Three-And-A-Half Heartbeats

by Amanda Prowse

  ‘Lucky you.’ He stood and went to the bar.

  ‘Yep, that’s me – lucky.’

  Tom returned. He hadn’t bought her another drink. Grace wanted to get this topic straight, wanted to be able to talk about Gael Ffydd without it turning into a row.

  ‘I think it was because he was a stranger that I found it easier to talk to him. And he understood. He lost his wife.’

  ‘How convenient – single, then?’ Tom snorted.

  ‘Tom! How can you say that? He gave me good advice because he’s grieving for her and knew what I was going through.’

  ‘No, Grace, he didn’t know what you were going through. I knew what you were going through because I’m Chloe’s dad, remember? Or was that easier to forget too?’

  Grace shook her head and picked up her cardigan.

  ‘Did you sleep with him?’ Tom asked, his voice low, eyes steady.

  ‘No!’ She stared at her husband, mightily relieved that she could at least answer that question honestly, acutely aware of how, if she had, it would have cleaved her and Tom even further apart, would have hurt him still more at a time when he was just beginning to show signs of healing. For that she would never have forgiven herself.

  She stood, unwilling to have this argument in public. She rested her cardigan on her shoulders, wearing it like a little cape.

  ‘Don’t go, Grace, please! I’ve ordered scampi and chips.’

  She glowered at him and whispered, ‘You can shove your scampi and chips up your arse.’ Then she squeezed through the gap between the table and the wall and made her way to the exit.

  Stomping along the lane, Grace had only made it a few hundred yards when Tom called out behind her. ‘Grace! Wait up!’

  She duly stopped and watched him trot towards her.

  ‘Did you just say shove the scampi and chips up my arse?’ he asked with the twitch of a smile to his mouth.

  ‘Yes.’ She nodded, feeling her face bloom with supressed laughter.

  ‘Up my arse?’ he repeated, giggling.

  ‘I couldn’t think what else to say!’ She laughed too, covering her mouth.

  Tom reached out and held her arm as he bent backwards, letting out a huge guffaw, which spilled from him. ‘I told the landlord you’d lost your appetite, but what I wanted to say was, “We no longer require our scampi and chips, you can put them up your arse!”‘ He laughed until he cried, wheezing and puffing as he clung to his wife, who was similarly affected.

  ‘I’m sorry, Tom!’ she said as she snickered.

  ‘I’m sorry too.’ Her threw his arm around her shoulders and the two continued along the lane, laughing and shouting ‘Arse!’ as they did so.

  To laugh without feeling immediately guilty or sad was new for both of them and they quickly realised it was special, something precious to be protected and nurtured.

  Grace flicked the lamp on in the sitting room and flopped down on the soft sofa. Tom sat down too and did as he had done a million times before, placed her feet on his lap and sank back against the cushions.

  ‘Why was it a special place?’ he asked, as though they were mid conversation.

  She considered her response. ‘I think because I didn’t have to do anything. Didn’t feel the pressure of work or having to do chores around the house, didn’t have to worry about avoiding people who knew me, who knew Chloe. I felt freer and that gave me space to think, to try and get my head straight.’ She paused and wiggled her toes inside his warm palm; that always felt so good. ‘But it wasn’t only that. There’s something about the actual place. It has a different feel from anywhere I’ve ever been, a different pace; even the light is unusual. It’s quite magical.’

  ‘It certainly looked it,’ Tom whispered.

  ‘Yes, yes of course!’ She’d forgotten that he’d been there for one night and had seen for himself the sweep of the valley, the green fields sloping down to meet the River Wye.

  ‘It is, Tom, it really is. I would love to show you more of it; I’d love you to feel how I felt. It was as if I was connected to nature in a way that I haven’t been before. I had no interest in watching telly or anything like that; I was more than happy to sit and look at the landscape. And I did, for hours. I was a stranger there, but I felt… welcome.’ She smiled.

  ‘What are we going to do, Grace?’ he asked earnestly.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she answered truthfully.

  ‘Do you still love me?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Again the truth left her lips. It felt now like there was no point in anything other than honesty. ‘I want everything to be like it was before, but I know it can’t be, and it seems like the best solution might be to make everything different, new job, new start, new house…’

  ‘New husband?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  The two sat in silence, both trying to navigate this difficult path, unsure not only of what steps to take but also of their destination.

  ‘I think you’re right, we have bent out of shape. But fundamentally, we are still Chloe’s mum and dad, and as long as we don’t ever forget that, we can keep part of her here.’

  ‘I feel her, Tom.’ Grace placed her hand on her chest.

  ‘Me too.’ He smiled. ‘Maybe that is the answer, love – to move, change your job, start over. Although I don’t know how I’d feel about leaving here, where I see her everywhere.’

  Grace nodded. ‘I see her everywhere, whether she’s been there or not. I saw her in Wales—’

  ‘With the single, grieving bloke who helped you,’ he sniped.

  ‘Yes, even there.’ Grace pictured her little pink mac and her wellington boots disappearing behind the tree. ‘His name is Huw and I don’t want you to be off about him, Tom, because he helped me make sense of things. He was the reason I felt able to come home.’

  He considered this. ‘I guess anyone that helped you return to me can’t be all bad.’

  She smiled. ‘I thought I might have had feelings for him—’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Grace!’ He interrupted her, throwing his head back on the cushions and gazing upwards.

  ‘No! Don’t shout! Please.’ She raised her palm. ‘But I think it was because I was so low. I was just happy to have someone to lean on for a bit, and he is kind, and as I said, has been through it, sort of.’

  ‘I honestly don’t know whether I want to shake his hand or punch him in the face.’ Tom sniffed.

  ‘Punching someone is never the answer…’ She smiled again. ‘As I said, nothing happened, not really. He was just a very good friend to me. He was what I needed at that time and I know how that sounds and I know how that must make you feel, but if we’re going to go forward, we have to be straight with each other. There’s no point in holding back, is there?’ She looked at her husband.

  ‘I guess not,’ he replied levelly.

  ‘You know, Tom, most people go through their whole lives hoping that the worst thing doesn’t happen, but it has happened to us and if we can survive it, I think we’ll be stronger than anyone because we’ll have plummeted to the lowest depths and to come back up after that takes something really special.’

  He nodded. ‘If… I guess that’s the big question.’

  ‘It is,’ she agreed. ‘And I’ve been thinking that Chloe’s not here in these bricks or in the air – she’s in us, in here.’ She patted her heart. ‘And that won’t change, ever. We don’t need to be here.’

  ‘Would you like to move?’ He looked at her. ‘Because if that would make you happy, if that’s what it’s going to take, then that’s what we should do.’

  ‘I don’t think anything can make me happy, not truly happy, not ever again, but I think I might find it easier if I didn’t have to walk across the landing every day, see the place where…’ Once again, she pictured Chloe’s little feet sticking out of the end of her nightie. ‘I don’t want to see it any more, Tom, and I think a new start might be a good thing.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right.’ Tom nodded as his tum
my rumbled. ‘Jeez, I wish I hadn’t put all that scampi up my arse, I’m bloody starving!’ And the two chuckled, as though life was normal, as though they had come home from the pub and Chloe was asleep upstairs and all was right in the world, like they had in the time before the nothingness.

  ‘Cheese on toast and a glass of red?’ Tom offered as he released her feet and stood from the sofa.

  ‘Lovely.’ She nodded. ‘D’you want me to make it?’

  He stared at her from the doorframe. ‘Blimey, Grace, one step at a time.’ He smiled at her and she smiled up at him. He turned to leave, but hesitated. ‘You look beautiful,’ he said, knitting his brows earnestly.

  ‘Thank you.’ She felt suddenly coy.

  ‘I’ve missed you, Gracie. I’ve missed us.’ He swallowed.

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘We can only do our very best, can’t we?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’ She took a deep breath. ‘That’s all we can do, Tom. Our very best.’ And she nodded. Lesson learnt.

  18

  Sepsis will kill approximately one hundred people today in the UK. That’s one hundred families like yours and mine…

  It was hard for Grace to believe that it had been six whole months since she’d last dialled the number and nervously paced the kitchen.

  ‘Jason, hello!’

  ‘Ah, Grace, it’s really good to hear from you, and you sound a lot better – brighter, if you don’t mind me saying.’ As usual, he cut to the chase, blunt and to the point. Yet today she found this far from irritating, today she found it quite reassuring that he wasn’t pussyfooting around.

  ‘Small steps, Jason, but, yes, I do feel a lot better.’

  ‘Good. That’s really good news. We were all so worried about you. So, when are you coming back? I’m having to do twice the work here! Every time I get a doctor’s note, for another month, another month, all I can think about is how much paperwork you’re causing me! You are an admin vortex, woman!’ he joked.

  She pictured him with his feet up on the desk and the phone resting under his chin as he formed his fingers into a pyramid over his chest.

  ‘Ah, well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’

  ‘Uh-oh. That sounds suspiciously like the preamble to a resignation.’

  ‘You’re good.’ She smiled.

  ‘Obviously Grace, I’ve been half expecting it.’

  ‘Have you already stolen my desk clock and business-card holder?’ She laughed.

  ‘Oh, Grace, I had them off you while you were still wandering up and down the stairs without your shoes!’

  ‘God, Jason, that was a bad day. A really bad day.’ She shook her head; even his humour couldn’t ease the wave of distress and embarrassment that rippled through her.

  ‘It really was. We were all in bits, no one knew what to do for the best, me included. When you left in the cab, we all just sat here in silence, shocked by how little we could do for you, how helpless we were to make things better.’

  ‘Ah, well, that’s the thing – no one can make it better.’

  ‘I’m really glad to hear you’ve got some of your bounce back.’

  ‘Thank you.’ His warmth touched her. She found it hard to reconcile his tone with the bastard who had continually used fair means or foul to try and get one over on her. ‘I’ll drop you a line, make it formal.’ She sighed, realising that this was it: she was walking away from the career she had carved out so carefully, made sacrifices for and clung to.

  ‘I shall miss you, you know Grace. I’ve enjoyed learning from you over the years.’ He coughed.

  ‘Learning from me?’ She chuckled.

  ‘Absolutely. You’re the best. You were always the best. I had to keep on my toes. I think you could do anything you put your mind to.’

  ‘Thank you, Jason. Thank you for everything.’ Grace ended the call and swallowed the lump in her throat.

  As Grace and Tom pottered in the garden later, she told him what Jason had said. He listened intently, pausing from cutting back the hawthorn bush.

  ‘He was probably a bit intimidated by you.’

  ‘But I’m not scary!’ Grace looked up from weeding the bed beneath the kitchen window.

  ‘Well, you can be sometimes, especially when you get an idea that you can’t and won’t be deflected from.’

  ‘Really? Like when?’

  ‘Like… God, Grace, I have so many examples, I honestly don’t know where to begin.’ He shook his head.

  She sat back on her haunches. ‘That’s not how I see myself at all.’

  Tom threw the secateurs on the ground and pulled off the leather gauntlet with which he’d been handling the prickles. ‘Okay, what about the extension on this house?’

  Grace looked up at the red bricks that towered above them. ‘What about it?’

  ‘Do you remember the hours and hours of drawing up plans, going over ideas, looking at budgets and debating the detail until the early hours?’

  ‘Of course, but luckily I was married to the architect, so I got all that consultancy for free.’ She smiled.

  ‘Yes, you did, but that’s not the point. The point is that you didn’t want to wait until we could afford the top floor as well, you wanted to rush it through so we could get the kitchen done first and then, if and when possible, go through a second extension in a few years’ time, with all the mess, dirt, upheaval and expense doubled up. And I told you that was crazy, but you were adamant.’

  She twitched her nose at him. ‘So what’s your point?’

  ‘My point is, what’s the first thing you said when it was finished?’ He placed his hands on his hips.

  ‘I can’t remember.’ She turned her attention to a rather stubborn dandelion root that was wedged in a crevice between the paving slabs on the path.

  ‘You said, “I wish we’d waited and done the top floor at the same time. There’s no way I want to go through all that mess and hassle again.” And I had to bite my tongue not to say I told you so!’

  She smiled as she dug the trowel into the sandy crack, conveniently deaf to his rambling.

  ‘Or what about when you were pregnant and you would only think of boys’ names, totally convinced you were having a boy because someone had told you an old wives’ tale about the way you were carrying. You refused to even think about having a girl and then when you had her…’ Tom realised he was crying.

  Grace quickly stood, threw the trowel onto the path, took her husband into her arms and held him tightly, matching him tear for tear.

  ‘When I had her,’ she continued for him, ‘it was the most wonderful gift I had ever been given. I couldn’t believe that she was mine, that she was ours! Half you and half me. She was without a doubt the best thing we ever did, the very best.’

  ‘She was, Gracie. She was. And I loved her because she was so like you.’

  ‘And I loved her because she was so like you.’ Grace kissed his wet face as she held him close. The two stood on the path, letting tendrils of affection and understanding entwine them, fragile strands that in time would bind them together once again.

  It was the very next day that the estate agent had turned up – promptly, at 11 a.m., as agreed. He knocked on the front door and Grace had been ready for him, having mentally prepared herself for the ordeal. He had shiny shoes, shiny hair and a shiny car and looked to be about fourteen. Grace didn’t know whether to offer him coffee or squash.

  She could sense a certain shyness about him that his established patter could not disguise; his nervous glances into corners and around doors made her feel jumpy in her own house. She tried her best to put him at his ease.

  ‘So, really, Darren, we want it sold and wrapped up as quickly as possible. The price matters of course, but we don’t want to drag it out for the sake of a few grand. We figure we’d rather have the equity sitting in a bank than tied up here while we haggle over money.’

  Darren nodded, but Grace wasn’t sure that he was listening; his mind appeared to be elsewhere.
He then came out with it, quickly and with obvious relief. She correctly suspected that the words had been hovering on his tongue from the moment he’d arrived.

  ‘I saw your daughter’s funeral, Mrs Penderford.’

  The admission threw her. She hadn’t been expecting the subject to crop up. She mentally lost her balance and reached for the chair in front of her.

  ‘You did?’

  He nodded again, this time looking her in the eye. ‘Not the actual service, but I saw the car drive past the office and I went out to stand alongside the route to pay my respects. We all did, actually.’

  Grace listened. It was odd to hear about that day from the perspective of a stranger, especially as the whole thing had passed in such a blur; she could recall only patches of detail.

  ‘Thank you for doing that, it was very kind; in fact, people’s response generally has been very kind. It does make a difference, you know, so thank you.’ She didn’t know what else to say, or what he expected her to say.

  He continued. ‘It was one of the saddest and most significant days of my life.’

  Grace smiled at him, not understanding. ‘How do you mean, saddest and most significant?’

  The boy studied his highly polished shoes, unsure about whether to go on. Eventually he found his voice.

  ‘I couldn’t get my head around the fact that someone with their whole life ahead of them could go, just like that. It seemed so… so unfair.’ He grimaced at the inadequacy of the word and the inadequacy of his vocabulary.

  ‘It is unfair,’ she concurred. ‘She died of sepsis – do you know what that is?’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t. I’m really sorry.’

  ‘No don’t be, that’s not unusual, lots of people haven’t heard of it. Look it up, Darren, when you get back to your office. Look it up and learn about the symptoms. People need to know what to look for. If we’d known… Well, just do that for me, will you?’

  ‘I will and I’ll tell my friends to do it too.’

  Grace nodded, quite overcome by the lad’s offer.

  ‘Something weird happened to me on the day of the funeral, Mrs Penderford.’