Rose is singing a song, giving Leah explicit instructions on the chorus.
When I drop her off, Leah gets out and blows us kisses before climbing into her waiting car, already loaded with what she needs to take to another place. She does a three-point turn in five, looks at me in her rear-view mirror and drives away.
52. Anna
Raw Honey Blogspot 29/03/2015
Here’s what I know, readers.
My daughter lied. My daughter died. My sister cried. Her husband lied. And I have cried. My daughter’s daughter has cried.
There have been too many lies, too many tears and not many conclusions. And it’s only because my daughter, ‘Honey-girl’ to you, is dead that there should even be a conclusion, isn’t it?
It feels like there should be some nice ending. I’m not even saying a happy one, just an ending. But there’s none. ‘Honey-girl’ – in my head, anyway – lives on. I still talk to her every day. I’ve even had the fights with her that I would have had if she’d lived. In my head, we storm off from each other regularly. This can only happen because I did know my daughter. Despite the pain of the last few months; despite my anguish that I had lived in the same house with a woman I felt I didn’t know at all, someone who had made some selfish, selfish decisions – that is not all she was.
She was a brilliant mother to her only child. She was, to me, when she was alive, a brilliant daughter. And when I say brilliant, I mean just that. She dazzled, she shone, she sang. Her presence was vivid and bright and anyone who met her felt that. They are the parts, the parts that I choose to remember, that I choose to focus on.
On dull days, where a grey mood will loom, and other inevitable features in her psyche surface – I will push them away. I’m not ignoring them, you understand. I know they exist. Existed. I know that now, and I can never un-know it. I can, however, choose to protect myself and her daughter from it. I can choose to file it away, for discussion with whoever brings it up on those grey, dull days, as I know they will. And I won’t shy away from it. I will listen, close my eyes, breathe deep and try hard to move past it all again.
Honey-girl lied and Honey-girl died, but she also lived and I will not live my life not forgiving her.
Do not imagine this is easy, reader. Do not imagine that the gaping chasms she and her lover blew into the very fibre of my family can be forgotten, but they have to be forgiven. At least by me. I can’t go on, can’t learn from her life, and can’t learn from the things she taught me even after she died, unless I forgive.
I cannot say the same for my sister. I hope to some day, but that’s a feeling steeped in optimism, rather than bare, base facts.
This will be the last post on this blog. It may or may not ever be read because I will be closing it down today. Thank you, Honey-girl, for finally using your date of birth as a password that actually works.
So, this is all I can offer in summary, to readers who follow this blog. Finding it, reading it, has taught me things about human nature, not least my own, and for that I suppose I’m strangely grateful to my daughter, Anna.
Yes. Her name was Anna. It means Grace, or blessing. And yes. I was blessed.
Epilogue
The Lakes, 7 December 2015
The package is delivered by a brusque courier, a young man who would rather be home in the warmth than out in his van on this icy December day. It has layer upon layer of bubble wrap on it, which Rose will love popping when she gets back from school. Pug barks, circling my feet.
Within a couple of minutes the picture is revealed. I hold it in my hands. It’s about thirty centimetres by sixty. I recognize the image from somewhere, but I can’t quite place it at first. It’s in Mum and Dad’s cloakroom … There’s a picture there of Anna and Rose, in profile, looking out at the lake. I turn the canvas left to right and back again. How did he do that?
Somehow, the artist has included me. It’s triple profile, simple black lines on a yellow canvas. I chew my lip, try hard not to cry. It’s here in my hands, the three generations – me, Anna and Rose. I look to the bottom of the canvas. Charles Everard. I don’t know him but, in three simple black silhouettes, he has captured us all in stunning simplicity. It’s beautiful.
The card, one with an image of the Madonna and child on the front, has Theo’s handwriting inside. Unlike that of any other doctor I’ve known, it’s neat, legible, with a slight slant to the left:
‘This artist likes to paint happy things. I hope you feel happy when you look at it. Thinking of you both today. T x’
I call him straight away. ‘It’s perfect,’ I say when he answers. ‘It made me smile this morning and I think it always will. Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome. I sent it by courier so you’d have it first thing, but I’m leaving shortly, I should be there by two.’
Enough time, I reason. Nothing is happening until three fifteen when Rose is home from school.
‘Is Finn coming?’ I ask.
‘No. Harriet’s coming to stay here for a couple of days. I can’t take him out of school in the first term.’
I nod.
‘Jess, I gotta go. She’
s just arrived.’
‘Drive safely.’
‘Will do. Love you.’
And he’s gone. He’s gone before I can say the words on the tip of my tongue. I love you too, Theo.
I make two coffees and, with my coat on, open the door on the side of the house, walk a few feet of narrow path to the small rear garden. Nothing like my own garden, now being looked after by tenants; the only familiar thing in it is Doug. I hand him the hot drink. He has run an electric lead from the small shed to where I have Theo’s Christmas tree sitting in a pot just outside the rear window. It was Doug’s idea; get some lights on it so that Rose can see it out here at night. I look up at the darkening sky and grimace, still trying to get used to the weather up here.
‘Do you think the rain will hold off?’ I ask him.
He sniffs the air. ‘Doubtful,’ he says, and flicks a switch inside the shed.
Immediately it’s Christmas, and my smile is wide. The tree is covered in white lights. On top there is a star, edged too in tiny lights. The star alone flickers on and off. I put my cup on the windowsill and hug him. ‘Thank you. Trafalgar Square in a small terraced garden in Windermere.’
He packs up a couple of things and finishes the drink before handing me the cup. ‘I’ve got to go into work, but I’ll see you later. Carol and I will do the school pick-up so we’ll bring Rose straight there. You all right, then?’
I nod. There is only one thing I have to do, one thing I have to remember.
Doug doesn’t come back in the house, just lets himself out through the side gate. He doesn’t get to see the picture Theo sent, the one that I spend the rest of the morning staring at.
I eat lunch at Mum and Dad’s. She’s in one of her nervy moods, running around the place doing things that have already been done. Dad’s sleeping in his chair and I pull his blanket around him and sit next to him. I glance at the clock on the living-room wall every five minutes and leap from my chair when the bell rings at ten minutes to two. Theo has to steady himself when I literally jump into his arms, my feet leaving the ground, my arms as tight around his neck as the thick scarf he wears will allow.
The Day I lost You Page 30
