by Paige Toon
‘Da,’ she says.
‘You want Daddy to sing you a song?’ I ask her.
She stares up at me with her very blue eyes.
‘I think she wants you to,’ Charlie says. ‘I think “da” means “yes”.’
‘Shall I sing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” again?’ I don’t take my eyes from hers. This time she nods and it’s such a sweet sight, my heart feels like it’s going to burst.
‘Just put her in her cot when you’re ready. She should settle, but give me a shout if you need me,’ he whispers. I wait until he leaves the room before I start to sing.
I’m feeling oddly emotional as I back out of April’s room. I placed her down in her cot when I came to the ‘lemon drops’ bit and sang the rest of the song with my hand on her chest. She let me walk out of her room without so much as a peep. She’s unbelievably good at her bedtime routine.
‘It’s all down to Kate,’ Charlie responds when I gush about how lovely his daughter is. He’s sitting at the kitchen table.
‘No, I don’t believe it’s that,’ I say decisively. ‘She’s just a really good baby, isn’t she?’
‘She’s pretty incredible, yeah,’ he agrees, distracted by whatever it is he’s doing.
‘What are you up to?’ I ask, moseying over.
He has his toolbox on the table.
‘Just trying to find a drill bit that would work,’ he mumbles, rummaging around.
‘For the sea glass?’
He nods, and then I see it – the small pile of coloured, smooth pieces on the table.
‘Could you dangle some pieces of painted driftwood in amongst it, too?’ I ask him.
He smiles up at me. ‘I had the same thought.’
I grin and sit down. ‘Can I help you?’ As soon as I ask the question, I backtrack. ‘Oh, it’s okay, I’m sure it’s something you want to do for her yourself.’
‘You can help if you want.’ He looks at me for a long moment.
God, his eyes. They really are unusual. I’ve never seen a colour like it.
I’ve had boyfriends in the past who have looked similar to other boyfriends. Jorge had the same caramel-brown eye colour as Felix, and Gabe’s were the same dark shade as Dillon’s. When Liam frowned, sometimes I’d think I was looking straight at David because their expressions were so similar, and, even though Beau and Freddie looked nothing alike, there was something about the way Beau’s eyes creased when he laughed that would bring Freddie to mind.
When I saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens I completely identified with that little-old-lady thing with the big, round glasses who said that she’s lived so long, she sees the same eyes in different people.
I know what she means. I see the same eyes in different boyfriends, too.
But I’ve never seen Charlie in anyone.
Chapter 27
‘I really want another beer,’ Adam announces at nine o’clock.
‘You can’t, you said you’d drive Bridget home,’ Charlie replies resolutely. He’s had one too many himself to get behind the wheel.
‘I can walk,’ I scoff.
‘I don’t want to drive myself home,’ Adam cuts off whatever it was Charlie had opened his mouth to say. ‘Can’t we just crash here?’
‘You can. Bridget won’t want to sleep on the sofa.’ Charlie casts me a sidelong glance.
‘Are you kidding? This is the comfiest sofa in the world,’ I reply. ‘I never want to leave.’ I’m tucked up under a fleecy blanket that he dragged out of an upstairs cupboard for me. We’re sharing the larger of the two sofas, but he said I could lie down. He’s right at the other end. I did protest, but he insisted.
‘You can stay if you want,’ Charlie tells me.
‘You’re not worried about leaving us in the same room together?’ Adam chips in cheekily.
Charlie lets out a sharp laugh. ‘Nope, not any more. Bridget is more than capable of fending you off.’
‘I thank you for your faith in me,’ I say to Charlie, mock-sincerely.
‘Awesome.’ Adam stands up. ‘Who wants one?’
I assume he means a drink, so I reply in the affirmative.
‘I’ll probably still walk home,’ I say to Charlie when Adam has left the room, calling out to us to pause the DVD until he gets back. We’re watching Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Charlie missed it when it came out at the cinema last December.
He was a bit preoccupied at the time.
‘You should stay,’ Charlie says, draping his arm across my ankles. I don’t know why, but this makes me feel squirmy, until he casually squeezes my toes in such a friendly manner that all I want to do is smile at him.
‘Maybe,’ I murmur, staring at the paused TV.
‘What’s he doing?’ Charlie mutters after ages of our waiting. ‘Adam?’ he calls out. He cocks his head to one side, listening. ‘Is he on the phone?’
I lift my ear free of the sofa to check. He definitely sounds like he’s talking to someone.
‘Fuck this.’ Charlie unpauses the movie.
A moment later, Adam returns.
‘We got tired of waiting,’ Charlie says, glancing up at him. The sudden change in Charlie’s expression makes me whip my head around. ‘What is it?’ Charlie asks Adam uneasily as his brother kneels in front of me.
‘That was Michelle,’ Adam tells me gravely, as I push myself up on my palm, wondering what the hell is going on. All of his cheeky humour has vanished from his face.
‘Bridget, Beau died two years ago.’
‘What?’ I ask, even though I heard him perfectly.
He looks pained. ‘It was a drug overdose.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘Not Beau.’
I sit up properly, folding my legs up underneath myself. I’m vaguely aware of Charlie pausing the film again and staring ahead in a daze.
If I were lying on Beau’s sofa, he’d somehow manage to squeeze into the gap behind me. He’d wrap his arms around me and pull me tight against his torso so that we’d both fit side by side. We could stay there for hours in that position, watching telly. He was so warm and affectionate. I adored him. I loved him. And now he’s gone.
I can’t believe he’s gone.
Despite their attempts to persuade me otherwise, I tell Adam and Charlie that I’m going back to the campsite. I insist on walking – I need the fresh air – but I’m also craving my own space. I’m intensely aware that my sadness might be causing Charlie pain or bringing back memories of his own.
I know that what I’m feeling is minor in comparison with what he went through – is still going through – but, even though Beau might not have been my childhood sweetheart, my husband of many years or the father of my beloved child, he still meant a lot to me, and I’m crushed by the news of his death.
My mind is racing as I set off at a fast pace along the footpath. It was a heroin overdose – a heroin overdose! Michelle told Adam that Beau fell in with a bad crowd a few years ago, but, even though he occasionally dabbled in recreational drugs at parties, I never thought he’d go that far.
Who the hell was he when he died? What on earth happened to my Beau?
It hurts so much to think about it.
I hear the sound of footsteps jogging closer on the footpath behind me and I look over my shoulder, preparing to move aside, but instead I stop in my tracks, because it’s Charlie.
‘Don’t argue,’ he states firmly when he catches up with me. He knows from the look on my face that I was about to scold him, but then I’m in his arms and he’s holding me so tight I can hardly breathe.
‘You don’t have to be here,’ I say in a strangled voice.
‘It’s okay,’ he replies into my ear. ‘I want to be here.’
I lose it then, right there on the Camel Trail.
I have very troubled dreams that night. Beau is in them, and Charlie, too, but when I wake up I can’t quite remember what they were about.
I have a feeling it’s just as well.
Beau is buried in Yealmpton, n
ear Plymouth, about an hour and a half away. Charlie has offered to drive me there. I don’t say much in the car. April has her nap and we listen to the radio.
I’ve brought my camera and my notepad, but I don’t feel like putting pen to paper. I sit and stare out of the window for the most part.
Beau’s parents chose to bury their free-spirited boy on a grassy hilltop with far-reaching views of Dartmoor and the Yealm estuary. It’s a natural burial site, and, to preserve the environment, his coffin was made of willow, which will return to the soil as nature intended and won’t impede the growth of the saplings that will be planted in memory of those who are buried here. One day this entire hill will be covered with trees.
No headstones are allowed, but one of the Woodland Burial Association’s employees shows us the site where Beau’s body was lowered into the ground.
Charlie takes April for a wander and I’m left in peace.
‘I wish you could see the sea, Beau,’ I whisper, as I sit there on the grass, surrounded by wildflowers. Skylarks sing overhead as I take time to remember the boy who once took a piece of my heart.
And there is no way now that I can ever ask for it back.
‘I can’t write about this,’ I tell Charlie later, when we’re in the car on our way home. My notepad lies open in my lap, the blank pages rustling in the wind from the open window.
‘No,’ he says. ‘No.’
As if it really were that simple.
Chapter 28
‘Bridget you must,’ Sara says the next day. I’m in Nicki’s office and she’s called me to check on how it’s all going. I’ve just told her I can’t write about Beau. ‘You absolutely must,’ she repeats. ‘This is exactly the sort of chapter that will bring some grit to your book. It can’t all be light-hearted fluff.’
Er, pardon? ‘I didn’t think it was,’ I say narkily.
‘You know what I mean,’ she soothes. ‘There’s not a whole lot of depth to your chapters at the moment. They’re fun, but, if you really want people to care, I think you need to let them see your emotional side. It needs to be more heartfelt. You can’t possibly leave Beau out of it. I thought you’d already written about your time with him.’
I emailed her an update on where I was at with my blog only last week.
‘Yes, but—’
‘So it shouldn’t be too hard to write up yesterday.’
‘Well—’
‘Hard is the wrong word,’ she interrupts. ‘But remember, the best writers put themselves out there. They lay themselves bare,’ she says weightily. ‘The reason Nicki’s book was such a success is because she allowed the reader to see inside her heart. We felt everything Kit was feeling, every painful decision she makes, every butterfly that, I don’t know, flaps around her chest.’
Flutters, I think to myself distractedly.
‘I’m not the writer,’ she continues, ‘but you know what I’m saying.’
Unfortunately, I do.
I still don’t really understand how Nicki wrote so authentically about her heroine, Kit, being in love not just with one person, but with two. The love she speaks of is so deep, so passionate, I’m not sure I’ve ever felt anything on that scale before.
Well, not with anyone other than Elliot when we were sixteen. But that was first love. And first love, though ardent, is not necessarily long-lasting; the sort of love that endures.
I still can’t believe we found each other again. We’ve both matured, we’re both more experienced. Our relationship this time around really could go the distance.
I don’t know why I think about Charlie at that moment, but I do.
I firmly push him out of my mind and slam the door shut behind him.
Somehow Sara manages to convince me that I should write about Beau, but I can’t quite bring myself to tell Charlie. I have this horrible feeling he’d be disappointed in me.
On Monday afternoon, I return my attention to the second row of books on Nicki’s top shelf. They’re very dusty and I cough as I try to lift some of them down without falling off Nicki’s swivelling chair. Frustratingly, most of them are nothing more than old school textbooks.
I have a quick flick through her A-level English language study guide – if only for nostalgic reasons: I used to have the same book myself. A single sheet of paper falls out onto the carpet.
I bend over and scoop it up. It looks like a poem in Nicki’s handwriting:
I am not one thing
But many little pieces
Divided but allied
One of these I gave to you
Now part of it has died
Every time you hurt me
Every time you make me cry
That little piece of me you own
Withers up inside
For now it’s still alive
You haven’t lost me yet
But others have
Others have
And that’s something
You should not
Forget.
I sit down on the chair, shivers ricocheting up and down my spine. My pulse is racing. This is too strange. Too coincidental. When did Nicki write this?
I turn over the page, but there’s no date.
I am not one thing
But many little pieces
She felt the same way I did.
One of these I gave to you
Now part of it has died
Who is she talking about? Who did she give her heart to?
Did she write this poem while she was still at school? Is it about Isak?
Or Charlie?
I’m not sure I should show him – what if it hits him hard like the driftwood heart did? That was such an awful day, but, then, he did seem to feel better afterwards.
And this poem is relevant to my work. This is Nicki, writing from the heart, about her heart. I’d like to know when she wrote it. Charlie did say I could ask him anything. I’m hardly going to ring his mother about it.
April is still in the midst of her afternoon nap when I come out of my office, and I think twice about disturbing Charlie while he’s working. Eventually, I go downstairs to make a cup of tea and take the page with me, just in case he ventures indoors.
He does.
‘Hey,’ he says, wiping the sweat from his brow as he comes through the French doors. I notice he’s not wearing Nicki’s headband today. ‘God, it’s hot.’
‘Do you want a cuppa?’ I ask, turning on the radio and filling the kettle.
‘No, I need something cooler.’ He gets a glass out of the cupboard and opens the fridge, his eyes landing on the piece of paper on the worktop. ‘What’s this?’ he asks as I tense.
‘It fell out of one of Nicki’s books. Have you seen it before?’
I watch with trepidation as his eyes dart back and forth, reading down the lines of verse on the page.
‘No,’ he murmurs eventually, turning it over.
‘There’s no date,’ I tell him, relieved that he’s not freaking out.
‘It looks like her handwriting from when she was at school,’ he comments. ‘It’s pretty melodramatic, which also sounds like Nicki back then.’
‘Do you think it’s about you?’ I ask.
His lips turn down at the corners. ‘I don’t think so. This has Isak written all over it.’
He sounds on edge. I go and stand beside him, leaning against the counter as he reads the words again.
‘I guess I’m one of the “others”,’ he says drily. ‘Along with Samuel.’
‘Urgh, Samuel,’ I moan. ‘He sounded like a right little prick.’
Charlie flashes me a grin and some of his tension dissipates. ‘He was. Twat.’
I nod at the poem. ‘How do you feel about it?’
‘Not great,’ he admits, sobering. ‘It was a long time ago, but it brings it back a bit, to be honest.’
He pushes off from the worktop and places the sheet of paper face down on the counter, filling his glass with apple juice.
‘Sara want
s me to publish my Beau account,’ I reveal, and then start with surprise because I thought I’d decided to keep that information to myself. For as long as I could, anyway.
‘Are you going to?’ he asks.
‘I think so. She put up a good argument.’
He doesn’t say anything, nor does he meet my eyes. After a few moments he says, ‘I’d better crack on,’ and there’s an edge to his voice that makes me feel a little queasy.
‘Sure,’ I reply.
His disappointment plagues me that night as I write about Beau at Hermie’s bright yellow table. I try to put Charlie out of my mind and focus on the job at hand, but it’s easier said than done.
I seem to be doing quite a bit of that at the moment where Charlie’s concerned.
Chapter 29
‘I’m a-coming to Cornwall!’ Marty exclaims, laughing down the phone on Tuesday night.
‘Really?’ I ask with excitement. ‘When?’
‘This Friday, baby! Ted’s got a stag party and I am so there. So there.’
I have a feeling she’s been watching a lot of American TV recently. She used to be obsessed with US high school dramas when we lived together in our early twenties.
‘I can’t wait to see you!’ she cries.
I would like to say thank you here to Ted’s friend for being so accommodating. Yay, marriage.
‘Will you drive down?’ I ask.
‘Yep, I’ll set off straight after work.’
‘Friday rush hour? It’ll take you forever!’ I say with alarm. ‘Can’t you come earlier?’
‘No, we’re going away for a long weekend in early September so I can’t really afford to take more time off.’
‘Okay.’ That’s a bit of an anti-climax. ‘We’d better make Saturday a big one, then.’
‘Hell yeah!’
I bump into Jocelyn on my way to Charlie’s on Wednesday morning. She’s just leaving her house.
‘Off anywhere nice?’ I ask her, smiling at Thomas, who’s in the process of trying to kick his shoes off from the looks of it.