The Last Day

by Claire Dyer

  The last day

  On the last day Graham Silverton has finished loading the poles onto the lorry, has climbed up into his cab and is staring at the docket in his hand. He punches the postcode into the satnav.

  It’s blustery, there’s still a chill in the air and, as he starts the engine, the radio comes on. Some idiotic DJ is playing California Girls by the Beach Boys.

  ‘What the fuck?’ Graham mutters, putting the truck in reverse and harrumphing to himself.

  Summer seems a lifetime away still; they’ve yet to book their holiday. His wife has said she’d like to go to Cuba this year. ‘Cuba?’ he’d said, ‘why on earth would you want to go there?’

  Behind him the poles rattle a bit like distant applause.

  Honey

  She’d thought she knew Boyd, but this man sitting on the bed in front of her is an almost-stranger. But, she reasons, there are things about her he doesn’t know so maybe all relationships are based not on what’s real, but on what’s perceived to be real. However, she needs to say something, so says, ‘We don’t have to stay here, not if you don’t want to. We can move out, find somewhere else. I didn’t realise. You should have said.’

  ‘I thought I could cope, that we’d both moved on, but – and this might sound strange – in some ways it’s been good, being here.’ He pauses, then says, ‘I think we should stay, it would disrupt things too much if we left now.’

  ‘Disrupt Vita, do you mean?’ She has no idea where the words come from, she doesn’t mean them, not in a nasty way, but worries that Boyd may not understand so she clambers on the bed behind him, wraps her arms around his chest and rests her head on the broad sweep of his shoulders.

  He sighs, but doesn’t answer.

  ‘You should have told me before now,’ she whispers into the wool of his jumper.

  ‘I know, but I didn’t know how to.’

  At least she can understand this. It’s the same for her. She is, however, surprised that Trixie’s never said anything, never even hinted at it.

  ‘Should I say anything to Vita?’ she asks.

  ‘I wouldn’t. She’s very proud, very private. Her grief isn’t something she can talk about. That was part of the problem I think. We fought a lot during those last months before I left. Mostly in this room actually, it seemed to be the place where both of us felt him most keenly.

  ‘We’d tried for ages, you see. To have a child, I mean. Our friends, and Trixie, of course, had their families already but we started late and then it didn’t work. We had tests and there was no obvious reason why, so the doctor said just to keep trying and we did, but the joy went out of it all so quickly and then, amazingly, Vita got pregnant. They often say it’s at the point when you give up that you relax enough for it to happen. Maybe that was the case, I don’t know. We’d always wanted a big family.’ He pauses, then adds, ‘My mother was …’

  ‘Yes,’ Honey says softly, drawing in the Boyd-ness of his scent and the washing powder they use and wanting more than anything for him to turn and lay his body over hers.

  ‘My mother was uncharacteristically excited. I hadn’t expected her to react the way she did. She was besotted with William. In some ways I think when we lost him, it became another thing for her to blame me for. But it wasn’t anyone’s fault. What happened is so rare. He presented no symptoms; it came out of the blue, so there was the shock too. We had no time to prepare. We never got to say goodbye to him.’

  ‘Tell me what I can do.’

  Now he turns and gathers her to him. She nestles in the circle of his arms and he says, ‘Never leave.’ His lips are soft against the skin of her neck. Then, he pulls back a bit and looks her in the eyes. ‘Just stay with me. When you were out of it last night, there were moments I watched you and it scared me to think I might ever lose you too. I couldn’t bear that.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she tells him but her stomach clenches as she says this. How can she ever reconcile who she really is with who Boyd believes her to be?

  He moves away from her then and goes over to the window, his body a black mass against the light.

  ‘The flowers are nice,’ he says.

  ‘Trixie brought them round.’

  ‘She said she was going to. Guess she feels a bit responsible.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For you getting so …’

  ‘I reckon there must have been something wrong with the wine; it doesn’t usually affect me that way.’

  ‘Thank goodness,’ he says, smiling at last. ‘Or maybe not!’

  She can remember more about the sex now and, of course, now knows that Boyd had been weeping, but they have survived this moment, she thinks, and is grateful that they have.

  * * *

  In the days that follow, they are quiet and kind to one another and, on one occasion, she touches Vita briefly on the arm as she’s standing at the kitchen sink.

  ‘Hey,’ Honey says, ‘you’ll let me know if there’s ever anything I can do, won’t you?’

  Vita turns to look at her, her eyes glittery and hard. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ she says, but Honey thinks she does.

  Now she can sense William’s presence in the house and realises that he must be the child in the medium’s vision, the one her mother was holding. Holy shit, she says to herself now and again when she thinks of this and, one evening when Vita is out and Boyd and Honey are eating, she asks him where William is buried.

  ‘I’ll take you there one day,’ he says. ‘It’s not far.’

  ‘Did it …’ she taps her fork against her plate and clears her throat.

  ‘Did it what?’ he asks.

  ‘Did it rain after the funeral?’

  He puts his knife and fork down and looks over at her. ‘Why do you ask that?’

  ‘Just curious.’

  He’s silent for a moment and then says, ‘Yes, it rained.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘Good?’

  ‘It means he found rest and is content.’

  ‘That’s bollocks, surely.’

  ‘It’s nice to believe that it might not be bollocks,’ she says. ‘Isn’t it?’

  He doesn’t answer. She knows he humours her superstitions, but she does wonder whether she’s gone too far this time. After all, this matters, it really does.

  Little does he know the full version of her visit to Elizabeth’s. Elizabeth had seen a baby. That baby must have been William. Honey knew that now and if Elizabeth had been right about the child, then she was most likely right about Honey being found. OK, Honey hasn’t seen Reuben again and she hasn’t fallen, but she firmly believes both of these things will happen somehow and put an end to this life she’s living. They will mean the end of Honey Mayhew.

  Vita

  ‘I heard you,’ I say to Boyd as he stands next to me at the sink.

  It’s Thursday. It’s six-thirty in the morning and the lamps are on in the lounge and the house is warm. Boyd is up earlier than normal and is wearing joggers and a sweatshirt; his face still has that just-slept-in look. We’re waiting for the kettle to boil.

  ‘Pardon?’ he asks over the sound the kettle is making.

  I’ve been waiting for days to say this, but now that the moment’s here, I hesitate, unsure and wary. What good will it do? I’m not even sure of my motives but I plough on regardless. Sometimes I wonder what I’ve got between my ears; it’s certainly not brains.

  ‘I heard you when you told Honey about William. I was passing.’

  ‘Passing? How could you be passing?’

  I can’t read his tone. He isn’t looking at me, but he’s staring down at the washing-up bowl. He reaches out a hand and touches a teaspoon on the draining board and moves it a fraction.

  ‘I was on my way to the bathroom.’ I’m not looking at him either, I can’t.

  ‘Mmm.’

  I know he’s not convinced.

  ‘Why hadn’t you already told her?’

  Now he turns
and gazes down at me, I glance at him out of the corner of my eye.

  ‘I don’t know, Vita,’ he says. ‘I really don’t. I tried, believe me. Many times, but it was almost as though, if I told her, it would change me in her eyes. I wanted to be the man she believed I was when she fell in love with me, not the man burdened by …’ He doesn’t finish the sentence.

  I know it’s a cliché but it really feels like my blood is boiling. Burden? Hadn’t William been a gift too?

  ‘Oh, Boyd.’ But I don’t say what I’m really thinking which is, You are wrong, you are so wrong. How can you not have let her know this? And what about the grief? Don’t you still carry a picture of your child in your wallet like you used to do?

  The kettle boils, the kitchen fills momentarily with steam and then it dissipates. The silence is overwhelming. I think of Honey asleep upstairs and that she has no idea of this thing between me and Boyd, this iron bond.

  And then I think about her secret and the words are in my mouth. I would be a hypocrite if I expected him to have told her about William and didn’t expect him to need to know about her past. Surely it’s my duty to clear the pathway between them? Secrets do such damage.

  But I stop. What about Colin? If I’m such a great exponent of the truth above all things, I should come clean with Boyd about Colin and I should tell Colin about William. I should say to Boyd, ‘Oh, by the way, I’m having a relationship with the guy next door. We go places together, eat food together, have sex. I don’t love him, or at least I don’t think I do, but he knows every inch of my body – just like you used to.’

  No, some secrets should remain secret. I don’t analyse why I think this, but I am convinced that a) it’s not my place to interfere, b) I should not go back on my word and c) I don’t want Boyd to know about Colin, or that sometimes I think Colin is my last line of defence against an unknown enemy – those old-lady-eating Alsatians and the muddle of feelings I am not brave enough to face up to.

  ‘But it’s done now,’ Boyd is saying. ‘She knows now.’

  ‘Yes,’ I reply. ‘It seems that she does.’ And I am furious; a wave of anger hits me, it’s cold and hard and relentless. ‘Oh, sod it,’ I say, ‘forget the fucking tea, forget the fucking crossword today, I’m going to have my shower.’

  Walking away from him is a wrench; it’s like there’s a sundering in the air as, once again, what lies unspoken between us raises its head and stares at me with its pale eyes.

  I don’t look back at Boyd as I make my way across the room but, as I climb the stairs, I hear him sigh.

  Honey

  Boyd’s diary is full of calls to vendors, purchasers and solicitors and he has a valuation to do at one. Honey notices that there’s something different about him but for a moment can’t pinpoint what. Then it comes to her, he’s not wearing a tie.

  ‘You forgot your tie,’ she says, looking over at him as she signs off an email and presses ‘Send’.

  ‘I know,’ he replies. ‘Left in too much of a rush this morning I guess.’ He winks as he says this.

  He’d been downstairs as usual, talking to Vita as they’d made their tea and Honey’s coffee. She’d presumed they were doing the crossword and then she heard Vita stomp up the stairs and go into the bathroom. She checked the clock. Vita was having her shower earlier than normal.

  And then Boyd had come upstairs. He’d locked the bedroom door and had made love to Honey quickly and fiercely. He doesn’t usually, not in the mornings and especially not on a weekday, but he’d been insistent and the sex had been wonderful; they’d both come silently and had lain there afterwards tracing their hands over each other’s skin for a while, and so had, unsurprisingly, been a bit late leaving for work. Honey hadn’t even had time to read her horoscope but had seen his tie on the arm of the sofa and had assumed he’d pick it up and put it in his pocket to wear later.

  But here he is in the office, without it.

  ‘Do you want me to go and buy you one?’ she asks.

  ‘Or, I could pop back to the house and pick one up for you,’ Trixie says, standing up and smoothing down her skirt. She’s wearing the turquoise top Honey’s always liked. It goes with her colouring. ‘I’ve still got a key.’

  ‘No, don’t worry, you two,’ Boyd says. ‘I’ve been in touch with Vita and she’s bringing it in. She said she was passing anyway.’

  Honey purposefully doesn’t look at Trixie when Boyd says this. Why would his first instinct be to call Vita? This puzzles her briefly but then the phone rings and it’s business as usual for a while.

  Of course, she’d thanked Trixie for the flowers and Trixie had said something non-committal, like ‘We must go out again.’ but Honey had the feeling she didn’t really mean it.

  She’d moved the flowers downstairs as soon as she could because their scent had become too overbearing in the bedroom and anyway, since Boyd had told her about William, there’d been something too funereal about the lilies. They hadn’t lasted long and one day she’d come home from work to find Vita had thrown them away and washed up the vase.

  A few moments later Trixie asks if either of them wants anything from the storeroom.

  ‘No thanks,’ Honey says. ‘I’m good.’

  ‘Me too,’ Boyd replies.

  ‘Just need to check on something,’ Trixie says and opens the door and goes down the step, but then the main door opens and Vita wheels her bicycle in.

  ‘Hi,’ she says.

  ‘Hey there,’ Boyd replies, leaping up from his seat and going over to her.

  ‘Your tie.’ She plucks it from the bag she’s got hooked over her shoulder. Honey notices their hands don’t touch as she passes it to him.

  The weather’s turned a little now and Vita’s brought an eddy of damp, cold air in with her.

  ‘Thanks,’ Boyd says and, in a gesture that Honey guesses both she and Vita have seen countless times, he hitches up his collar and starts to tie the tie.

  He smiles first at Vita, then at Honey, his left eyebrow doing that thing it does.

  ‘Trixie in?’ Vita asks.

  ‘In the storeroom, checking something,’ Boyd replies.

  ‘I’ll pop my head in and say hi, then.’

  Vita leans her bike up against the wall and Honey hears her call out hello and Trixie’s muffled reply. She’s only in there for half a minute or so and then she comes back up the step, wheels her bike back out of the office and is gone. Honey goes over to where the wheels have left wet marks on the carpet and picks up a stray leaf the colour of thick-set honey. She throws it in the bin.

  The day presses on. Trixie and Honey do their work, Boyd takes and makes his calls and then he goes out to do the valuation.

  He’s been gone for about half an hour when Trixie says, ‘Bugger, I left my office keys in the storeroom. You wouldn’t be an angel and get them for me would you?’

  Honey doesn’t think it’s strange she should ask her this. She knows Trixie’s in the middle of something complicated and it pleases her to do something for Trixie now and again, kind of gives her the moral high ground.

  Honey’s saying something to Trixie about printer cartridges and is looking over her shoulder as she steps down into the storeroom.

  Of course she falls. The wooden step underneath her foot, the one Boyd warned her about when she started working at Harrison’s, seems to give way and she slams down onto the concrete floor, her right leg twisted painfully under her. She calls out.

  Trixie comes running. ‘Shit,’ she says, ‘you OK?’

  ‘I think I may have broken something,’ Honey says and then everything goes black.

  Boyd

  His phone is on silent but he can feel it vibrating in his jacket pocket. However, he can’t answer it because Mr Edwards is in full flow about his house. ‘Been here fifty years,’ he’s saying. ‘Man and boy. Carried my Gladys over the threshold so I did. Lordy, we’ve had some times here I can tell you.’

  Boyd wishes he could say something meaningful in reply but
his phone is still vibrating and he has no real idea what to say to Mr Edwards.

  Gladys died six months ago and Mr Edwards is selling up to move into a retirement flat. Apparently his son and daughter-in-law are going to help him with the move but, looking around the house, it’s going to be some task. Every room is crammed with furniture and paintings. Mirrors dot the walls and Boyd can tell that the wiring and plumbing will need replacing, as will the kitchen and bathroom.

  It’s a house that’s stood still while the world around it has kept on spinning. But, Boyd thinks – as Mr Edwards finally bustles out of the box room saying, ‘Best let you get on, there’s not room for two of us in here. I’ll get the kettle on, shall I?’ – what’s also stayed still is an idea of love and loyalty and togetherness.

  Everywhere Boyd looks are signs of a life lived with rectitude and care: in the sitting room the antimacassars on the armchairs have been hemmed by hand with tiny, even stitches; the books in the bookcase are arranged alphabetically and on every available surface is a photograph in a frame of a boy who turns into a youth, then into a man, then a man holding a baby – and so the photos multiply, depicting people Boyd knows are loved unconditionally. He doesn’t have time to explore this feeling though because as soon as he hears Mr Edwards carefully making his way down the stairs, he plucks his phone from his pocket.

  He wouldn’t ordinarily, not during a valuation, but there’s something about the insistence of the calls that has unsettled him.

  He’s missed five calls from the office and one from Trixie’s mobile. This doesn’t look good. Trixie knows where he is and that he doesn’t like to be disturbed, it’s not polite when he should be concentrating on the vendor. After all, each person’s story is different. Trixie’s left a message so he taps into voicemail. Her voice is breathless and panicked and he can’t catch all that she says but he gathers there’s been an accident and that Honey is hurt. It’s enough for him to take the stairs two at a time and burst unceremoniously into Mr Edwards’ kitchen and say, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, but I have to go. There’s been an accident at work. My colleague …’ Boyd baulks at the word ‘colleague’ but stammers on, ‘… has been hurt. Can we finish the valuation another time, please? I’m so sorry to do this. You must think I’m very rude.’