My tears come fast and steady and I can see the kids are wishing they’d never come. Jude is sitting with his hands on his head, looking like my nineteen-year-old distraught son who’s lost his father. He no longer looks like someone’s confident young groom. Rachel is tapping my hand rhythmically and I think it’s helping her more than me. And Dom? Dom seems to have vanished …
‘Thanks a bunch,’ I tell him later when he sits beside me on the sofa as I’m trying to lose myself in some television series. Dom says nothing. Fitz has texted to say he’s staying overnight in the house and will be back in the morning.
‘Right, you’re obviously in a quiet mood, which suits me.’ I get up and walk out to the hall table, come back carrying The Book of Love. ‘I need you to listen.’ I read yesterday’s brief words to him and when I’ve finished, I look up. Dom is staring at me sadly.
‘And there’s more,’ I say before reading the one I wrote after the kids left. Don’t look up once, I tell myself. Read it in one go. No glances.
21st June 2017
My darling Dom,
Once upon a time you told me you felt trapped. I remember it, as if it was yesterday. We were walking to the river with the twins, just babies, in a double pushchair – both of us overcome with responsibility when we needed to remember how to have some fun. We got over it – we came back to each other. I’m not sure how, but we did.
But I feel it again.
I feel it for you and for me.
I’m trapped because I don’t want to let you go. I’m trapped because I can’t bear the thought of life without you and this isn’t how it was supposed to be. I’m forty-five years old. We were supposed to check out together as octogenarians. Not now and not like this. I’m trapped because I don’t want to believe how you died. It’s one thing to have to come to terms with you being gone; it’s another thing completely to accept that you lost your life saving another. And where I should think the saving of a life is laudable, I’m angry at you. Because sad as it would have been, I’d have been able to bear the loss of Lydia easier than losing you.
You’re trapped because if this is real, if any of it is real, you should be gone from my life, yet you’re not. Is this some sort of limbo for you? Why do I only see you in Valentine’s or nearby? Do you have to stay here? Is that the real reason you couldn’t come with me to the States? Whatever’s going on I really only see you here, so all that talk of travelling together gets shelved. Is this where your limbo is – our happy place? Is Jude right, do you have something you need to say to me, something that was unfinished or left unsaid? Do you need to be here? Are you being pulled to join your mum and Maisie?
How do either of us move on?
So many questions …
I want you here with me forever. If I could have that, I’d lock the door and swallow the key.
But I can’t have that, can I? Because we’d both be trapped. You stuck in whatever halfway house this is, and me, hiding away from the other people I love so I can be with you.
And here’s the part where I tell you that I know you have to leave me. I know it – can feel it in my bones and all I want to do is to beg you to stay a while. I’m not ready to say goodbye again – not yet.
Please …
I love you forever, my darling Dom.
Erin xx
When I look up, my face is stained with tears and he’s standing behind me. I have to deep breathe to allow myself to catch air. He leans down and kisses my hair and I reach up to touch his hand, to feel him.
‘I didn’t read the letters,’ he admits, ‘but it doesn’t matter. I hear your thoughts as you write them. So, I knew.’
I turn and look up, frame his face with my hands. ‘If I imagined you, like made you up, I made you quite clever then.’
‘It would appear so.’ He looks at the clock on the wall and back to me. ‘Bed?’ he says, and I drop the book and take his hand.
45.
Thursday 22nd June 2017
Fitz is back. He has a small box under his arm which he places on the table, all the while frowning at me. ‘You look awful,’ he says.
Having woken with the feeling that my throat has been shredded by blades, my response is to sniff into an already damp tissue. ‘Summer cold,’ I whisper.
‘Hot toddy,’ he says, already filling the kettle, and I’m reminded of Lydia sipping the same concoction that night we arrived in Cornwall.
‘Have you cloves?’ He’s nosing around the cupboard that will have cloves and I try to tell him I really don’t want his cure-all-colds drink.
‘Would you, just for once,’ he peers at me from behind the open door, ‘do as you’re told?’
The kettle bubbles to the boil. He pours water on brown sugar and cloves, stirs it and then adds whisky. I grimace as he hands it to me.
‘Drink.’
It’s an order but all I can do for now is hold the glass, feel the heat warm my hands.
Fitz sits opposite me. ‘I’ve accepted an offer on the house.’
I nod slowly, sip the drink, rather than speak, feel it coat my sore throat. It’s vile yet somehow makes swallowing easier.
‘A young couple with a child on the way. They’re nice … it feels like the house will have a new lease of life.’
My eyes lock on his and I’m not sure what he wants me to say. ‘That’s good,’ is what comes out, and he seems okay with that.
‘I brought some things back for you.’ He pulls the box towards us both. ‘Things I thought you might like but everything else is being packed up in three weeks, so maybe you and I could go down there, and you could see—’
‘I don’t want anything.’ My voice is raspy.
He taps the lid of the brown box. ‘It’s just a few of your mum’s favourite books, and that scarf she used to wear all the time, remember the one?’
Oranges, reds, purples, multiple geometric shapes – I remember it. I imagine her wearing it now sitting next to Fitz at the table.
‘Do you see her, Dad?’
He turns to face me. ‘Sometimes, though less now …’
‘You talk to her?’
I watch his Adam’s apple move slowly. ‘All the time. More now.’ He laughs. ‘She doesn’t always approve.’
My smile is slight, and he reaches for my hand. ‘But I think she was the one who reminded me what you’re going through. I woke one morning feeling that she and I had been talking in my sleep and I—’ He pauses. ‘I felt like you needed me here.’
I put the glass down and hug myself. ‘Dom’s here all the time.’
Dad looks around the room as if he might catch a glimpse. He squeezes my fingers. ‘If it helps you.’
I say nothing.
‘“Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.”’
My lower lip trembles.
‘Rumi. Penny introduced me to him. A thirteenth-century Persian poet.’
‘Lovely words,’ I manage.
He lets go of my hand, taps it. ‘How did it go yesterday with Lydia?’ he changes the subject.
I could admit I never made it, but I just widen my smile. ‘Fine,’ I say. ‘She’s agreed to sell Valentine’s back, knows it’s what Gerard and Dom want.’
And it’s instant – that tell-tale crevice between my father’s eyes. My use of the present tense with Dom. His poetic words just spoken to humour me. His nod is hesitant and then he decides to leave me marinating in my belief that my husband is here.
‘But I’m not going back to work for her,’ I add. ‘And she knows that now.’ What was it she’d said?
I respect your decision.
I can see him decide not to comment. ‘I’m going to pop out and get you some soup,’ he says instead, already standing in the doorway jangling his keys.
It’s thirty degrees outside. I don’t want soup. Or hot whisky.
‘Maybe some sparkling water,’ I suggest.
‘Okay.
Text me if there’s anything you feel like eating.’
When he leaves I grab my wide-brimmed hat and walk outside to the patio, sit in the swing seat, and curl myself up under the shade of the Japonicus. My eyes rest on the area where we buried the time capsule and, not for the first time, I wonder.
I feel a gentle push and the seat moves.
‘You always knew I buried it,’ Dom’s voice comes from behind before he takes a seat opposite me, steeples his hands.
‘I think I did.’ I agree. The missing letter has, I’ve often sensed, been merely metres from the house.
‘You want to dig it up?’ he asks.
I shake my head. ‘I’d rather you tell me what it says.’
‘I never lied about it, Erin. It only ever opened up a possible dialogue that happened years later anyway.’
‘Why did you keep it for so long?’
Dom’s staring at the exact spot that I’d have pointed the spade. ‘To remind me what an idiot I’d been.’
‘So, why bury it when you did?’
‘To forgive myself. I figured when you managed that, maybe I should try.’ He looks skyward before turning to me. ‘You sound rough.’
‘I feel rough. Fitz is out getting soup.’
Dom laughs. ‘You should eat something, maybe not soup, but something, Erin.’
I look down at my body, at my clothes hanging loosely around my body.
‘Not a diet I’d recommend,’ I tell him before launching into a coughing fit.
‘I still would,’ he grins. ‘If I could. You’re still my beautiful Tree Girl.’
We hold hands, sit quietly until I hear the front door open and close.
‘Soup,’ Dom whispers.
I close my eyes and when I open them Dom has gone, and Fitz is hovering above me. ‘Chicken or minestrone?’
Thursday 22nd June 2017
Darling Dom,
I keep wondering about what Jude said and whether you have unfinished business with me and it’s made me focus on all that’s happened since you left and since you’ve been around again.
Valentine’s is coming back to me. Your father’s care is being looked after. I have life insurance money to ‘give me choices’.
All of that has been set in motion.
Which just leaves Lydia.
And that’s at least better than it was.
And here’s where one more time in these pages I tell you I’m afraid. I’m afraid to fix it like you want me to because then I think you’ll have to go.
I’m right, aren’t I?
I love you. Please don’t leave me.
Erin xx
46.
Friday 23rd June 2017
The journey is silent but for the noise in my head urging me to turn around. As we near the house, Fitz asks about the care home Gerard will move into. I assure him that it’s lovely – a newly built state-of-the-art facility – that it’s what Gerard wants and that there’s room for Fitz there too. He laughs – that deep-throated rumble that I miss. I’m doing this for him, I remind myself. For him. For Dad. He’s travelled to be here with me and this is for him.
I pull into the driveway. The building that Dom grew up in would have scared me away from him, had I seen it before I met him. Even Fitz is a little intimidated and I can’t believe he’s never been here before.
‘You could fit my place in a few times over,’ he says, taking in all four floors of the semi-detached Victorian house from the outside. I climb the stone steps, lift the knocker but Lydia has the door open before it sounds. ‘Fitz,’ she says, throwing her arms around his neck, ‘it’s good to see you here.’ She smiles at me over his shoulder, mouths a ‘hello’ in my direction and I notice she’s wearing the same lemon-coloured Bermuda shorts as me.
‘Ahh, you too. You look well, love.’ He holds out both of her hands and looks her up and down. ‘How’s your dad doing?’ He loops an arm through hers and leads her down the hallway. I follow, listen to my feet tapping in my summer flip-flops. I think of Dom’s feet treading these tiles for years. I think of Dom’s feet …
Lydia looks over her shoulder at me, looks as if she’s going to say something and then thinks twice. Dad, without knowing it, had led us to the back of the house, to the kitchen I remember Sophie cooking lots of Christmas dinners in. It’s weird, I think, it feels like she’s still here and then I remember, coming from my head, that it’s not weird at all.
‘Can I get you guys something?’ Lydia asks. ‘Maybe a cold drink, a soft drink or a beer?’
‘No thanks,’ I answer for both of us. The last thing I want is Dad lingering over a beer. ‘We’re only here because Dad wants to see Gerard.’
‘You’re not very well,’ she says.
‘Hurts to talk,’ I tell her, hoping she won’t try and make me.
She nods then leads the way out of the kitchen, down a set of stone steps to the lower ground floor where Gerard has been living for the last ten months. He’s sitting in a wing-back chair with a book on his lap and the television muted on a game of rugby. When he sees us, he opens his arms wide and I bend into his hug.
‘Erin, how are you, my dear?’ Both his hands frame my face, and his rheumy eyes look into mine. It feels like there’s no need for me to reply as he kisses my cheek.
‘Fitz!’ Gerard pulls himself up to standing. ‘How are you, old boy? I hear you’ve got a younger woman!’
I slink back towards the door, wanting to leave them to it but Lydia’s there, hovering in the shadows of the hallway.
‘Did you instruct the solicitor?’ I croak.
‘Yes. I emailed you – she’ll have contracts ready in a few days. We could probably exchange and complete in one go.’ She keeps her voice low.
‘You were happy with the valuation?’
Lydia nods, squeezing her pale, veiny, hands as if she’s trying to get blood flowing through them. Suddenly, she reaches her hand to briefly touch my arm and I flinch. Fitz is only metres away in the next room talking to Gerard about the many framed photos surrounding him.
‘It’s good to actually see you,’ Lydia says cautiously.
Gerard’s telling Fitz that there’s a Dom shelf and a Lydia shelf, all arranged chronologically, from baby to wedding day. Dom’s shelf has pictures of Rachel and Jude, even one of Maisie, and I just want to run screaming from the building.
‘Erin,’ she reaches for my arm harder. ‘Are you alright?’
‘Did you fall?’ The words are out. Through the doorway I see Fitz turn to glare at me. ‘Or did you jump?’
Lydia jerks back and steadies herself against the wall. ‘I fell,’ she says, dropping my arm as if I’ve scalded her. Quiet tears slide down her cheeks as she backs down the hallway and I follow.
‘I fell,’ she repeats, shaking her head.
‘Your being so near water?’ When I think of all of the charity swims over the years where she baulked at the thought of ever learning to swim, of ever taking part. ‘It never made sense.’
‘I’d just stopped to look at the view. It was wild … I was just—’
‘You’d lie anyway, Lydia, so I’ll never know.’
‘Erin.’ Her face is twisted with horror.
‘You were exhausted, had moved in here, volunteered yourself to look after Gerard’s needs.’
Fitz closes over the door, shuts us in the hallway.
‘Your life wasn’t what you’d imagined it would be—’ I continue.
Lydia whips around. ‘I slipped, fell in the water. Dom saved my life and I can’t spend the rest of my life apologising for that. And you know that’s not what he’d want either.’
She has no idea what Dom would want, what Dom wants.
‘I should go,’ I say, trying to edge past her.
‘I fell,’ she repeats as I climb the stairs. ‘But I still wish I’d died that day instead of him.’ Her voice gets louder, pursues me, as I move away from her. ‘Every day,’ she yells. ‘Every single day since, I wish he was still here instead.’
Fitz takes his time coming out and, when he does, says nothing until I switch the ignition on.
‘That’s one gorgeous house.’ He looks up at it while biting a thumbnail at the same time.
‘It is.’ I put the car into gear and reverse out.
‘And that’s one fucked-up lady, seriously Erin.’ He holds a flat palm in the air. ‘That’s one fucked-up lady.’
‘At least she’s here,’ I tell him as I drive away.
I stare straight ahead while he watches me.
‘Didn’t you hear her tell you that she wishes she wasn’t?’
‘Makes two of us.’
‘You’re angry. You’ve a right to be pissed off at the world but you need to get a grip, girl.’
‘Dad.’ I pull into the end of someone’s driveway and stop the car. ‘What the hell is this? Lydia’s begging for forgiveness lately after months of being unable to look me in the eye. You come from America now, indefinitely, to ‘sell the house’, but when Dom died you barely managed to stay for forty-eight hours after the funeral.’
‘Maybe she’s sensed that you always thought what you blurted out today. Maybe she did jump – if she did – imagine what she has to live with now?’ Fitz draws a deep breath before continuing. ‘I think she fell, for what it’s worth. And maybe I had to see you in the States a few weeks ago before I realised how much you need me here. My bad …’
I do not need you here. I have Dom. And stop talking like a teenager. Get lost, all of you.
‘I was wrong,’ he adds.
I pull my shirt off, leaving just a white T-shirt on, turn the air-con up. ‘You should go back to Penny.’
He ignores me. ‘Lydia spoke to me about you not going back to work.’
I smack my lips together.
‘What? When you walked out, we talked,’ he says.
‘I’ve resigned. I told you that already. I don’t need to or want to be involved with the business anymore.’
‘Yes, I know but it seems to me like you might need routine and a job you used to love more than ever.’
The Book of Love Page 26
