by Dani Atkins
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ I said, ‘I’m sure.’ Only I wasn’t. Not at all.
By mid-afternoon I was seriously considering interrupting Monique’s business meeting and asking her to come back to the shop. I knew a lot of my anxiety was down to guilt. I had turned my back on Caroline and had childishly focused my anger in a direction it had no business going. I had lashed out at her, for no other reason than the friend I was really angry with, the friend who had really betrayed me, was no longer around to blame.
I almost knocked my phone off the counter in my hurry to answer it when it finally chirped with an incoming call. I glanced at the display hoping to see Caroline’s name and felt fury arcing through me as I saw Richard’s instead. I pressed the button to sever the call without answering. Thirty seconds later it rang again. He just couldn’t leave it alone, could he? I glanced at the clock and saw it was after four. He must have left work and be back at his flat. I wondered what it was going to take to get through to him. It didn’t seem to matter how many times I told him not to get in touch, he just wasn’t listening.
He rang a further three times before he resorted to texting me. Pick up. I considered texting back and just saying No, but I didn’t want to get into any type of communication with him. His second text was more imperative: I NEED TO SPEAK TO YOU. IT’S URGENT. I frowned at the screen, and wondered if his use of capitals had been deliberate. It felt like he was shouting at me through his mobile.
I slid the phone a little further away. The third text was the charm. That was the one that had me reaching for the phone to call him back. If he’d sent that one in the first place it could have saved us ten minutes of wasted time. Phone me back. Caroline is in trouble.
‘What’s wrong? Where is she?’ This wasn’t the time for hellos or civility.
His voice sounded distant and hollow, and I could hear a howling wind behind his brief and terse reply. ‘I’m at the cemetery, by Amy’s grave. Caroline is here too. She’s in a bad way. I can’t get through to her. I need you to get here. Fast.’
I really was in danger of being nominated for Worst Employee of the Year, I thought, as I rushed to turn the sign on the door from Open to Closed, and moved through the shop at speed, switching off the lights and turning on the alarm system. I scribbled a short, almost illegible, note of explanation for Monique, which I left propped up on her desk. I should have taken the time to call her, but I didn’t want to waste a single second.
It seemed as though every traffic light was stuck on red, and every car in front of me was a learner driver having their very first lesson. By the time I eventually pulled into the cemetery car park, my anxiety levels had rocketed up like a barometer in a heatwave. I parked at an appallingly skewed angle in the bay next to Richard’s car and began to run in the direction of the burial area, pulling on my coat as I went.
I hadn’t set foot in this place in almost a month, not since the day I had clung on to Richard’s arm for support as I’d watched Amy’s gleaming black coffin being lowered into the ground, but I remembered where to go. In the early weeks, the thought of coming here had seemed far too painful, and then after I learned what had happened between her and Richard… well, also too painful.
I hadn’t seen Amy’s headstone before, and in fact I still couldn’t see it properly, because Caroline was kneeling in front of it, her forehead resting against the cool white marble and her arms wrapped around its sloping edges. That in itself was worrying. Even more worrying was the sound of her sobs – raw, throaty and hoarse, as though she had been crying for a great many hours. Richard was on the path, standing a little way back from the grave. He was watching Caroline with true despair as he paced anxiously back and forth, his hands moving restlessly in and out of his pockets. He heard the sound of my running footsteps and spun around. In all the years that I’ve known him, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look so relieved to see me. I came to an abrupt halt on the path, trying to make sense of everything I was seeing. Richard was like a relay runner anxious to pass on the baton of responsibility. For just a single moment I wanted to turn and sprint the other way, as fast as I could back to my car, as far away from this dreadful place as I could possibly go. But of course I didn’t.
‘Thank God you’re here.’ There was genuine fervour in his voice. I ignored his outstretched hand and stepped carefully over the spongy turf, picking a path between small piles of displaced soil, a muddy trowel and an array of what looked like plant bulbs. I came up behind Caroline and cautiously laid my hand on her shoulder as though I was trying to calm a wild pony. The shuddering of her sobs reverberated up the length of my arm.
‘Caroline. It’s me, Emma. I’ve come to take you home, honey. Come on now.’
She neither stopped sobbing nor turned around. I’m not sure if she’d even heard me, or been aware of my touch. This was horribly like the time she had kneeled insensibly beside Amy on the road as we waited for the ambulance.
‘How long has she been like this?’ I asked, turning my worried gaze from Caroline to Richard, who had begun pacing again.
‘I don’t know. I’m not sure.’
‘Well how was she when you brought her here?’
‘I didn’t bring her,’ he corrected, his brow furrowing. ‘I came here by myself expecting the place to be empty and I just found her here… like this.’
There was a lot to take in in that sentence. I forced myself to push to one side the fact that Richard had come to visit Amy’s grave and tried to concentrate on the person who needed me most.
‘I’ve no idea how long she’s been here or how she got here. I didn’t see her new car in the car park—’
‘She’s not driving yet,’ I cut in.
Richard looked concerned to hear this, but I felt like that was the least important thing to be worrying about just now.
‘I’ve been trying to persuade her to move away from… from the grave, but she just won’t let go of the damn headstone, and when I tried to lift her to her feet, she began crying so loudly I thought someone was going to call the police and have me arrested for assault.’ I could see the panicked memory in his eyes and almost felt a moment of sympathy for him. ‘I’ve tried calling Nick, but he’s not picking up.’
‘He’s away at a conference,’ I explained.
‘So what do we do now?’ asked Richard helplessly.
I ran my hand down Caroline’s arm, feeling the cold dampness that had seeped deep into the fabric of her coat. She really must have been here for a very long time.
‘You don’t have to do a thing. You can go. I’ve got it from here. I’m going to take her home.’ It felt good to dismiss him, but when I glanced up I saw he’d made no move to leave. I didn’t have the energy to insist or argue, so I simply ignored him and slid my arm around Caroline’s waist as I attempted to get her to her feet. ‘Come on, Caroline, stand up, let’s get you home now.’ I felt her body stiffen and her arms tightened their hold on Amy’s gravestone. I heard Richard make a small noise, which translated into I told you so.
‘Caroline, we can’t stay here,’ I reasoned, ‘it’s going to be getting dark in a while, and you’re freezing. Let’s go back to yours; we’ll have a cup of tea and a chat. Come on.’
She shook her head emphatically, but at least she turned her face away from Amy’s gravestone to look at me. I still couldn’t see all of the inscription, but two words in gold lettering seemed to leap out of the marble at me. Trusted friend. I stiffened.
‘I can’t go. Not yet,’ she said, her voice cracking as she spoke. ‘Not until they’re all in the ground.’
I glanced left and right and saw nothing but headstones. Everyone’s already there, Caroline, I thought, then I glanced down at the incongruous gardening equipment lying discarded beside Amy’s grave. Caroline reached for a large brown bulb, which to my non-gardener’s eye looked just like an onion. ‘When I got up this morning I saw daffodils had started to come up in our garden, and I suddenly realis
ed Amy had no flowers growing beside her. Every flower we leave here is cut… and dead. I wanted her to have some living ones. Amy loved flowers.’
Yes, she did, I recalled. Although the ones she liked best were usually the type delivered in large cellophane displays from an expensive florist. ‘So I walked to the garden centre and bought all of these,’ she said, her hand sweeping over the scores of bulbs lying on the turf as well as several unopened bulging net bags beside them. ‘Only I can’t remember which ones she liked best, was it daffodils, or crocuses, or tulips?’ I knew the answer to that one: Amy wouldn’t have cared less, but I couldn’t say that to Caroline. Not when she was looking at me with tears falling from her beautiful blue eyes, and her lip trembling like a heartbroken child.
‘Snowdrops,’ I answered decidedly. ‘Amy loved snowdrops.’ Did she? Maybe. Who knew? Anyway, this wasn’t for Amy. It was for Caroline.
‘Come on then,’ I continued, dropping to the ground beside her. ‘Let’s get them planted.’ The ground squelched unpleasantly beneath my knees as I reached for the trowel, and I felt the mud seeping through my jeans, but it was a small price to pay to give Caroline some comfort. I reached behind me for the bag of bulbs but another hand got to it first. A large male hand, which was already ripping open the netting, as he too dropped to his knees on to the muddy ground.
‘Your trousers—’ I began, already too late as I saw Richard’s smart work clothes had just suffered the same fate as my jeans, as his knees sank into the soft dirt.
‘It’s not important,’ he replied, his fingers gouging into the turf to make a hole, as I already had the only trowel. I eyed his bent head as he carefully placed the snowdrop bulb into the soil. Something inside me twisted and turned, and stayed with me as I thrust the trowel into the ground and set to work.
It didn’t take long with all three of us working, and when the last of the bulbs had been set in an invisible orbit around Amy’s plot, Caroline finally agreed to get to her feet. She wiped her dirty hands unthinkingly down the front of her cream-coloured coat, before gently touching Amy’s name on the headstone with her finger.
‘I’m so sorry, Amy. Please forgive me,’ she whispered, the tears which had temporarily stopped while we were working beginning to fall again.
‘What’s she sorry for?’ I asked Richard in a low voice, momentarily forgetting that I wasn’t supposed to be talking to him.
He leaned his head closer to mine and I caught a whiff of his aftershave. It was an expensive brand which I’d bought him for his last birthday. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ he replied, his voice regretful and sad. ‘She’s sorry that she… that she…’ He struggled to finish his sentence.
‘That she what?’ I prompted in a whisper, suddenly very anxious to get some greater distance between Richard’s face and mine.
‘That she killed Amy,’ he replied, his words achieving all the distance I could have asked for as my head shot back in shock.
It was a slow walk back to the cars. Richard took the gardening tools and bags of unplanted bulbs and I took Caroline. She was leaning heavily on me, her legs stiff and cold from what I could only guess were many hours sitting on the wet grass before we had joined her. As we walked away from the graveside she once again began to cry.
‘I hate leaving her here, all alone like this. Promise you’ll come back with me and visit her again, Emma,’ she asked, her voice so heart-wrenchingly un-Caroline that it felt like I was talking to a stranger. I prayed the change was temporary; I couldn’t face losing another person I loved, not again. She repeated her request, her eyes searching mine for a promise I wouldn’t – couldn’t – make.
I felt Richard studying me from his position on the other side of Caroline. He was the one to break the silence which was beginning to stretch uncomfortably. ‘I’ll bring you back,’ he promised, as he pulled his car keys from his pocket and pointed them at his car. ‘Anytime you want to come here, Caroline, I’ll bring you back.’
But of course.
As much as I had been reluctant to do so, I eventually agreed to let Richard drive me and Caroline home. ‘I can drop you back here later to collect your car,’ Richard offered as I climbed in beside a visibly nervous Caroline, who only let go of my arm long enough to grab hold of the seat belt and cinch it tightly across her body.
‘There’s no need. I’ll get a cab,’ I informed him, wanting him to understand that this in no way meant that anything at all had changed between us. I saw his mouth tighten into a hard line at my response. He got it.
When we arrived I shepherded Caroline straight up the stairs towards the bathroom, and decided to temporarily ignore the fact that Richard hadn’t just driven off, as I had been hoping, but had followed us both into the house.
‘I’ll put the kettle on while you sort her out,’ he said, already disappearing in the direction of the kitchen. I shook my head in irritation but said nothing. I dropped Caroline’s muddy clothes into the laundry basket and hung around long enough to make sure she had everything she needed for her shower, but short of standing on sentry duty outside the cubicle, I really had no excuse not to go back downstairs. There were three steaming mugs of tea waiting on the kitchen worktop. I took one and was grateful for the reviving hot drink. I kept my eyes firmly fixed on the mug in my hand, as though if I just avoided looking at him, I might be able to pretend Richard wasn’t in the room with me. Unfortunately he was having none of that.
‘Nick mentioned that Caroline hadn’t been coping well over the last week or so, but I didn’t know she was that bad,’ he began.
I took a large mouthful of tea, burning the roof of my mouth as I tried to swallow it and my guilt down in one uncomfortable gulp.
‘Did you know?’ he asked, pressing so effectively on my emotional sore point, he could almost have been doing it deliberately.
‘No. I didn’t. We had a bit of a falling-out, so we’ve not spoken that much recently.’
‘Really?’ His voice held all the surprise of someone who knew me and my habits really well. ‘What about?’
‘It’s private,’ I said.
‘Still, it’s a bad time for you two to be arguing. Surely you need each other for support?’
‘There were reasons.’
He looked at me across Caroline’s neat and tidy kitchen.
‘Emma—’
‘You really don’t need to hang around here any longer. I’m going to stay for a while, maybe even overnight as Nick’s away, so thanks for calling me about Caroline, but—’
‘Don’t do it again,’ Richard completed bitterly.
‘Something like that.’
He shook his head and there was a sadness in his eyes which I refused to take responsibility for. Richard waited until Caroline, wearing a thick towelling robe, had joined us in the kitchen. He hugged her and kissed her warmly on the cheek, before leaving. At the kitchen doorway he fixed me with one last look, and then, in lieu of goodbye, just said my name.
‘Emma.’
‘Richard,’ I countered, wondering how in such a short period of time we had managed to travel so far apart that even hellos or goodbyes were now beyond us.
I gratefully accepted Caroline’s offer of a shower, and as I stood beneath the hot jets, soaping off the mud from the cemetery, I wished all the stains of the day could be so easily washed away. Richard’s comment that Caroline felt that she had ‘killed Amy’ had left me shocked and stricken with the kind of guilt that seeps deep into your bones, and runs through the marrow like a raging cancer. I’d had no idea that Caroline felt that way. None. I hadn’t a clue that she was carrying the crushing weight of responsibility for our friend’s death on her fragile shoulders. Perhaps, if you hadn’t so callously turned your back on her you would have known that, a censorious voice intoned in my mind. I dunked my head back beneath the stinging jets as though to drown it out.
Caroline had left out a soft fluffy jumper and some leggings for me to borrow, and by the time I dressed and went downstairs, my own
muddied clothes were already tumbling somersaults in the frothy suds within her washing machine. I gave a small sigh of relief. It was good to know the domestic goddess was back.
She was waiting for me in the lounge, curled up on the settee with her legs tucked beneath her. I collapsed on to the deep plush cushion beside her, and we turned to each other with almost identical looks of apology.
‘I’m so sorry—’
‘I’m so sorry—’
We broke off and looked at each other, bright blue and emerald green eyes both brimming with unshed tears. There was a long moment when neither of us spoke or moved. Then I made a sound which was halfway between a laugh and a sob, as we fell into each other’s outstretched arms in an avalanche of apologies and relief. There were garbled half sentences, interrupted by unintelligible denials, and a great many tears, some from happiness, but most were because something precious, which so easily could have been lost, had just been retrieved.
Her phone rang a short while later and I knew it was Nick by the curve of her smile as she picked up the receiver. I wandered into the kitchen to give her some privacy, but I could still hear some of her end of the conversation.
‘… I got a little upset today…’
I gave a small snort at her glaring understatement. She ought to know me well enough by now to realise that if she didn’t tell him herself, I was going to relay everything that had happened the moment he got back from his conference. The worrying incident in the cemetery had shown all too clearly that Caroline was still suffering with injuries from our accident. She just had the type of wounds that needed more than sutures and antibiotics.
We ordered pizzas from a local takeaway (very un-Caroline) and surprisingly managed to find enough of our lost appetites to almost finish the large cheesy feast (very un-both of us).
‘So, Miss McAdam,’ I began, when the cartons had been disposed of, and we had returned to the cosily lit lounge. ‘Richard said something very disturbing earlier on—’
