Wilde About the Girl

by Louise Pentland

  THIRTY-FIVE

  NOVEMBER

  AS NOVEMBER ROLLS IN, the nights become darker and the days become greyer. I try to carry on with an upbeat attitude and I can confidently say I’m not feeling The Emptiness, but I am feeling something else. Or rather a lack of something. Life after nearly two years of some pretty full-on highs and lows has started to feel a little bit humdrum. We all seem to strive towards building the perfect routine, getting on top of things, keeping life simple; but then you do it, figure it out, and suddenly you find yourself in your reasonably tidy house, with your child’s school bag packed and ready by the door for the next morning, your work inbox clear and you, alone, on the sofa, glass of wine in hand, binge-watching Mad Men for the third time, wondering if you too could pull off a pencil skirt that tight. I’m not sure this is exactly what I’ve been striving towards …

  I’ve been thinking about Edward quite a bit. Maybe it’s the darker evenings and seeing couples in bobble hats holding hands and looking cosy, or maybe it’s just that, actually, he was a good guy and I blew it because I’d been scarred by the bad guy. Fucking Theo. I hope he’s happy doing whatever he’s doing. This, clearly, is a lie. I hope he’s unhappy. Not in a serious depression or severe physical illness way, but at least a few mild ailments. Maybe head lice or a light skin condition. Perhaps a bout of shingles. On his face. Anyway, peace and love, peace and love.

  I should be thinking about my future, not my past. So, channelling my inner sassy pencil-skirt-wearing redhead from Mad Men, I ping Edward a message for the first time in a while.

  Heya! Just watching Mad Men and thought of you in New York. Wondered how things were going and if you’re this side of the ocean any time soon? R xx

  I hit send before I can analyse it and then, obviously, analyse it. Worst message ever. Who says ‘heya’ these days? I sound so desperate. I may as well have put ‘TB’ at the end, for ‘text back’, like we used to do at school.

  I wish I lived in New York. I could skip about in $400 high heels like Carrie from Sex and the City, and then come home to my trendy studio apartment and write about all the men who have been throwing themselves at me. That’s exactly how it would be. As it stands, these days Auntie Kath has a more exciting love life than me.

  What I need is a night out. The problem is, I also need people who can come on a night out with me. Gillian and I were supposed to ‘pop out for a couple’ last week, which I had high hopes for, but at the last minute she cancelled because Clara had a temperature. I’d asked Finola, too, but she said something about ‘loading the horses’ the next morning and I didn’t question further.

  Lacey and Piper used to be a good bet for a night out, but with one sister on the other side of the world living her art-curation dreams and the other one at home probably knitting gender-neutral booties, neither of them is much help right now. Natalie, too, has been known to let her hair down a bit, but since her overwork-induced marriage wobble last year, she’s spending a lot more time with Martin.

  In a desperate bid for some excitement, yesterday I even asked Skye what she was doing on Friday night. Lyla is with her secret-doughnut-scoffing dad all weekend, and I’d wager that Skye knows all the places to be in Cambridge. Unsurprisingly, though, she has plans with Neil. They’re going to Bath to watch him compete in a body-building contest and then having a night out with ‘the lads from the show’. Skye has to help Neil ‘oil up’, and that’s not something I want to know more about. I will say, though, she looked genuinely touched when I asked her if she fancied an end-of-week drink. You’d think I’d told her I was going to offer her one of my kidneys or something – I saw a glimmer of real emotion for at least forty seconds. Good.

  I give in and text the likely bootie-knitter.

  I’m SO bored. Are you up to much? Send.

  Karl and I are practising our hypnobirthing breathing. Reply.

  Ooohhh that sounds fuuunnnnn. Do you fancy doing something Friday night? Something chill? Maybe pop into a pub for a nibble? I omit the part about me drinking a bottle of wine by myself and perhaps drunk-dialling Edward once I’m home.

  Love to, but I can’t. Having a new supplier start with Dovington’s on Saturday so doing a stock take. Come to that though, if you want some company?

  So we’ve gone from a fun night out of fizz and flirting to sitting in a closed florist’s on a Friday night helping my pregnant friend tidy up and rejig the shop. Not ideal, but better than another solo sofa night.

  Can I bring wine? I ping back.

  Yep, as long as you bring me the imitation stuff too!

  See you at 7 with a bottle of Shloer! I reply.

  Not exactly what I was looking for, but a plan is a plan.

  YES, EXCITEMENT IS ON the horizon! After essentially being tricked into free labour for Lacey (it turns out she decided at the last minute to completely reorganise the entire shop and it was non-pregnant muggins here who did all the lifting and dragging for her), we sit in the back room with non-wine, real wine (ha, take that, Preggo – you may get to put your feet up, but I get all the wine), a bag of Babybels (cheese and wine, very classy) and a tube of ready-salted Pringles, and I have a good, full moan. I talk about how boring things feel at work now we’ve experienced the high of LFW and it’s back to regular jobs again, how I’ve organised everything in the house and there feels like nothing else to do at home. I tell her how we don’t see Kath as often because Lyla is so unsettled by Colin, and about how all the PSMs are too busy with their sick kids and horses to hang out. I even confess how I’ve messed it up with Edward. He seems uninterested these days (he did reply to my last message, but simply to say that he was well, that he also loves Mad Men and that he’s not over again till Christmas. There were no leading questions or conversation starters, so it fizzled out there. I replied with just an OK-hand emoji because I’m easy-breezy (I tell myself). Lacey listens as I try to explain how I feel like I’m just plodding through motherhood, not doing anything amazing or ‘wow’. It’s funny how for so long my goal has been to be this settled and sorted, and now that I basically am, I’m bored. I need a ‘thing’. There’s something very cathartic about a good whinge to a good friend.

  ‘What you need is something to look forward to!’ declares Lacey, wafting her bottle around dramatically (why use a glass when it’s all for you, anyway?).

  ‘Yesh!’ I slur.

  ‘You’ve got three weeks till the big three-oh. Let’s have a party!’ she says, like this is the best idea anyone has ever had.

  ‘Nooo! Oh no, no, no,’ I protest, instantly visualising all the ways it could be a disaster.

  ‘Robin Wilde, you are turning thirty years old on December the tenth and you need a party. I will do the whole thing. I want to do this for you. You deserve it. It will be magnificent. You will be magnificent. I will be magnificent.’

  ‘Why don’t you say “magnificent” some more?’

  ‘Magnificent,’ she says with a twinkle in her eye.

  ‘OK. Magnificent,’ I agree, weakly.

  THIRTY-SIX

  LACEY’S PARTY PLANNING ISN’T the solution to everything, however. Despite numerous pep talks and heart-to-heart chats, Lyla is really struggling with Colin being in our lives.

  I had thought a little time would do the trick, or that our mini-adventure to the Lakes would help (though I still shudder at the knee-bashing incident), but unlike me, Lyla just cannot bring herself to let Derek go and warm to Kath’s new relationship.

  Derek was a wonderful man. He really was Kath’s other half, and even though he passed away before Lyla came into the world, he has been so often talked of and so highly elevated that he’s become almost godlike to Lyla. Of course he had his faults, and I’m sure he and Kath had their off days, but once someone’s gone, you don’t talk about those bits, do you? You never hear someone saying, ‘Oh, such-and-such had a beautiful soul … never bloody unloaded the dishwasher, though, did they?’

  And we don’t just talk about Derek – so much
of his essence, his photos and possessions still adorn Kath’s house, it’s almost as though, to Lyla, he’s still here. A friendly, comfortable part of our lives, and her innocent childhood loyalty can’t cope with Colin edging in. That, and she hates sharing her beloved Kath, of course.

  Breaking point came three days ago, when we visited Kath for only the second time in a month. Lyla is used to going round there a lot more than that, but Kath has been saying she’s a ‘bit busy’ when I’ve asked if she can babysit, and likewise, Lyla hasn’t been itching to go ‘if Colin’s there too’. So it’s been a bit of a stalemate, and I thought if I went too, and on a day when Colin was at the warehouse, we’d make less of a hash of it.

  We went through to her front room and sat in our usual places: Lyla and I on the chintzy floral two-seater sofa opposite the fireplace and Kath in a high-back crushed-velvet cerise chair. Just as I was about to dive into conversation about Lacey planning a thirtieth birthday party for me, Lyla jumped up, marched over to the tiled hearth, crammed with photos, trinkets, old pine cones and candles, and in one big movement, kicked over a silver-framed picture of Kath and Colin. Glass smashed everywhere, Kath and I jumped up and Lyla screamed at the top of her little lungs, ‘Where’s Derek?’

  ‘What are you thinking?’ I shouted back, shocked, as Kath started picking up shards of broken glass without saying a word.

  ‘This is Derek’s place, not HIS!’ Lyla shouted back.

  ‘Lyla Blue Wilde, what is the matter with you? You say sorry right now!’ I said through clenched teeth, trying to regain control.

  ‘No! Where is Derek?’ she carried on, her shouting subsiding now, and her voice wobbling.

  ‘You know where he is. He’s in Heaven with Granny Wilde and Coco the cat. Why are you being like this?’ I asked, exasperated and upset.

  ‘Not actual Derek, I mean his picture,’ she said, with big fat tears now rolling down her hot, red cheeks.

  ‘Lyla, I moved Derek’s picture into the dining room so that in here I could have my nice photograph of me and Colin on the top of the hill in the Lakes. I haven’t forgotten Derek, but I want to be reminded of the happy times I’m having right now, not all the happy times I had many years ago. Smashing my pictures won’t stop me having those happy times but it will make me feel very cross inside, and your mummy doesn’t like seeing you behave like this, either,’ Kath said calmly but firmly. Kath is rarely firm, so the change in tone was very effective on my petulant eight-year-old.

  ‘But Derek has always been just there,’ she said meekly, still crying.

  ‘I know he has. Now, though, he’s in the dining room. It’s not a big deal, it’s nice to change things around in your house sometimes. You have to keep things fresh, otherwise if everything stayed the same, life would be very dull, wouldn’t it?’ Kath said more softly now, putting the shards of glass on the coffee table and bending down to take both of Lyla’s hands.

  ‘I don’t like things to change around,’ Lyla mumbled. ‘I like them to always stay the same. Just me and you and Mummy and nobody else.’

  ‘Bluebird,’ I say, picking her up and sitting with her on my lap, even though she’s far too old to sit there comfortably, ‘you and me and Auntie Kath will always be a team, we’ll always love each other and will always be a girl gang, but it’s nice to let other people join us and have fun. Derek has died and is waiting in Heaven for Kath. Until then, Kath is allowed to enjoy her time with Colin, OK? You need to stop behaving like this. You’re a big girl, you’re eight, this behaviour is unacceptable. I love you, Kath loves you, but this is absolutely not OK.’

  AFTER THE HULK SMASH incident, I knew we had to do something. She’d gone as far as apologising and giving Kath a hug, but we’d been through that before and I know how Lyla works – sometimes rather than just talking, she needs to actually see something before she’s truly on board with it. And this time, I’ve got a plan.

  On a cold late-November afternoon we pop into Dovington’s and pick up a small holly wreath with berries and gold glittery polystyrene bells hot-glued to it (Lyla’s choice, not mine), then drive out to the edge of town where the cemetery is. I’ve been here a handful of times and, each time, never want to return in a hurry. Cemeteries are odd places – everything is calm and relaxed but nothing is happy. It’s not like a country park, where you feel your spirits lift and the weight of the world slip away, yet you’re surrounded by the same peace and quiet, the same smells and twittering birds.

  I park the car at the edge of one of the little roads that weave through the plots and open Lyla’s door for her. She climbs out with the wreath in her hand.

  ‘Right, where is he, then?’ I say gently to fill the silence as we survey the headstones in various stages of age and decay.

  Lyla, unlike her usual self, clings to my hand and doesn’t respond. I’ve never taken her to a cemetery before and, unsurprisingly, she isn’t feeling at ease. But I know we need to find a way through this together.

  We walk a couple of hundred metres until I start to slow, knowing his plot is reasonably near the lamp post we passed a second ago.

  ‘Look, here he is,’ I say quietly, coming to a stop and feeling Lyla moving even closer to me. We stand in silence for a few moments before I hear very gentle footsteps on the grass and turn round to find Kath walking towards us, a poinsettia plant in her hands. Lyla looks over to her but doesn’t say anything.

  ‘Hello,’ I say, giving her a big cuddle with my free arm, Lyla refusing to let go of my other.

  ‘Hello, lovies,’ Kath says, hugging back and then leaning down to give Lyla a squeeze, too.

  She kneels on the grass despite the November damp and cold, carefully places the little red-leaved plant down by the headstone and looks at Lyla.

  ‘This is one of my most special places, Lyla. I come here when I want to think about Derek in peace. Underneath the ground we are on now, Derek’s body is resting. I made sure he’s wearing his very best suit, the one we married in, and I tucked photos of me in as well, and a pair of lacy white gloves I wore on a ship we went on once we knew he was going to get poorly and leave us,’ Kath says, so gently and quietly I too have to bend to hear.

  ‘Is Derek wet and cold in the ground?’ Lyla asks, practically.

  ‘Derek’s body is in the ground, lovey. A person is two things. A body and a soul. Your body is like a machine. It is the thing that allows you to run and play and eat and laugh and talk and touch. Inside your body, though, is your soul. Your soul is the most perfect, unique, fantastic thing about you. It holds all of your love, your memories, your kindness, it’s who you are. Without your soul, you’re just the machine – but with it, you’re a person. Derek was a beautiful person. His soul was made for my soul. We matched in every way and every day he made me happy. He made me laugh harder than anyone in the world could, he took care of me more sweetly and more kindly than anyone I’ve ever known, he made me feel brave and adventurous and like I was the most cherished thing he’d ever had. When Derek died, before you were born, we buried his body in the ground because he didn’t need it anymore and because that’s what he wanted, so we could always have a place to come and talk to him and think of him. But Derek’s soul is not here. You can’t bury a soul. A soul lives on in Heaven.’

  ‘Where is Heaven, though?’ she asks.

  ‘Heaven, until we know for sure – when we’ve gone there too – is wherever you want it to be. I think Heaven is all around me, in every little thing that brings me joy, because that’s exactly what Derek brought me: pure, complete joy. So, every time I feel it – sometimes in a big way and sometimes in a little way – I think of Derek. I think of him smiling and nodding, reminding me that he’s here, wanting me to have a good day and to enjoy each moment of life as much as he did. Derek didn’t live a sad life, Lyla, he lived a life full to the brim with fun. He would be so sad if he thought I wasn’t carrying on doing that. So you must remember, whatever I’m doing, I’m always thinking of Derek with love, and when it’s
my time to go as well, and my body is buried, my soul will find his soul. It will be so wonderful it will be like fireworks of joy. Can you imagine that?’

  Lyla looks like she’s thinking really hard.

  ‘Mmm-hmm.’ She nods. ‘So, when a person dies, their soul is all around you all the time, like air?’

  ‘Sort of,’ Kath says, standing up, making that little noise that people with bad knees or backs make as they manoeuvre themselves upright. ‘Sometimes, when I see the sky just as the sun is setting and the clouds have gone golden and pink, I feel myself smiling for no reason other than how lovely it looks and I think, That’s joy; that’s Derek reminding me of himself. Sometimes you might be quite engrossed in something and feel a warmth in your heart and think of the person you have lost. I think that’s them saying hello and reminding you that they are always with you, surrounding you with love and care, and watching you live your life until it’s time for you to join them.’

  I think of the baby I lost and wonder if their soul is around me, surrounding me with the love and care I never got the chance to give them, and feel a tear trickle down my cheek. Kath notices, shuts her eyes for a moment longer than a blink and takes my hand.

  ‘You see, the people we have lost are not lost. They’re just waiting. We don’t need to spend each day feeling sad and downtrodden about them dying. We are supposed to spend each day living the happiest lives we can, so that when we eventually join them, we can say, “I lived my life to its very fullest, just like you wanted,” and then sit down with them in some amazing, heavenly cake shop and tell them all the marvellous adventures we had while they were waiting!’

  ‘Yeah!’ says Lyla triumphantly. ‘And you’re making new adventures with Colin, aren’t you?’

  ‘I am, lovey, yes.’

  ‘But you will always love Derek?’ Lyla asks, still looking for a hint of reassurance.

  ‘Absolutely!’ Kath says firmly.

  ‘And me?’ she questions.