Steve had left her after only eleven months of being a parent and, for the most part, she had enjoyed doing it alone. She had been doing it alone anyway. He had barely contributed, not interested or engaged in their home life. He would only ever complain, about the disturbance, the mess, the noise, the break in his own routine.
She had thought they would do things as a family: long walks along the promenade, both holding pudgy hands, watching their child run ahead, learning to kick a ball, to fly a kite. He had promised her a lot when she was pregnant, stroking her stomach and talking nonsense to her bump.
His disinterest began almost immediately: a refusal to share in the night feeds, comments about a woman’s role, long evenings out at the pub, leaving her there to rock and soothe and cry silent tears into her small child’s hair as the loneliness consumed her. His leaving had hurt though. And then there was no one to share in the difficulties and the triumphs: the first word, walk, day of school. The anger built too, at the fact that he could leave something so precious and never look back.
Maria looked up again at the window. The woman had stopped swaying and soothing. Perhaps the child was now asleep. Suddenly her neighbour glanced in her direction and Maria found herself starting, looking away. She didn’t want to be called a nosy busybody, she didn’t want trouble. Keeping her head down, she let herself into the apartment block.
What if she took her something the next day? Made her a meal perhaps? She had always been quite good at shepherd’s pie, hadn’t bothered to make it recently but perhaps she could take the woman something for her freezer, something to keep her going. The thought chased her up the stairs, towards her apartment. Then the truth hit her: the neighbour was just a stranger. She wouldn’t want an old woman fussing about, making her feel as if she couldn’t cope.
Charity, Maria thought, Troy’s words cutting deeper inside her. Why did she think she could help?
She removed her key, passing the other door, hearing a cry from inside. Was it the baby in her arms who had woken, or the other child in another bed? Was there anyone else there to help? She blocked out the sound as she dragged her feet up the last set of stairs: it was none of her business. She headed to her door, slotted the key in, opened and closed it firmly. Forget it, Maria, haven’t you learnt your lesson already?
She lay in bed, drifting in and out of uneasy sleep, and morning light began to edge around the bedroom curtains, straining to get inside. The room was now an orange-grey colour, her belongings taking shape. Another day. She knew she wouldn’t get any sleep now and reached for her book on the bedside table, pausing for a second as her eyes took in the familiar photograph. The gentle throb of the start of a headache. Mouth dry, her water glass out of reach. Opening the book, a folded piece of paper fluttered to the floor: the list. She had left it there and forgotten.
She stared at it for a long time, seeing his distinctive slanted writing in that green ink, and felt there were things she should have ticked, progress she should have made. But it wasn’t as neat as that, she knew, it wasn’t as simple as ticking off deeds. Staring at Cathie’s name, then Troy’s, she wondered for the millionth time what had happened, why it had gone so wrong.
Then there was the last part of the list, about her. Why had Albie added her name, and at the end? What might it have been like had he lived long enough to do these things with her? Regret filled her.
‘For Maria,’ she read in a whisper, ‘Go to the grave…’ She folded the piece of paper back up without reading more.
She had never been back to the graveyard.
She imagined it now, the gravestone standing in the shade of a yew tree in the furthest corner of the graveyard. How tall would that tree be now, she wondered. Would it still be there at all? Would its leaves still scatter on the ground below? Was the gravestone now crooked, green with moss crawling over its surface, a signal to everyone that it had been forgotten? Was it ignored by passers-by?
She had let that person down so badly and now she had allowed the grave to be neglected too. How could she visit with tulips? Even if it was what Albie had wanted, how could she? Perhaps if she had him at her side, holding her hand, transmitting his warmth and strength to her, she would be able to push at the lichen gate, move along the twisted paths between other people’s loved ones, kneel in front of the grave, and start the process of cleaning it, restoring it, making her own amends. Finally.
It had been more than thirty-six years. She hadn’t dared visit since the day she had watched them lower the coffin into the ground, that terrible mound of earth piled up next door to the gaping hole. The first handful thrown on top, the noise as it struck the wood. The hands on her shoulder, the watery eyes, the sobs from others, the curious glances in her direction. The blame she had felt as they had watched her, waiting for her to react.
She had simply stood, inert, unable to feel anything beyond the icy block that had become her heart since that moment she had been told the news. She hadn’t cried that day, didn’t remember the words spoken to her, didn’t remember leaving the graveyard. She hadn’t realised then that she would never visit. She used to walk past, see the spot in the distance, the grass a little raised compared to the others. She would take flowers, clutched in a tight palm, and linger outside the railings. Then, she would turn around and return home, knowing she didn’t have the strength to set them in a pot, to read the words etched in the stone. If she didn’t visit the grave, perhaps she could convince herself none of it had ever happened.
And suddenly the months had passed, then the anniversary of the day it had happened and still she stayed away. She stopped walking past, stopped buying those bright yellow tulips, stopped going to things, stopped seeing friends that reminded her of the days before it had happened, stopped answering the phone, stopped seeing family, stopped leaving the house. It was amazingly easy to disappear into the new, small life she had created for herself. She moved, not far, but gave no forwarding address. No more Christmas cards, no more annual reminders of how other people’s lives were moving on, news of their children – holidays, achievements at school, exam results, places won at college and university.
Sometimes though she would still be floored, caught out on the street by an old acquaintance, someone she had known before it happened. They would call her name with a half-wave and then a quick dash across the road. ‘Maria, how have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you… so and so told me you still lived in Brighton, I was worried you’d moved away…’ Gradually she started to shop in the evenings, nip out in sunglasses in summer, large hats in winter, and cross the street if she saw a face she recognised. Over the years, the instances became fewer and fewer, the faces that passed her growing unfamiliar, her world smaller and smaller.
Then Albie had stepped into it, had joined her without ceremony, sat down opposite her at that tiny table in that café and started to chat. She hadn’t meant to engage him, hadn’t meant to let him make her laugh or buy her a slice of marble cake, but somehow she hadn’t been able to help herself. When he had looked at her, it was as if he could see the person she had been, had used to like. She wanted him to keep looking at her like that.
Now he had gone and she was brought back to her bedroom with a devastating thud.
She placed her book back on the bedside table, the list folded safely inside, and settled back under the duvet, ignoring the brightness in the room, the heat from the sun outside. She didn’t want to tick things off anymore, didn’t want to be reminded of his writing, the things he had done for others, the things she needed to do. She just didn’t want to face it all. Turning her face into her pillow, she forced herself to shut her eyes as the tears silently fell. Outside, she could hear the sounds of the world moving past without her.
She spent almost the whole summer on a lilo, paddling lazily on this bright pink inflatable thing that I had bought to use as a mattress for sleepovers. Friends seemed to gravitate towards her, girls liked her. She would make them laugh, do wicked impressions of their
teachers and had a mum who let her stay out until dark.
Her hair was long, thick, and she backcombed it to make it really stand out. She wore a swimsuit with a belt and treated Brighton beach like her personal playground, shoulders brown from the sun. Skinny as a rake, she would lean against the kitchen counter and tell me all the gossip from her group, hands waving around, never still as she spoke in the fastest voice. I couldn’t keep up, but I loved to listen. Loved that she shared so much with me. Glad it was just the two of us, our special bond. I hadn’t missed Steve in years. How he had missed out!
She glowed with charisma and charm, chatted happily to children her own age and adults, used perhaps to my company. I hadn’t been half that confident when I was her age and my mother had been determined for me to settle down quickly, not to waste my time with college or qualifications. As she talked – about how they were going to burn their files after O Levels and dance around the fire on the beach – I laughed at her youth, her energy, excited for all that she had to come.
Except, it never did.
Twenty-Six
The water was cold, her skin more shrivelled than normal – her toes, fingers, palms white and spidery blue veins livid on the surface of her hands. She didn’t know how long she had been in the bath but today was Thursday and as if on automatic, without a thought for the last few months, she had run the taps. Stepping into the lavender-scented water, it had hit her once more: this ritual no longer brought her any pleasure. It would simply be the only thing she did that day.
The thought of the emptiness gaping before her froze her in the water, until it gradually turned from hot to tepid to cold. Goosebumps appeared on her skin as she stared blankly at the tiled wall opposite, droplets of condensation snaking slowly down the ceramic, pooling on the lip of the bath. How many Thursdays had it been now – and would she feel the same every single Thursday from now on?
She moved and the water sloshed against the side as she reached for her towel, clutching the rail in the bath to help steady herself. Gingerly towelling herself dry, her features obscured in the steam in the mirror, she thought of the bare cupboards, the fridge with its paltry offerings. She could get dressed, head out, and yet… She took her dressing gown from the back of the bathroom door, shrugged it on, its familiar smell a small comfort as she padded softly back across to her bedroom, the bottom of her hair curling from the damp. Propping up her pillows, aware of the yawning silence, she rested back against the headboard, tucking her cold feet under the blanket bunched at the foot of the bed.
She must have dozed off, her stomach aching with hunger, her mouth dry. Reaching for the water glass, she realised it was empty, but she couldn’t face the interminable walk to fill it up. Every task seemed so gargantuan, so insurmountable.
The phone rang in the lounge, shrill and sudden, then stopped. Maria didn’t feel a flicker of curiosity: a cold caller no doubt, a stranger pestering her for something she wasn’t interested in.
Her book sat on the bedside table, as if confronting her. She didn’t need to see the list inside to know that the only things left to tick off were under her own name. She didn’t deserve to be on it at all. Albie hadn’t known the truth about her, hadn’t known what kind of person she truly was – if he had, her name would have disappeared sharpish, she was sure of it. The last item was impossible, something she couldn’t imagine, and didn’t want to think about.
Now that the list was all but over, and everyone was getting on with their lives, Maria had lost her purpose: that momentary zeal that had brought her such temporary joy gone. And the list hadn’t always been the great success it should have been. She had been so determined to honour Albie and yet she had managed to mess things up. She thought again of Cathie and Troy: would Albie be pleased with how she had handled things, despite everything? She closed her eyes, exhausted by her thoughts and by the heavy weight of grief.
* * *
Noises in the stairwell outside woke her: a baby’s wail, the insistent voice of a small child. She could hear the clump of items on the floor, an adult voice tired and pleading before a door opened and closed somewhere beneath her, then the sounds muffled by another wall.
How many other people were moving in and out of their lives in this block without talking to others? Albie had been a rarity, someone who had actively sought to help strangers – people he had no previous connection to at all. She marvelled again at his good nature, his generous spirit. Now she had put the list to bed that generosity had ended, and his light had truly gone out. The thought was so bleak she found a tear escaping, leaking down her cheek, to be absorbed into her dressing gown. Another hour and she would have been walking to the café to meet him.
She thought then of the last Thursday they had met: nothing had marked it out as particularly unusual. Albie had been sat at a table, a pot of tea in front of him, poised with a fork for cake. He had his back to the door and she remembered his head turning as she entered, his face lifting, eyes crinkling with the wide smile he gave her. He had stood up immediately – he always stood when she arrived – and he had reached over to kiss her lightly on the cheek. He had always greeted her like that, his skin brushing against hers for a second, his hair sometimes damp, as if he had taken a shower recently.
‘You alright, Maria? You look nice, that scarf’s very pretty,’ he’d commented, pulling out her chair for her.
She’d batted away the compliment, secretly thrilled as she’d spent an age selecting that exact scarf, and had dusted her eyelids with the same pinkish hues.
They’d immediately shared their news, Albie telling her about his visit to the library. ‘One of the children there asked me to read The Very Hungry Caterpillar again, he likes the way I go “Munch, Munch, Munch” apparently. I’ve added it to my CV.’ He had laughed, a building rumble that seemed to always make others want to giggle too. The only time she ever laughed in almost forty years was when Albie made her. ‘You should come next week,’ he’d tacked on.
How she wished she had said yes. She thought then of all the other times he had asked her to join him: ‘You should get yourself to the youth centre, come and see the changes’, ‘You could join me on the phones, the RSPCA always love a volunteer’, ‘We could go and check out that exhibition if you like’, ‘There’s a new Thai restaurant opening in Kemptown, do you like Thai, Maria?’, ‘Troy would love to meet you one day, I’m sure’. Always her answer had been the same: no, no trouble, no bother, no, no, no, no, no.
Why had she always answered in that way? Why hadn’t she just once seized on the opportunity to spend more time with him? Why had she imagined he was just being kind? Why had she really not wanted to be any trouble, a burden, a charity case? She knew now that he had cared for her deeply: what he had left her, the list, the things he had written, that final line.
What a waste, she thought, the tears thicker now, cheeks damp with them. What a waste. Her fault, all that time, those opportunities: gone.
It should have been her: no one would have noticed or been affected if she had gone. Instead he had left this enormous Albie-shaped hole that stretched out and touched countless lives. As she had worked her way through his list, she had seen first-hand the good he had done, felt the warmth from others as she put them first. It had felt amazing and wonderful and for a second, she convinced herself the connections were real, lasting. That he had managed to change her too.
Now though, in this silent apartment, with the ticks checked off, it seemed that it was over, that she had been wrong and that her joy had been fleeting. But glimpsing it had almost made it worse. She hadn’t exactly been happy in her previous life, but she had grown accustomed to the lack of action, the lack of anything much. Now, she felt the absence of anything meaningful keenly, because for a second, her days had been full with the joy of others, full of Albie’s life and laughter.
She shuddered, sinking deeper into the pillows, her chin lowered to her chest. Another Thursday, she thought, another Thursday with an Albie-shaped
hole.
We’d been fighting those last few weeks, always the same argument over and over. Her pushing to stay out later, to head out two nights in a row, and me saying no, setting a curfew.
‘I’m sixteen, an adult,’ she’d say.
But to me she was still my little girl. My little girl who never fights with me.
Last week I raided her room when she was out shopping, searching in the back of her drawers, under her bed, for I didn’t know what. Her diary was shoved between the frame and the mattress of the bed, more girly than she was currently trying to be, decorated with stars drawn in biro, hearts, her own name scribbled in different fonts. I stroked the pictures on the front, so tempted to open the pages and read the things she didn’t share with me, but I replaced it where it lived. I trusted her and there was a small part of me that simply didn’t want to know.
This was when I wished I had a partner, someone else to share the load. How I loathed Steve on days like this. I felt terrible – I’d stay on late at work and she’d get back from school on her own, or go to a friend’s, and by the time I’d get in, weary from the gruelling day I’d had, she’d be in her room, listening to her cassette player, not wanting to talk.
I left her notes, directing her to the new pack of Findus Crispy Pancakes, or the bowls of Angel Delight she used to love, that I would’ve made the night before. Does she still love it? I didn’t produce her a sibling; I wasn’t there waiting with a batch of homemade muffins ready to hear about her day. But I knew she was proud of me. She would often tell me so, asking about my job, listening carefully about the latest campaign I was working on. I didn’t want to give it up; I would tell myself it was because we needed the money – and that was true – but I also needed it, I needed to be me, not Mum/chauffeur/cleaner/fan. Just me.
The Wish List of Albie Young (ARC) Page 22