by Lauren North
My hand reaches for the fridge to retrieve the milk. The magnet with Jamie’s school photo on it has fallen off again. Kicked under the fridge when the milk bottle smashed, I bet.
“No thank you, Tess. I won’t keep you. I . . . I wanted to tell you something at the funeral, but there didn’t seem to be a right moment.”
Acid burns at the back of my throat and my mouth fills with a metallic saliva. I flick off the switch on the kettle and plunge the kitchen into a loaded silence.
“The guilt has been eating me up inside. I’ve tried to come here so many times. I’ve been parked around the corner for the last hour trying to figure out the words to tell you this. The thing is . . . the event . . . the event in Frankfurt was canceled.”
“What?”
Tears are dropping from her eyes, and when she speaks it’s in between deep, wrenching sobs that make me want to yank the words right out of her. “An email went out first thing Monday morning from Frankfurt. Half the German office were down with flu so the trip was canceled. It was fine because the main flight wasn’t until ten thirty. But then I remembered Mark was booked on an earlier flight than the rest of us.
“I phoned him straightaway to check he’d seen the email. He was about to board the plane. I heard someone in the background asking for his boarding pass, but I thought he heard me tell him he didn’t need to go. I’m sure he laughed and said, ‘OK,’ but I was still at home packing and my phone signal was terrible. I kept breaking up. I thought he’d heard me but . . . but then I found out about the plane. It’s . . . my . . . fault . . .”
I stare into the watery eyes of the woman in my kitchen. She stops sniveling and takes a breath in without releasing it. Denise is the reason you are dead. This woman is the reason Jamie no longer has his father.
“I don’t understand. Why were the rest of the team on a different flight?”
Denise shakes her head and sniffs. “That’s my fault too. Mark asked me to book the flights and I was really busy that day. I’d only just been promoted and I was struggling to keep on top of the workload. Everyone was asking me to book their flights and hotels for the trip, and I thought I’d done everyone but when I came to send out the confirmation emails I realized Mark’s wasn’t there. By the time I tried to book his flights the ten thirty was fully booked. Mark was really nice about it. He said he didn’t mind going early and joked about it being a quieter flight without all of us on it . . .” Her sentence trails off and there’s a beat before she speaks again. “I’m so sorry, Tess. If I’d only booked him the later flight in time or spoken to him sooner on that Monday he’d still be alive.”
Denise’s words hang in the air and I know she is waiting for me to tell her it’s OK. She’s waiting for my clemency. For a fleeting moment I wonder how she found out about the crash, how she knew you boarded the plane. Did I call your office? I don’t remember. It’s another blank space where a memory should be. Ian must have done it. He handled everything else.
“It’s not your fault the plane crashed,” I say. “Mark liked going to the office in Frankfurt. He probably would’ve gone anyway since the ticket was already paid for.” It’s not really true, but it feels like the right thing to say.
Denise nods, her posture softening as though my words have lifted actual bricks from her own shoulders and dumped them onto my own.
“It’s not your fault,” I whisper. It is. It is. It is. I grind my teeth together and bite down on my lip before I can snatch back my faux forgiveness.
“Thank you for telling me.” I shuffle my feet to the nook and the side door and see Denise out. I can tell by the way she lingers in the doorway, her eyes flicking to the dinner plates and then back to me, that she’s hoping for more. More from me? Or more relief from her confession? Maybe she is hoping to see Jamie, but I’m not about to let that happen. He’s been through enough. We both have.
“Here’s my number,” Denise says, pressing a card into my hand. “In case you need anything. Call me anytime.”
I nod and open the side door. Cold night air stings my cheeks. The kitchen light shining through the window illuminates a square of gravel on the driveway, but the rest of the drive, the rest of the world for as far as I can see, is black.
Denise hangs her head and steps past me. I’m about to shut the door when she turns and speaks. “I . . . I wanted to ask you—has anyone called you?”
“Sorry?” My tone is snappish, and I don’t mean it to be, but I’m so tired now. What more can there be to say?
She shakes her head and steps away. “Nothing. It doesn’t matter. Good to see you, Tess. I’m so sorry.”
Denise strides into the darkness and I hear the beep of her car unlocking.
I shut the door and try to process Denise’s final question. Something about a phone call. I let the thought go and think of you instead.
Oh, Mark. You didn’t need to go. You shouldn’t have been on the plane. If only you’d turned around and come home.
Stop, Tessie. It doesn’t matter now.
It does, but I’m suddenly too tired to argue.
* * *
—
My hand trails the wall as I move through the house. A spinning has taken hold of my head—long, meandering loops that make me feel sick to my stomach and tired. Really tired.
I find Jamie facedown on his bed. The room is cast in a pale blue glow from the nightlight in the corner. From the doorway I can’t make out his features but somehow I know he’s crying.
“Jamie, baby?” I sit beside him on the bed.
He lifts his head and looks at me. Even in the gloom his eyes are startling, and glassy from tears.
“Oh, baby.” He heard Denise’s confession. Anger wends through my body. I’m not sure if it’s Denise I’m angry at for off-loading her guilt, or Jamie for overhearing it, but I push my teeth together, waiting for the worst of it to pass before I trust myself to speak.
It’s not Jamie’s fault.
I lie down on the single bed, squishing my body against Jamie and the wall.
I’m sure there are things I should tell him, comforting words I should offer, but my mind is blank—numb. You shouldn’t have been on the plane.
It’s an effort to talk, and my words are as slurred as my thoughts. “I’m so sorry.”
You’ll get through this, Tessie. Just like last time.
You’re wrong, Mark. This is nothing like before. Last time I was mourning a family we couldn’t have—a brother or sister for Jamie. I lay in bed and cried and cried thinking of the family I’d always wanted. I worried so much, wondering why we were failing this time and what our lives would look like without the family I longed for.
You didn’t understand. You thought Jamie was enough for us. You were right, but you were wrong somehow too. It wasn’t about Jamie; it was about the picture in my head of days at the beach and Christmas dinners with children laughing and playing.
I couldn’t see past it. I let the worrying gnaw at me until it was all I had inside. The worry worm, my dad used to call it. Did I ever tell you that? “Oh, Teresa’s worry worm is back,” he’d say, opening up his arms and letting me scramble onto his lap when I was six, maybe seven. I’d dry my face on the sleeve of his shirt and tell him my worries about the waves swallowing our house, a hurricane blowing us away, a car crash, a madman, and a thousand other things.
The fears changed as I grew up, but the worry has always been the same.
I tried to hide it from you, Mark. I tried to bury the worry deep inside and I bit my tongue to stop the questions coming out and the fear from sounding in my voice. You saw it anyway. I guess it’s why you kept things from me—a loan from Ian, your secret project. What else didn’t you tell me?
This feeling, it isn’t worry, it isn’t like before. This loss is raw—an open wound, blood that won’t clot, tissue that won’t heal. I’m worried about thi
ngs, sure, but it isn’t all that there is.
Exhaustion is tugging at my thoughts and my eyelids are pulling closed. In the darkness I feel the fog creeping back until I see nothing but you.
CHAPTER 13
Saturday, February 24
43 DAYS TO JAMIE’S BIRTHDAY
The phone is ringing. Ringing and ringing—an incessant noise that pierces my sleep and drags me into the world.
I breathe in and peel open my eyes. There’s an alien feel to my surroundings and it takes a beat for the hazy memory of cuddling in Jamie’s bed to drift into my thoughts. I stare again at the room and recognize the row of Ninja Turtle figures on the shelf.
Slits of gray daylight penetrate the edges of the curtains.
“Jamie?” I call in a voice husky with sleep. “Jamie?” I shout this time.
“I’m on the PlayStation.” His voice carries up the stairs.
“What time is it?”
He doesn’t answer.
I stagger to the end of the hallway and to your makeshift study with the old desk you did your homework on as a boy. The room is icy-cold and I long to dive back under the covers in Jamie’s room. Like the rest of the house, your study is still filled with the cardboard boxes from moving day. They are tucked up against the wall and stacked three high. Resting on one of the boxes is the cordless telephone sitting in its base, and I snatch it up.
“Hello?”
It’s an effort to keep my eyes open, as if the air is filled with needles prickling my irises. I close them and feel myself drift again.
“Tess?” Shelley’s voice jolts me back to the room. “Are you there, Tess?”
“Um.”
“I’ve been trying you all morning. I was getting worried. You were going to call me to talk about what happened at the supermarket.”
It takes me a moment to remember what Shelley is talking about. “What time is it?”
A gust of wind blows into the microphone, and I imagine Shelley on her mobile, walking somewhere.
“It’s . . . twelve thirty,” she says.
“Oh.” Twelve thirty on a Saturday. Did we have plans today? I can’t remember. Guilt jabs at me—a pin to a balloon—and I’m no longer floating in and out of sleep. I’m awake. “Sorry.”
I haven’t made any lunch or breakfast. I race down the stairs as fast as my legs will allow and poke my head into the living room. Jamie is engrossed in a football game on the PlayStation.
I cover the microphone and whisper to Jamie, “Have you eaten?”
He twists his face around and flashes me a brief smile, nodding his head before losing himself once more to the game on the screen. I can tell he’s pleased with himself. For making himself his own food or for being able to play on the console all morning without interruption, I’m not sure.
The relief that he’s eaten doesn’t touch the surface of my guilt. How could I have slept all morning? What if Jamie had gone outside? Run into the road?
“Tess?” Shelley’s voice breaks into my thoughts again. “Are you all right?”
“I . . . I’m not feeling too good. I think it’s flu.” The lie seems garbled, even to me. I move an arm and rub my eyes. My muscles feel weak, overused, but from what I don’t know.
“Tess, this is me. I’ve been where you are. Is this about thinking you saw Mark? What happened?”
“A . . . a woman from Mark’s office came over last night.” I lower my voice to a whisper and stagger from the living room and along the corridor to the kitchen. “She told me the event in Frankfurt was canceled. There was no reason for Mark to be on the plane.” A sob shudders through my body and I drop onto one of the kitchen chairs.
“Oh, Tess, that’s awful. I’m so sorry.” There’s a pause before she speaks again. “I’m coming over.”
“You don’t have to do that.” The line is dead. She’s gone.
I don’t know how long I sit there for, in yesterday’s clothes, with yesterday’s dinner congealing by the sink, but my bare feet are numb from cold by the time there’s a knock on the side door.
“Tess?” Shelley calls out.
“I’m coming,” I shout, heaving myself out of the chair. It’s only then, as I’m reaching for the handle, that I remember I haven’t told Jamie. I’m not sure I’ve mentioned Shelley to him at all, in fact. He won’t be happy, but it’s too late to do anything about it now.
A burst of cold air blows straight through me as I open the door. Shelley is wearing the same tight jeans, with a red V-neck jumper this time. The winter coat and the suede boots have been replaced with a black silk scarf and a pair of black Converse trainers.
“Hey.” Her smile is as wide as it was on her last visit, as if she is on my doorstep for a lunch date, a catch-up with an old friend, instead of here to help me pick up the pieces of my shattered life. “You look dreadful.”
“Thanks,” I say, and maybe because Shelley’s energy is infectious, or maybe because she didn’t tiptoe around how awful I look, I smile.
“Shall I put the kettle on? We can talk some more.”
“I . . .” I shake my head. “I’m so tired.” Tears flow from my eyes like a tap someone has forgotten to turn off. “You didn’t need to come over. I’m sure your volunteer role doesn’t extend to weekends.”
“I’m not here as a grief counselor, Tess. I’m here as a friend, one I think you need right now. I understand what you’re going through. So why don’t you go back to bed for a bit or have a bath if you prefer? Get some rest. We can talk later. I’ve got some food in the car. I can make dinner. Leave everything to me.”
Shelley slips out of her shoes, leaving them in the nook beside Jamie’s, and steps through the kitchen. I’m about to trail after her and protest, to remind her how shy Jamie is, but before I have the chance I hear him talking. I follow the noise and stand in the living room doorway. Shelley is moving around the room, fluffing cushions and scooping up a pile of newspapers in the corner that have been there since forever.
“These are the controls,” Jamie says. “X to pass and O to tackle.” The way he’s talking it’s as though they’re old friends instead of total strangers. There is no hint of the shyness he so often shows. I guess he feels it too—Shelley’s energy and the way she understands without having to say anything.
Shelley looks up and smiles.
I want to join them. I want to flop onto the sofa and listen to Jamie’s chatter, but I can’t. There’s a dead weight on my chest. I have to lie down. I have to sleep.
“Are you sure you don’t mind if I go back to bed?” I ask them as a yawn takes hold of my body.
“We’re fine, Mum,” Jamie shouts back.
“Leave it all to me, Tess,” Shelley calls after him as I’m already moving toward the stairs.
It’s OK, Tess, I’m here.
You’re not, though, are you, Mark? Your voice is really my voice.
Do you remember our first holiday with Jamie? We took him to Portugal, and he spent most of the holiday trying to eat the sand.
I remember.
All those waiters kept tripping over themselves to speak to you.
Hardly, but keep talking to me. I like to hear your voice.
CHAPTER 14
It’s the sound of Jamie’s giggling that pulls me back to consciousness. Our bedroom is dark. I stare at the curtains waiting for my eyes to adjust and see daylight, but it’s not there anymore. How long have I been asleep?
There’s a glass of water on the bedside table and I gulp it back in one. The liquid sloshes inside my empty stomach, leaving me suddenly nauseous as I stand and make my way downstairs.
I find Jamie alone in the living room. He’s lying on his stomach, sprawled across the rug, legs kicking back and forth as his eyes scan the pages of a Where’s Wally? book.
The lights are on and it’s dark outside. I’ve lost
all sense of time but I can tell by the puffy skin around his eyes that it’s close to bedtime. I should tell him to get ready for bed, but it doesn’t seem fair, considering the day he’s had.
My heart aches staring at our son. Love—pure and raw—floods my body. The plane crashed and took you with it. It took a sledgehammer to my world, but I still have a world because of Jamie. I am nothing without him.
“Hey,” I say from the doorway.
Jamie’s legs stop midair and he looks up at me, wobbling that front tooth back and forth, back and forth.
“Are you OK? Sorry about today,” I say.
“I’m fine. Shelley looked after me.” Jamie’s tone is matter-of-fact. His attention is back on the beach scene in the book and finding Wally’s dog.
“What have you done today?”
“Er . . . played on the PlayStation—Shelley’s really good. She beat me three times. We dusted, played football in the garden, cooked dinner,” he says, rattling off the answer like a list.
“You cooked?” I gaze around the room and notice the clean floors and the smell of jasmine furniture polish. There’s another scent: herbs and chicken wafting from the kitchen.
A proud smile spreads across his face. “Yep. I chopped the onion. Shelley is amazing. She let me use a proper knife. It was much easier than the baby knife you make me use.”
“Oh . . . that’s good.” At least I think it’s good. Good that Jamie has had fun and opened up to Shelley. Maybe not so good that he used one of the sharp knives I don’t let him touch for fear he’ll cut himself.
I’m about to ask another question, but voices in the kitchen stop me. Shelley’s voice, and a man’s voice too. Why is there a man in my house? What if it’s the police? What if they have more bad news to give me?
Stop worrying, Tessie.
I can’t, Mark. My heart is pounding in my chest and my mouth is dry.
“Stay here,” I manage to whisper to Jamie.