The few people that were about nodded greetings as he marched around the arc of the harbour bay heading to the lighthouse at the end of the pier. It was small, painted white – he wondered if someone lived in it, if it had one of those circular staircases that hugged the wall all the way to the top. Scents of fresh baking beckoned. Windows with saucer-size fruit scones, volcanic meringues. His mouth began to water. They’d come back later. He and Erin would come back and have Cornish tea and scones. He had done the right thing, he told himself. Erin would see that.
He stopped to look out to sea. Though the day was grim, the light was bright, and he narrowed his eyes, gazed at the huge expanse of ocean – nothing for thousands of miles until America. The tide was in. Swirling surf circled a lone rock just beneath him. Boats bobbed about on the full, restless, ocean. Cormorants dipped and dived as Dom filled his lungs with fresh sea-air. He turned right towards the lighthouse and, in the distance, saw someone standing on the pier, a palm raised to their eyes, staring beyond to the other side of the horseshoe-shaped harbour. The neon yellow jacket he recognised as Lydia’s. Dom quickened his pace as the rain got heavier.
Something, instinct, called out to her, but left him in no more than a whisper. Where she was standing, his fatherly instinct kicked in.
Be careful. Slippery. Top step. Rain.
Not far now. He stopped himself yelling her name; instead watched her looking inwards across the bay – towards the small cottages and taller dark, granite houses, towards the street they’d both just walked from, and then she raised her face up to the sky as if to also feel the rain on her skin. And as she did, her body toppled forward.
‘Lydia!’ Dom screamed her name, began to run, tearing at the buttons on his coat, tossing it into the wind. At the steps, he kicked his shoes off and looked once to see if he could spot the neon yellow. Nothing. He dived.
The water was freezing. For a moment, it felt as if his heart had stopped as his body registered the cold and his clothes hampered every movement. Under the water, murky with silt and seaweed, he turned in a full circle once, twice, before coming up for air. ‘Lydia!’ he called her name, gasped and dived again. As he did, he caught a glance of something floating to his right. It was her. As he swam to her, he could see panic had filled her beautiful face as her arms and legs flailed wildly. Her eyes widened as she saw him and underwater he watched her scream his name. He grabbed hold of her and pulled her towards the surface.
Stop struggling, Lyd, please.
With his lungs tight, his chest about to explode, he pleaded eye to eye for her to still and then pushed her towards the light, towards the nearing silver glinting links of a chain above. From below he could see her hand, a hand, someone’s hand …
Grab hold of the chain. Lydia, take hold.
Dom felt something hit the back of his head hard. Above him, near the air he so desperately needed, boats bounced like corks in the water. His grip on his sister loosened as the keel of the boat the chain was anchored to rose and fell in the swell. He felt the force again. Pain … His mouth opened when every survival instinct told him to keep it closed. He felt his lungs fill. And slowly, too slowly, as he slipped away from the surface, he felt his body convulse and his eyelids close.
Beautiful Erin,
I’m falling. Colours. I see colours, blues, greens; none as green as your eyes … Noise; the waves booming to shore. Erin, I’m cold. I don’t want to leave you.
Love … you … mightily.
23rd October 2016
Dear Dom,
You’re an idiot, but all in all, you’re a kind idiot.
Where are you? I’ve tried calling you.
I have nothing lined up to throw at you. Just let me yell at you once for not telling me and then we’ll make some plans. No one is ‘losing their shit’, as you put it, except this infernal cat of Rachel’s.
WHERE ARE YOU?
Love,
Erin xx
43.
Tuesday 20th June 2017
Struggling with the lock, I push the front door, throw my purse on the hall table and drop the bag of shopping. Marching down the hall to the back of the house I open the back doors and slump onto the swing seat just outside. I’m shivering, despite the heat in the sun and despite all my techniques over the years, all the deep breathing, all the learning to handle and work with my fear – I’m pulled right back there. I’m yanked back to that ‘New York Minute’ in Cornwall.
My phone starts to ring upstairs. It’s plugged in on the nightstand and when I reach it, answer it, all I hear is Nigel screaming, ‘Get down here, Erin!’
‘What? Where are you?’ Something in his voice scares me, makes me force my feet into shoes immediately. There’s no one home when there should be and that four-word order from him ices my soul.
‘The pier, get here, there’s been an accident. Lydia, Dom …’
The phone still held up to my ear, I start to run. The pier. It’s quicker to leave the car. I run down the street, yell at them that I’m coming. From the bottom, where the road branches into a left-hand side access for cars and a right-hand walkway along the bay, I can already see across the small, horseshoe bay. There’s a crowd gathered at the end of the jetty, an ambulance, it’s blue-and-white lights flashing. No. No. No.
I run. Faster than I’ve ever run until my lungs hurt. I stub my toe on the cobbles and fall, grab some air and run again. And when I get there, when I push my way through the crowd I see someone being loaded into the ambulance on a stretcher. I see Nigel standing next to it sobbing. I clutch my chest, bend forward a little, try to refill my lungs as I spot something on the ground near him. A heap of coats, stranger’s coats.
I move towards Nigel and a gasp catches in my throat because I see the broken look in his eyes the same time as I see feet – feet poking out from the end of that long pile of coats. One with a sock, one without. And I know those feet. I’ve rubbed those feet; kissed those feet and smacked them away when they played footsie with me under the dinner table. Those feet have walked miles for me, have helped him stand when he felt like falling, have helped him hold me up. I shake my head slowly at Nigel before I fall by the coats, start pulling them off one by one to get to him and then the sounds come. I start to thump his chest, remember seeing it on a television advert; remember old colleagues in the ambulance service saying it. Pump the chest to the rhythm of ‘Stayin’ Alive’.
‘Dom? Come on, baby,’ I’m screeching, like the banshees in the tales Fitz used to tell me as a child.
‘Dom, can you hear me? You have to live.’ I hold his hand, rub it between both of mine to warm it.
I lift his head onto my lap and there’s green stuff on it and when I try to rub it off him, my fingers tangle in his beautiful hair. His face is covered in slimy stuff and I pull a tissue from under my sleeve and wipe it away. I blow into his briny mouth; his beautiful pink lips are blue.
‘Come on, wake up, baby.’ Dom isn’t moving. His eyelids haven’t flickered. I cling to him, can hear myself crying, and convince myself it’s someone else.
‘Erin?’
I feel someone’s arms try to pull me away from him.
‘No, no, no.’ I try to hang on to his arm but my grip slips because of the water on his clothes.
‘Erin, listen to me.’
Nigel. Nigel’s voice. Nigel’s arms.
‘Lydia’s in the ambulance. I need to be with her. Come with me. He’s gone, Erin, he’s gone.’
No. No, he’s not. I feel myself dragged away by him.
From him.
I’m winding the dog tag I now wear on my wrist around and around until it almost stops the flow of blood.
‘Don’t do that.’
I blink slowly, look at him, just inside the house, sloped up against the wall in our kitchen as if none of it had happened. And the elephant in the room parks itself right next to him, its trunk almost curving upwards into a smile.
‘You’re not here,’ I tell him, shaking my head. �
�Are you here?’
‘I sure as hell hope so,’ he laughs. ‘This is funny. You and I having an existential conversation.’
‘See, the thing is …’ I’d swear I can hear him breathing, ‘that you died …’ There; the words are out. ‘You died, Dom, and Hannah and Lydia,’ I continue, ‘they all think I’m a teensy bit insane – that you’re a part of my grieving process. Not really here, but my imagination willing you into being. You heard your sister howling through the letterbox. Though she’d love to believe you’re here, really she thinks I’ve conjured you up because I can’t let you go.’
‘Oh, right.’ He nods sagely as he approaches me.
‘And I haven’t been able to bear the thought of asking you if you’re real.’
‘Why not, Erin?’ He bends down to my level.
‘Because I don’t want you to confirm it either way.’
Dom tugs me towards him and kisses me and I feel him – really sense his full lips on mine, gentle, reassuring. ‘What do you think, love?’ he asks. ‘What do you believe?’
I hold his hand, feel the life force in it, and tell myself again that it’s possible, that anything’s possible; that love has made it happen. ‘I think you’re here,’ I tell him. ‘If that makes me crazy, I don’t care because I never believed that death is the end. You, on the other hand … I think I can show you in our book exactly what you thought about this.’ I wave my hands about us. ‘About the likelihood of this being real.’
‘Pay no attention to that. Another time I wrote in there and gave you instructions, remember?’
I’ve no idea what he’s talking about.
‘I told you we’d die when we were old and wrinkled and tied to one another’s Zimmer frames or something along those lines. I told you I’d be eighty-five and you’d be eighty-two.’
I remember. ‘Sorry, my love,’ I say, stroking the face of the only man I’ve ever loved. ‘As usual, life had other plans.’
20th June 2017
Darling Dom,
You’re dead but you’re not. You’re alive but you’re dead.
You’re here. That’s all I care about.
I love you because you didn’t leave me.
Erin x
44.
Wednesday 21st June 2017
‘Holy shit!’ I look out the upstairs window and, within seconds, Dom is by my side. The kids. Both of them – arriving at the same time – Jude with a bottle of wine under his arm, Rachel with flowers.
We strain to see them as they disappear out of eyeline. I grip the windowsill and the doorbell rings.
‘An intervention,’ I whisper.
‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘I’m right behind you.’
I take the stairs two at a time, barefoot, open the door just as Jude’s about to use his key.
‘I’m here, I’m here.’ I tap my chest rapidly. ‘Gosh, both of you. Together. How brilliant. Have you eaten? I haven’t got much in, maybe some crisps.’ I look back towards the kitchen to where Dom is already seated at the table. ‘And you’ve just missed Fitz! He’s down at the house with an agent meeting someone who wants to buy …’
‘Mum, we came to see you, not Fitz and not to have dinner. You sound like you have a cold.’ Jude kisses my cheek and Rachel follows and I close the door behind them. It makes a ‘swish’ sound as it shuts, as if it’s sealing all the air inside. My heart hammers as Jude makes his way to the back and sits at the table too.
‘I was telling Rachel you’re leaving work,’ he says, handing her the wine. From his tone I already regret telling him this morning on the phone. Rachel hands him the flowers which he lies on the table and she heads to the kitchen to get glasses. ‘Yes, I’m not sure I believe it!’ she says. ‘You never said anything, Mum!’
I squirm, try not to take it as an accusation but tension pulses through my veins. ‘I only really decided on it this week …’
‘She’s going to do a photography course,’ Dom says from his seat and I’m reminded of the last time we sat at the dining table together – Jude’s announcement.
‘I’m going to do a photography course,’ I echo.
‘I think it’s a great idea,’ Rachel says, handing me an overfilled glass. I have to almost slurp the top of it to stop it from spilling. ‘Home measure,’ she says. ‘They’d fire me at work if I ever thought that was a measure of wine.’ She puts hers down and reclaims the flowers.
‘They’re lovely,’ I tell her.
‘I figured Lydia’s had died by now so thought you deserved more.’
Lydia’s flowers – the ones she sent me on my return from the States, the ones I binned the next day because every time I looked at them I resented her presence in my home.
‘I do?’ I ask Rachel.
‘You do,’ she says hunting for a vase in the cupboard under the sink.
‘Try at the back,’ Dom shouts to her, ‘behind all the dishcloths on the left-hand side.’
Dom is grinning at Rachel’s search and I look to Jude, who’s staring at a photograph of his father on the shelf next to him.
‘So, why are you both here?’ I stay standing.
‘See?’ Rachel laughs behind me. ‘I told you she’d think we have an agenda.’
‘Of course, you have …’ I reply.
‘Of course, you have …’ Dom says.
‘Well, actually we do,’ Jude confirms, and I hear Rachel’s tut of disgust. True to form with my twins, already this isn’t going the way they’d obviously agreed beforehand.
‘You think you can see Dad?’ Jude stares at me. ‘You really think you’re seeing Dad?’
Dom is smirking and shaking his head less than three feet from our son.
‘What are you talking about?’ My voice trembles.
‘Lydia called me, ranting about things Hannah had told her. She’s worried about you, says you’re convinced Dad is … still here.’
Rachel sits on a small tub chair I have sitting next to the doors onto the garden. She smiles at me, lets her brother do the talking.
‘He didn’t believe in any of that crap,’ Jude says. ‘When you’re gone, you’re gone – that was what he used to say to me.’
‘Yes, he said the same to me.’
‘So, what’s going on, Mum?’
I have no idea how to answer him, so I curl my hair behind my ears and tell a white lie. ‘Nothing. At least nothing to worry about. Everything’s good.’
Dom is sitting back on the dining chair, his legs crossed, arms folded. He blows me a kiss and I’m momentarily distracted.
Jude follows my eyes. ‘Do you see him now?’
To hell with it. ‘He’s sitting on the chair at the far end of the dining table.’
Jude’s head whips around, and then slowly turns back to me. ‘And you really think he’s there.’
‘I do.’
My son stretches his eyebrows into tall arcs and looks first to Rachel for help and then to the space where Dom sits.
Rachel raises her shoulders up and down. ‘Maybe he is,’ she says. ‘I hope he is,’ she adds before looking towards Dom’s chair too. ‘Dad, if you’re there, anywhere here, I miss you. I miss you every day. I wish I could see you. I wish you could meet Paul. I miss coming here for your roast dinners.’ She stops to draw breath. ‘I miss calling you on the phone, hearing your voice. Most of all, I miss your hugs and your laugh.’
Dom moves to her, kneels on the floor just in front of her.
Rachel raises her knees up and hugs herself. ‘I call here all the time, Dad. Just to hear your voice on the answer machine. As soon as I hear that daft bit of you butting in on top of Mum, I hang up.’
‘He’s right opposite you,’ I whisper, and Rachel leans forward, closes her eyes while I try not to think of how, in my head, I’d blamed Lydia for all those hang-ups.
If Jude could yell the word ‘Traitor’ at Rachel, he would. ‘Mum, I know it’s still early days,’ he says, ‘but I think it’s a really bad idea leaving work. You need routine. Dad
’s not here. He’s just not.’
‘Maybe not, Jude.’ I feel a bit defensive. ‘I mean, I know why you might think I’ve lost it.’
Dom scrunches his nose and looks at me through only one open eye.
‘Because I was the one who tried to beat life into his still heart … I tried to blow air into his water-filled lungs.’ I shake my head. ‘I know it makes no sense. And I’m well aware that seeing my dead husband is probably some form of coping mechanism. But right now, my biggest regret is sharing it with Hannah, who felt the need to tell Lydia,’ I nudge my head to Jude, ‘who felt the need to tell you. And no doubt each whisper has an added layer of Erin’s lunacy.’
‘Mum.’ Rachel has stood, comes behind me and hugs my neck.
‘Answer me honestly,’ I address them both. ‘It’s been eight months. Do you really think I’d be doing this well if I didn’t at least believe he was still around?’ I gulp back the lump crawling up my throat and Jude joins Rachel and me and pulls both of us into a tight hug.
‘I miss him too,’ he says, ‘so very much. I could cry when I think of him. I do cry when I think of him.’
My children don’t know but their father has his long arms around all of us and I lean into the squeeze. ‘Don’t you think he misses you too?’ I whisper.
Jude is first to move away and he downs half a glass of wine before sitting down again. ‘I googled this,’ he says and both Rachel and I glance at one another, smile, because Jude googles everything. ‘What? I knew you’d both be saying the same thing so … anyway, apparently—’ He thumbs a query into his phone and pulls up a page to read from. ‘Apparently,’ he continues, ‘and I’m not saying I agree, but let’s just assume here that there is such a thing as a soul.’
I notice as he speaks that Dom is leaving the room. It’s as if he doesn’t want to hear this bit.
‘He has unfinished business with you,’ Jude puts his phone down and shrugs. ‘Wants to tell you something. There’s a whole piece on there but that’s what it’s saying. Not with you and me, Rach, because we can’t see him. Just you, Mum.’
The Book of Love Page 25
