This is Me

by Shari Low

  ‘You’re right. I’d miss the DEFCON level one bitchiness and judgement.’

  Jeanna laughed, the pressure of pushing her cheeks outwards almost, but not quite, causing the abomination of a crow’s foot. ‘And my unlimited, but understated, adoration.’

  Claire’s crows’ feet appeared as soon as she chuckled, ‘Yep, I’d be lost without that too.’

  Her phone suddenly burst into life.

  ‘Oh thank G…’ she started, snatching it up, before her words drifted off and she was left open mouthed, just staring at the screen.

  Jeanna leaned forward, curious. ‘Aren’t you going to answer it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not? Is this some maternal lesson you’re trying to teach him? Only, you’re cutting off your nose to spite your face there.’

  ‘It’s not Jordy.’ Claire’s words were low and could barely be heard over the repetitive ringtone.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s my… my mother.’

  Her mother. It had been many years since she’d seen that name flashing on the screen and even the thought of that woman made Claire’s throat tighten. It had been Claire’s choice to remove her mum from her life, but there had been no argument from the other side.

  Her gaze returned to the phone for a few more seconds. Then Claire pressed the red button and rejected the call.

  Two

  Denise – 2019

  Denise hadn’t expected her to answer. In truth, she knew Claire had no reason to pick up the phone to her, but contacting her had just seemed like the right thing to do. She could picture her daughter now – all bloody sanctimonious and defiant. Ray would say he was right all along, that Denise should have known better than to even bother trying to contact her.

  She tossed the phone on to the silver silk duvet and spoke to him in her mind. ‘I know, my love. I know,’ she whispered.

  The urge to climb off their bed became impossible to ignore as the longing to reach over and touch him became so overwhelming that she couldn’t bear to look at the space beside her. For forty years, he’d been next to her. Not every night, of course. For many years now his work as the boss of his own construction company took him away, sometimes for a few days at a time, and on every single trip she’d count the hours until he came home.

  The feel of the carpet under her toes was no comfort either. He’d picked it. Said the wooden floor they used to have there was too cold. Now the carpet was thick, grey, as dark as the hole he’d left behind.

  On the black glass dressing table, there was a bottle of red wine, the last one they’d shared. She opened it and poured the last drops from the bottle into the glass he’d used, then pressed it to her lips. Inhaled. Exhaled. Then tipped the glass and drained the intoxicating red liquid.

  She should eat something, but she couldn’t face the kitchen, the fridge, the pantry, his favourite foods, the cheese he’d opened the day before he’d passed, the bread that she’d travelled to a French baker on the other side of the city to buy for him because he said it was the best.

  It had been so sudden. He was there, then he was gone. An aneurism. Brain bleed. Caused by a slip in the shower, a fall, a bang to the head. A twisted episode of misfortune. If he’d just put his hand out, broken the fall, slid the other way, moved his head at the last minute, done any one of a hundred things that would have made a difference to the outcome, he’d still be here. But no. One moment he was there, singing in the shower while she drank coffee in bed. Then there was a crash and he was gone. They told her later that it was likely that his brain had been irreparably damaged almost instantly, before the paramedics she called had arrived, before the towels on the floor had dried, before her screaming had stopped.

  Now, she was in the same room she’d been in when she’d heard him fall, the window was wide open and yet she could barely find the oxygen to breath.

  She pulled another bottle of wine from the rack above the mini-bar in the lounge area of the bedroom. His idea too. They’d knocked the wall down that used to separate their room from Claire’s childhood bedroom, and made it into a luxurious master suite, modelled on a hotel they’d stayed in on a weekend in Las Vegas. Ray had loved his five-star hotels, his upmarket restaurants, his expensive suits, his first-class travels, his luxury holidays.

  She realised she’d lost her train of thought. The mini-bar. The suite at the Aria. As soon as they’d returned, he’d brought in a squad of his builders and taken the wall down. ‘I want you to wake up in a beautiful room every day,’ he’d told her.

  And then he did what he was good at, took charge, made his vision into reality. Denise didn’t have to give any input at all as he got to work creating a master bedroom and lounge in stunning shades of silver and greys, with glass and chrome furniture and lighting that cost more than the Vegas weekend. It had a seating area, a stunning, oversized, overstuffed chenille sofa, a huge television on the wood-panelled wall, a fireplace, a coffee maker, the wine rack and the mini-bar for soft drinks and water. After it was finished to perfection, they rarely used the downstairs lounge, preferring to come upstairs to relax, to talk, to watch movies, to make love.

  On the outside, their house looked like any other three bedroom house in Giffnock, the Glasgow suburb that they’d lived in since just before the kids started school. Claire would have been about five, and Doug close to four. It had originally been Ray’s grandfather’s house, left when the old man died, with only a small mortgage still to pay off. Not that it bore any resemblance to the dilapidated, dingy place they’d moved into way back then. Over the years, as Ray’s business grew and they could afford it, they’d converted it, room by room, into a family house. It helped that Ray was in the trade, so he got everything at cost and mates rates from everyone who worked on it.

  Of course, back in the early days, he didn’t have the team that he had now. He’d started out as an electrician in the same power plant as his father, before going out on his own and diversifying into general construction, bringing in mates to help on bigger extensions or kitchen installations. Denise had worked with him, answering the phone, booking appointments, sending out invoices, chasing up planning departments and building control. Along with bringing up the kids and taking care of this house, it had kept her busy, especially as Ray had gradually accrued a team of self-employed sub-contractors and moved on to bigger jobs, sometimes several renovations or builds at the same time.

  After a few years, with the small mortgage paid off and good money coming in, they’d developed a taste for the nicer things in life. First-class travel. Expensive holidays. Great clothes. Fancy dinners. Ray liked to splash the cash and Denise wasn’t complaining because she’d enjoyed it all right by his side, especially after the kids, Claire and Doug, had left. That’s when they’d made the final alterations, changing the house into the perfect home for just the two of them. Ray always said that was all that mattered – the two of them.

  On the back wall of the master suite there was a door to a walk-in closet. They’d converted Doug’s old bedroom and made it into a ‘his and hers’ storage space, with Denise’s clothes on one side, Ray’s on the other, and a set of back-to-back drawers, topped with a large slab of granite, making an island in the middle.

  Opening the mirrored door of one of his wardrobes, the scent of him immediately enveloped her. She held on to the door to steady herself, overcome once again with the pain of his absence.

  How would she function without him? He was her everything. Her world. There was, and never had been, anyone else. Every decision, every thought, every action had been for them both. How would she ever adjust to a world in which he wasn’t by her side, making her happy, filling every need she’d ever had? She was part of a pair, not a solo act. Without him there was nothing and nobody. What would be the point of waking up every day to a life of solitude? Yet, no one and nothing could ever replace him.

  A quicksand of loneliness threatened to pull her down, but she struggled against it, taking large gul
ps of air until she could return to the task in front of her.

  Tell me, she said silently. Tell me what you want.

  She began to flick through his suits, all of them grouped by colour, shade, occasion, all perfectly pressed on padded velvet hangers. Eventually, she paused at a deep navy single-breasted jacket, the matching trousers tucked under it. She remembered when he’d bought that one. Last year, his birthday, a weekend trip to London. They’d gone to shows, shopped on Oxford Street, eaten in restaurants that Denise had only seen on the pages of celebrity magazines. Ray had absolutely belonged there. Denise wasn’t sure she did, but she’d learned not to show her self-consciousness because it upset him. She deserved the best, he’d tell her. They were two council house kids and look how far they’d come, he’d say.

  She took the suit out of the wardrobe and placed it on the hook on the back of the door, then added a white shirt and the tie she’d bought him last Christmas. Socks. Shoes.

  When the outfit was complete, she took it all into the main room and laid it on the bed, then opened another bottle of wine and filled her glass, not sure what to do next.

  Of course she’d lost people before. Her parents. Ray’s parents. But in those cases, their houses had filled with family and friends who came to offer sympathies, to share the loss, to bring casseroles and bread and tales of the times they’d had with the person who’d passed. Mourning was a time for gathering, for coming together to celebrate a life and share the sorrow of a passing.

  No one was knocking on her door.

  No one had come in the week since she’d returned home from the hospital, bereft, clutching only his bloodstained clothes, his watch and his wedding ring.

  She snatched up her phone again, the second glass of red wine making her bold, pushing her to take action, to find someone – anyone – to share this grief. She scrolled through her contacts. When was the last time she’d talked to her siblings? Five years ago? Ten? Had she really not spoken to anyone else in her family in all that time? Of course, they had so little in common, and hadn’t been close for years before that anyway.

  No, she couldn’t call them now. What would be the point? So they’d feel obliged to come, to sit awkwardly in her kitchen, giving fake sympathy and platitudes about a guy they’d never particularly liked in the first place? No. Ray would hate that. He hadn’t liked them when he was alive, so he wasn’t going to want them there in death.

  She flicked through more numbers on the screen, then stopped when one name brought on another flash of pain. Doug. Her son. She could hear Ray’s roar of rage if she called that number. It had been many years since she’d heard his voice, seen his face, but that was his loss. She knew that. Hadn’t she and Ray discussed it so many times? Claire and Doug had walked out of their lives for the same reasons. She didn’t even want to think about that now. Hadn’t Ray told her again and again that they weren’t worthy of her? Only Ray deserved her time and her love.

  Numbers exhausted, she threw the handset on the bed, her eyes drawn to Ray’s mobile phone, which had been sitting on the charging dock on his bedside table since the morning she’d called the ambulance.

  Reaching over, she picked it up, switched it on, then watched as the screen came to life with the image of the two of them, toasting each other with champagne on the deck of the Queen Mary 2 as it set sail from Southampton en route to New York just a few months ago. Their fortieth wedding anniversary. The captain hadn’t believed them, said she looked far too young to have been married that long.

  She punched in the code to open the phone, realising it was the first time she’d ever done that. She’d seen Ray doing it so many times that she knew the code by heart, but he’d have been furious if she’d ever looked through his phone, so she never had.

  She went to contacts, the names coming up in alphabetical order. Restaurants. Hotels. Car valet. Architects. The tradesmen who sub-contracted for him on bigger jobs. Joiners. Landscapers. Painters. Plumbers. X. Y. Z. The end.

  Or not.

  The ‘Z’ category was empty, but there was one number in the preceding group, identified with only a Y. That was it. Just Y. It was all Denise needed to identify who it belonged to. That woman. Her.

  He’d kept that bitch’s number.

  A guttural sob escaped her. A whole fucking set of contacts and there was not a single person she could call for comfort, for help, to listen to her pain, until the very last contact in his phone. Y. It was a cruel bastard irony. The only person who might have just a glimmer of understanding about how she was feeling right now. And it would be a cold day in hell before she made that call.

  She quickly searched his messages and past calls for any contact with Y, but there was nothing. Small consolation. He still shouldn’t have saved that bloody number.

  She tossed the phone across the bed, the thud as it hit the duvet breaking through her red mist of anger, then she picked up her wine again and climbed into bed, still fully clothed, hoping that the warmth of the duvet would make the shivering stop.

  She reached over to Ray’s side and picked up the tie that she’d left there, wrapping it around her neck, desperate to have a part of him touching her.

  How was she to live? What was she to actually do with her days? Her dreams had been their dreams. Her plans had been their plans. How was she to move forward on her own, to have a purpose in a life without him in it?

  Ray Harrow had been her world from the moment she’d met him at fifteen years old, utterly clueless about life. Now the dark shadows of emptiness and loss were creeping in around the sides of her peripheral vision and she didn’t know how to make them stop.

  Three

  Denise & Ray – 1978

  The disco at the local youth club was a full house, with every teenager under the age of seventeen who lived within a five mile radius in attendance. Denise was in the toilets, topping up her Avon lipstick. She’d worked two nights in the cafe after school that week so she’d have the cash for her make-up order, because there was no way her mother would pay for it. The twins had just started high school and her mum was still bemoaning the cost of the uniforms. In the last couple of months, her wages had also stretched to the bell bottom jeans and the off-white cheesecloth shirt she was wearing now.

  The sound of David Soul singing ‘Silver Lady’ permeated the walls from the main hall next door. He was her favourite in Starsky and Hutch too – when she was actually allowed to watch it. It depended on whether her dad was watching snooker or something on the other side.

  Denise loved that song, but she wouldn’t dance. No way. Although she knew what was coming because, beside her, her best friend, Alice, was already singing along.

  ‘Oh, come on, let’s go dance! I love this song!’

  ‘No, you know I don’t da—’ Denise knew it was futile. They were best friends, neighbours and shared the bus to school every morning too, and in all that time, Alice, gregarious and always up for fun, had never taken no for an answer. Not once. Now wasn’t any different. Before Denise could even finish the sentence, Alice grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the toilets and into the dark hall, illuminated only by two banks of flashing red and green lights that sat on top of the speakers on the stage, one on either side of the DJ. Actually not so much a DJ as the janitor who fancied himself as a bit of a star on the mixing desk.

  The only consolation was that in the darkness, no one could see the burning flames of embarrassment that were creeping up her neck and onto her cheeks. Not for the first time, she wished she had Alice’s wild side, the ability to let loose and not give a damn about what anyone thought about her.

  The song changed. ‘I Only Want to Be With You’ by the Bay City Rollers. Crap. There was no way she was getting Alice off the dance floor now – this was one of their favourites, although Denise much preferred dancing in the privacy of her own bedroom, using a can of her mum’s Elnett hairspray as a microphone.

  Glancing up, she saw a reprieve in sight. Billy Jones was coming right up behi
nd Alice, his hand raising to tap her on the shoulder. Brilliant. She could escape back to the sidelines where the pressure was off. The tap on her own shoulder confused her for a second. Just as Alice turned to see Billy, Ray Harrow appeared from behind Denise’s left side.

  ‘Wanna dance?’

  Cue full body paralysis.

  Ray Harrow. One of the best looking boys in school, he was in the year above her, although, like half the boys in his class, he’d be leaving soon to take up an apprenticeship at the power plant that was the biggest employer in the town. No way did he want to dance with her. This must be a joke. Or a bet.

  Thankfully, he didn’t wait for an answer, just started dancing three feet in front of her, his eyes not leaving her face, the grin on his face just making him even better looking.

  Somehow, she forced her feet to shuffle so that she wasn’t standing there looking like a plank, wondering if her face was now giving more illumination to the room than the disco lights.

  He must be doing this as a favour to Billy. Yeah, that was it. Billy had fancied Alice for months, and Ray was one of his mates, so he was obviously just helping his pal out. Oh well. In a couple of minutes it would be done, and in the meantime, she got to look at him from under her thick blonde fringe. His dark hair was longer than the neckline of his jumper and she’d always thought he looked a bit like David Cassidy, especially in those denim flares he was wearing.

  The music ended and she decided to make the first move away, to save the embarrassment of having him walk off and leave her there. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that Billy had taken Alice’s hand and he was leading her off the dance floor. Crap. It distracted her for a few seconds, long enough for Ray to step forward and say something in her ear. She couldn’t hear him over the noise of Boney M’s ‘Ma Baker’, so she shrugged, then came close to fainting when she felt his hand take hers and give it a gentle tug in the same direction as their departing friends.