by Rhoda Baxter
‘Morning Mr French,’ said Grace.
He gave her a nod and grumbled. ‘That woman is very rude.’
‘Oh stop it, Dad,’ said Harry. ‘You love it.’ He gave Grace a grin. ‘I’ll see you some other time, my darling, I need to get on. Come on Dad. Let’s get you back to your castle.’
Grace waved to the father and son as they hurried off down the corridor.
Margaret was lying propped up on her bed. Grace noticed that she looked well. Her eyes were sparkling and there was a small blush of colour in her cheeks.
‘What are you reading?’ said Grace, pulling a battered looking paperback towards her to read the cover.
‘Oscar and Lucinda,’ said Margaret.
‘Again?’ She knew Margaret had read that at least three times before.
The old lady shrugged with her good shoulder. ‘So, what’s going on with you, young Grace?’
‘Actually …’
Margaret’s good eye narrowed. ‘Yes?’
‘I’m … er … thinking of taking your advice and going away for a bit.’
‘Oh, excellent. You’re going on holiday. About time too. Where are you going? How long for?’ She seemed genuinely pleased.
‘About six weeks, if I get the time off work.’
‘Oh.’ For a moment, Margaret’s face clouded. When she looked back up, the sadness was gone. ‘Well, you deserve it.’
‘And you don’t mind?’ There would be no one to visit and chat and pretend to sneak in a shot of port for her.
Margaret’s gaze met hers. ‘Of course I mind, I’ll miss you. But that shouldn’t stop you going. You need to stop letting other people’s needs dictate your life. That includes my own needs. Just get on with it, Grace. I’ll still be here when you get back and you’ll have more interesting things to tell me.’
‘I’ll try and find someone else to read to you,’ said Grace, feeling wretched now.
Margaret gestured weakly at the tape player. ‘I’ve got the lovely John Turnbull’s voice for company. I hate to tell you this, but his is much more soothing than yours. Besides,’ she added, with a smile, ‘that Mr French is coming to see me again tomorrow.’
‘Harry’s Dad?’ She must have seen them when they were returning from Margaret’s room. Good old Harry, true to his word. ‘How did that go?’
‘That man is just insufferable,’ said Margaret. ‘I’ve never met such a miserable old curmudgeon.’ Her eyes took on their sparkle again.
Margaret’s demeanour didn’t agree with her words. Perhaps she enjoyed having some different company after all. ‘Did you enjoy their visit?’
‘Absolutely,’ said Margaret. ‘I like a man who can handle a bit of verbal combat.’
Grace shook her head. If Margaret was being visited by Harry and his father, at least she needn’t worry about Margaret being lonely. She pulled out the latest audiobook she’d got out of the library.
‘So, if you’re thinking of going away, that means things aren’t going well with your young man.’ Goodness, Margaret didn’t miss a thing.
‘He’s not my young man,’ she said, automatically. He definitely wasn’t now.
‘What happened?’ It wasn’t so much a question as a demand for an answer. Grace eyed Margaret. For all her frailty, Margaret was a hardy soul and would probably not be surprised by anything. Even a ghost. Perhaps she should tell her.
Margaret was still watching her, waiting for a response. Grace pulled her chair closer. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you, but you’ve got to promise not to laugh.’
Margaret didn’t laugh. Instead she said, ‘How interesting. She’s a ghost to all intents and purposes, but she’s not dead. Makes you wonder if there is such a thing as a soul.’
Grace was surprised. She hadn’t expected that. ‘You believe in ghosts?’
Margaret rolled her eyes. ‘When you’ve been sitting around for as long as I have, you’d be amazed at the things you can believe in!’
Margaret’s support had surprised Grace and lightened her, as though the responsibility of visiting Margaret daily had somehow been weighing her down. On the spur of the moment, she’d ordered a Kindle and made a wishlist of novels set in modern day Sri Lanka to load on it. A Kindle. Her father would have been apoplectic. She wondered how he would feel about her going back to see his roots. She suspected he would have been proud. He was always proud of her. He was always proud of where he came from too, despite never going back there once he’d married. He spoke of ‘home’ in glowing terms, telling her about the island’s beauty and fecundity and showing her pictures in the big coffee table books that she hadn’t had the heart to throw out.
She dug those same books out now and settled down in the living room, with a mug of tea, to look at the pictures and work out what she wanted to see while she was there. She was engrossed in reading about the cultural triangle when a small noise made her look up. Sally was sitting on the sofa opposite her, watching. How had she not noticed the chill? She was about to comment, when she realised that something was different. Sally’s appearance never changed, her hair and make-up were always frozen in time from the day of the accident. But something in her demeanour was wrong. It was little details, the way she was curled up in her seat, the downturned corners of her mouth, the lack of bravado. All these gave off the impression of defeat. For the want of a better description she looked … haunted.
‘How long have you been here?’ said Grace.
‘A while.’ Sally didn’t move from her position nestled in the armchair. ‘You look happy.’ She raised her chin in the direction of the book that was on the table. ‘Looking at your dad’s book?’
If she needed a time to tell Sally, now would be it. Grace drew a deep breath. ‘I’m going to go there on holiday. ‘
Without Grace around, Sally would be utterly alone. She felt as though she was abandoning her.
‘That sounds nice.’ There was no enthusiasm in Sally’s voice.
Grace waited for Sally to voice her opinion. She always had an opinion on everything. None came. Sally seemed preoccupied, as though she wasn’t really paying attention.
‘Are you okay?’
Sally finally made eye contact and Grace was shocked to see the fear in her friend’s eyes. ‘Sally, what’s wrong?’
‘I need a favour.’
‘Okay. What is it?’
‘I want you to let me talk to Peter. Just one more time.’
Oh no. Not this again. She thought she’d made everything clear. No more possessing. ‘I told you—’
Sally held a hand up to stop her. ‘I want to say goodbye.’
‘What?’ The implication was that Sally was going somewhere. Perhaps she’d decided to go and live in the casino permanently. Or found another ghost to hang out with. ‘Where are you going?’
Sally rolled her head back dramatically and stared at the ceiling. ‘I can’t carry on like this anymore. No one can hear me. No one can see me. I’m turning into my mother. And Peter doesn’t love me anymore.’
‘Sally …’ Where to start? Did Peter not love her any more, or was it Sally being over dramatic again? Grace could understand the horror of realising that you’d nearly killed the man you love in a fit of anger. But what did she mean by ‘turning into her mother’?
‘If I could come back now,’ Sally continued as though Grace hadn’t spoken. ‘If I could come back now, I might be crippled. I’ll have crap hair and crap skin and I’ll probably pile the weight on as soon as I eat a bit. And there’s the risk that parts of me might have been ruined by the accident. Oh, Peter would stick by me. Everyone will. But that would only be because they felt they had to. I would be the object of pity.’ Her mouth twisted. ‘And I’d be revolted with myself, lying there weeing and crapping into a bag. It’s disgusting.’
‘You might not have anything wrong with you,’ Grace suggested, not sure how to steer the conversation back to something positive. If Sally were to die, properly, Peter would be a widow, free to be with someone else. But then what? Just because he was able to see someone, it didn’t mean that he would want to see her.
‘You don’t know that,’ said Sally, still staring at the ceiling. ‘Peter doesn’t look at me in the same way he did before. So what have I got left? There’s nobody who would miss me.’
Okay, now Sally was just feeling sorry for herself. ‘You’ve got your friends …’ she was about to say ‘Your mum,’ but resisted just in time.
‘I haven’t got any friends,’ said Sally. ‘Never really bothered with them. Except you.’ She looked away again. ‘And look what happened there.’
No. she was not going to have that conversation again. Grace shook her head. ‘So, what are you saying?’
‘If I died now, I’d just be the girl who was cruelly and tragically snatched away on her wedding day. Her man grieved for her for over a year and finally, she died. It’s a beautiful and aching story.’ Sally made a sweeping gesture with her hand.
Sally was going for the full tragic heroine now, like a teenager in full strop. Grace decided she wasn’t in the mood for that either. ‘Sally, that’s all very well, but you’re stuck as ghost. You can’t die just because you’ve had enough.’
‘Yes I can. I know how to do it and I want to go while things are still looking good for me. It’s a far far better death that I have now … you know, what that Sydney guy said.’
‘It’s a far far better thing I do now than I have ever done before?’
‘That’s it.’ Sally sat up, suddenly animated again. ‘What do you say? Will you let me talk to Peter, so that I can say goodbye.’
The sudden change of mood put Grace on her guard. What if the whole ‘I want to die’ thing was just a trick to get her to agree? Sally was clearly stronger now than she had been before. What if she’d figured out a way to stay in Grace’s head?
She gazed thoughtfully at Sally, who leaned forward, waiting for an answer.
‘No,’ said Grace.
‘What? Why not? It’s just for me to say goodbye to my husband!’
‘No. I said no and I meant it.’
Sally rose to her feet. Grace braced herself for a barrage of abuse. Without taking her eyes off Sally, she gripped the edges of the book harder, preparing to use it to deflect whatever Sally was going to throw at her.
But the abuse never came.
‘Okay,’ said Sally. ‘I suppose I can understand that after what happened. I just want to say, thank you, Grace. For letting me hang out with you, and taking me to talk to people and all that stuff. You’re not the sort of person I’d normally talk to. It’s been interesting getting to know you.’
Grace blinked, not sure what to make of that speech. ‘Um … okay.’
‘And I really am sorry about the whole thing with the statue. I lost my temper. I shouldn’t have.’
This wasn’t like Sally. There was no bluster. No insistence that she was right. What was going on? Grace looked at Sally’s face again and saw something she’d never seen in her before. Calm. As though she’d found something she’d been looking for. There was sadness too, but mostly, she looked … calm. Somehow that was more creepy than the barely controlled rage vibe that Sally usually gave out. ‘Sally, what’s going on? You’re starting to scare me.’
‘I’m a ghost.’ Sally gave her a thin smile. ‘It’s what I do.’
She drew herself up and clasped her hands in front of her. ‘Do me a favour, Grace?’
Grace hesitated, still wondering if this was some elaborate trick of Sally’s to get what she wanted. ‘What is it?’
‘Look after Peter.’
And Sally disappeared.
Grace stared at the spot Sally had just vacated. What was that all about? She ran through the conversation in her mind. Without the suspicion that she was being tricked, she realised the melancholy of what Sally had said. It wasn’t a trick. It was a farewell.
But how? Had Sally figured out a way to die? Would that even work?
She pulled out her phone and called Peter. ‘Where are you?’ she demanded when he answered.
‘Grace? I’m at work.’ He sounded surprised.
‘You need to get to the hospital.’
‘What? Why? They haven’t called—’
‘Sally’s up to something. I’m not sure what, but I think she’s going to commit suicide.’
‘Commit …’ He stopped. ‘That’s ridiculous. She’s in a coma.’
‘I know how stupid it sounds.’ She grabbed her handbag and fished about for her car keys, the phone wedged between her jaw and her shoulder. The phone beeped as her cheek made contact with the screen. ‘She just came and gave me a long speech about how it was nice knowing me.’
‘Are you sure she’s—’ said Peter.
‘Peter! I’m going to the hospital. Before she does something stupid.’ She hung up on him and ran to the car. She couldn’t let Sally just slip away like that. For all the problems they had with each other, Sally was still her friend. As she slammed the car into gear she realised, that she’d miss Sally. Without her around the house would always echo, just like it had done before. Without Sally, Grace would be alone again.
Sally drifted back through the places in her life. The house she and Peter had furnished. The old flat which was now full of someone else’s stuff, the bedsits, the shared houses until eventually, she stood outside the small house she’d grown up in. She’d stood there before, looking up at the house and feeling that same mixture of loneliness and loathing that she’d carried with her, ever since her father died. No wonder she’d left when she could. Sometimes it was less lonely being alone.
The house was empty. The residents were presumably out, doing whatever menial jobs they could find. She stepped through the door. A few steps in and she looked up. In front of her was the stairway where she’d found her father, hanging from a short rope, his eyes and tongue protruding. She could almost see it. ‘Dad?’ she said, just in case his ghost was hanging about still. She waved a hand through the space his body had been in.
There was no answer.
‘I’m going, Dad. I just wanted to say – I think I understand what you did. You thought we would be better off without you. I get that. But you were wrong. We weren’t. Things got worse. Just so that you know. It didn’t help. It just made everything worse.’
She paused, listening for an answer. When there was no response, she turned to leave. As she stepped back out into the overcast afternoon, she realised that, for the first time in a long time, she felt okay. No anger burning, no tears being throttled. She smiled to herself and as she swept down the path and through the gate, not bothering to make contact with the ground. There was a park she wanted to go to, just around the corner, where the forget-me-nots grew.
She didn’t look back at the house. There was nothing left there for her to see.
Peter ran out of the office. Something in Grace’s voice disturbed him. It was ridiculous that Sally was planning on committing suicide. For a start, she was a ghost already and her body was in a coma. For seconds, she was so into her drama. There was no way she’d make a quiet exit like that. Even a huge car crash on her wedding day wasn’t enough for her. There was no way she’d go out without a bang.
As he got into the car, he realised that there would be drama. Sally had him and Grace rushing over to the hospital for no apparent reason already. What did she have planned?
As he drove up to a traffic light, he wondered how he would feel if Sally really were to die. He had been grieving her loss for so long that it had sunk into his very bones. He had loved her, lost her, loved her more, then realised that the woman he’d loved had been a fabrication.
He no longer knew what was truth and what was mirage. If she died now, would he really be losing anything that he hadn’t already lost over the past year?
Sally waited. Grace would come. She knew she would. She wasn’t sure if Peter would though, which was telling in itself. A few weeks ago there was no doubt that he would drop everything and rush over at the slightest twitch from her. But now, she wasn’t sure.
She looked over at the pale creature in the bed, with her crappy hair that was mostly brown now and sallow skin. It wasn’t a bad body. It had been in much better condition while she was looking after it. She stretched her arms out in front of her and admired the sleek tan and perfect manicure. The photo at the side of her bed was testimony to what a beautiful bride she had been. On that day she had been at the peak of life, with a fabulous future ahead of her. She had such promise. Not like the poor cow in the bed.
The creature in the bed had no future. If she ever woke up, she would be a broken thing – weak from being in bed for over a year, maybe damaged in other ways. She would have to suffer the embarrassment of having to wee into a tube and being rolled around by nurses. She would have to go to a home that was too smart for her to look after and to live with a husband who didn’t love her any more. No, that wasn’t a life. That was a life sentence.
‘I’m not going to let you win,’ Sally said. She pointed to the silent body. ‘You are going to die.’ She pointed to herself. ‘I am going to be the one they remember. Me. The beautiful bride who was so tragically whisked away on the happiest day of her life.’
Outside, the sun came out from behind a cloud and pale light flooded the room. Sally moved, shadowless, to the window and checked out the sky. There was a patch of blue. She hoped that lasted until she died. In a few more minutes, the sun would start to set and the room would be flooded in gold. It would look stunning.
‘A perfect send off,’ she whispered to herself. That made her think of a good last sentence. She would turn her head, if she could manage it, and whisper ‘It’s a beautiful day to die.’ She repeated it to herself and savoured the pathos of it. Yes. Those would be fitting last words.
