The Cookbook of Common Prayer

by Francesca Haig

  I don’t know if she even heard me.

  Gabe

  When I call, Gill asks me, ‘Did you get the letter?’

  ‘I got it.’

  She emailed the latest letter to me yesterday. I read it several times. I can hear Dougie in it – the exclamation marks; the bracketed asides; the appetite. All the details of our travels together. She’s good at this. Of course she is. She’s a writer. She’s his mother.

  What I want to tell her: Stop writing these letters. This has to stop. Write to me instead. I miss you.

  She’s still talking. ‘When you ring her, remember the letters take at least a week to get here from Europe. So that stuff about Paris is a week old, at least. You’re in Barcelona now.’

  ‘How did it go?’

  ‘In Barcelona?’

  ‘No,’ I say quickly. ‘Sylve’s afternoon at home.’

  ‘It was fine. She was OK. Papabee kept asking about the feeding tube again. But apart from that, it was fine.’

  ‘So what next?’

  ‘There’s going to be another meeting, with Louise and the rest of the team, to work out a timeline. They’re talking about taking out the tube on Friday, if she’s still stable and maintaining her weight. I need to make a time to meet with Louise. But I’ve been busy. There’s work, and Teddy, and I’m only halfway through the next letter—’

  ‘It has to stop now, surely? We have to tell her?’

  ‘Coming home’s a big change. A big transition. Let’s not rush anything. We don’t want to derail it now.’

  ‘Gill—’

  ‘I have to go,’ she says. ‘I’ve got to call Louise at the hospital before five.’

  ‘Honey—’

  ‘Love you,’ she says. ‘Love to Dougie.’

  She’s hung up.

  I should get on a flight home. She needs me. Sylvie and Teddy need me.

  I look at the box of ashes on the bedside table, sitting on top of a roughly folded map, and a coroner’s report about a caving accident in 2005. A picture of Phil Murphy’s face, from the newspaper report. I printed it out too big, his bewildered open mouth a cluster of pixels.

  I can’t go back home until I’ve finished.

  That night I dream that Dougie and I are playing cricket in the backyard again.

  ‘Five things you miss most about being alive,’ I say as I bowl to him.

  ‘One.’ He makes a neat drive. ‘Bodyboarding at the Neck.’

  I catch the ball, bowl again.

  ‘Two.’ A leg glance towards the clothes line. ‘Sylvie.’

  I retrieve the ball.

  ‘Three.’ This time he hooks it high – I have to run backwards to catch it. ‘Teddy. Papabee. SausageDog.’

  ‘That’s three things,’ I say.

  ‘No it’s not – they all go together.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ I bowl again. Another drive, but I fumble the catch.

  ‘Four: Mum.’

  ‘She’d have killed you again if you hadn’t said that,’ I tell him.

  We’re both smiling. I toss the ball from hand to hand.

  ‘And five?’ I ask him.

  He hits a sweep this time, bouncing off the wall of the house and into the lavender. Dougie doesn’t answer. I wait to see if he’ll name me, or Rosa, or something else altogether. I wait for SausageDog to retrieve the ball, but I don’t hear him rustling through the bushes. There’s nobody else here: not the dog, or even a blackbird in the wisteria vines. Just me and Dougie.

  ‘Five?’ I ask again.

  I wake. The digital clock gives off its red glow and something outside sweeps a shadow across the ceiling.

  Dougie. My deepwater son, drowned in the dark. If he comes to me again in my dreams, he will answer, You. I miss you most. And in Rosa’s dreams he’ll say, You, Rosa. It’s you I miss the most.

  And in his own dreams? They’re his own.

  The date for the inquest hearing has been set: a month from now. All the statements and reports are now submitted for the coroner’s consideration. As a Properly Interested Person, I was entitled to request copies of everything, and of course I did. The whole lot, which Heather at the coroner’s office has emailed me.

  Heather advised me to keep my own submission to essentials, and not to go beyond my direct experience. Last week, on the day of the deadline, I sent them everything I’ve compiled over these weeks: the detailed master map of the Smith–Jackson cave system; the reports of the water levels in the reservoir, and the meteorological reports about rainfall in the system’s gathering ground. A summary of my discussion with Meredith Calvert, and a timeline of the rescue operation, cross-referenced with comparable operations detailed in reports of similar accidents. An annotated version of the post-mortem results, in which I devote half a page to the state of Dougie’s hands, and the possibility of cadaveric spasm, referencing recent articles from academic journals.

  ‘The coroner’s office finally forwarded me all the other reports last night,’ I tell Rosa, when she arrives later than usual. I point to the papers, carefully arranged on the table. ‘Do you want to help me go through all this?’

  ‘I told you,’ she says, shrugging off her bag. ‘I don’t really need to read any of that. I was there.’

  She’s quiet today, and edgy. She drinks three cups of tea and flicks through her phone. When it gets cool, in the late afternoon, she takes my jumper, which was hanging over a chair, and wraps it around her shoulders like a shawl.

  Over dinner at the Italian place she drinks red wine and jumps from subject to subject. She tells me her sister’s offered to pay for her flight to Mexico, but Rosa’s waiting to hear whether she still has a job at the school. Her parents haven’t phoned her – she hasn’t seen them since the day after the accident. Another teacher at the school is pregnant, is going to be leaving. Rosa’s thinking of moving to Spain – did I know she studied Spanish? (I know) – or maybe Mexico, after all. Or maybe she’ll stay.

  ‘Do you feel like everything’s—’ She raises her hands in the air, holds them there. ‘I feel stuck.’

  ‘Your boyfriend died. You went through a horrible trauma yourself. There’s all the uncertainty about your job. It’s natural to feel unsettled.’

  She pours herself more wine, then tops up my glass too. Wine sloshes onto the white tablecloth.

  ‘I still think you should consider talking to someone.’

  ‘I’m talking to you,’ she says.

  ‘That’s not the same. You should—’ I stop myself. I shouldn’t be lecturing her on what to do. I’m hardly a model of dealing healthily with trauma.

  ‘Don’t be grumpy with me,’ she says. ‘It’s a special occasion.’

  ‘It is?’

  ‘Two months,’ she says. She doesn’t have to say since what. And she’s already turning away, waving down the waiter and ordering a bottle of dessert wine.

  It feels churlish to stop her. Two months since she survived. Two months since he didn’t.

  I pour the sticky wine when it comes. We’re both a little drunk.

  ‘I’ve never actually tried dessert wine before,’ she says, wrinkling her nose as she sniffs it. ‘I always wanted to try it.’

  She drinks, then keeps talking, waving her arm expansively. ‘I’ve been thinking about it, because of the two months thing. I want to try more of the things I’ve always wanted to do.’ She takes another sip. ‘Like this. It tastes just like raisins, but to the tenth degree. Like essence of raisins.’

  I laugh – she’s right. That’s exactly what it tastes like, viscous on my tongue.

  We walk back to the flat through warm rain. I stumble on the stairs, and she catches my arm. In the living room I make us tea.

  ‘I’d like more wine,’ she says.

  ‘That’s not a good idea. And anyway, I don’t have any.’

  I sit on the couch. I should do some work, I think, but she’s still here, perched on the arm of the sofa. Then she grabs my hand.

  I could let go, but I don’
t. I hold it.

  I bought that expensive rope because I wanted to hold what he held. To feel what he felt. So I hang on to her hand, because that was what Dougie was doing, right at the end.

  That’s true, but it’s not all of the truth. I hold her hand because I want to.

  Her thumb runs up my thumb, to the knuckle, and back. I’m looking very carefully at her hand, her thumb, the ragged skin on the side of her thumbnail where she bites it.

  She leans down, quickly, and kisses me. She kisses me hard – when she pulls away her chin is red from my stubble.

  ‘I’m not Dougie,’ I say.

  ‘I know.’ She doesn’t even hide her disappointment. But she leans forward and kisses me again anyway.

  Of course I kiss her back. Of course it’s wrong. She slips off the arm of the couch so she’s half sitting on me, and I put my hands to the sides of her face and kiss her with a kind of hunger that’s more than lust, though that’s there too.

  I might try to pretend to myself, later, that I don’t want this. That I’m not enjoying it. That would be a lie. I can’t believe my luck. This woman – this beautiful young woman, reaching for me. Her hands urgent on the back of my neck, pulling my mouth up to meet hers. She tastes of dessert wine or sadness, or both.

  ‘Stop,’ I say. ‘We should stop. This isn’t right.’

  ‘We’re both adults,’ she says.

  Adults? Oh Jesus. The shame of my old body next to hers. The wispy grey hairs on my chest; my sad old balls, wrinkled as baby birds. And it’s not just my body. I’m old in a way that she won’t understand for another thirty years. I’ve buried my parents; I’ve cremated my son. I’ve been here for so long.

  And I know, too, that I’ve become that tired, shameful cliché: the dirty old man, lusting after the young woman. I don’t kid myself that Dougie’s death gives me some kind of free pass for this behaviour. There’s no such thing.

  She’s straddling me now, and I want this so badly, my whole body saying yes.

  There are so many reasons why this is wrong. Gill. Dougie. But I choose the one that relates to my own pride.

  ‘Stop.’ I pull back. ‘It would only be because you felt sorry for me.’

  She sits back too, looking at me. ‘A pity-fuck,’ she says.

  ‘A pity-fuck.’ I haven’t heard the term before, and it sounds ugly and stupid in my middle-aged voice.

  ‘Probably,’ she says. ‘But the person I’m pitying isn’t you.’

  Rosa slides off my lap and onto the floor.

  ‘Christ,’ she says. ‘I miss him.’

  ‘Me too.’

  We’re both crying. I lean forward and kiss her, once, on the forehead. It’s the wrong thing to do – too paternal, when I can still taste her mouth in mine, and my clumsy erection is still straining at my trousers.

  ‘I thought if I did something – anything – I could—’ Her hands are raised again, like they were earlier in the restaurant, and then she suddenly splays her fingers, an exploding motion. ‘Shake myself out of this stuck feeling. This limbo.’

  I nod, and slump back onto the couch. ‘I get it. But that’s not how it works.’

  I’ve been treating her like a glass bottle in which Dougie might have left me a letter. It hasn’t occurred to me, until now, that she’s doing the same with me. We would have to break each other open to find any message.

  She wipes her face with the back of her hand, and looks up at me.

  ‘There’s something I have to tell you,’ she says.

  Gill

  They’ve taken out Sylvie’s feeding tube. Before, I used to have to stop myself staring at it. Now it’s gone, I have to stop myself from staring at her bare face. It’s still gaunt, the jaw still oddly prominent; I can still see the outline of her teeth through her flesh. But her face is no longer bisected by that line of fleshy rubber, and I stare at her until she squirms and says, ‘Alright, Mum – enough. Jesus. I get it.’

  When I pass the nurses’ station on the way out, Louise calls me into her office, and tells me that she’s set a date for Sylvie to come home.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I ask.

  Louise smiles. ‘I’m happy with her progress. We shouldn’t count our chickens, of course, but I’m hoping that for once this isn’t going to be a one-step-forward, two-steps-back situation.’

  Having Sylvie back at home is what I’ve dreamed of ever since she got sick. But in hospital, I can control what she sees, who she speaks to. No internet, no newspapers. No visitors who aren’t on the approved list. Outside the sterile white world of Paediatrics 3, she could find out the news so easily. Her school friends; our neighbours; Mrs P at the corner shop. Any one of them could blow the whole thing, deliberately or by accident. A sympathetic comment – I was so sorry to hear about your brother – that’s all it would take.

  And if that happens, how many steps are there between her and Katie P and all the other dead anorexics? Between her and Dougie, always so close?

  I know I can’t stop time. That’s what Sylvie has spent the last three years trying to do, after all. But my most important job is to keep her safe. I don’t know if I can do that once she’s off the ward.

  ‘What if she finds out the news before she’s ready?’ I ask. ‘Before Gabe’s back to help?’

  Louise looks at me for a long time.

  ‘I’ve told you before, Gill. Don’t underestimate her.’

  Sue comes over that afternoon, while Teddy’s at Papabee’s.

  ‘To Sylvie coming home,’ she says, raising her gin and tonic and taking a big gulp.

  I raise mine too. I’ve made it too strong; the gin’s bitter kick makes me grimace.

  Sue puts her glass down. ‘You know you’re going to have to tell her now, right?’

  Outside, a bumblebee butts insistently against the glass of the French doors. It won’t stop.

  ‘Not just yet,’ I say. ‘We’ll wait until Gabe’s back, for one thing. We don’t want to rock the boat, while she’s going so well.’

  ‘You didn’t want to tell her while she was going badly. It doesn’t go both ways.’

  ‘Maybe it does.’

  Sue leans forward. She looks nervous. Sue never looks nervous. At the Neck we once found a tiger snake wrapped around the base of the clothesline where the metal pole had been heated by the sun. While the rest of us shrieked, and Sylvie and Ella leaped on top of the outside table, Sue just finished hanging up the beach towels.

  ‘Are you OK?’ she asks. ‘Really OK, I mean? I mean, of course not – nobody expects you to be OK. But are you above water?’

  She stops herself. The clumsy metaphor hangs between us.

  I shake my head. ‘She’s not ready to find out yet, that’s all.’

  She leans forward and takes my hand. It’s partly a squeeze, partly a pinch. ‘Look: I love you. I love Gabe, and the kids. You know that. But I can’t stand back and watch you mess this up completely.’

  ‘I’m doing my best.’

  ‘I know,’ she says, her hand still on mine. ‘I got it. I did, at first. And, God knows, I’ve supported your batshit idea. Because whatever gets you through the day, fair enough – that’s what I thought. But the letters, the lying to her – you’ve gone full-Miss Havisham.’

  ‘You have no idea what I’ve lost.’

  ‘Nor do you,’ she says, sitting back. ‘You have no idea. You’re trying so hard to keep Dougie alive that you’ve totally lost sight of him. You can’t grieve for him because you’re too caught up in all this madness.’

  ‘Why the fuck would I want to grieve for him?’ I shout. ‘Would you want to? Would you want to grieve for Nathan, or Ella? Or maybe both?’

  As soon as I say it, I know it’s wrong. Even uttering those words is to cross a line. I shouldn’t have invoked her children’s names; invoked their deaths.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I tell her. ‘But you don’t know what it’s like.’

  ‘Of course I don’t. You’re in your own unique world of shit right now.
But that doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t see what’s going on.’

  ‘Tell me then,’ I say. ‘Please, tell me.’ I’m not being at all sarcastic. I’m deadly, deadly sincere. ‘Tell me how to get this right.’

  ‘It’s time. Just tell Sylve the truth.’

  ‘Or what? Or you will?’

  ‘Just tell her the truth. Stop lying to her.’

  ‘And if she kills herself? If her heart gives out? I can’t make my daughter a martyr to your holier-than-thou ideas of honesty.’ I stand up, the chair making an ugly scraping sound. ‘Don’t come round here any more,’ I say. ‘And don’t go to the hospital. I’ll take you off the visitor list.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’

  I’m crying and yelling at once. ‘If you’re not willing to help me, just get out.’

  She picks up her bag. ‘Just ask yourself: who are you doing this for?’

  Sylvie

  Mum and Teddy come in on Saturday, straight after Teddy’s soccer game. Mum takes the chair, and Teddy sits on the end of the bed. He’s still in his long socks and muddy shorts. His knees look too big for his little legs. Mum’s wearing an old scarf of Dad’s, looped twice around her neck. She keeps fiddling with the tassels at the end.

  For three years I’ve been watching only myself. I’ve been fixated on this body. Each rib. My hip bones. The negative space between my thighs. I’ve watched myself, and the others watched me too.

  Then Dougie had his accident. When they told me about the cave and the flood, fear lodged in me like a fishhook. It made me look back at my family. I see them now.

  I see Teddy, trying to fix me.

  I see Dad, or his absence. I see him hiding from me.

  I see Dougie, his letters coming more often than ever, relentlessly upbeat, trying to stop me from worrying about him.

  I see Mum, and her new brittleness, since Dad left. She’s too quick to answer questions; too cheerful. She spends more and more time in here with me. I watch now as her hand moves from her scarf to the chair, traces the piping along the edge of the vinyl seat-cushion; goes back to her scarf.