The Last Day

by Claire Dyer

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘We do.’

  Belle grimaces and Honey feels her hand tense under hers.

  ‘You OK, Mum?’ Boyd asks. ‘Do you want me to get a nurse?’

  ‘Of course I’m not all right,’ she snaps, turning to look at him. ‘I’m dying for heaven’s sake. And,’ she turns back to look at Honey, ‘because I am, I am entitled to ask you this.’

  ‘What? What do you need to ask me?’

  ‘I need to know where you’re from, what your background is. Boyd’s told me so little. If I’m going to have to leave him in your care, then I need to know.’

  A nurse comes over, soft-soled, plump under her uniform. ‘How are you doing Mrs Harrison?’ she asks. ‘Can I get you anything? A cup of tea maybe? We’ll have to do your blood pressure in a bit if that’s OK?’

  Belle waves the nurse away with the hand Honey’s not holding. ‘Don’t fuss me,’ she says. ‘Just do what you have to do when you have to do it and leave me alone the rest of the time.’

  ‘There’s no need to be rude, Mum,’ Boyd says.

  She doesn’t acknowledge him but looks at Honey again and says, ‘Well? Who are you, Honey Mayhew?’

  So, is this it? Should she tell them both everything, right here, right now? Is this the place and time? Boyd can tell Vita later and then, when it’s quiet and he and Honey are alone, Honey can ask Boyd if he wants her to leave.

  The text is still sitting like a malevolent toad in her phone. There is no escape and she can’t go on pretending. Whatever half-truths she’s told Boyd in the past about her foster homes, the itinerant jobs, the grotty places she’s lived in, now is the time to set the record straight and tell him that she sold her body for money, took innumerable risks and consorted with crooks, that she was there when a boat exploded and a man lost a limb and people could have died, that there’s someone out there who’s after her, who she believes either wants to hurt her because she hurt him, or silence her because she knows too much, or both.

  She looks across at Boyd, at the way his hair tufts over the top of his ears. He’s watching her, his left eyebrow raised, he’s resting his hands on his knees. She can see the fair hairs at his wrists and again thinks of the car wash and how she’d noticed them then; she remembers how he touches her, the warmth of his breath on her skin, what it feels like to have him in her, how his mouth twitches when he comes. She remembers the small kindnesses he performs: coffee in bed while she checks her horoscope, going out at midnight to the petrol station to buy a can of Diet Coke when she’s had too much wine. She remembers the mumble of his and Vita’s voices while they’re doing the crossword first thing each morning, how he is sitting here next to the mother he’s never really known how to love, how he is both fatherless and childless and will soon be motherless and she can’t. She can’t do it to him. She can’t let him know who she really is. She has to give him the version of her he thinks he already knows.

  She squares her shoulders and moves her foot a little, her toes are cold and she has pins and needles. ‘I’m a product of the State,’ she says. ‘What you see is what you get. I never knew my mother, nor my father. I was in care from an early age but had good foster parents, went to school, did my exams, worked in temporary jobs, tried to make ends meet and then I got the job at Harrisons. The rest is history, as they say.’ And she repeats for good measure, ‘So, what you see is what you get. Isn’t that right, Boyd?’

  ‘And I like what I see,’ he says, smiling broadly at her.

  She is lying, of course. She seems to spend her life lying and can tell Belle doesn’t believe her. Belle’s too shrewd to do so, but she doesn’t contradict her or press her for more details.

  She just says, ‘I think I’ll have that cup of tea now, Boyd, if that’s OK?’

  ‘Sure, Mum,’ he says and stands up. ‘You want anything, Honey?’ he asks.

  ‘No thanks, I’m fine.’

  He wanders off and, as soon as his back disappears around the corner, Belle flips the hand Honey’s still holding over and grips hers fiercely.

  ‘Don’t you hurt him,’ she says. ‘Don’t you dare. He’s had enough hurt to last a lifetime.’

  ‘I know,’ Honey says. ‘I know he has. Hurting him is the last thing I want to do.’

  ‘It should never have happened.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He and Vita should never have split up. They should have worked it out. Once you have a family, you have to fight to keep it. It was the one thing I could never give my son. It is the biggest regret of my life. He and Vita could have, should have tried again, had another child. It wasn’t too late, not for them, not then.’

  ‘Belle?’ Honey says. ‘Don’t. Don’t say that. What’s the point in saying that? What’s done is done.’

  ‘It’s all right for you to say. You’re young, you have choices. Will you give Boyd a child?’

  This last question takes Honey by surprise. ‘We’ve not talked about it,’ she says. ‘It’s still early days. We’d need to get sorted financially first and move out of Vita’s house.’

  Her head is reeling. How could she ever have a child?

  ‘Promise me you’ll try,’ Belle says, still holding on fast to her hand. ‘Let me die knowing that Boyd’ll have that at least.’

  Honey recognises emotional blackmail when she sees it and Belle is heaping it on in spades. She can’t answer her so instead says, ‘Oh look, here’s Boyd with your tea.’

  They leave her shortly after, the question lying unanswered between them. Honey didn’t promise and Belle didn’t mention it again. Honey knows it’s hard for Boyd to leave, but he needs to get to work; the distraction will help and there’s stuff that needs doing. Trixie’s been emailing both of them all day with updates and questions and it’s not fair to have left her to hold the fort for so long. Life goes on, or the life Honey’s living now has to go on anyway. She has to keep going until she runs out of options.

  Boyd hasn’t seen his mother’s doctor but at least he knows that she’s being cared for, as much as she’ll allow, that is.

  ‘I’ll come back tomorrow,’ he says to her as he helps Honey back onto her feet and passes her her bag.

  ‘There’s no need,’ Belle says.

  ‘Of course there is.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  ‘I will.’

  He doesn’t kiss his mother when he leaves.

  They meet Vita at the entrance to the hospital; she’s sitting on a bench, muffled in her coat and staring into space. Strangely, it’s good to be back with her. Her company is a comfort.

  When they get home, Honey manages to delete the text and block the number yet again, Boyd leaves for work, Vita goes into her studio and Honey’s left alone in the house. She hobbles to the sofa, picks up the remote and switches on the TV but is, she realises, exhausted and is soon asleep. And, this time, she does dream.

  She’s dreaming she’s in the water; it’s cold and salty and the waves are bumping up against her like hands, the moon is a white coin in the sky and behind her the boat is burning and she can hear shouts. This time she doesn’t make it to the shore but there’s a small dinghy alongside her and someone is stretching down into the water and saying, ‘Here, hold my hand. We’ll pull you up.’

  And inside the boat are Vita, Trixie and Belle, their faces are silvery in this light and Belle says, ‘It’s her. It’s that woman.’

  And she’s gripping on to the side of the boat and each time she gets a finger-hold, one of them bends down and prises her fingers off as the others are batting her away with their oars and still she can hear shouting and smell burning and the waves are covering her and she can’t breathe. She can’t breathe.

  Vita

  Sitting in the hospital’s reception had been torture. Seeing Belle had been torture too. It was so fucking sad to see her the way she was – so diminished, still so angry. I’d really tried when I’d been with her to put on a brave face, say what she’d expect me to say and what Boyd would expect
me to say, but inside my chest, the best and bravest parts of me were tumbling around in tiny, sharp-edged pieces.

  I hated the thought of Belle meeting Honey and what they might say to one another. What if Belle liked Honey more than she’d liked me? I knew this wouldn’t be hard, even given the recent thawing of relations between us.

  As I watched the comings and goings of visitors and nurses and people driving buggies and young kids and the teenagers who have that amazing ability to walk in a straight line whilst looking at the screens of their phones, I wondered what on earth I should do with all the past that’s stuffed inside of me like loft insulation or the innards of soft toys? How do I make sense of any of it now there’s this new order: Belle dying, Boyd in love with Honey, Honey’s massive secret, my spectacular ability to walk around with the wool firmly pulled over my own eyes?

  And I hated sitting there because I was back in the place where William had been born, where Boyd and I had come the first day after he died; back where the cracks in our marriage had begun to appear.

  This is what I’m thinking when Colin says, ‘I’d like it if you came,’ and picks out an onion from the vegetable rack in the cupboard next to the sink and starts to peel it.

  He’s making dinner: something exotic, spicy and carefully crafted.

  It’s not often he says things like this, in fact I can’t recall him ever doing so before, but ever since Boyd and Honey have known about me and Colin, there’s been a subtle shift in the balance of things. It had been fine when it’d all been a secret, it was almost as though I hadn’t admitted it to myself. But what had seemed convenient and pleasant before now seems portentous and uncomfortable.

  ‘Boyd knows about us,’ I’d said to him the day after Honey’s accident.

  ‘Ah,’ he’d replied. ‘I guess that’s a good thing.’

  ‘Mmmm, I’m sure it is.’

  When I think back to this conversation, I realise I hadn’t looked him in the eye during it and surely that must have spoken volumes?

  He chops the onion and I feel my eyes smarting. ‘Shit,’ I say, grabbing a piece of kitchen paper.

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I’m sitting on a stool at the breakfast bar in Colin’s immaculate kitchen, a glass of wine on the countertop by my elbow. Outside it’s November, the air crackling with the first frost of the winter. It should be nice to be inside on a night like this; I should be enjoying the warmth and safety, the pungent smell of frying onions, the vibrant greens of the herbs Colin’s washed and left to drain by the sink. But all I can think about is the comfortable muddle of my own house the other side of the party wall. There, I can put my feet on the sofa without fear of leaving a mark, I have Boyd’s company and Honey’s, and the company of their scattered belongings. I am part of something crowded and bigger than myself at home. I had got used to being on my own but now I have a role, a part to play. Here, everything is minimalist and clean lines. Here isn’t where I belong.

  Colin’s taken out as many of the non-load-bearing walls as he can and made the ground floor of his house into something that to me looks like a marble run; it reminds me of one of the few games I’d had as a child on the commune – a maze through which I had to run a ball bearing until I got it into the centre when a bulb would light up and a buzzer sound. The walls of his house are white; his furniture is mostly either pale wood or light grey with a few statement pieces: a copper sculpture of interlocking circles, a Mondrian print, a faux tiger skin rug.

  ‘Well?’ he asks, as he tips the jasmine rice into the rice steamer.

  I still like the way he moves, his tidy gestures, his compact frame, the contours of his muscles underneath his shirt, but am beginning to ask myself if this is enough.

  I’m wearing jeans, a pair of socks Boyd left behind when he moved out the first time, a loosely knitted black cowl-necked jumper. My hair, as ever, is in its plait and I’m wearing my glasses. I cross my legs, take a mouthful of wine and say, ‘Remind me when it is again?’

  He stops what he’s doing and turns to face me. I have the feeling he’s going to walk towards me and touch some part of me. I both want this and I don’t, and so I put my wine back down on the counter and slip off the stool, saying, ‘Shall I lay the table?’

  ‘Thank you,’ he replies. And, moving back towards the hob, says, ‘The party’s next Saturday. We don’t have to stay for long, but I should show my face. I’d like to. After all, I designed the house! And it would be great if you could come; I’d love for you to see it.’

  But part of me doesn’t want to go, doesn’t want to get involved in this part of Colin’s life. It’d been OK when we’d gone to the art gallery, to the recital in the church, to the cinema and to other innocuous, generic places; those had been events in which I’d had nothing invested, they didn’t matter, not really. But this would be different. This would be him and me being like a couple and, for some bizarre reason it’s almost as though by going there with Colin I’d be putting a distance between myself and Boyd, and Honey, and Belle too.

  Belle had been moved to a hospice and was waiting, ever more impatiently, for the end to come. Boyd and Honey and I, and sometimes Trixie too, had settled into a routine of visiting her, although it was still tricky for Honey to get around and would continue to be while her leg was still in plaster.

  It had been a combination of Honey’s broken ankle and a particularly busy time at work for all of us that had meant Honey and I had not yet got around to arranging another sitting for the portrait. However, we’d fixed one for this coming Sunday, the day after Colin’s clients’ housewarming party.

  ‘Sorry?’ I say to Colin, aware that he’s speaking but, because I’m not listening, I haven’t heard him.

  ‘I was saying, shall we use chopsticks with the meal? If so, they’re in the sideboard, second drawer down.’

  ‘Wilko Cap’n,’ I say, doing a mock salute and trying my very best to smile at him. He really doesn’t deserve to be treated the way I’m treating him. For reasons I can’t explain, we haven’t had sex and I haven’t stayed the night since Honey’s accident.

  I march over to the sideboard, a ball of fury lodged in my chest. I’m impatient with the sideboard’s Scandi glamour, impatient with the faux tiger-skin rug, with the Mondrian print, with the walls, with the front door and the path down to the road and the way I imagine the frost is even now settling on the bare branches and the railings and the tops of the streetlamps.

  We eat in relative silence. A few weeks ago it would have been companionable, but now the silence has a kind of edge to it.

  ‘I guess you’re not stopping over this evening,’ Colin says as he pours the last of the wine from the bottle into my glass.

  It isn’t a question but even so, I look up at him, over the top of my glasses and say, ‘I don’t think so, thanks anyway. Got a busy day tomorrow and need to get an early start. But dinner was lovely. Thank you.’

  When we’ve finished eating, he quietly and efficiently clears the plates and stacks the dishwasher. I help, and soon the kitchen’s back to its normal pristine state, its white high gloss cupboards gleaming.

  We don’t kiss one another goodnight but I touch him lightly on the arm as he hands me my coat. ‘Hope you sleep well,’ I say.

  ‘Thank you,’ he replies.

  As the front door closes behind me, I tell myself it doesn’t matter. He and I are fine; we understand one another and yet, sitting at the base of my heart is a knot of regret that I don’t quite know what to do with.

  The night is clear and cold, the sky almost black, the few stars I can see through the light pollution glitter like small pieces of tinsel and I’m right, the frost is starting to settle. The breaths come out of my mouth in small, dense puffs as I walk the short distance to my house.

  Inside Boyd’s watching something dreadful on TV. From the nasal, smug tones coming out of the speakers it’s a re-run of a Top Gear episode, I imagine. It’s times like this I really regre
t letting him persuade me to have a TV installed. We’d never needed one before.

  ‘Nice evening?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  ‘Honey’s turned in. She fancied an early night.’

  ‘OK.’ I convince myself I don’t care where Honey is, or that Boyd’s sitting on the sofa in the extension to the kitchen dressed in his jogging bottoms and an old sweater he had when we were together. I remember him wearing it when he was lying on the sofa with William on his chest. William had been fast asleep, his body rising and falling along with Boyd’s breathing. ‘I think I’ll turn in too. It’s been a long day and I’ve got an early start.’ I haven’t, not really, not an unusually early one. But saying this maintains the lie I’ve just told Colin. I wonder whether if I say it enough times I’ll actually begin to believe it.

  ‘Well, goodnight then,’ Boyd says. ‘See you tomorrow. If you’re up too early though, you’ll miss our crossword session.’

  He chuckles at something on TV and I stay silent because I don’t know what to say and so I turn and make my way upstairs, the babble of TV voices and roar of car engines following me.

  Maybe I should knock on the door of Honey and Boyd’s room and say goodnight to Honey too, but I resist. It gives me a buzz that I’m able to do so. When I’d been at Colin’s, I’d wanted to be here with them, but now I’m here, I want to be on my own.

  I don’t need these people. I bloody well don’t need anybody.

  * * *

  But, naturally, I go to the housewarming party with Colin on Saturday. He drives and Classic FM’s playing on the radio. The weather’s stayed cold all week and even at six, it’s frosty; the air the kind that burns the back of your throat if you breathe it in too deeply.

  ‘Here we are,’ he says as we turn into a concealed entrance in some village in the Surrey Hills. ‘The drive’s a bit of a statement too.’

  He hasn’t told me anything about the house other than that he likes the clients and is pleased with the end result, and so I’m not prepared for the mansion that appears in a clearing in the trees at the end of the driveway. I should have known it’d be magnificent. After all, the gates were grand enough, and then there were the lights throwing up beams of intense white at even intervals into the shrubbery along the drive. The drive had been laid to gravel, making even the tyres of Colin’s ordinary Toyota sound like they belong to a high-performance car.