‘I read her letter. It said, “Frank, I’m so sorry. I can’t go on. I thought when I met you I could change for the better, and I’ve tried, I have. But nothing changes. I love you, and the boy. Don’t blame yourself. Take care of him, Frank. He’ll be so upset. Grace.”’
There was a pause, and I thought of the letter I had pushed into Hugh’s hands just hours earlier.
‘She couldn’t even bring herself to say my name,’ he said, unable to meet my gaze. ‘I didn’t really know what the letter meant, and it was Dad’s lie in, so I waited until it was eleven and I made him a tea, like she always did on a Saturday. And when he asked where she was, I said, “There’s a letter downstairs on the table. Mum says she’s sorry, but I don’t know what for.”
‘I’ve never seen him move so fast. He tore down the stairs, picked up the rings and the letter and ran out into the street. I went after him, and I told him it had been there when I’d got up, that it had been there a long time.
‘And he grabbed me, and shook me, and asked me why I didn’t wake him. And he kept shaking me and crying, and shaking and crying. When he let me go, he went into the house and called the police. She hadn’t taken anything. No clothes, no money. Her purse was on the sideboard. No door key. Later that day they found a pair of shoes on the beach in Clacton. They were Mum’s shoes. That was all we knew about what happened next: a pair of shoes on a beach.
‘There was an inquest, more than a year after she disappeared. It was an open verdict, but we got a death certificate. We had a funeral. There was an empty coffin, even. Dad was a fisherman; this is his jacket. He taught me to love fishing too. He’d take me on weekends, after she’d gone, deep into the countryside, to fish. It was wonderful and awful, because … after she’d gone, there was this kind of peace, this tranquillity that wasn’t there before. It was after she was gone that I realised I was like my dad; that we liked the same things: reading and fishing, history and ghost stories. Life with just the two of us, it was gentle and kind. On Sundays he’d drive us out of the city, to posh parts of the Thames, and we’d fish. And sometimes I couldn’t help being glad that she wasn’t there, and I couldn’t help but wonder if, somewhere under the surface of the water, she was watching us – angry that we didn’t miss her more.’
He pauses and shudders, closing his eyes for a moment. I reach for the sugar bowl, picking up a sachet of sugar, just for something to do, something to look at, because looking at him now feels too intrusive.
‘When I was about sixteen, I went to look for something in the shed – I was building something. I wanted to make a table, that was it, for Dad’s birthday, so I went to look for some tools. Right at the back of the garage there was something covered up with ground sheets. I pulled them back and there were stacks and stacks of boxes. Forty-four boxes. Each one filled with six empty vodka bottles. Dad kept her empties, for years. He went around the house and collected them, poured what he could down the sink and put the bottles in the garage. I guess it was before the days of recycling. He never wanted me to know that she drank, and I didn’t know until that moment. I had no idea. I was this happy little kid, with this happy mum who’d take me out in the middle of the night to look at stars that we couldn’t really see, or get me up at five a.m. to come with her and watch the sunrise, and I loved it. I loved that I had a mum that took me on adventures, and a Dad that slept in on Saturdays. And then … it all changed and she was gone. She was gone and she couldn’t even write my name in her suicide note. And for the last twenty-five years, I’ve woken up every morning knowing that my mum didn’t love me enough to stay alive. Until this morning. Now I know she didn’t love me enough to die.’
There is nothing to say, so neither of us speak. Instead we just sit in the café, sipping cold coffee. Taxi drivers come in and out. Conversation and laughter, life, going on around us, everywhere except for the four square feet where we are. Here, life is standing still, and there’s a kind of bond between us – a survivor’s bond, perhaps. Or just the bond of the broken-hearted. But I feel it; it’s comforting.
Meeting Hugh’s eyes, I notice that behind his glasses he has hazel eyes that seem kind and warm. He doesn’t hate me, the way that I thought he might, the way that he perhaps has a right to. He sees me. He sees why I did what I did, and he understands.
‘I thought that if I delivered the letter to you before your mum died, I could be a hero, at least in your lives if not in my own. I had an idea that I could at least save something – save you, save Grace. Make something that was terrible, better, but it was a stupid idea. A thoughtless one. I shouldn’t have given you the letter at all. I should never have written it. I just wanted to feel important, somehow, to someone. To feel that I mattered. It was selfish, and I am so, so sorry.’
Hugh sighs, shakes his head. ‘Would it have been any better if you hadn’t delivered the letter?’
‘Well, you’ve moved on. You had grieved, and now I’ve dragged you back into pain that I imagine took you years to recover from. So yes, yes, I think it would have been better.’
I glance across the road at Marie Francis. At this time of night, it looks dark and closed, but that’s just because you can’t see the ground floor from behind the wall.
‘Are you late for work?’ he asks me.
‘I’m not due in. I was only going in to tell Grace what I’d done.’
‘How long has she got?’ he asks.
I remember my dead phone and hope it’s not too late, that the choice hasn’t been taken out of our hands.
‘I’m not sure,’ I say. ‘I can find out, if you give me a moment?’
He nods. ‘I need to know if I have time to think, or if there is anything to think about.’
Mandy, the night nurse on duty whenever I am not, is surprised to see me.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asks. ‘Surely you’ve got something better to be doing with that lovely strapping husband of yours?’
‘I wanted to check in on Grace. I’ve been thinking about her; how is she?’
Mandy checks her notes.
‘Stable, comfortable. Keris is visiting with her now. She’s peaceful. Why?’
‘Why what?’ I lean against the desk, wondering if this is the news that Hugh will want to hear.
‘Why have you come all this way to ask about Grace? Why not call?’
‘You know, sometimes a patient just gets under your skin,’ I say.
It’s clear that Mandy doesn’t believe me, and she knows that I know that, but she doesn’t question me further.
‘Well, she’s stable for now, pain-free.’
‘How long do you think?’ I ask her.
‘We never answer that question. You know that,’ she says, bemused. ‘Stella, what’s going on?’
I glance at Grace’s closed door; the low light that radiates from it seems so comforting and secure. Am I bringing a whirlwind into her life? Am I bringing the chill of anger and regret into what should be a peaceful death?
‘Grace asked me to do something for her, and I … I’m not sure if I have enough time to do it. That’s all. I got sidetracked and I forgot, and I’m hoping that I’m not too late. I couldn’t rest. You know how it is.’
Mandy gives me a decidedly sceptical look. ‘All I can tell you is she’s comfortable. It could be another day or two, it could be hours. You know how it is.’
‘OK, thank you.’ I attempt a reassuring smile.
‘What is it?’ She reaches across the desk, taking my hand in hers; her fingers feel so warm and strong. ‘You’re freezing! At least have a cuppa as you’re here, and talk to me. You seem like you might need someone to talk to about something.’
I squeeze her fingers back and let them go.
‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘But I’m fine, honestly. I can’t stay for a tea. Vincent is waiting for me.’
‘OK.’ She accepts my explanation, but I see her face is full of concern. ‘Stella … you look … just tell me, are you OK?’
I think for a m
oment. My fragile life, constructed of matchsticks, has disintegrated around me. And yet, I do feel OK. I feel somehow free. Sometime in the last twenty-four hours, I reached the very bottom. I’m here, I’ve arrived, and it’s survivable. Now all I have to do is find a way to surface again and the courage to take another breath of air.
‘Everything will be OK, one way or another,’ I tell Mandy, and I walk back into the night.
Dear Deborah,
I hope this letter finds you better than it does me. I must admit I’ve wondered how you will take the news of my demise; if it will be with ill-concealed glee or something a little more sober. I hope you’re not completely delighted to hear of my passing. I hope you remember some of those twenty years we were married to each other as happy.
Deborah, I want to apologise for the way that I treated you, over the matter of our divorce. I thought that I had fallen out of love with you, and in love with another woman. But the truth is, it wasn’t love, or even lust, that drove me to end what had been a very satisfactory marriage; it was fear. Suddenly I felt old and afraid. I think I thought that having a new wife, a wife twenty years younger than me, might make me somehow immortal.
The truth is, Deborah, I think she probably drove me to the very edge of this early grave I am about to find myself in. It took about a year for me to wake up and come to my senses, and perhaps you will be glad to know that the last eight years have been wrought with regret. How I have missed you. Your quiet passion for life, your grace, your scent. The smooth plane of your cheek, the way your hair fell against the back of your neck. Your familiarity, your calm.
Of course you will say that I am just a stupid old man who always wants the opposite of what he has, and you are right, I expect. You remarried, of course. I always knew Kevin carried a torch for you. I do hope that you are happy. In the divorce settlement, I got the fisherman’s cottage in Devon that I know you always loved, but now I am bequeathing it to back to you, in the hope that sometimes you will remember our first summer there, when we did nothing but make love and laugh all day.
Your first husband,
George
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
HOPE
‘Right, then.’ Ben takes the key from the receptionist, and we head towards a tiny and suspect-looking lift.
When it opens, it looks like a small, mirrored, upended coffin, with barely enough room for one. Panicking, I look around for some nice reliable stairs to idle up, but if there are any stairs, they aren’t around here. There’s no emergency exit – that just about sums up my entire life.
‘After you,’ Ben says. Without an escape route, I see no alternative but to step inside the tiny box, and Ben follows me.
At once we are thrown into uncomfortably close proximity, and I am excruciatingly aware of every inch of Ben that I already, at least in theory, know so well. His hair, blacker than black, thanks to semi-permanent gloss, which he doesn’t know I know he applies (but is fairly obvious due to the blue tide marks behind his ears). The scar on the back of his neck from when he fell off his Chopper bike doing wheelies when we were nine. His arms, mostly bare; the curve of his forearm; the small of his back. I’ve never thought about … about what’s under his trousers before. And how can it take so many seconds for a lift to go up two tiny floors. He raises an eyebrow at me, as if he’s somehow sensed my mental skimming over his genitalia, and I close my eyes. Is he thinking about me naked? Am I thinking about me naked? I don’t know when I last shaved. Will he expect me to be bare down there like an adult film star, when I am entirely as nature intended me? Perhaps we can turn out all the lights.
The relief is palpable as the lift door slides open and we tumble out of it.
The corridor is narrow and long, with an odd-angled curve at the end, following the unorthodox cutting and shutting together of a row of crumbling terraces.
‘Room thirty-two…’ Ben says, tapping the key card against his chin as we follow the trail of numbers. Finally we stop in front of a white-painted door bearing our number. Ben jiggles the key card in and out of the lock several times before finally the red light flashes green and it releases the lock. He pushes the door open and stands back to let me in first. I keep expecting him to laugh and change his mind, to point and guffaw and say something like, ‘I really had you going. Christ!’ But he doesn’t; he’s very quiet. And so am I. This feels more like a condemned man’s last walk to the electric chair than a lovers’ tryst.
The room is not nice, exactly. It might have been, once – about fifteen years ago – but if you squint, and don’t notice the threadbare curtains, the coffee stains on the carpet, the shadow of an iron burn on the carpet next to the bathroom, or the greying nets, then, yes, it’s OK. It beats a hospital room, any day of the week. It’s clean, at least, and with the bedside lamps turned on, it’s pretty cosy. It’s not a terrible place to have sex.
The trouble is, now we are in the room, I have no idea what to do. I look at Ben, at a loss.
‘Well, you’re the one with the six lovers,’ I tell him. ‘You start.’
‘Not six lovers all at once,’ he says. ‘Shit, I don’t know. Shall we have a drink?’
‘Did you bring anything?’
He looks crestfallen then nods at the mini kettle in the corner.
‘Cup of tea?’
I can’t help but cover my mouth with my hand, and he smiles. He takes a step closer to me.
‘We should kiss,’ he says. ‘The last time I kissed you, I wasn’t at the top of my game. But I’m sober now, and also germ-free.’
‘Have you got a certificate to prove that?’ I ask him. This time his smile is shy, nervous. It’s nice. I like the fact that he isn’t treating this like a joke. If he did, I’m sure I would lose my courage much sooner.
‘About those six girls,’ he says. ‘There were only three of them. And I’m not sure one counted.’
He takes another step closer to me and places his hands carefully on my hips. I gaze resolutely downwards.
‘It’s going to be hard to make out with the top of your head,’ he says.
‘I was just thinking about other stuff, you know. Practical stuff like … like condems. I mean condoms.’
‘I’ve got it covered,’ he says. ‘Well, it’s not covered yet, but it will be.’
It’s a terrible joke, but we both have to repress a snigger.
‘I think let’s stop with the talking and try the kissing again,’ Ben says.
Taking a breath, I look up and see him, his face right there. That dear face that I’ve always known, that sweet mouth. We slowly move together, our lips meeting hesitantly. It feels weird and strange. I close my eyes and concentrate on the faint pulsing of blood under his skin. His tongue tests my mouth, and I remember the last kiss, when I had resisted, and teeth and gums and saliva were in all the wrong places at all the wrong times. This time I let him lead me into the kiss; I let him explore my mouth, and then I reciprocate. It’s almost like writing a song, a balancing act of discovery, each of us sensing the other as we look for harmony. Pretty soon, much sooner than I feared, it starts to feel right, this kiss. If my eyes are closed and I don’t let myself think too much about who I am kissing, it starts to feel really good. My arms snake upward around his neck, and I’m pulling him closer to me, enjoying the resistance of his firm body against my soft one, and then he moans with what I imagine is desire. Ben moans, and because it’s Ben, I freak out and let him go.
‘What?’ he says, taking a breath. ‘I thought it was going quite well.’
‘Nothing, nothing,’ I say. ‘It was just you made a noise, and you know. It was like you were getting into it.’
‘I was getting into it. Weren’t you?’ he asks me. ‘I mean, there isn’t a rule that says we can’t get into it, is there?’
‘Yes, I mean no,’ I say. ‘I was enjoying it. But … look, I haven’t been with even three women … I mean men … so cut me some slack. Let’s just be a little less … into it. At least out loud.’
Ben grins, and I pick up a cushion and throw it at him.
‘So what next?’ he asks me. And the way he looks at me, it’s different from any way he’s ever looked at me before. The atmosphere has changed between us; it’s charged with something that I didn’t expect at all: anticipation, expectation, even desire. I realise that we both want whatever it is that is going to happen next, and it’s a revelation that’s both exciting and terrifying. I need to be in this moment, and I need to be brave. I liked the way he wanted me just then. I liked the way my kisses made him moan with desire; it makes me feel bold. I grab the hem of my shirt and pull it off over my head, revealing my black vest, which shows pretty clearly that I am not wearing a bra.
‘Shit,’ Ben says, staring at my breasts. ‘You look good in that.’
‘Your turn,’ I say, tossing my shirt over my shoulder, warming to my role as sexual siren. He hesitates, and my confidence ebbs a little. ‘Come on, fair’s fair.’
Still his hands remain at his sides, and I think, well, I’m in this deep, so I attempt a sort of a flirty swagger over to him and start to unbutton his shirt, my fingers fumbling with the stupid little buttons.
‘Press studs would be easier,’ I mutter. ‘Didn’t you have anything with Velcro?’
His hands still mine, and finally he pulls the shirt off over his head.
‘That works,’ I say. Well, I more sort of squeak. It’s odd to look at him this way, to see the curves of his muscles, the flat surface of his stomach.
We Are All Made of Stars Page 20