Over

by Margaret Forster

  It was such a short time, after all. At half past seven, Lola’s mother came for her in a curious state of both agitation and resentment – there was just the faintest suggestion that I might have been trying to kidnap her daughter. Certainly, there was no gratitude, no fulsome thanks. She maintained that she had been assured that someone had phoned the school, when she woke up in casualty to find she’d been knocked down by a moped on a crossing. It was her first waking thought, she said, Lola, collecting her, and a nurse had calmed her and asked for the name of the school and said she would call and would also call the neighbour who could keep her for a few hours. They wouldn’t let Ms Adams leave the hospital until she had been checked out, and then it had taken her an age to get home, because by then it was rush hour. And when she got to her neighbour’s and found no Lola she had practically had a heart attack.

  On and on the saga went and, though I sympathised with what Lola’s mother had gone through, I wanted her to be relieved rather than still so hysterical and full of blame for the nurse, the hospital, everyone. Lola, during all this, slept on. ‘Oh,’ her mother said, ‘she’s still got her jacket on, she’ll be boiling,’ and it sounded like a criticism. She managed to pick up Lola without waking her. She did then say thanks for looking after her, and I said it had been no trouble. I wanted to say it had been a real pleasure but thought that might be misconstrued. In the end, she accepted my offer to drive her home. Lola woke up just as we got to their flats, and the tears and kisses between her and her mother made me ashamed to feel envious. Envious of what, exactly? But I think I know.

  *

  Plans are made. I am going on holiday. I’m to meet Lynne at Gatwick on Sunday morning next week, at the BA check-in desk.

  *

  We were on holiday. Don and I. We were on holiday. Molly was in France. Camping, with friends. Finn was with his cousin, Judith’s youngest son, in Devon. We were on holiday, Don and I. Lindisfarne. Lovely day. We came back to our hotel, pretty place, and there was a message. She’d tried our mobiles, Judith said later, but we hadn’t taken them. I’d left our itinerary with Judith. I’d given it to Molly and Miranda, and Finn too, but they’d laughed and said they didn’t need to know our every movement. ‘In case,’ I’d said, just in case. I made sure they had our mobile numbers. And I’d made them tell me where they would be. They had mobile phones of course, but Molly’s did not work abroad. Molly said she couldn’t give me an itinerary, anyway, she didn’t know where they would stop en route for Nice. But she had promised to call when they got there. How will I reach you if I need to? I asked. Mum, she said. Please. But in case anything happens, I pleaded. Mum, please. Miranda gave me Alex’s mobile number, with instructions not to dare to call except in a dire emergency. There were no difficulties with Finn.

  They say I am arrangement-mad. That I love organising, and that I over-organise, and try to over-organise them. Probably true. But if so, is there anything really wrong with this? Anything wrong with trying to cover all eventualities? For two whole days we couldn’t contact Molly. We were home in four hours. Finn was home that night, but Molly – we had to wait. One of the other parents … I rang all the other parents. One of the group had a mobile which did work. I called her and asked to speak to Molly. Molly wasn’t with her at that moment. Molly. Molly had to be told to ring back. Molly got the news on a terrible crackly line, two days later. She flew home. We met her at Luton. That’s as much as I can bear to write.

  Does it make any difference? Did it matter that we were all scattered, that no one was at home? Would it have been any less agonising if there had been an accident outside on our busy road and the rest of us had been together, eating supper? No. Of course not. The end result would have been the identical – shock, grief, misery. All the same. And yet, and yet. Somehow, us all being on holiday, already parted from each other, did make those first days afterwards harder. Our home life was usually reliably structured, our movements clicking into place more or less effortlessly every day. But because we were on holiday, different holidays, we had no stability. Emotionally we were in turmoil but on a practical level, too, we were in chaos. And we were not used to it. Those four hours travelling back were cruel, time was not so much suspended as crushed, the minutes, the seconds forced into a sickeningly tight framework. There was the time before, a loose wavy sort of time through which we were pleasantly ambling, and there was the time after Judith told us, and soon we were in the car holding our breath until our chests hurt. Our being on holiday made a difference. We coped less well. We did not cope well at all, but we coped less well than we would have done.

  *

  Another instance of feeling shaky, after I finished writing that. It upsets me so much going over any of the details and yet there is something pushing me to insisting that I should, even though I am reluctant. I don’t want to write about what happened, or talk about it. It is over. It’s been over for two years. It is afterwards that matters: now. I’ve told Don this repeatedly. He is keeping all the agony alive by refusing to stop dwelling on the tragedy itself. But now I am being as foolish as he is, torturing myself by recreating that July day. It has to stop.

  *

  Not many of the children are going away for this half-term holiday. Some, but not many. Most of them will spend it at home, lucky to be taken to the park. Quite a few are going to holiday school at the local community centre. The mothers who work and have no other childcare pay a small amount to book them in there. Lola goes, so do several others. I’ve seen them in the park, groups of a dozen, herded round by two youth leaders who do a lot of shouting. The children always look so different from how they look in my classroom – less confident, more vulnerable. When they see me they wave and call my name, but slightly fearfully, as though they don’t want me to stop. And I don’t, afraid of the urge to take them home with me.

  The mothers, most of them, find this half-term week a strain. They resent it. It upsets their arrangements. But a couple – Emily’s mother and Harry’s mother – make a great thing of it being more than welcome. ‘What fun we’ll have next week, won’t we?’ Emily’s mother declared, rather loudly, but then Emily’s mother doesn’t work. She devotes herself to Emily and her younger sister. I’m sure that she annoys the other mothers with her virtue. I do wonder if I was a little like her – though not, I hope, so stridently pleased with myself – during the decade when I wasn’t teaching. I think there was some pretence in my delight at half-terms, if so. I felt I should be thrilled to have my children at home, and I made great efforts to see they had the fun Emily’s mother talks about, but I think I was always relieved to get them back to school and felt guilty about this.

  ‘Miss, what will you do next week?’ Lola asked. ‘Will you be lonely here?’ I said no, I was going away, to another country. Alarm filled her little face, and I had to explain.

  *

  I have to let Judith know that I will be away. Finn will mention it, but I owe it to her to tell her myself. It’s odd how I dread – no, ‘dread’ is much too strong – how I am always reluctant to contact my very kind sister-in-law. I put it off again and again – it is so silly. She has helped me out so many times, willingly, and lets Finn live in her house, and has always been eager to be friends. It’s to do with her being the bearer of the news, that Greek thing of wanting to shoot the messenger. Judith became tainted. That is such a horrible label to hang round her neck, but it fits. It’s unfair, outrageous, but the mere sound of Judith’s voice —

  Don blamed her for the way she broke the news. He said she blurted it out, just the two words, no preamble, no ‘I’ve something terrible to tell you’, no ‘Are you alone?’ or ‘Sit down, Don’. She didn’t work up to it with ‘I’ve had a phone call from the police/hospital’. She just said – shouted – those two words, Miranda’s dead, in a hysterical voice. Don said he didn’t take it in, the information was too absurd, too gross, and he had to ask her what on earth she was talking about, and then she burst into noisy sobs and hiccups a
nd he could get no sense out of her. Why, he raged afterwards, could she not have been calm? Why could she not have taken a deep breath and spoken quietly? She had, he said, increased his suffering and he couldn’t forgive her for it. He still hasn’t.

  I didn’t speak to her on the telephone that day. I thought afterwards of pointing out to Don that he himself had not passed this shocking news on to me with any degree of calm. He stood there, the phone in his hand, staring straight ahead, his jaw clenched, his body rigid, and I had to beg him to enlighten me. Again and again I asked what had happened and he appeared not to hear me. I had to grab his arm and shake it and say his name over and over, and then, finally, he managed to say, ‘It’s Miranda, she’s been killed.’ Like that. He didn’t take me in his arms first, he didn’t present this appalling news any better than his sister had done. From the very minute he heard he separated himself. We were never together.

  When we got home, Judith was there, waiting. He treated her disdainfully, almost with contempt. She held her arms out to him and said his name, and mine, and Don brushed past, going straight to the telephone. She embraced me instead and I leaned against her large, soft body and felt her wet cheek against my dry one. She was shuddering, vibrating with emotion, and I found myself patting her on the back. I still hadn’t shed a tear myself. My throat had seized up, my head throbbed, and I felt unsteady on my feet but I hadn’t yet wept. Judith took me into the kitchen and sat me on the basket chair there. I flopped into it obediently, very glad to be taken charge of. She had a bottle of whisky on the table, which she opened, and she poured out a large measure for me. I shook my head. I’d be sick. She swallowed it herself.

  It was awful for poor Judith. Afterwards, I put myself in her position and suspected I would have done no better. It was bad luck that she was in our house, feeding the cat, as I’d asked her to do on the day my neighbour couldn’t manage it. She’d driven over and was putting the cat food out when the phone rang and she automatically answered it. What else could she have done but ring us straight away, before she had got a grip on herself? Suppose she’d waited – I could imagine what Don would have thought of that. And then how could she work up to such shattering news? She loved Miranda, she loved both my girls, especially as she had no daughters herself. No wonder she let it just spill out, no wonder she was almost incoherent. But Don resented my attempts to feel sorry for Judith. He absolutely would not feel any sympathy for her situation.

  They used to be close, Don and Judith. They liked each other, teased each other. When I first met his sister and saw how fond the two of them were of each other I felt wistful – that kind of sibling affection was something I knew nothing about and envied. Don took his duties as a brother seriously, always concerned about his sister’s welfare. Her husband David’s death was so devastating, so cruel – he was only forty-two – and Don took over all her financial affairs, dealing with their accountant and straightening things out for her. He was her rock, she said, and meant it. But when her turn came to support him, he felt she was useless. It was not her fault. She tried so hard afterwards to help but he simply wouldn’t let her get anywhere near him – it was as though, in that initial phone call, she had done some kind of irreparable emotional damage.

  Don said, at one point, ‘I don’t want Judith in the house. I can’t stand the sight of her any more.’ She was afraid of him by then. She’d arrive, bringing food, and try to smile at him, diffidently, not sure if smiling was offensive, and he’d simply walk away. ‘What have I done?’ she’d whisper to me. ‘Lou, what have I done?’ She hadn’t done anything. She’d just been the one to tell him his daughter was dead. All I could say to her was that her brother was being unreasonable and that he was half-mad with grief and there was nothing any of us could do. But Judith was, if not a rock, then a useful support to me. Even before he actually went to live in her house, Finn practically lived with her, for weeks on end. He was the first to tire of the poisonous atmosphere in our house and at every opportunity he would accept his aunt’s invitation to go back with her. Her house was normal. His cousins didn’t have to creep around as though they were in a church. And as Finn pointed out, when his Uncle David died it was just as tragic, but when the funeral was over, what his aunt concentrated on was trying to be happy again. ‘It’s not as if they don’t know what it’s like,’ he said, ‘but they got over it.’

  He did attempt to use this argument with Don, who was furious. He said there was no comparison, and that in any case making comparisons was repugnant. He reminded Finn that his uncle died of a heart attack, which nobody could have done anything about. It was a natural death, involving no one else. No one was to blame. Nobody caused his death. No one had to be brought to account. But, Don said, his sister was killed through some unknown person’s negligence. She was in effect murdered. That couldn’t be accepted and ‘got over’ until the culprit was found and brought to justice. He told Finn that we had no right to try to return to ‘normal’ until that day arrived.

  That was more or less what he said. Finn didn’t have the power to come back at him. I remember how red he became as he stood in front of Don, how frustrated he was. He didn’t recognise this aggressive, arrogant man as his father. But then none of us did.

  *

  We have been considering senses today, though only in a general sort of way. We did sight first. How do we see? Yes, with our eyes. What did we see on our way to school? Cars, dogs, buses, people, and Paige saw half an apple in the gutter but her mum wouldn’t let her pick it up. What happens when we close our eyes? Yes, it is dark. We can’t see anything. ‘Like we’re dead,’ Paige said, knowingly. ‘The dead can’t see, can they, Miss?’ I said no, they couldn’t, thank you, Paige. We moved on to hearing and tasting and touching and smelling. Predictably, Yusuf said he could smell Hussain’s fart. Loud laughter. Paige began to say something but the laughter went on. I knew she would be going to say that the dead can’t fart, or something similar. Her obsession with death is perfectly normal, at her age, but still not usual. Has a relative died recently? I should find out. Then, as the cackling stopped, one of the quietest children in the class, Emily, suddenly said what was feeling funny called. Feeling funny? When you feel funny, Miss, she said. Funny? She couldn’t explain. She’s only five. ‘It means you’re going to vomit,’ Paige shouted, filling the gap. Emily shook her head, and blushed. I felt I was failing her. Well, I was. She must mean, surely, a sixth sense exists. But she can’t, she’s too young. I wanted to ask her when she had ‘felt funny’ but it was not the right time to press her. Does she mean that even at her age she has felt as I have so often felt in the last two years? As though I didn’t exist? As though a stranger inhabited my body and made it function?

  We said goodbye as though we were going to be apart for months not just for a week – the classroom rang with the word. I was laughing at how exaggerated these farewells were becoming, but I was enjoying the children’s exuberance too. There were hugs between us, affectionate little nuzzlings, arms thrown round my knees so that I was hobbled and could hardly walk. Then they were all gone, and Jeremy and I left to do the last tidying up.

  ‘Going anywhere?’ Jeremy asked. I said yes, I was going abroad, with a friend. He didn’t ask where, but instead said, ‘That sounds romantic.’ Romantic. I was about to put him right, and tell him I was going with Lynne, but for some reason I didn’t. I just smiled, and said no, I didn’t think so, and then I pointed out someone had left a denim jacket behind and he should put it in lost property. ‘Romantic’, I thought, looking at myself in the cloakroom mirror, bending down to see myself. There has been no romance in my life for a very long time nor do I expect there to be ever again. Romance belongs to years ago. I have had romance, I thought. I don’t need any more.

  I walked back to my flat, wondering about this, not in a self-pitying or gloomy way, but just checking the statement out. But nudging behind that question – are all thoughts of romance over? – was another, not so easily answered: did I ex
pect to live alone from now on and never have another man in my life? It was complicated, answering myself on this one, because Don is not really out of it. We are separated but not truly apart. We don’t live together but neither of us lives with anyone else. So what does that make us? Where would the space be for anyone else? But it has never occurred to me that there ever will be anyone else. I am forty-five years old. But even as I remind myself of that fact, I see how silly it is to imagine my age alone is sufficient explanation for why I expect to be on my own. The real question is do I want to remain alone?

  At the moment, yes. Definitely. Is that because I entertain hopes of Don coming to his senses and of us being together again?

  *

  Finn came last night, to wish me a happy holiday. He looks terrific, all tanned and healthy, and he was wearing a new shirt because he was off to meet a girl. He asked me if I liked it. There wasn’t much to like – it was an ordinary blue cotton shirt, a bit crumpled – but I said it made a nice change from his usual T-shirts. Finn is so cheerful, that’s what I like best. He takes life lightly, or so it seems, quite content to live in the present, never worrying about the future or dwelling on the past – a trick I’ve never learned though I’ve tried hard enough.

  Don used to reckon Finn was superficial, or as he expressed it ‘seriously trivial’. He said it was impossible to have a real conversation with him – he was too flippant. Well, if that is true, it is very engaging. He seems happy and I’ve no desire to press him on whether he really is or not. I have never burdened Finn with my troubles, never wept in front of him or clung to him in desperation except when I was in a panic about those phone calls. I didn’t do it then, afterwards. Whenever Finn came into the room, I managed to stop crying. It was for his sake I so often sent him to Judith’s for a while, wanting to protect him from the raw grief that drenched the atmosphere in our home. Keeping Finn as happy as it was possible for him to be in the circumstances became a prime concern of mine. It helped me, trying to protect Finn, especially from his father. And later, when he came back home, I kept up the effort.