‘Go on,’ Liam coaxed.
The men sat in silence again. I watched the minute hand on the clock move from ten to fifteen before either of them spoke.
‘I love her so much,’ Marc said.
‘I love you too,’ I whispered through fingers that were covering my mouth.
‘What am I going to do?’ Marc asked. ‘What am I going to do?’
Liam didn’t even try to answer. He took a mouthful of whisky and swallowed it before asking, ‘What about Naomi?’
‘What?’ Marc looked confused.
‘You said Ellen had picked Naomi up from school,’ Liam said. ‘Was she in the car?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh God.’ Liam said the words slowly and hesitated before asking, ‘Is she alright?’
The first hint of brightness forced its way into Marc’s voice. ‘She’s fine, or at least that’s what the doctor tells me. She’s got to stay in hospital for observation. The only thing is,’ he took a deep breath. ‘She hasn’t asked where Ellen is. In fact, she hasn’t spoken a word. The doctor says it’s normal and that it’ll pass but what am I going to do then?’ He started to get agitated. ‘What am I going to do when she asks where Mummy is? How can I tell her Mummy is dead?’ He closed his eyes and I could see from the clenching in his jaw that he was inches from falling apart.
After a minute he opened his eyes and looked around the room. He shook his head as he did so. ‘I don’t believe this,’ he said. ‘How can this be happening? It’s a normal day. How can this be happening?’ He drained his glass and held it out for a refill. ‘It was a normal day until the police were parked outside the house when I got home from work.’ He was lost in a dream as he recalled the events. ‘I could tell from their faces that something terrible had happened.’ He started to shake his head again. ‘But not this…’
‘Do you want to stay with us?’ Liam asked as he loosened the top on the bottle again.
Marc shook his head.
‘Not even for tonight? You shouldn’t be on your own.’
Marc shook his head again.
‘Are you sure you’re going to be OK?’ Liam asked tentatively.
Once more, Marc shook his head. ‘I don’t know if I am or if I’ll ever be again,’ he said. ‘But I want to stay here.’ He put his refilled glass on the floor beside him. He looked right at me when he said, ‘I can smell her perfume. The one I bought her last Christmas, the one she always wore.’ He took in a deep breath. ‘If I close my eyes, it’s as if she’s still here, right in this room.’
It felt so odd to be in the bedroom with Marc, the bedroom I had shared with him for eight years. A room so familiar, yet one I barely recognised. Everything looked different. Everything was different.
My eyes were drawn to the table, where the book I’d been reading sat beside a ceramic dog Naomi had given me last Mother’s Day. The piece of scrap paper I’d been using as a bookmark showed the page I’d been on when I closed the book the night before. I realised I would never know if Miranda lived long enough to tell Gareth that she loved him. My new circumstances made her fictitious situation all the more significant and I hoped that the author had allowed Miranda the strength to fight her disease until Gareth made it home from Mozambique. I realised the importance of saying things before it was too late. I chastised Miranda for not telling him sooner. Too late could happen any time.
At least Marc knew I loved him and I was grateful for that.
I looked at him as he lay on the bed, our bed, a bed I had shared with him just last night. His hands were behind his head and he was staring at the ceiling.
‘Ellen,’ he whispered.
The sound of Marc saying my name gave me more pain than a dead person should be able to feel.
I sat on the bed a few feet from him head. ‘Marc.’ My words were also said in a whisper. ‘I’m here.’
‘Ellen,’ he said, ‘what am I going to do about Naomi?’
I felt completely helpless.
He put the heels of his hands over his eyes
‘What the hell am I going to do? What would you do?’ I backed away as he turned his head on the pillow and looked at me. ‘You’d tell her, wouldn’t you? You’d be brave and face it head on. I know you would.’ He was still looking at me. ‘How can I do that?’
Did he know I was there? I didn’t think he could see me because I didn’t sense it in the way that I had when Naomi had looked at me but I definitely got the feeling he was talking to me.
‘Is he talking to me?’ I asked George, who was stood by the window looking out at the dark street.
He turned his head towards me.
‘He is, but not in the way he did before.’ I didn’t understand and it must have shown on my face. ‘He’s not talking to you as a person sitting opposite him, one that can give him a straight answer, anyway. He …’
I stopped George mid-sentence because I didn’t understand.
‘Can I talk to him?’
George smiled and his face softened in the half light of the street lamp. ‘You’ll always be able to talk to him.’ He turned to look out of the window again. ‘But whether he’ll take any notice is another question,’ he said to the glass.
I crouched down beside the bed. ‘You have to tell her,’ I urged him. ‘Naomi needs to know.’
‘I can’t tell her,’ he said, moving his head back to its original position and looking at the ceiling again. ‘I can’t. You would, I know that you would. But you’re so much stronger than me, Ellen. I can’t tell Naomi you’re gone.’
I appreciated what George had said but it felt like Marc and I were having a conversation. My hand went out to him but I stopped just short of stroking his hair. ‘You’re right, I would. It would be so hard but I would tell her. I would have to, because she would wonder where her daddy was.’ This time I did touch his hair and I hoped that he could feel it. ‘You have to summon up all the courage you can and you need to tell her. Once you’ve done that the worst part’s over. All you need to do …’
The telephone interrupted me. The shrillness of its ring made us both jump. Marc moved slowly and picked it up on the third ring.
‘Hello.’ Marc’s voice was croaky. ‘Oh hello, Mum.’
Marc’s mum had been practically housebound for the last two years. Like me, her life had changed in an instant. One minute she was fine and then a brain haemorrhage later and she was paralysed from the chest down. All that worked now were her arms and her head. One day, she had been a fit, healthy woman who walked for miles and did yoga three times a week and the next she was confined to a wheelchair. There was a time they’d thought she’d never get out of bed again. She’d once told me she wished she was dead and I’d agreed with her that I’d want to be dead too if I was in her position. Now I would give anything to be alive.
‘Thanks,’ Marc continued, and I listened to the rest of the one-way conversation. ‘Yes … yes, she was very lucky … Yes thank God. She’s fine … I promise she’s fine … I’ve just seen her.’ There was a longer pause. ‘No … not yet … I know, I will … I just don’t know how.’ He struggled to control his breathing. ‘Look, Mum, I’ve got to go. I’ll come round and see you tomorrow … No, not yet … I’m seeing someone tomorrow … It’ll probably be next week sometime, but it won’t be a burial, Ellen wanted to be cremated.’
Cremated!
Oh God, they were going to burn me.
My breathing quickened and I felt panic start to wash over me. I toppled from my crouching position and landed on my backside. I felt George’s hands under my armpits as he lifted me up.
Had I really said I wanted to be cremated? I knew I had, but now that it came to it, it was a bit of a shock to hear the words spoken. I didn’t much like the sound of them.
The first time I’d said it, we’d been watching a film where a girl had woken up in her coffin and could hear the soil being thrown on top of her. I’d told Marc that I didn’t want that happening to me and I wanted to be cremated.
Marc had laughed and asked me if I knew what embalming was. I’d had to admit that I didn’t and he assured me that after I’d been embalmed I wouldn’t be waking up in a coffin. Even so, I’d stuck to my guns and said that I wanted to be cremated. Marc’s aunt had been cremated last year and after the service I’d said that I thought it was wonderful that her daughters could take her ashes away and put them in a spot that was special to her. I remembered meaning that it was what I wanted when the time came. I just hadn’t expected it to come so soon.
I tried to get a grip of myself. He was only doing what I’d said I wanted.
Even so, I felt sick and closed my eyes tightly, half hoping that when I opened them again I would have woken up from this nightmare. Sadly, nothing had changed.
I’d been so preoccupied with thoughts of cremation that I hadn’t noticed Marc move, so I was surprised when I saw him sitting on the edge of the bed with his back to me.
His breaths were long and heavy. His head was lowered and resting in his hands. He pushed his fingers through his hair and gave it a tug before finally letting go. It was just what I had seen Phil do earlier that day. He brought his hands down onto his knees with a slap and used them to push himself up. He walked the three steps to the wall and turned around. He looked ten years older than the man I had kissed goodbye that morning. Or was it yesterday morning? Did it make any difference?
Slowly, he lifted his arms towards the ceiling before wrapping them around his head so his elbows were near his eyes and his hands were joined at the top of his neck. He leaned against the wall and slowly slid down it until he was crouched on his haunches. He lowered his head into his chest and rolled onto the floor. He lay there in silence for a long time.
The clock had moved fifty-three minutes before he uncurled himself and crawled towards the bed. For all that time I watched him helplessly from the corner of the room.
Marc didn’t bother getting undressed, he just climbed into bed. That made me as sad. He lay for a few minutes before I could tell from the sound of his breath that he had fallen asleep.
‘He’s exhausted,’ George said.
‘I know,’ I replied.
‘Come on,’ George said, taking me by the elbow. The next thing I knew we were in the back garden.
The swing that Naomi was quickly growing out of stood on the lawn to our left and a couple of wooden garden seats sat on the paved area to our right. My mother liked to call it our patio but I always thought it was a bit grand for half a dozen paving slabs. I noticed the washing was still on the line, now soaking after the earlier downpour.
I loved that garden.
‘Nice garden,’ George said.
‘Thanks.’ I smiled at the compliment. ‘It was a tangle of weeds when we bought the house but we sweated blood and tears to turn it into something beautiful.’ I looked around, my eyes picking up every detail. ‘We were always planting this or fiddling with that. And you see those,’ I pointed to the ornamental finials sitting on top of the fence, ‘they went up just a fortnight ago.’ My tone of voice changed from pleasant to bitter. ‘Eight years,’ I said. ‘It took us eight years to finish this garden and I only get two weeks to enjoy it. How can that be right?’
‘No-one said it was right,’ George said. ‘It’s just the way it is.’
I moved to one of the chairs and sat down.
The first signs of daybreak showed in the sky and birds broke into chorus.
The sun was going to rise and the birds were going to sing. Life was going on.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I stood on the outskirts of my life and watched. No, not my life, their lives. The one I wasn’t part of anymore. Just as I’d realised it would when I’d sat in the garden listening to the birdsong and watching the sun rise, life was going on.
I watched Marc crying in his mother’s arms.
Sadie’s arms were about the only thing that still worked for her but they were strong and she held her son tightly. He knelt by her wheelchair as she stroked his hair and whispered in his ear.
‘What am I going to do?’ he asked her. ‘What am I going to do?’
I couldn’t hear Sadie’s response or if she even made one. Her face was buried deep into her son’s neck.
They sat like that for a long time.
Sadie was the strongest woman that I had ever known and always would be. That strength may have all but left her body but in her mind it was a different kettle of fish. She wasn’t crying; there’d be time for that later. Maybe she’d cry when she was on her own. Right now though, her son needed her to be strong.
‘I wish there was something more I could do,’ Sadie said. ‘I’m useless to you in this body.’
‘No, you’ve helped.’ Marc squeezed her arm and sniffed hard. ‘More than you can imagine.’ He wiped his eyes with the cuff of his shirt and looked away as the tears started again. ‘I needed my mum and you were there.’
‘I just wish that there was more I could do.’
He looked at Sadie again. ‘What am I going to do when Naomi needs her mum?’
‘Don’t worry, love, her mum will never be far away from her,’ Sadie said as she wiped Marc’s tears away with her fingertips. ‘Ellen might not be able to put her arms around Naomi any more but she’ll always be there.’ She brushed a stray hair away from his eyes. ‘Darling,’ she whispered, ‘my mother died when I was eleven and I didn’t know what I was going to do. I was the only girl in a house with four brothers.’ She cupped his chin. ‘But my mother had to go away just like Ellen did. They didn’t have a choice, you see. It wasn’t that they wanted to die, but just because my mum died didn’t mean that she stopped loving me or that I stopped loving her. I’ve felt my mother at my side a thousand times, and I feel her every day here.’ She touched her chest. ‘I can feel her right now and I get great comfort and strength from that.’
I wondered if Sadie was telling the truth.
I knew she was telling the truth about her mother dying when she was a girl, but had Sadie really felt her mother with her? Or was she saying it to make her grieving son feel better?
‘I thought I could smell her perfume last night,’ Marc said quietly. Sadie almost spoke but changed her mind at the last second. Marc pushed himself up from his knees and sat on the edge of a nearby chair, a movement he completed without letting go of his mother’s hands. He took a couple of deep breaths and swallowed hard. ‘I was sitting in the living room after I got back from the hospital,’ he said, ‘and for all the world it felt like she was standing beside me.’ The look on his face was a mixture of sorrow and desperation. He looked at Sadie. ‘I could still smell her, Mum. And in the bedroom it was there again.’ A half smile found its way to his lips. ‘I know it’s stupid but I was talking to her.’
‘Why’s that stupid?’ Sadie asked. ‘I talk to your dad all the time.’
Marc’s dad had died the year Naomi had been born. He’d lived long enough to see his only grandchild being christened before succumbing to the illness he’d fought for two years. He’d told us he was dying a happy man.
‘But she’s dead.’
‘And so’s your dad but it doesn’t stop me talking to him. Sometimes I think he’s answering me. I’ll ask him a question and suddenly the answer just pops into my head.’ She let go of his hands for the first time. ‘Go and make a cup of tea, love,’ she said. Marc went to the kitchen and did as he was told.
The tea had been made, brewed, and partially drunk before Sadie said, ‘You will get through this.’
Would he?
Did I want him to?
Of course I did … didn’t I?
Marc and my parents sat in a triangle, each of them on a separate piece of furniture. They didn’t look at each other and no-one spoke. Dad moved his mug of coffee in a circular motion, watching its contents swirl around. Marc was also looking at the contents of his mug, cradled in his hands. My mother sat in her chair with her arms folded across her chest and her head lolling forward.
She
started to shake her head and threw her hands up to her face. She said something that nobody heard. Both of the men looked at her and Dad said her name gently.
Marc looked at the coffee again.
Marc had come to my parent’s house after seeing the funeral director but had not told them I would be cremated the following Tuesday morning.
Eventually my mother took a deep breath and asked. ‘Have you seen Naomi today?’
‘No.’ He sounded apologetic. ‘I had some stuff I had to sort out this morning. I’ll go to the hospital this afternoon.’ After a pause he added, ‘You can come if you like. I expect Naomi would be pleased to see you.’
My dad seemed about to say something but Mum got there first. ‘I don’t think I can do that … not yet.’ Her voice faltered.
‘It might do you good, Peg,’ Dad suggested.
My mother turned away and put her hand to her mouth. After a few seconds she turned back. ‘I carried that girl,’ she said through the tears. ‘I carried that girl inside me and after seventeen hours in labour I brought her into this world and I fed her from my breast until she was ten months old. She was my child, my only child, and now she’s gone.’ Mum paused to wipe her eyes with a tissue that had been stuffed into the sleeve of her cardigan. ‘I’m sorry, Marc, I don’t think I can see Naomi at the moment because seeing her would remind me of what’s happened to Ellen. I can’t really face that yet.’
‘I wish that was a luxury I could afford.’ Marc said, I think without realising, because he looked at my mother and added. ‘I’m sorry, Peg,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean that. I just can’t handle this. I don’t know what to do. I haven’t even told Naomi.’
The silence that followed lasted minutes rather than seconds.
‘You know under the circumstances it’s what Ellen would have wanted.’ My father’s voice was flat and expressionless. ‘If one of them had to die she would have wanted it to be her.’
‘Every time,’ Marc agreed. ‘Every time, she would have wanted it to be her.’
‘I wish I’d had the chance.’ My mother’s voice was weak and shaky. ‘Why wasn’t it me?’ she wailed. ‘Why isn’t it me that’s dead? I’ve had my life but Ellen …’
Things I Should Have Said and Done Page 5