The Last Day

by Claire Dyer

  ‘I wasn’t expecting this,’ he continued. ‘What can we do?’

  He looked like he was on the verge of tears and as if he wanted to say much more than he had done.

  She knew that love could happen in an instant, well a type of love anyway. She’d read of it in books and seen it at the movies and, if it wasn’t love, then it was a connection, an understanding stretching from one person to another. It was something in the other person’s eyes, how you felt seen by them, the way they tipped their head on one side, their smile, the set of their shoulders, the tiny movements they made that caused your heart to flip and your life to realign – whatever it was you were expecting to happen changed course and you had no control over where you were headed from there on in.

  Maybe it was this type of love they’d felt that day in the car. Maybe it was something else altogether. What was for certain was that he raised his head and lifted a hand and rested it on her face and she covered it with one of hers as if by doing this they would find the answers to all the questions he’d just asked.

  They sat there like that for what seemed like hours and then, peeling it away from her cheek he flipped his hand over and brought her palm to his lips. He kissed away the sweat. His lips moved up her wrist; he leant across, pushed up the sleeve of her jacket and kissed the inside of her elbow.

  The brushes had started up again by now. The mechanism rolled again. The car rocked again. The noise was deafening and in her chest her heart was hammering, telling her that something amazing, wonderful and terrible had been done that couldn’t be undone.

  ‘We will need to talk about this. I’ve never, not ever, not before, with anyone from work. Not for years and not with anyone other than …’ he said sombrely, uncertainly, as the doors started to lift and the light above them turned green and he pressed the car’s ignition switch and the engine rumbled into life.

  ‘I know,’ she said. It seemed she had lost the power to say anything else and her heart was still thumping, her head reeling. This was wrong, this was not allowed. She didn’t deserve any goodness and Boyd was a good man and he must never know what she was. She wanted to carry on being this version of herself.

  But she had let Boyd kiss her palm, her wrist, her elbow and she hadn’t been loved for as long as she could remember, not properly, and she wanted to, oh, how she wanted to, and so now months have gone by and Boyd is in bed beside her in his and Vita’s house and in her head she can still hear the pulse of the car’s indicator, the beat of the car wash’s brushes against the windows of his Lexus.

  * * *

  Towards dawn she hears Vita come home and realises it was her she was waiting for. Vita goes into the kitchen and runs the tap for a bit and then she comes upstairs. Honey hears a floorboard creak and the soft click of the bedroom door as Vita closes it behind her. She doesn’t use the bathroom and Honey’s curious as to why, but this curiosity doesn’t last and soon she tumbles into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  Or, she thinks it’s dreamless until she realises that the darkness is water and she’s swimming, or trying to. She’s lifting her arms and her hands are slicing through the water but she’s not moving. She kicks her legs but, again, she’s not moving. Then she remembers.

  She remembers the boat, and the man on the boat. He is dark-skinned and wiry and smells of cinnamon and one of his arms is pinned across her chest. He’s holding on to her free arm, her other arm is wedged under her. He’s pulling at her clothes and she’s saying ‘No’ and his mouth is opening and closing but no words are coming out of it.

  The space they’re in is small and there is a distant smack of waves against the hull and he’s hurting her, she needs to tell him he’s scaring her.

  She doesn’t know what time it is, but it’s dark outside.

  His mouth moves again, his eyes are black buttons, like a toy’s eyes.

  She feels his weight shift a fraction and slips out from under him. It’s like she has scales, like a fish does, and that she’ll die if she doesn’t get into the water. Her lungs are gills. She has openings in her chest that flap with her breaths.

  She shakes her head and her vision blurs. She is inching away from the man who has his back turned to her now and has lifted his head as if he is an animal scenting danger in the air.

  Then there is an explosion somewhere behind her and she wants to think it came before she started running but time is concertinaing and she hears a crackle, like someone is screwing up a sheet of tinfoil.

  There is a huge white moon in the sky and behind the boat is a strip of lights which must be the shore. She jumps off the deck but there is roaring in her ears and she doesn’t hear herself hit the water. All she can feel is the cold judder her bones and that the clothes she’s wearing are weighing her down. She is a flag or a jelly fish and she’s lost all the bones that had juddered a second ago; they are floating somewhere just out of reach.

  But she starts to swim and she swims until her chest is burning with the effort. Then there are arms around her: strong, muscled arms that are dry and warm but she is still swimming and the arms are holding her tighter and tighter until she has to stop. She tries to tread water. Water laps at her mouth; there is still roaring in her ears. She raises her head and howls and she hears a voice saying, ‘Honey! Wake up. My god. You were dreaming again.’

  And the door to the bedroom bursts open, the light from the landing is the colour of custard and Vita is standing in the doorway in a pair of men’s pyjamas, her hair like a curtain over her shoulders.

  ‘Boyd?’ she’s saying. ‘Is everything OK? I heard crying. I heard crying and I thought for a moment …’

  ‘It’s OK, Vita. It’s Honey. She was dreaming. I’m sorry we woke you.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Vita’s disappointment is a solid thing. It stands next to her. Honey can sense it even though she can’t see it. Her breathing is steadying. She knows now she was dreaming and that it must almost be morning.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says both to Boyd and Vita. Boyd is still holding her but he’s looking at his former wife. Honey follows the trajectory of the look as it leaves the bed and travels across the room. It falls with a thump at Vita’s feet as if it is exhausted, as if it has been travelling between them for years.

  ‘As long as you’re OK,’ Vita says, turning swiftly and marching away. She doesn’t shut the door behind her so Boyd lets go of Honey, gets out of bed and gently closes it.

  ‘You haven’t had a dream like that for a while, have you?’ he asks. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

  ‘No. It’s all right. Must be something about being in a new place. Perhaps it’ll just take time for me to get used to being here.’

  But, as Boyd checks the clock and says, ‘Five-thirty. We could get another hour or so’s sleep,’ and settles himself under the covers, she knows what she dreamt didn’t have anything to do with being unsettled here and it wasn’t a dream. It was a memory; it was her unconscious telling her that she’d never really be free. One day he will find her.

  She lies next to Boyd and listens to the birds and the occasional car gun its engine down the main road which intersects with Albert Terrace. She thinks of the nurses coming off night duty, and milkmen picking up crates and loading them onto the backs of their floats. She thinks of postal workers sorting letters and farmers walking their cows to the sheds. And she thinks of the heat of the sun on her face and of flowers opening their petals and refuses to let herself think of the boat, and the man with the dark skin and the black-button eyes, and the fire, and how the water weighed down her arms and legs, how she swam, how she staggered onto the beach and how cold the sand was under her feet.

  * * *

  It’s Saturday morning and they don’t have to be in the office until ten. At eight-thirty Boyd goes downstairs to make them a cup of coffee and Honey hears him and Vita talking, their voices making a soft humming sound. She imagines they are discussing her and the dream. She wishes they wouldn’t. She’s still thinking about t
he look that passed between them, how Vita seemed to reject it. She doesn’t want Boyd to be treated that way. Also, she wants to know what her crying out reminded Vita of.

  Then, Boyd’s back. He’s wearing joggers and a t-shirt. Yesterday morning he went down in his boxers. She remarks silently on this but doesn’t think anything more about it. She drinks her drink but her head is sore from the wine and sex and lack of sleep and the intensity of the dream. It is almost as though she imagines there to be saltwater stains and small heaps of sand in the bed. She sips, but struggles to distance the dream from reality. She must pull herself together. Dwelling on the past won’t do her any good at all.

  ‘What’s Vita doing today?’ she asks Boyd as he picks out a shirt from the wardrobe.

  ‘Working in her studio I think. That’s what she said just now, anyway.’

  He peels off the t-shirt and drops it onto the bed.

  ‘Do you think,’ she says, ‘I should pop down and say thank you to her, you know for being concerned in the night? I’d quite like to take a look in her studio anyway and I’d rather do it when she was there.’

  ‘Sure, I guess she wouldn’t mind. She doesn’t normally. One good thing about Vita is …’ he pauses as if trying to choose one good thing from many good things, or so she imagines, ‘… is,’ he continues, ‘her lack of pretension. She’s a no-nonsense kind of girl.’

  Honey lets the definition of Vita as a ‘girl’ pass, after all she guesses she must have been one once.

  And so, just before they set out for work, Honey makes her way down the garden and knocks on the door of Vita’s studio.

  ‘Mmmm,’ Vita says.

  The studio is flooded with light; its windows seem out of proportion to the size of the walls and there are canvasses stacked everywhere, six or seven deep at times. Vita’s bike is propped up in one corner, Classic FM is playing on the radio and Vita is sitting on a stool in front of her easel. She looks at one with where she is, as if the studio has grown around her. She wears it like a coat.

  There is a faint sketch of a dog’s head on the easel. From this distance Honey can’t make out the breed.

  ‘Um,’ she says. ‘I just wanted to pop down to say thank you. You know for checking in on us earlier and,’ she pauses. Vita picks up a brush and studies its bristles. She doesn’t look at her. ‘And …’ Honey continues, ‘I’m sorry, for disturbing you and everything.’

  Vita glances up, her expression unreadable. ‘As long as everything’s OK,’ she says. ‘It’s never easy in a new place.’

  There’s a moment of silence. Honey waits for Vita to say something more but she doesn’t. Honey doesn’t know what to say. It seems she has run out of words.

  ‘Best I let you get on then.’ The words splutter out at last.

  ‘OK.’

  Vita’s looking at her brush again.

  And then she sees it. Tucked in a corner, half-covered by another painting but unmistakably him, is a portrait of Boyd. ‘Oh!’ she says, ‘you’ve painted Boyd.’

  ‘Well, of course,’ Vita replies.

  It is a remarkable likeness; it’s as though he’s about to break into a smile. The picture of him is everything he is, from his eyebrow, to the curve of his cheek. Honey feels as though he is going to say something that matters.

  ‘It’s extraordinary,’ she says.

  ‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’

  ‘Oh, yes. I meant it as one. I really did.’

  Again, there is silence and she is aware she should go. She needs to go to work. The day must go on.

  And this is what Honey’s learnt in the life she’s living now. There can be no remission, now she’s here with all that she has; even being here in Vita’s studio with the picture of Boyd she’d painted once when they were really married to one another, Honey must take that next step, one foot in front of the other. She needs to go on so she doesn’t stop.

  If she stops the cracks may appear and if they do, Boyd may see them and Honey must never let this happen.

  The last day

  On the last day, Graham Silverton is carrying the bath panel back to the car. In his jacket pocket is a tube of Polyfilla for the ceiling crack and the Twix he’d treated himself to from the vending machine behind the tills.

  It’s nine-thirty. He’s not due at work until eleven and so decides to go home first.

  When he gets there, everyone is out; the kids are at school, his wife at work, even Henry the cat is on manoeuvres. Graham puts some food in a bowl for him anyway, should he decide to come back before the others get home.

  He leaves the bath panel leaning up against the banisters and the Polyfilla on the kitchen counter. Opening the fridge, he takes out a carton of milk and takes a swig from it. This, obviously, is a banned activity: he should use a glass, or so his wife has always stipulated. He looks over his shoulder to check she’s really not there. She isn’t. He puts the milk back in the fridge and closes the door.

  He gets to the yard just before eleven and asks his boss, ‘What’ve you got for me today, Darren?’

  Vita

  I’m standing outside their bedroom door. I know I mustn’t go in, but they’re both at work and I’m bored with the painting I’m doing: bloody stupid dog, its bloody stupid owner.

  Boyd and Honey have been here for two nights now, but it seems longer. The first night I was worried I would hear them, but I couldn’t, and then last night I was with Colin, coming home in the early hours only to be woken by Honey crying out the way she did.

  It had been instinct that got me out of bed; I don’t remember doing it, but there I was, standing at the door looking at them in the bed, a clamour of sounds in my head. Without my glasses on I couldn’t see all that well, they were more shape than substance in the glow from the lamp on the landing.

  But even so, I had refused to acknowledge the look Boyd gave me and had hurried back to bed, burying myself deep in the duvet. It had reminded me of other times, other nights, the taste of the despair in my mouth was the same.

  And now I’m turning the door handle and stepping inside the room. The bed is unmade; the dents in the pillows where their heads have been are still there, the covers thrown back, Honey’s things are strewn about: some jewellery, a book by her bedside, a pair of jeans that look like they’d fit a child, inside out on the floor. The sun is streaming through the window and dust motes are spinning in the air. The silence is overwhelming.

  And I can smell Boyd: his aftershave, the lingering scent of his skin, his Boydness.

  I put my hand on my chest and tell myself that my heart is still in one piece. This will not break it. This will not break me. If you don’t love, then you can’t be hurt. If you no longer miss something, you can’t grieve for it, can you?

  I turn around and slam the door behind me. The sound is like thunder.

  Boyd

  Boyd has a few significant regrets. He regrets not getting into lettings when he first started up his business. Back then he’d believed there was a certain cachet about having the word ‘Residential’ after his name, but now he knows better. After all, now the business is just him. It has no inherent value so if he were ever to sell it, the return on the investment of his time and energy would be disproportionately small.

  Maybe he’d believed that one day he’d have a child to pass the business on to. The fact that he hasn’t is another of his regrets.

  He does well enough, given how small a fish he is in the pool of agents in the town, including the mighty creatures that have swum out of London to set up base here. Despite the size and pulling power of these giants of the deep, and that of the new breed of internet agents offering their one-click service, there are still people here who favour the more personal touch, people to whom Boyd can say, ‘I sold this house to your parents. I know how much it meant to them.’

  If only he’d managed his money a bit better they wouldn’t be in the fix they’re in now. If he’s honest with himself, he did take his eye off the ball in the earl
y days with Honey. But, who could blame him? He’d been like a rabbit in headlights. However, ignoring his accountant’s warning was, he’s come to learn, a foolhardy thing to have done.

  He also regrets not having been a better husband to Vita. He’d started out with all the best intentions, of course he had. But now she doesn’t love him and he doesn’t love her – not in the way they did before. And if, as they say, grief is the price you pay for love, then because there is so little love left, he shouldn’t still be grieving. And yet he is, it overwhelms him on occasions, like a punch to the stomach, and he finds himself bent double, with his hands on his knees trying to breathe through the pain, but he can’t tell either of them, not Honey and especially not Vita. It wouldn’t do any good for him to do so.

  And so these are the thoughts Boyd has as he stops off to buy a lock for the bedroom door on his way to work. Honey had wanted to walk to work today, she’d said.

  If only life were as simple as having a bolt on a door, he thinks as he waits at the counter to pay. If it were, we could choose when to lock ourselves in and the world out.

  ‘Thank you,’ he says to the assistant. He’s young, a schoolboy still. He’s obviously been made to work here by parents keen for him to have something on his CV other than ‘IT Skills’ which actually means all he’s good at is playing video games.

  The boy nods at him, but hasn’t yet learnt the art of saying anything back.

  For all she did wrong, his mother did at least instil a work ethic in Boyd. He too had worked behind shop counters, done deliveries and washed the neighbours’ cars. But, unlike this boy perhaps, Boyd’s choices had been predicated by the need to earn. If he hadn’t, then they’d have had no money, at least at the start, before his mother started on her campaign of finding men with money. She’d been remarkably successful at that, in the end.

  When he gets to the office, Trixie is on the phone, the bangles on her wrist knocking against the surface of the desk as she takes a note of what the person on the other end of the line is telling her. Boyd hears her say, ‘Yes, of course. Quite understand. It must be a very difficult time. I’ll certainly ask him to call you. Thank you. Do take care now. Our sincere condolences on your loss.’