“There’s no need,” Sean replies. “I’m… you know… I’m just slouching around watching rubbish television really.”
“It’s hard,” April says. “I feel like I should have been readier – is that a word? Readier?”
“I think it is.”
“Anyway, I feel like I should have been readier, more ready, or whatever. I mean, we knew, didn’t we? But it’s still… I don’t know. It’s hard to get my head around it.”
“It’s a shock, isn’t it? But I think that’s normal. It’s a big thing. You only lose your m–” Sean has to clear his throat before continuing. “It’s a once in a lifetime thing, thank God.”
“…”
“April?”
Sean hears his daughter blow her nose at the other end of the line. “I just miss her so much,” she finally says, her voice wobbling. “But even that doesn’t make any sense. I mean, it’s not like I even saw her that often. I wish I’d come up more, Dad. I wish I hadn’t let work get in the way so much. But even though I knew… I… I don’t know. I sort of didn’t believe it. I couldn’t really imagine that she would be…” April starts to sob freely.
“It’s all right, honey,” Sean says gently, fighting back unwelcome tears himself.
“I didn’t imagine that she’d be, you know, gone…” April says, through tears. “That doesn't make any sense, does it? But I didn’t realise how… final it would all feel, I suppose.”
“Things don’t get much more final than this,” Sean says, his own voice trembling.
“I know. But I didn’t believe it in a way. I do wish I’d come up more, though. God.”
“It’s fine, sweetheart. Really it is. She wasn’t up to talking much towards the end. You know that. And she wanted you to get on with your life. She was glad you were getting on with your life. She was really proud of you.”
“I know,” April says. “It’s just… you know.”
“I know,” Sean says, kindly. “But there’s no need to feel guilty.”
“So, are you eating OK, Dad? Are you looking after yourself?”
“Uh-huh. There are still sandwiches left over,” Sean says. He thinks of the sushi box and looks around the room, then remembers that he put it in the refrigerator. “And Maggie has been dropping food parcels in,” he adds. It’s an exaggeration, but at least it will reassure his daughter. Then again, perhaps it’s true. Perhaps the box on the table is food as well. He reaches out and runs one finger across the rough brown string looped around the box.
“Oh, that’s good. Good old Maggie,” his daughter says.
“And you?”
“I’m not hungry to be honest,” April admits. “But that’s no bad thing. I’ve been wanting to drop a few pounds for ages. So… golden opportunity I suppose.”
“Well, don’t lose too much. You’re skinny already.”
“I’m not.”
“No, well… You girls never think you’re skinny enough. But you have to eat something. You know that, right?”
“I’m living on cornflakes at the moment. I can’t stomach anything else. But there’s, you know, loads of takeaways and stuff around the corner. If my appetite does suddenly return, I’ve only got to nip out.”
Sean, who has been absentmindedly fiddling with the string on the package, now slides the box towards him. It’s not as heavy as he expected. Perhaps not food, then.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come back up?” April asks.
“I’m sure,” Sean says. “You just rest and eat something and look after yourself. Are you back at work tomorrow?” Without thinking about it, he has pulled the end of the knot holding the packaging together. The crisp folds of brown paper are opening slowly, like the petals of a flower.
“I am,” April says. “Three days. That’s all you get for… for this sort of thing. I mean, I could probably take some more holiday and stuff, but I’m kind of wondering if work isn’t the best place to be. That doesn’t sound callous, does it?”
“Not at all,” Sean says. “I’ve been thinking pretty much the same thing. Now Monday’s almost here though, I’m having second thoughts. But I’ll just see how I feel in the morning, I expect. No one will mind if I don’t go in. No one will care either way.”
“And you’re sure you’re OK?” April asks, yet again.
“I am. I’m fine,” Sean says, thinking that how he is right now is a whole new, most unpleasant definition of ‘fine’. “And Mags brought me some sushi, like I said.”
“You can’t live on a bit of sushi, Dad.”
“And other stuff too. A whole box of stuff. Really, don’t worry.”
“Right, OK then,” April says. “Well, I think I might try to sleep some more. Sleep’s the least horrible place to be at the moment. I’m sleeping loads. It’s just the waking up bit that I hate.”
“When you suddenly remember?” Sean asks.
“Yeah. There’s this brief window, like, just a few seconds, yeah? And then I remember.”
“It’s horrible. I get that too.”
“I’m seeing someone tomorrow lunchtime, actually. A counsellor or something. My friend Sinead saw her when her brother died. Sinead said she was good, so I thought, why not? I mean, it can’t do any harm, can it?”
“No, you’re right, it can’t. That’s good. If you feel you need it, that’s good.”
“Have you thought about seeing someone?”
“Oh, I’m not really the seeing-someone type,” Sean says. “You know that. I think I’m OK though, considering. But let me know how it goes.”
April yawns loudly, then says, “Sure.”
“You go back to sleep, sweetheart.”
“OK, talk later, Big Daddy.”
“Sure thing, Little Daughter.”
Once the phone call has ended, Sean stands and crosses to the refrigerator where he retrieves – and sniffs at – a bottle of milk. This he places on the kitchen table along with the pack of muesli and a bowl and tablespoon plucked from the dishwasher.
He’s been feeling nauseous ever since Catherine died. He supposes that he, too, should probably try to eat something.
He pours the muesli, adds milk, and raises a spoonful to his lips. He chews unenthusiastically, then forces himself to swallow, before pulling a face and pushing the bowl to one side. No. It’s still too soon for food.
He pulls the box towards him and peels back the wrapping paper revealing a baby-blue shoebox. At the sight of the lid, he inhales sharply.
Across the top of the box, someone has written, All about us. The handwriting looks a lot like Catherine’s own but, in capitals and written in chunky marker, it’s hard to be certain. He runs his finger across the lettering as he thinks about this, then chews his bottom lip as he removes the lid from the box, revealing one small package and a neat wad of white envelopes stacked end-up, like index cards.
His hand shaking, he lifts one from the pile and inspects it, then another, and sees that they are numbered and in order. Each envelope seems to contain a small object, the size of a box of matches.
He spins the box around so that the numbers are facing him and pulls the first envelope from the box. It reads: Week Two. He hunts for Week One and then finally lifts the small parcel from the box. The inscription says, Start here. Open me first.
Written in ballpoint pen, the handwriting is clearly identifiable as Catherine’s messy scrawl.
He slowly rips the paper from the package revealing a small Olympus Dictaphone and a single Polaroid photo. “Oh, God,” Sean murmurs.
He picks up the dictaphone and moves his finger towards the play button, but then puts it back down and studies the photo instead.
Snapshot #1
Polaroid, colour. A woman lies in a hospital bed. A man is crouched beside her, his head laid gently on her shoulder. The woman is wearing men’s striped pyjamas and from the buttoned chest sprouts a cluster of cables which run across her free shoulder to a monitoring device. Despite the oxygen mask, which covers her mo
uth, one can see from the shape of her eyes that she’s somehow managing to smile.
Cassette #1
Hello Sean.
Well, this is spooky, isn’t it? The voice of your late wife. “Late Wife” – you hadn’t thought about that before, had you? Well yes, having been absolutely obsessed with being on time my whole life, I finally get to be “late.”
I’m recording this on Friday night. I started off writing you letters but I kept having to bin them – you know how insecure I’ve always felt about my dodgy spelling – and one of the nurses came up with this idea. I’m sure April would tell me I can do it on my iPhone or something, but I’m far more comfortable with these little cassette things, even if they do seem to cost a fortune. Seven quid each, apparently! Can you believe it?
Anyway, this system has seemed to work better for me, so it’s probably worth it. Plus, you get to hear my lovely voice instead of trying to read my spidery handwriting and that’s got to be a blessing.
Have you looked at the photo yet? It’s the one that April took with that new Polaroid of hers. Isn’t it funny that something as old-hat as a Polaroid camera should become fashionable again? I think it must be because people are fed up with looking at screens.
You have both just left the hospital and they have given me one of those horrible adrenalin pills to get my blood pressure back up, so I’m galloping like Patti Smith’s Horses.
I’ve been putting off recording this last tape because, well, it’s my goodbye message, I suppose.
That’s an idea that neither of you have been able to get your minds around, I know. Just this evening, you said, “Oh, you’ll outlive us all,” which, considering the state I’m in, is pretty much a dictionary definition of being in denial. But the truth is, I’m pretty sure you’ll be listening to this before the end of the month.
The shadows – have I told you about the shadows? I think I did, but I might have dreamt it. I have been having the strangest dreams… Anyway, there are shadows when I dream, shadows like dark forests crowding in on the path. And the path is lit by an ever weaker beam. It’s as if my torch battery is running out, and the shadows at the edges have been becoming deeper and darker and scarier for some time now.
The doctor has said repeatedly that this is just an effect of the morphine pump, but I’m convinced that the shadows are death crowding in on me.
Hum, the nurse interrupted me there, so I had to stop and start again. It’s amazing that it hasn’t happened more often really.
Anyway, where was I? The shadows. As I was saying, they’ve been crowding in on me.
But recently, these last few days, I’ve ceased to be afraid of them. I’ve started to see the shadows as a calm restful place out of the sun, soft grass off the beaten track to lie back in. I’m starting to want to lay down my torch and ramble off into the undergrowth. There’s so much pain on the path, that’s the thing.
I haven’t told you much about the pain, I don’t think, and I don’t intend to now. But know that there is pain. So. Much. Pain. Will you forgive me for not hanging on? Will you understand that the cost to me of staying has got to be too high? It’s the only reason I’m mentioning the pain now – so that you understand that I would have stayed if I could. But it’s no longer possible, darling. I’m sorry.
So, the packages. There are twenty-eight more of them (I’ve been recording them for months, a real labour of love) and they are already packaged and sealed in that little cabinet beside my bed, here at the hospital. If all goes to plan, Maggie should deliver them to you once I have wandered off into the forest.
The idea came to me when you brought that box of photos in. As we were going through them we came across a picture of me looking peculiar on Margate jetty. Do you remember the one? And you said, “Gosh. Look at your face! I wonder what you were thinking about?”
Well, the thing was that you had already said that. You had said almost exactly those words when we got the batch of photos back from the developers in ‘94. “Gosh. Look at your face. I wonder what you were thinking about?” And a little later, when I denied that I’d been thinking about anything in particular, you said, “No one really knows anyone. That’s amazing, isn’t it? We share everything, but we all have our secret gardens too. We all have fantasies and fears and fetishes. We all have secrets about ourselves we don’t want to share.”
I asked you what your fantasies were, what fetishes you had, and you replied, “Oh, I mean most people. Not me. I’m pretty boring that way. And you know I tell you everything.”
But I knew that it wasn’t true. And I knew that even to you, there were things I’d never be able to say. So you were right. To spend your entire life with someone and still not know them is pretty strange.
The other thing that set me thinking was a conversation we had when Mum died. I was talking about what a wonderful person she was and you said, “Well, the dead make so few mistakes.” You’d had a few beers, so you had a bit of an excuse, but I felt that you were sullying her name (I was very over-sensitive about her at the time) so we had an argument about it. But you were right about that too. When people die, we choose to forget the arguments. We wipe out the slights and the injustices. We turn our dead into saints and that clearly doesn’t make the grieving process any easier.
So, I’ve been worrying about your memory playing tricks on you. I’ve been worrying about you canonising me! Because when I die, which is pretty soon I reckon, I want you to move on with your life. I want you to make a fresh start for yourself. I want you to meet someone new and have drunken arguments and holidays in the sun with her. I want you to make that horrible carrot soup of yours even if it’s just so that you get a second opinion on it, so that you realise that it wasn’t me being overly critical after all.
Oh, I can hear you protesting as if you were here, sitting next to me. I can hear you saying that it’s never going to happen, that ours was a once in a lifetime thing. But I hope that you’re wrong. I pray that you’re wrong.
And these messages, well, they’re everything about me that you know, that I don’t want you to forget. And they’re everything about me that you never knew, as well. And I’m hoping that with it recorded, it will stop you from turning me into some kind of angel. It will stop me being remembered as some ridiculous Stepford Wife in whose footsteps no one could ever follow. Because, God knows, I’ve got my faults. And this is my way of reminding you of them.
Now the next bit is going to mean that you’ll call me a control freak, but that’s OK, because you’re right. I am. That’s just one of my many faults.
The packages are numbered two to twenty-nine (this is number one) and I really want you to open them in order and I really want you to open them at the rate of one a week.
These weeks are going to be so hard for you. I know that, and it’s one of my life’s great regrets that I can’t be there to help you, to look after you at this difficult time, as they say. So this is my way of being there for you. One message a week. No cheating. Trust me, please.
The pain is back now, so I’m going to have to press that little grey morphine button. Which means that I’ve reached the hardest part of all. I have to say goodbye and I really don’t know how to do that. It’s so final.
Your mother would say there’s an afterlife, but she’d probably also have me booked on the first train to hell, so that’s no real comfort to me.
As you know, I’m no great believer in the afterlife and that’s OK with me. I’ve been. I’ve seen. I’ve partied. I’ve loved. As long as the coming nothingness is pain-free, I’m ready to go there.
I want you to know that it’s been great. It’s been brilliant. It’s been amazing. It’s been better than anything I ever imagined for myself and that’s all thanks to you.
As far as I’m concerned, there’s only one thing luckier than getting to spend your life with someone who loves you and that’s getting to spend your life with someone who loves you whose name is Sean Patrick.
I love you with a
ll my heart, Mr Patrick. I love you so much that my heart is breaking at the thought of having to leave you. But the path is so painful, darling. And the shadows look so inviting.
So listen to the tapes, one a week. Take time to look at the photos, to remember what we had at each step of the way. Take time to cry over the good things we had. Take time to shout at me for the things I never told you at the time. And when it’s done, put the box away and get on with your life.
Tell April how much I love her. Tell her how proud I am of her. Don’t ever let her doubt either of those things for a single second. Tell her over and over and over – she’ll need it.
God that hurts, perhaps more than all the rest put together: the fact that I won’t be there to say the things she needs to hear. That I won’t be there to tell you I love you anymore.
Because I do. I love you. Forever.
Hi there again. I’ve just played this back and it doesn’t even begin to express how I feel. There simply aren’t big enough words in the dictionary. Or perhaps there are and I just don’t know them. So I’m going to end by sending you a big sloppy kiss and a virtual love-heart which you’ll just have to imagine I’m drawing in the air as I speak. Gosh, that made me think of those love heart sweets you used to buy me. I have the sherbety taste in my mouth, right now, even as the morphine is rising up in me like a deep, dark, soft, hot toddy. Isn’t memory strange?
Snapshot #2
Photo booth format, black and white. A teenage girl with bleached, shaggy, layered locks and a back-combed fringe is squashed into the frame beside a thin-faced young man with smooth dark hair which almost entirely obscures his right eye. The couple appear to have collapsed into a fit of giggles.
Sean sits and stares at the photo. It is five o’clock on Sunday morning and he has just abandoned his attempts at sleeping, pulled on a dressing gown and come down to the kitchen. Beyond the window, the garden is dark and cold.
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