How to Say Goodbye

by Katy Colins

  *

  The night wore on. The boys flopped in the spare room. Everyone was a little merrier, especially Rory, who decided he wanted to get to the bottom of what I was doing there on his friend’s birthday. It wasn’t until after he’d asked me for tips on the best way to grow tomatoes, and gone on and on about the impressive trailing ferns that I’d planted, that I told him that I wasn’t actually Callum’s official gardener. We’d met in less happy circumstances.

  ‘I think it’s great, ya know!’

  ‘What’s great?’

  He lazily dragged his hand between Callum and I. ‘This, you two.’

  It was hard to see Callum’s face in the fading light. I fidgeted in my chair.

  ‘What do you mean? Us two?’ He gently scoffed. ‘There is no us two.’

  Rory acted like he hadn’t heard him. ‘I mean, you can never replace Abbie, you know that, right?’

  ‘She sure was one of a kind,’ I heard Mel mutter under her breath.

  ‘You just gotta do what you want to do. I reckon it’s a good thing.’ He lowered his voice. ‘I know you and Abbie weren’t getting on so well…’

  Her name hung in the air. I felt itchy and hot, despite the cool summer evening breeze.

  ‘If that means hanging out and making new friends, a friend that happens to be female, then go for it. I’m sure as hell not going to judge you for it.’

  ‘Er, when I’m dead there’s no way I’m giving Nick permission to move on. I want him mourning for me for the rest of his life,’ Mel butted in. ‘I’ll come and haunt you just to make sure.’

  ‘Ach, what a load of bollocks.’ Rory laughed, slamming a palm on the table. ‘Grace, do you believe in this nonsense?’

  ‘Well, I…’

  ‘Cal, Abbie won’t be haunting you. Wherever she is, she’ll have much bigger things to be getting on with.’

  ‘The only spirit I believe in is found in a bottle,’ Callum tried to lighten the tone. ‘Anyone for a top up?’

  ‘She’s not coming back. You know that, we know that. So, what else are you supposed to do? Stay celibate forever more?’ Rory said, matter-of-factly. He was slurring his words now. Being the only sober one I wasn’t sure the others had noticed.

  Callum seemed to choke on his drink. ‘This is not about sex!’

  ‘Alright, calm down!’

  ‘I’m so sorry about him, Grace, just ignore him. The drunkard Scot!’ Mel placed a warm hand on mine.

  ‘It’s fine!’ My voice was about three times higher than normal.

  Nick passed a few squares of kitchen roll to Callum to clean up the beer he’d spilt. I focussed my eyes on the liquid bleeding into the paper towel, avoiding the looks I knew they were giving each other.

  ‘You can’t expect to stay isolated and cut off from the opposite sex forever. You can’t live your life in the past. Whatever helps you to get up in the morning, to get dressed and face the day, well… no one can judge you for that.’ Rory finished his drink and raised his empty glass in the air. ‘Sure it’s a little odd that it’s the funeral arranger but, hey! I like the woman!’

  ‘Me too!’ Mel said, leaning over and pulling me into a hug.

  ‘That’s a first,’ Nick snorted.

  ‘I think you’re both getting the wrong end of the stick. Grace has just been helping me out with some gardening, that’s all.’ Callum ignored their matching raised eyebrows. ‘Seriously, she’s an excellent gardener who just happens to be a woman. Nothing more than that.’

  ‘Yep, what he said!’ I laughed, but it sounded all wrong.

  Mel smiled, getting to her feet. ‘Now that’s shut Rory up, I’ll go and put the kettle on.’

  I made my excuses to leave not long after that.

  Chapter 24

  ‘Are you awake? Stupid question. I woke you, didn’t I?’

  The sound of a phone ringing had pierced my dreams. It took me a second or two to realise my mobile was actually ringing in real life.

  ‘Callum?’ I yawned.

  ‘Sorry, yeah. Listen, I’ll let you go, I’m sorry for waking you.’

  I heard a rustle of sheets. I tried to shake the picture of him in bed from my mind.

  ‘No, it’s fine.’ I blinked rapidly. ‘I’m up now. I’m guessing you can’t sleep? Is everything OK?’

  ‘Nah, I just wanted to go through my phone contacts list. I’ve made it all the way down the list to S for Salmon.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘That was a joke, Grace. Sorry, I clearly think I’m hilarious at four a.m.’

  I could hear him smiling down the phone.

  ‘Clearly. So, what’s up?’

  ‘I just wanted to apologise for my friend Rory,’ he said deadpan. ‘He’s a real hoot.’

  ‘Ah, yeah,’ I winced. ‘It’s fine. I think he probably had a little too much to drink.’

  ‘You can say that again. But either way I should have said something sooner, it wasn’t fair him winding you up like that.’

  ‘Honestly, it’s fine.’ I just wanted to move on. There was nothing between us and there never would be, despite what a drunk Scotsman wanted to intimate. ‘Everything else OK?’

  It seemed a bit drastic calling at this time, just to apologise for his best mate being a bit gobby.

  He sighed deeply. ‘I don’t know…’

  ‘Struggling to sleep?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Have you tried all the usual stuff? Warm milk, hot bath, lavender pillow spray, meditation…’

  ‘You sound a bit like a sleep expert.’

  ‘I sometimes struggle with insomnia. What you need is a pair of socks.’

  ‘Socks?’

  ‘I’ve read that the secret to a good night’s sleep is to always keep your feet toasty warm. To be honest, I’d rate that above camomile tea, changing your mattress or installing blackout blinds. Thanks to the socks I’ve managed to get a solid, and pretty miraculous, five hours.’

  ‘I’ll keep that in mind. Mel wants me to get into meditating. It just sounds a bit wanky, if I’m honest. Apparently there’s this thing called death meditation. The Buddhists are big on it. It makes you realise how lucky you are to be here, and worry less about trivial stuff. Or something like that.’

  ‘I kind of get it. It might help? So, I think I know why you can’t sleep – you’ve clearly got a lot on your mind.’

  ‘Tell me about it!’ He laughed.

  ‘Do you want to talk about any of it?’

  ‘It’s four a.m. I’ve already taken up enough of your time…’ He trailed off.

  I suddenly didn’t mind him interrupting my circadian rhythm. I realised I was enjoying lying in the dark, hearing his sleepy voice down the phone. Judging by his pause he wasn’t desperate to get back to bed either.

  ‘I’m awake now. Go on. What’s up?’

  ‘Where to start? OK, the newest thing is that I’ve been thinking about other people I know who’ve lost someone they loved, and realising I’ve been a properly shit mate to them in the past. It’s like when someone dies you go into this club made up of people who’ve also been where you’ve been, and I just keep thinking how crap I was for others when they needed me. I’d try my best to cheer them up, then change the subject, not knowing what to say. I mean, I never realised how isolating grief was.’

  ‘I’m sure they knew you cared.’ I cleared my throat. ‘Have you been struggling to sleep for a while, with things like this on your mind?’

  ‘You could say that. Mel gave me some herbal sleeping tablets, but I’m such a groggy sod when I’m on them. I’ve got better as time has gone on, I guess. The first few weeks were the toughest. I couldn’t settle into a deep sleep in case Abbie came back… telling myself that she might have forgotten her key or something daft.’

  ‘I know of a few families I’ve helped who still, years later, sleep with the porch light on to light the way home for their loved ones. It’s normal for something like this to affect your sleep. I guess the empty bed is a
nother tough reminder?’

  He paused. ‘Between you and me and these four walls, I’d not shared a bed with my wife for the eight months before she died.’

  ‘Oh…’

  ‘Yep.’ He let out a deep sigh. ‘This perfect marriage wasn’t so perfect after all.’

  I remembered snooping in Abbie’s wardrobe; no wonder I couldn’t see any of Callum’s things in that perfectly made-up bedroom. God knows when he had last slept in there. I hadn’t expected them to live such separate lives. There was a long silence between us, long enough that I wondered if he’d fallen asleep.

  ‘Grace, can I tell you something else that’s been going around my head?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘This might just be me overthinking, but something’s been bothering me about Abbie’s death… Well… I keep thinking about it all.’

  ‘That’s perfectly normal. You’ve suffered a huge shock and trauma –’

  ‘Yeah, I know how she died but not why.’

  I stayed silent and focussed my eyes on the edge of my duvet. I wondered if he’d heard Mel’s rumours after all.

  ‘I don’t know why she was on that road that night, or where she’d been after dropping Owen off.’

  She had been with Owen on the night she died? I sat up straighter. I didn’t know that.

  He took a deep breath. ‘We’d had a row over something so small I can’t even remember now. She’d stormed out. It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence. I’d expected to wake up the next morning to face a stony silence, until one of us got over being so stubborn and attempted to make peace. I never expected to see a policeman at my door. He told me to sit down. Well, you know what that means…’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Callum.’

  ‘He’d asked me why my wife might have been on that side of town at that time in the morning. I told him I had no idea, that she probably wanted to drive to clear her head, but that wasn’t the truth. Abbie hated driving.’

  The pause stretched out between us.

  ‘I knew that she’d been at a nightclub with Owen, gatecrashing a perfume launch together.’ I wondered if Mel knew about this, if that was what had fuelled the rumours of Abbie being unfaithful? I’d tried not to think about what Mel had mentioned, about Abbie and Owen. It wasn’t any of my business, and it made me uncomfortable to think that someone was spreading rumours about a woman who couldn’t defend herself. I knew Mel and Abbie hadn’t had the closest of relationships, so whoever had told her knew she would fall for it. But despite not wanting to believe it, my head and my heart said different things.

  As fellow models at the same agency they could easily have turned their work friendship into something more. I still didn’t know much about the man who was with Abbie the night she died, as his social media all seemed to be set to private.

  ‘He told the police that she’d driven to the club, they had stayed out until he’d got too drunk, and then she’d dropped him home about midnight or one o’clock, but he couldn’t say for sure as he was so paralytic. Then she must have driven the long way home from his house, as she was found on the winding road that skimmed the edge of Ryebrook. But there’s time unaccounted for, no matter how slow she was driving…’

  ‘Maybe she wanted to go for a drive to clear her head?’

  I could picture him shaking his head. ‘No. She had never done that before. People change but not Abbie. Things just don’t add up.’

  ‘Have you told anyone else about this? How you’re feeling, I mean?’

  ‘No. For so long I blamed myself. But now, well, I don’t know.’ He sighed. ‘Maybe I wasn’t the whole reason for her death. Not coming home to face me wasn’t enough for her to absently drive around town. There has to be something else I’m missing here. Something that I’ve tried to ignore but can’t.’

  In the dead of night, he had been able to summon up the words that he’d not told anyone else.

  ‘I don’t really know what to say, Callum.’

  He let out a hollow laugh. ‘I don’t think there is anything to say.’

  Another pause. I desperately wanted to lighten the tone. I could feel us heading into unfamiliar territory, and I wasn’t sure how comfortable I felt. Suddenly this phone call in the dead of night felt very intimate.

  ‘It’s hard to find the right words sometimes, especially when it comes to death. Did you know that people are more likely to open up about their sex lives than their funeral plans?’ I said.

  He let out a sort of chuckle. ‘I can believe it. What was it that Raj said at the end of last week’s session?’

  I tried to remember. ‘Er?’

  ‘Something about the only things you can say both during lovemaking and at a funeral?’

  I groaned. Raj really did need to pick his audience better.

  He laughed. ‘He’s great. A little out there, but great.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’d go and see him at a comedy club?’

  ‘What! Course I would.’

  ‘Pfft.’

  ‘And you’d come with me. I’d make you sit on the front row, we could be his groupies, it would be hilarious.’

  ‘Never going to happen!’

  ‘I’m serious, Abbie, it would be brilliant.’

  I didn’t move. His slip-up hung in the air between us. The brief laughter in his voice brought to an abrupt end.

  ‘God, sorry. I don’t know where that came from. I –’

  ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘Grace, I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t mean –’

  ‘It’s fine. I mean, she’s obviously on your mind. It’s your birthday after all…’

  ‘But, I really didn’t –’

  I held up a hand – not that he could see me. ‘It’s cool. Honestly. Speaking of your birthday, it’s late and you probably need more beauty sleep now that you’re a year older.’ I tried to lighten the awkwardness.

  There was a pause.

  ‘OK, well, I’ll let you get back to bed, but thanks for listening, it means a lot.’

  ‘Anytime. I mean that.’

  ‘Thanks, Grace.’

  I hung up and rolled over, waiting for sleep but knowing I wouldn’t find it.

  Chapter 25

  ‘So, Julie, how’re you doing?’

  It was Grief Club once more. The first time I’d seen Callum since his Abbie/Grace mix-up. I hadn’t mentioned it and neither had he. We just carried on as normal, making small talk with the others.

  ‘It’s been a week of ups and downs,’ Julie nodded at me. I’m sure she was wearing a little make-up this evening. ‘I guess when someone suffers from a terminal illness, you think you’ll know what to expect when they eventually pass away but it’s not the case. I managed to hold it together for almost the entire day that my mum died until I went to her house. The silliest thing got to me: I caught sight of her slippers by the lounge door. Untouched since she had taken them off for what would be the last time ever, just sat waiting for her when she arrived home.’

  The picture she was painting was so hauntingly sad. The room waited on her every word, heads nodding in sympathy, or understanding, or both.

  ‘It was the normality of it all. Staring at these M&S dark pink slippers, ones I’d only bought her last Christmas, I realised she was really gone. The fact that they would never be worn by her again just ripped me apart. It has been so tough coping with these little empty spaces left behind. Spaces only she could fill.’ She paused to dab the tears from her eyes with a tissue Ms Norris passed her. ‘You feel sick at the loss of things you didn’t even know you could miss.’

  ‘It’s the small things that get to you,’ Raj nodded.

  Others murmured in agreement.

  ‘Exactly, like the trashy magazines that she adored, the half-empty bag of peppermint creams next to her favourite chair. The almost-finished tube of toothpaste, the knitting pattern she would never finish or the library book that she didn’t get to the end of. These ordinary items made me yearn for her much more than the big strik
ing memories. I craved for her to brew up – always milk first – in her tea-stained mugs. Trivial things we take for granted.’

  ‘I know just what you mean,’ Callum said quietly, his eyes low.

  ‘I wish I could tell others to savour these moments with their loved ones,’ Julie said. ‘You can see them going about their ordinary business without a second thought about the small habits, but boy, those are the things you miss the most when they’re gone.’

  I saw Callum give a slight nod. He’d told the group that he and Mel were making a start on clearing Abbie’s things at the weekend, a look of utter dread and resignation etched on his face as he’d said it.

  ‘But, like so much in life, I guess, clearing their things is always a harder job in your mind than in reality.’ Julie turned to face Callum. ‘Along with all the sentimental heart-tugging items my mum had, there was a lot of old rubbish.’ She let out a light tinkle of a laugh. I realised I hadn’t heard her laugh before.

  ‘I found myself rolling my eyes a lot and wondering why she’d bothered to keep hold of some stuff for so long. I can tell you, putting those two ugly china dogs that sat on the lounge window into the charity shop box was a good moment! I’ve always hated those dogs. Funny eyes.’ Julie shook her head at the memory. ‘Oh and don’t get me started on the out of date food that had been lurking at the back of her cupboards since I don’t know when. I’d been on at her for years to chuck them out but she was of that generation – waste not, want not.’

  Her eyes misted over.

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ said Callum. ‘I expect I am building it up a little – the dread. It’s just clothes and stuff, after all.’

  I couldn’t imagine how overwhelmed he must have been feeling at sorting through Abbie’s many, many clothes, deciding which items to hold onto and cherish, and what could be chucked away. The surprising value he would place on innocent jumpers or pyjamas – now she would never wear them again, they’d turned into priceless artefacts. Her DNA woven into the threads. Her smell sewn in the seams. It was not a task to envy.

  Ms Norris raised a hand to speak. ‘As the oldest one here I feel it is my duty to add something.’ Everyone turned to listen to her. ‘With age comes experience, but it also means that I’ve survived when a lot of people I’ve loved have not. I’ve lost family, old colleagues, neighbours and friends, and the only thing I know is that the pain of losing someone you love never gets easier. It tears a hole through you, it leaves an indelible mark and will never not be painful.’