Fierce Fragile Hearts

by Sara Barnard

  ‘We both knew what it was about going into it,’ I say. ‘That’s the thing. We agreed. He’s the one who blindsided me.’

  Rosie lifts her head. ‘Life doesn’t work that way, Suze. Love doesn’t work that way.’ She sighs. ‘Poor Matt. I liked him.’

  ‘So did I,’ I say. ‘And this all means I’ll probably lose Kel, too. But that might have happened anyway, what with Caddy and everything.’

  Rosie rolls her eyes. ‘Oh yay, this part of the conversation.’

  ‘You knew it was coming.’

  ‘This is all you and her,’ she says. ‘Can’t I just not be involved?’

  ‘You don’t have to be involved. But can you just tell me if she’s going to be mad at me forever?’

  ‘One, that is being involved. I’m not your go-between. And two, obviously not. Don’t be stupid. Just let her be mad for a while, that’s all you need to do.’ She glances up as the waitress arrives with our food. ‘Gross, I haven’t washed my hands. Be right back.’

  When she and the waitress are gone, it’s just me and Jade, sitting across the table from each other. ‘I’m sorry about all this,’ I say.

  She looks up at me from where she’s carefully separating her burger into parts. ‘All this?’

  ‘All the drama,’ I say.

  Jade smiles a little, more to herself than to me. ‘Listen,’ she says, reaching for the ketchup and knocking a splodge of red sauce on to one of the buns. ‘This is the first time I’ve ever been to Brighton. I’ve come here with my girlfriend, who’s pretty great, you already know, and I’m meeting her mum, and her best friends, and I’m seeing where she grew up. This is all kind of a big deal, you know? So, I mean this in a nice way, but I really don’t care about whatever drama is going on between you and Caddy and whoever that guy was. Like, I literally don’t care. Why would I?’ She’s looking at me like she’s expecting me to tell her, and I can feel my face starting to turn red. ‘Don’t you think it’s kind of self-centred to think I would?’

  I open my mouth, but I’ve got no idea what to say.

  ‘I’m not trying to make you feel bad,’ Jade says, shrugging. ‘Really. And I’m not trying to be a bitch. But sometimes people just don’t realize things, you know? So, it might be a big drama to you, but to me, it’s just a fight between my girlfriend’s friends that has nothing to do with me. Hey, do you like onion rings? You want mine?’

  ‘Sure,’ I say, trying to regain my footing. ‘Thanks. You’re right. It is self-centred.’

  She glances up. ‘Kind of self-centred,’ she corrects, and I think she’s teasing but I can’t be sure.

  ‘Kind of crap,’ I say, hoping to self-deprecate myself into someone she could like. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be sorry,’ she says, so easily I know she means it. ‘Really.’ She smiles over my shoulder and I glance back to see Rosie, beaming back, easing between the tables to return to us.

  I watch them both as Rosie sits down, her hand sliding across Jade’s back on the way past. I hadn’t thought I’d had any preconceptions of what Jade would be like, but I clearly did, because I realize as I sit there that I’d been expecting Rosie to choose a girlfriend who was like Caddy; conciliatory, a bit quiet, happy to let Rosie lead. What a stupid thing to think. Why would her girlfriend be anything like her best friend, just because they’re both girls? Jade is nothing like Caddy, and nothing like me, either, for whatever that’s worth.

  ‘So tell me about what you guys did today,’ I say, moving the conversation to where it belongs. ‘Be detailed. I want to know everything.’

  By the time I get home, I feel better. I still have Rosie, and I trust her when she says it’ll all blow over eventually with Caddy. ‘Best friends fight,’ she says, and Jade nods. ‘They just do.’ I’m trying not to think about Matt, because there’s a deep pain somewhere in my chest when I think about how I spoke to him, and I don’t want to poke it. So I push thoughts of him down and away, where I don’t have to deal with them. I already miss him. And, weirdly, I miss all the potential of him that I’ve taken from my life; all the fun we could have had together, all the ways we could have been great.

  Now I’m back alone in my flat, I can’t stop thinking about how the night could have gone. How it should have gone, from his point of view. If I’d said yes, if I’d said, I love you, too. We’d both have been so happy. Isn’t that the normal response to an ‘I love you’? From someone whole and good and sane, maybe.

  I message Caddy again, and get no response. I try Rosie.

  Me:

  Thanks for tonight. And can you say thanks to Jade, too?

  Rosie:

  Any time. Jade says no worries. We’re going to get the train up the coast tomorrow. Want to come?

  Me:

  I’m working! But thanks ☺ Have a good time. I love you xx

  Rosie:

  Course you do, I’m great. Love you too.

  Don’t worry about Cads, OK? Just give it time.

  I will xx

  I spend the next couple of days at work, losing myself in the monotony of coffee cups and loyalty cards and wiping the same stretch of counter over and over. I end up telling Farrah, my workmate, about Caddy and Owen and Kel and Matt, and she’s fascinated, demanding to see pictures of everyone so she can ‘visualize it all properly’. We go to the beach together after our shift and talk on the pebbles for a while, and it’s nice to spend some time in an ordinary friendship, where the stakes don’t feel so high.

  I don’t hear from Matt or Caddy, but Kel invites me over the next evening and we watch The Grand Budapest Hotel in his conservatory with a couple of his housemates, sharing buttered popcorn and chocolate fingers. Neither of us talks about his best friend or mine. It crosses my mind that if mine and Kel’s friendship is the only thing that survives romantic love going wrong, that wouldn’t be so bad.

  On Thursday I carry my guitar on my back and get the bus to the care home to see Dilys. I’ve got a small pot of daffodils in my hand, yellow and bright. I’ve decided that I’m not going to bring any of it up with her, I’m just going to play the Joni Mitchell song I’ve been practising – ‘River’ – and read the last chapter of The Little Prince. I’m hoping she might let me keep the book when we’re finished, because I like it a lot more than I thought I would, and I kind of want to read it again. There’s a bit about a fox that makes me think of Caddy and me, and I want to show it to her when we’re friends again.

  This is what I’m thinking about when I wave at Ines on reception on my way into the building and head down the hall towards Dilys’s room. The fox and the wheat fields.

  And then I see the empty room and everything goes out of my head, because I know.

  And when I hear my name, and turn to see Marcus, I know all over again.

  And when he says, ‘I’m so sorry no one told you,’ I know a third time.

  And then, finally, I hear the actual words. ‘Dilys died on Monday.’

  I can hear my own breath, somehow still steady, in and out of me, and it’s comforting in a weird kind of way. I focus on it, each breath, each heartbeat.

  I’ve never known anyone who died before. My grandparents either died before I was born or when I was too young to know. The closest I’ve ever come to death is when it was me, thinking I was choosing it willingly. I’d thought of it as an exit, then. An escape route. I was used to it, I thought. But I’d always been thinking of death in terms of how it affected me. For all my obsessing – and I had obsessed a lot when I was really ill – I’d never thought beyond it being a choice I could make. My own death hadn’t seemed scary to me. But the death of other people, people I love, people who are bright and kind and loving … Impossible.

  I’d known Dilys was old. I’d known she was ill. But she wasn’t that old, and she wasn’t that ill. I’d thought there’d be years of daffodils and talking and music. She was going to get strong enough to have Clarence back. She was going to teach me to play the piano. But she didn’t even get better enough
to say my name.

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ Marcus says.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘She had a heart attack,’ he says.

  ‘A heart attack?’

  He nods gently, like he doesn’t want to scare me.

  ‘Not a stroke?’

  ‘No. But sometimes, after a stroke, the muscles around the heart can be affected. That’s how it was for Dilys.’

  No one told me that. None of the pamphlets I read told me about that. I’d thought I’d been prepared, I really did. I researched. I tried, didn’t I?

  I feel like I should ask more questions, but I don’t know what they are. I feel so young, all of a sudden. ‘Was she alone?’

  Marcus shakes his head. ‘I was here.’

  ‘OK,’ I say, trying to smile. ‘That’s good. You’d be a good person to be here.’ I don’t even know what I’m saying.

  ‘I’m sorry that no one let you know,’ he says.

  ‘Why would they?’ I reply, more bitterly than I intended. ‘I’m not anyone.’ God, don’t be pathetic. Don’t make this about you being pathetic. I press the ridges of my knuckles to my eyes and take a breath in. When I open them again, Marcus is watching me, sympathy all over his face. I ask, ‘Do you know anything about the funeral?’

  He nods. ‘Her nephew left his number and details in case anyone wanted to go along.’ He reaches out a gentle hand to me and I step back in confusion. ‘Do you want me to take those?’ he asks.

  I’m still holding the daffodils. I look down at them, incongruously yellow, and I think how Dilys will never see flowers again. ‘No,’ I say. I know it’s rude to be so abrupt but if I have to speak any more I’ll cry.

  I walk slowly down the hall towards the exit. Kelly, the care manager, walks past me with a distracted smile. I don’t know if she’s forgotten who I am, or who Dilys is, or the fact that we’re connected, but it hurts all the same. I detour on my way out and stop by the common area. An old man and a younger woman are playing backgammon. An old woman is asleep on a chair by the window. I go over to her and carefully, quietly, put the daffodils on the windowsill so they’ll be the first thing she sees when she opens her eyes.

  And then I go home.

  34

  ‘Song For You’

  Alexi Murdoch

  When I get back to my building, I can’t quite face going inside it. I sink down on to the steps looking out at the street, thinking about Dilys. The last time I saw her, when she’d held my hands between hers, a contented smile on her face, while I talked about … What had I talked about? I don’t even remember.

  I pull out my phone and twirl it in my fingers for a while. I want to message Matt, but I know I can’t. Not after the way he left, the things I said. Let him be free of me, that’s the fairest thing.

  But I still want to, so badly. I open WhatsApp and stare at his name. I type, Dilys died. And, I miss you. And, Do you play at funerals? I delete them all.

  I press the call icon. The screen transforms, the rings sound in the air, his face in a little circle.

  ‘Hello?’ His cautious, confused voice. And it’s the weirdest thing, because I feel how much he knows me in that one word. He’s angry, he hadn’t expected to hear from me again, and he doesn’t want to talk to me. But he also knows that there must be something wrong for me to call, that I wouldn’t even think about doing it unless I needed him. And he’s answered, despite it all, because he cares.

  Maybe I know him, too.

  ‘Hi,’ I say.

  There’s a long silence. ‘What do you want, Suze?’

  I look out across my tiny part of Brighton. The rows of Victorian houses stretching down a hill. There’s a woman pushing a pram. A man talking into his mobile. ‘Dilys died.’ My voice breaks, but I don’t cry. ‘I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I just …’

  He’s saying, ‘Shit.’ He’s saying, ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘You’re the only one who really knows about her, and … no one else would understand why I …’ I try to swallow. ‘I’m sorry, I know you can’t do anything, I shouldn’t call you.’

  ‘Are you at home?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘OK, I’m going to come over. Is that OK? Is that what you want?’

  I wipe at my dry eyes. ‘From London?’

  ‘I’m in Brighton.’

  ‘You’re back in Brighton?’

  ‘I never left. I’m staying at Mum’s.’

  I say, ‘Why?’

  He says, ‘Suze.’

  And I say, ‘OK. Yes. Please. Come over.’

  I’m still sitting there when he pulls up outside half an hour later. He gets out of the car and walks slowly towards me, pausing by the steps.

  ‘Hey,’ he says.

  ‘Hey,’ I say.

  He sits down beside me, cautiously, like he’s waiting for me to say no. We both sit there for a while, staring out at the street. At some point he puts his arm around me and I let my head rest on his shoulder. I think about what people would say if they could see us like this, how weird they’d think it was after everything. But they’re not here. They’re not us.

  When we finally go up to my flat, I still haven’t cried but my head is heavy with the denial of it. I unlock my door and let us in, feeling him hesitate behind me before coming inside.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asks me.

  I shake my head.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I don’t really know what to say.’

  ‘Me neither,’ I say. ‘It’s like …’ I swallow, trying to think of the right words. ‘I feel so sad. But it’s like I’m not allowed? No one even told me. And why would they? I’m not family. I don’t even know how to explain who she was to me. It’s not like I can say she was my gran or something. She was just … just this random old woman.’ Tears are stinging my eyes. My throat is tight. ‘And she …’ I don’t have words for this. ‘She liked me.’

  He tries to take my hands. ‘Lots of people like you.’

  I take my hands back, sliding them under my arms, holding myself in. ‘No. No, you don’t get it.’ Maybe people do like me, when I’m in Suze mode, charming them with some stupid performance, but that’s not real. Dilys never saw any of that, and she liked me anyway.

  ‘Hey,’ he says, so soft. ‘Hey.’ He touches my arms and I let my hands fall loose to my side. I let him hug me, and that’s when the tears finally come, hot on my cheeks. Dilys, adjusting my elbow when I held her violin. Calling me ‘my dear’. Smiling wonkily at me from a hospital bed, like she couldn’t want anyone there but me. Dilys, never looking at me like so many people do, even people who love me, like they’re waiting for my next mistake.

  The knowledge hits me hard, a punch to the chest: I never told her. Never, not once. I never said, ‘I’m really glad I got to know you. Thank you for giving me your washing machine and your time. Thanks for caring.’ Would that have been so hard?

  Matt kisses the top of my head, and a fresh jolt of guilt and pain sears through me. I take a step back. ‘I’m sorry for all the things I said to you. I didn’t mean them.’

  ‘It’s OK, Suze. We don’t have to talk about that now.’

  ‘We do. You’re so …’ So what? Kind? Patient? ‘You deserve so much better than—’

  ‘Stop,’ he says, but gently. ‘We really don’t have to talk about that now. Let me make tea, OK? Tell me more about Dilys. How far did you get with your classical education? You never told me.’

  Oh God. It hurts that he’s so nice. It actually physically hurts.

  I press my fingers together so hard the tips turn white. I watch him go to the kitchen and take a hold of the kettle. ‘Did I tell you she was in the Hallé Orchestra?’

  He shakes his head. ‘I don’t really know what that is, sorry.’

  ‘It’s a really prestigious orchestra in Manchester,’ I say. ‘Like, you have to be really good to play in it. The best. So that means she was this incredible violin player. Not just good, you know? I never got to see her play, becaus
e of how bad her joints were, but I saw a YouTube clip.’ I take a deep breath. ‘Her life was classical music, and she got to, like, the top level of it. That’s pretty cool, isn’t it?’

  ‘Very cool,’ he agrees.

  ‘She was going to teach me how to play …’ My voice breaks. I clench my teeth. ‘The piano. She did that too, played the piano. And she taught it for years. I bet loads of people in Brighton can play because of her.’

  ‘My sister’s piano teacher was a woman in Brighton,’ he says. ‘I’ll ask what her name was. Wouldn’t it be cool if it was Dilys?’

  ‘Why are you being so nice to me?’ I ask. The kettle lets out a squeal as it comes to the boil. ‘I was so horrible to you.’

  Matt lifts the kettle and pours it into two cups. ‘I care about you,’ he says. ‘And you’re hurting. So I’m here. That’s the only equation that matters right now.’

  ‘That’s a good line,’ I say. ‘Put it in a song.’

  He looks up at me. ‘Those were all good lines, weren’t they? That’s a whole verse, right there.’ He pulls out his phone. ‘One sec, writing it down.’

  We sit for a while on my bed, drinking tea and talking about Dilys. Every now and then the tears come again, then fade.

  ‘When’s the funeral?’ Matt asks. ‘Do you know?’

  ‘No. I’m going to ring her nephew tonight and find out.’

  ‘Do you have anyone to go with you?’ he asks. ‘That seems like a lot to do on your own.’

  I shake my head. ‘I don’t know anyone else who knew her. Maybe someone from the care home will be there? I’m not sure how it works.’

  ‘I can come with you, if you want,’ he says. ‘If that would help.’

  I look at him. His sweet face, crinkled slightly with the effort of saying the right thing. Way back when Matt and I first met, Caddy and Kel had been so full of warnings, but they hadn’t warned me about his goodness. How nice he is. The thing I have no defence against.