The Day I lost You

by Fionnuala Kearney

  Abigail has my phone in her hand. She’s looking at it as if she doesn’t know what to do with it. In her other hand, she still has scissors. Abigail’s boss, a man named Marty, is standing beside me and Rose with a mug of tea. I shake my head, hold Rose tighter.

  ‘I put sugar in it. Try and drink it. It’s good for shock.’

  I do as I’m told. I have always done as I was told. Ask my mum and dad. I have always been a good girl. Why, God, why?

  It’s moments before I realize I’m speaking aloud. Everyone is staring. Most are crying too. Rose raises her head and I offer her some tea. She takes a few sips and burrows into me again.

  ‘Let me call someone for you,’ Marty says, and my head bobs up and down. I’m not even sure what I’m agreeing to.

  Leah is brilliant. I don’t know why I don’t describe her as my best friend, why I reserve that title for Theo. It’s probably because she’s my only sister and, as such, it’s a given that we’re close. Theo is my best friend apart from my sister. We’re in her house. It’s getting dark outside. Somehow Pug has magically appeared here and is snuggling on my lap. A white-faced Gus has carried an exhausted, sleeping Rose up to bed. I am nursing my second vodka and tonic. I only added the tonic when Leah told me I should. I am a good girl.

  ‘Has anyone spoken to Sean?’ Leah’s voice is so quiet it’s almost still.

  ‘Jesus, no. I mean, I don’t know.’

  ‘Shall I call him?’

  I nod. My brain is shrieking thoughts inside my skull. Anna is dead. There is a body. Sean is Rose’s father …

  ‘She’s okay,’ I hear Leah say, and I know he’s asked about Rose and not me. It’s obvious he knows already from the brief conversation and Leah hangs up shortly after.

  ‘He knew?’ I ask.

  She nods.

  ‘Doug.’ He’s good like that, Doug. He will have made all of the calls so that I don’t have to; has offered to go to Queyras alone so that I don’t have to, but I’m going. Leah has already sorted taking some time off from chambers to look after Rose. Doug has booked our flights and tomorrow we return to the Alps, this time to identify Anna’s remains, Anna’s effects. She was only found after a thaw but still quite high up. I understand my baby was still mostly under snow. I refuse to allow the thoughts about her body to germinate, but some slip through the cordon just because the dreaded call came. I got the call …

  I swirl the ice around my glass, look up and find Leah by my side. She removes it from my hand. I try to resist; there’s a final gulp of vodka left. She gently replaces it with a strong coffee. ‘You’ll need your wits about you tomorrow.’

  ‘Thanks for having Rose.’

  ‘No problem. I spoke to Mum too.’

  I throw my head back on the chair and shake it. ‘I’m not even going to ask.’

  Leah’s lips form a straight line. ‘She’s had to tell Dad. He’s taken it very badly.’

  And again my phone emits a loud interrupting sound. Leah looks for me. ‘Theo,’ she whispers.

  ‘Theo,’ I say. ‘Shit.’

  She hands it to me.

  ‘I’m at yours,’ he says. ‘You’ve not responded to texts and I need to see you. Where are you?’

  ‘Theo—’

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘No.’ I sob quietly into the phone. ‘They found her.’

  ‘Oh, Jess. Oh, Jess … Where are you, I’ll come, I—’

  ‘No, I’m with Leah and Gus. Doug and I are leaving for France in the morning. We’ll talk when I get back.’

  ‘Call me … if you need anything at all.’ Theo falls silent as my tears continue.

  ‘I’ll call you when I’m back,’ I say eventually.

  I can imagine him nodding, but he says nothing else and I hang up. What can he say? What can anyone say?

  I turn my phone off and throw it into the bowels of my bag. Leah stands, kisses my hair and picks up her glass, walks over to the dishwasher, sniffing loudly.

  I follow her form across the room and wonder if she’ll just let me go home. I really want out of here, don’t want to talk any more and just want to be alone. I want to go into Anna’s bedroom and spray her perfume all over me; crawl into her bed; wrap myself up in her covers; breathe in her scent as if my life depends on it – because I am now that woman. I am the woman who got that call; the call to confirm that from here on in, every single night, my last waking thought will be about my daughter’s last breath.

  20. Anna

  Raw Honey Blogspot 04/10/2014

  On my twenty-third birthday, I got a tattoo. It sits just above my knicker-line on my hip and says ‘Felix culpa’. It means ‘happy fault’ – or a mistake that has happy consequences. I thought it was much better than having her name on my body, and DD will forever be my happiest ‘mistake’.

  Of course He only got to see it last night, called it a ‘tramp-stamp’ and laughed. I told Him to get used to it because I intend getting more tattoos whenever the mood takes me. Then He traced the letters gently with his fingers; told me it’s beautiful, that I’m beautiful, that our daughter is beautiful, and that his life is beautiful when I’m in it.

  I’m going to hell because I cried in his arms. Happy, happy tears, because I felt like I was home. I let myself remember our first kiss; we talked about it, how it had frightened both of us, feeling what we felt. I let myself forget the guilt that consumed me when I went back for more.

  I’ve never stopped loving Him. All that happened during the years apart is that I got better at managing the loss. Last night, I pushed all the bad stuff out of my mind and let Him hold me. Last night, none of the other shit mattered. Last night, I didn’t punish myself for taking the latest phone call from Him; the one I knew that, if I answered it, we’d start this thing again. Last night, I didn’t punish Him for making the call. Last night, we made slow gentle love and I allowed myself – He allowed himself – to believe that somehow we’d make this love work.

  PART TWO

  21. Jess

  Doug’s holding my hand. At least, my hand is gripping the armrest, my knuckles white, my nails almost breaking with the pressure of my grasp and Doug’s hand is resting over my clawed fingers. He knows that nothing has changed with me and flying. I have always been filled with a pathological fear of the plane just dropping from the sky. Now, I realize I have more real fears to contend with. Life has a habit of tossing real reasons to be afraid; like losing Anna, who, it turns out, is the love of my life. I look at Doug’s hand, veiny and lined, a scar visible just above his thumb where he ironed it years ago. I loved Doug, but losing him was something I recovered from. I’m not sure I will ever recover from losing Anna.

  When we’re in the air, I show him the text my mother sent me earlier today. It’s like a letter, must have taken my elderly mother an age to use her arthritic thumb on her phone:

  My darling girl,

  You will miss her, your darling girl, every day of your life. You will have to learn how to breathe again so that your breath doesn’t catch in your throat and leave you short. This you will do. I know you will. You will do it for you; you will do it for us and you will do it for Rose. There’s not a day goes by when I don’t share your pain, my darling girl.

  Mum x

  He reads it, squeezes my hand again, then peers at the picture of Anna on the screen that I put there this morning. It’s one of the ones Max emailed me from the ski-trip.

  ‘Is that …?’

  ‘Yes. It’s from the holiday. Max, a guy from her work, sent it to me. He came to visit me.’

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘Just to talk. I think he wanted me to know she’d been happy, having a good time.’

  His hand is back. It’s laced with his other one in his lap.

  ‘Did you do anything with her phone?’

  ‘Leah knows someone who can get it unlocked.’

  He nods.

  Though it’s a short flight, I order a drink. The hostess leans across Doug and he glances at he
r breasts. She smells of a heady perfume, something spicy. His gaze lingers on her a moment before his eyes return to mine.

  ‘We should talk about arrangements,’ he says.

  A simple word, three syllables. ‘Arrangements’. I’m imagining all the connotations; all the beautiful ways the word could be used. Attached to ‘wedding’, ‘a night out’ or ‘a lover’s tryst’.

  ‘You have her will,’ Doug continues. ‘Did she want to be buried?’

  I have the most inappropriate urge to laugh out loud. She was buried.

  ‘They’re here, all the papers.’ I tap my handbag. ‘Cremated,’ I add.

  It’s the answer he was expecting. ‘Do you mind if we have a small, private service? Just family? I don’t think I could face some big church thing …’ He hesitates. ‘Everyone’s grief. It’s too much to bear.’

  I stare at him, realise in that instant that Carol has been good for him. He is in touch with his emotions so much more; this is the man I strangled with my love. I clear my throat.

  ‘Do you remember …?’ I’m not sure about this and hesitate.

  ‘What?’

  ‘When you left me?’

  He reddens, wonders what’s coming next.

  ‘You told me my love strangled you.’

  He straightens up, angles his face towards mine. ‘I remember,’ he says.

  ‘I’ve never forgotten it. It was such a potent sentence.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to apologize. All water under the bridge now but … I poured all of the love I had into Anna.’ This, I conclude, must be neat alcohol talking.

  ‘I was young. It was easier to walk away from something I couldn’t handle,’ is how he responds.

  Next to me, through the cabin window, orange and white lights flicker from below. I think about the lives of the people who live in the tiny houses, in the tiny villages. Has life been kinder to them? I shake my head, loathe the fact I’m feeling sorry for myself.

  ‘You’re happier with Carol, I can see that. I just never did get that word “strangle”,’ I say.

  ‘I couldn’t breathe. I was young, wasn’t ready to be loved like that. I’m sorry …’

  ‘Don’t be.’ I exhale slowly. ‘And yes, by the way.’

  ‘Yes, what?’

  ‘Yes. No fuss. Let’s bury our daughter as quickly and as simply as possible.’

  I can’t remember when, but sometime recently, on Twitter, someone posted a link from NASA. Theo told me about it. Finn had told him. They had just released the biggest picture ever taken of the universe and, when I saw it, it made me realize just what a tiny chunk of the tiniest atom I am. It’s on my mind today, that picture. I’m remembering the soft accompanying music; the way the camera zoomed into what was a microscopic spot on the photo, to reveal thousands of micro-lights – planets, stars, whatever. I’m wondering now if Anna is actually one of them; whether there is any truth in Rose’s preferred idea of her mum. Is she a star? She was my star … Where has all that wonderful, intoxicating energy gone? Has it been swallowed up by the vast universe?

  I’m thinking about NASA’s galaxies because I don’t want to think about my daughter’s body. Doug and I are unable to be in the same room as her. We are only offered the option of seeing her through a glass screen. I don’t know why, but I assumed I could touch her. I’ve asked if I can touch her, only to be told by a kindly mortician in perfect, accented English that, no, that’s not possible. Doug’s hand is on mine again. He squeezes it, not a momentary comforting squeeze, but a fearful, ‘we need to touch each other’ one. The man with perfect English but perhaps a less than perfect tact is telling us that Anna’s upper body has been almost perfectly preserved by the ice. The lower part, however, has ‘suffered’.

  I don’t want to go there, but my thoughts race ahead rapidly, working out the different things her body might have endured. Images of her flesh rotting in the sun, animals scavenging her ankles, all make me want to throw up.

  ‘You’re all right.’ Doug lets go of my hand and with his right arm holds me upright. ‘You can do this. We can do this.’

  He nods to the Frenchman who draws back a curtain with a short string made from tiny aluminium baubles. I stare at the string, at the way it catches the light just like the diamantés on Anna’s phone, then I look downwards at the tiled floor. The morgue is silent, as a place for the dead should be. The only sound I hear is Doug’s gasp as he claws his right fingers into my shoulder. I can’t help it – I look up.

  And there she is. Someone has pulled back the shroud-like sheet that covers her, pulled it back from her face and folded it in a neat, straight line just above her chest. The top of her right arm is just visible, the tattoo she had only a few weeks ago obvious. Carpe diem. It screams its own special irony at me. My fingers make contact with the glass and I want to just reach out and touch her. I can’t. I can’t plead either. My voice has left me. No primal screams – just tears, silent tears, carving that now-familiar route down my face. She looks so beautiful. Just like normal. Her face, I can tell, has had some makeup applied. Her bright blue, sapphire eyes are closed. Her hair has been combed and I wonder who got that job, how long it took them. Was her face bruised in the fall? Dear God, how many bones did she break? If I could reach into her, if I could just bend into her, would she still smell of coconut shampoo?

  Doug is nodding beside me and then suddenly the curtain closes. I want to cry out, I want to scream, NO. Please, just a few minutes, just leave me here for a few more minutes with her. I feel myself slide; can hear that smearing sound of fingers on glass as I fold onto the floor. At lower levels I smell antiseptic. How has this happened? Let me into my baby. How has my baby ended up in a sterile, white-tiled mortuary in south-east France?

  Doug pulls me up and I fight him. I hit him, thump him; lash at him with my fingernails until I’m held against him so tight that I can barely breathe. I hold what’s left firmly in my lungs. I don’t want to breathe. I do not want to live without Anna. I don’t know how to live without Anna. Then Rose pops into my head and I exhale in a loud burst.

  We’re in a tiny café in the town square. It’s actually very mild and the sun’s heat warms my face after the air-conditioned morgue. I have my sunglasses on. Anyone looking at Doug and me would think we’re a couple holidaying, enjoying a few rays, protecting our eyes behind our large shades. He hasn’t cried yet today. I look at his sepia image from behind my darkened lenses. He’s staying strong for me and I’m grateful. Carol will probably hear his real grief and for the first time since I heard her name all those years ago, I’m grateful to her too. By his side on the floor sits Anna’s suitcase, which we collected from the local police.

  Doug takes a call, holds a hand up to excuse himself. I can tell it’s Carol, followed by their children, Tom and Ethan. It’s obvious by the way his voice changes, and I’m filled with the most anxious jealousy I have ever, ever felt. He still has children. Only eleven and eight; he will have them in his life for a very long time and is still able to offer that unique love. Just for a moment I hate him.

  When he comes back, the croque-monsieurs have arrived. He nibbles the edge of his, a small string of cheese stretching from the toasted bread to his mouth. I only stare at mine. I haven’t eaten properly in days, know I have to eat, so reach for it and raise it to my mouth. I look to the distance towards the chairlift, still carrying people to the slopes, all of them oblivious to the fact that our daughter died here.

  ‘Can I have her things?’ My eyes rest on the case and the white plastic bag from the mortuary containing her red suit.

  He hesitates, which makes me look at him instead. I notice a small, fresh, long scrape on his neck, and realize I did that. I did that with my fingernails.

  ‘Of course,’ he says. ‘I’d just like to have something of hers, from … from her last days.’

  ‘Well, we can go through it together.’

  ‘No, just send me something.’ He shakes hi
s head.

  I nod towards a small hotel just next to us. ‘We could go in there. Rent a room. Go through her case. You could choose something, and then, then you could hold me until we have to leave for the airport.’

  Doug takes his glasses off, eyeballs me. I leave mine on. Then he nods, raises his food to his mouth and waves at the waiter for the bill.

  Within ten minutes I’m standing in a first-floor room, overlooking the same town square view; the same vista of the chairlift and snow-capped peaks just to my right. I leave the shutters and the window open.

  It’s a pretty grim room, furnished simply with a shiny pine bed, wardrobe and chest of drawers and one metallic-looking bedside table. On top of that sits a lamp with an uneven fringed trim. To the right-hand side of the bed there’s a tiny shower cubicle and loo behind a sliding door that no longer slides. Doug places the suitcase on top of the bed and together we slowly go through Anna’s things. Both of us pick up different items. Mine is a silky camisole top and I can’t help thinking where in hell did she wear that in December? Doug has a polo-neck ski top. Both of us raise them to our noses to draw in her scent. He lets go of the polo-neck and his hands rest on a jumper, the palest of sky-blue colours. I recognize it as the one he gave her last Christmas.

  ‘This,’ he says, ‘this is all I want.’

  He quietly packs the things back in the case and I drop the camisole in. When he moves the case, he lies down on the bed and pats the empty space next to him. I climb in beside him, into his open arms, and we lie there, spooned, listening to each other’s breathing, to the sounds of laughter outside.