The Last Day

by Claire Dyer

  Boyd came to collect them about half an hour later. They spent the intervening time talking about work and Boyd’s mother, who Honey was yet to meet. Trixie managed to hide her surprise on discovering this, she’d assumed otherwise. And then they were in the car and Boyd was driving her home, his large hands on the wheel, his head turning every now and again to talk quietly to Honey who was sitting in the front seat next to him. If only, Trixie thought, from her vantage point in the back, if only he knew the whole story …

  At home Richard was already in bed: a whole day of her marriage had passed with her only seeing him briefly, speaking to him briefly, loving him not at all. But, at least the house was clean and tidy this time and, before she went to bed, she made herself a sandwich and a cup of tea and fired up her laptop and did a Google search for ‘explosion’, ‘boat’, ‘marina’.

  * * *

  ‘What did I do?’ she asks Boyd now. ‘I saved you from her, that’s what I did. She was damaged goods. She would have left you anyway. She would have ended up hurting you one way or another. I just helped her on her way.’

  The world has contracted so that it’s just her and Boyd. They are the only two survivors from some sort of holocaust.

  ‘It was easy,’ she says. ‘I told Honey how mediums’ predictions can come true, I put stuff in her drink that night we went out so that she would talk, and when I found out about her past, I sent her texts from “The Boatman” from pay-as-you-go phones, I damaged the step in the office so that she’d fall and then fixed it again the next day. And,’ she hesitates, ‘then, when at last Honey replied to one of the texts, telling me to “Fuck off and die”, I knew I’d hit home and, after a suitable gap, I posted a letter through the door of your house saying that “The Boatman” was on his way. I did all this so that she’d leave. I waited for her to buckle. I knew in my bones that she would.’

  It feels amazing to say this. Amazing and dreadful. She knows her life will never be the same again but still, she’d been right to do it, hadn’t she? She’d been fearful for Boyd; after all she loved him, didn’t she? She’d also been jealous all the times she’d been side-lined: after Honey’s accident; when Boyd went to the hospital with Vita and Honey the day they got the news about his mother; Honey’s friendship with Vita – all this had hurt. It had offended her that Honey should be taking centre stage the way she was, that she should be taking Trixie’s place. She’d been justified in doing what she did, if only Honey hadn’t left the day she did, if only she hadn’t been crossing that particular road at the particular moment when the lorry came around the corner, if only …

  ‘But,’ she says, ‘I never intended it to be like this. You have to believe me. Can you forgive me?’

  Boyd

  He thought he’d known what grief was: he’d lost a son, he’d left his wife, he was motherless, had always been fatherless and now the woman he loved was dead. But this? This ‘confession’ he’d just heard coming from the mouth of the one person he thought he’d always known and who he’d always trusted, this was somehow worse. It was worse because it was intentional. Trixie had meant to do these things. She said it was because she loved him, but what sort of love leads someone to cause such awful damage?

  And now she was asking him to forgive her.

  ‘I never intended it to be like this,’ she was saying. ‘You have to believe me. Can you forgive me?’

  He studied her face. How much of this was his own fault, he wondered? How many signs had he missed?

  ‘You seriously expect me to forgive you?’ he asked. ‘I should have you fucking arrested, that’s what I should do.’

  She nodded a tiny nod. Her fists, he noticed, were clenched, her back was ramrod straight.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I will never forgive you and I want you to leave. Now. Go. And never, ever come back.’

  He watched as she picked up her bag, put on her coat and walked out of the door. There was nothing left, absolutely nothing. He had lost everything.

  Vita

  And so there’s another funeral, another coffin. And this time, like we had with William, it’s a church service.

  ‘Whoever she really was,’ Boyd had said, ‘she may have believed in God. We should at least give her the chance.’

  And then he’d said, ‘I never did get to take her to William’s grave. I should have done. I really should have done.’

  Boyd has told me about Trixie’s confession but it’s almost too much to compute. And when Boyd asked me what I knew, I told him what Honey had said.

  ‘I should have made her tell you the truth, or I should have told you,’ I’d said. ‘That way, none of this would have happened. But she made me promise not to.’

  It sounded such a feeble excuse in the light of this massive thing that has happened.

  There have been, I think, so many huge betrayals and it is only now I understand the full import of what Honey told me, how scared she had always been.

  Trixie doesn’t come to the funeral.

  Everything Trixie has ever done is tainted now.

  So much lies unforgiven.

  But this time, unlike at Belle’s funeral, the church is almost full. Boyd’s customers come, and the boy at the shoe repair place, and the people who run the dry cleaners, and Elizabeth, the medium Honey had been to see, and so many other people I don’t know but whose lives Honey had touched.

  The lorry driver sent flowers. There were no charges to answer. He hadn’t been speeding and there was nothing wrong with his lorry. She had stepped out in front of him. That was all there was to it. How he will ever live with what happened though, I have no idea.

  In the days that followed the accident I often thought about him. His name is Graham Silverton. He’s married, has kids. I wonder whether he dreams it, over and over again like I do.

  Amongst the congregation I spot a man in a brown jacket who limps when he walks. He wears dark glasses throughout the ceremony. I don’t know who he is.

  The rest of the congregation sings the hymns Boyd has chosen and Boyd reads ‘Do not stand at my grave and weep’ and cries huge, wracking tears and all I can do is stay close to him and hold his arm as if my small body could shore him up and stop him from falling.

  And still I haven’t wept. Not for William, nor Boyd, nor Belle nor Honey, nor even for Trixie. One day I know I will have to.

  And Colin is there, too, but I know that whatever it was I had with him is over.

  I’d thought I wouldn’t spend another night with him, but I did. New Year’s Eve had been our last night together. There’d been no massive row, no cruel words spoken, just a gradual fading; like ropes loosening. We’d got up the next day and moved away from each other inch by inch ever since. Perhaps this process had started the night of the party at his clients’ house, perhaps it had started earlier; perhaps it had reached its conclusion when the pallbearers had carried Honey’s coffin into the church.

  What is for certain is that there’s no room for Colin in my life now and there probably hasn’t ever been because, and this might sound a strange thing to admit to now, even before Honey came into our lives, I’d never stopped loving Boyd and, even if I didn’t know it, Colin did. I have no idea how he did, but maybe he knows me better than I thought, better than I know myself. ‘It’s OK,’ Colin said when I went to see him the day after Honey died, ‘I understand.’

  And I replied, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know, when we started I mean, that in the end I’d still be needed like this. My place is with Boyd. You do understand, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I do.’

  * * *

  It’s afterwards and we’re standing outside the church. Boyd is talking to the vicar and around us the trees are freckled with blossom. Colin is wearing a dark suit and tan shoes. He is tidy and contained, his skin is smooth, his beard tidy.

  It’s like my head and heart have become disconnected.

  Colin puts a hand on my arm. I look at it and recall how it used to be when he ma
de love to me.

  ‘Love never ends with a clean break,’ he says. ‘That’s to say, no one comes with a ruler and pencil and draws a line under how you feel and says, “There now, that’s sorted. You won’t yearn or hope or wish or remember or regret any more.” The phone might ring and you have no idea what to say, not like before when it was easy and comfortable and normal and right and this doesn’t change anything. What you felt for whoever it is, like what I’ve felt for you and what you’ve felt for Boyd and him for you and for Honey, and all the interconnections that exist, don’t go away. They stay out there in the air like invisible cobwebs binding us to one another. Like ours will bind us, in some way. Always. I don’t need to tell you this though; you know it already, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I do.’

  And in that moment, it’s over. It is simple and sad and he’s right, I will still love him in a way, but not in the way I love Boyd, the way I’ve always loved Boyd.

  * * *

  Boyd and I are standing in front of the fireplace in the lounge of the house in Albert Terrace. I’ve shown Boyd the painting I’ve done of Honey but neither of us is ready to hang it on the wall yet and I wonder whether we will ever be.

  The daffodils I’d been arranging when the police came are in a vase on the mantelpiece. They are fully open now.

  ‘The painting’s wonderful,’ he says. ‘I love it.’

  ‘I’m glad. It was her idea. She said she wanted to leave something good behind.’

  ‘I don’t think she ever planned to stay. She was always going to leave, wasn’t she?’

  ‘I don’t know. Honestly I don’t.’

  ‘Do you think we’ll ever know whether she was going or coming back?’

  I lean up against him and he puts his arm around me. I tuck myself into him like I did before.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say again.

  ‘I’m glad you’re here,’ he says.

  ‘I’m glad I’m here too.’

  There is a pause and then I say, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I should have told you about the danger she was in. She was both of our responsibility. It seems odd to say it, but it’s true. She was …’ I falter.

  ‘Go on,’ he says.

  ‘So much like a child to me. Is that an odd thing to say, seeing how you and her were …’ I can’t finish the sentence.

  ‘No, it’s not odd,’ he says. ‘Love comes in many shapes and colours. You can never predict it. I guess …’ he hesitates. ‘We both wanted to protect her, in our own way.’ Then he asks, ‘Do you think grief ever ends?’

  ‘Has yours for William?’

  He looks down at me, his eyes are dark, his face achingly familiar. ‘No,’ he says, ‘it hasn’t. I thought once that I’d finished mourning him and that I could escape it, but it’s lodged too deep inside. I should have told you all this years ago, shouldn’t I? I shouldn’t have let you believe I’d finished grieving for him because I never will. I shouldn’t have let you believe I’d stopped loving you either, because I hadn’t, not really.’

  And it’s then that it happens; all that was out of alignment falls back into place. The disconnect, the raw, pulsing loss, the memory of Boyd’s head bent low over our son’s body blurs as though I’m looking at it without my glasses on. Gone is the anger and the confusion and all that’s left is the sharp sting of a remarkable kind of grief, both for the son we lost and the girl whose life blessed ours for a while.

  There have been so many last days in my life with Boyd. William’s death and Honey’s are utter tragedies and I miss them both more than words can say. For them there will be no next day but I realise that, for those of us who are left behind and who have to cope with these aching absences, after every last day, there comes a first.

  I realise that, although we may not have known that it was the last day – the day when what we believed to be true was true, when what we loved was there to be loved, when what certainty we depended on was certain, and we may mourn all these things when they’re gone – what is sure is that we will sleep and rise, and a new day, the first day of a new kind of living, a new way of looking at the world, will come.

  I look up at this man and think of all the days he’s been in my life both as a presence and an absence; the space he filled and the space he left behind have always been the parameters that have helped to define me.

  And I think how love, like life, never follows an ordered path from A to Z; it meanders and stalls, it constantly bewilders and surprises us and how seldom it is that we are actually at peace in amongst the dark dawns and the last days, how rarely we can stand still and say ‘I love and am loved’.

  * * *

  It’s late August, another last day.

  On the mantelpiece is a vase of phlox from the garden.

  Boyd and I are looking at the portrait of Honey on the wall above the fireplace, the memories of her and of William are inked onto our skin like tattoos and we are together, waiting for what might come next.

  I can feel the heat of his body next to mine and know that after this last day, this other life, later will come yet more grief and a kind of forgiveness and, when he’s ready, a different type of love.

  But I don’t say anything, because sometimes just being there when it matters most is the only thing that matters.

  This Time Last Week

  An ordinary morning;

  conversation and see-you-later,

  routine goodbyes and plans

  for an ordinary day.

  How special that was,

  seen now from the lack of it,

  how fragile the charms

  protecting us from this.

  Alan Hester

  Acknowledgements

  It is safe to say that this book would not exist if it wasn’t for the dedication, insight and support of my agent, Broo Doherty. My gratitude and twirling are infinite, Broo.

  Also, the whole team at The Dome Press have been just wonderful. Massive thanks are due to both my editor, Rebecca Lloyd, and to David Headley for championing this book, and really special thanks are due to all-round guru, Emily Glenister: you are simply a star. I am also grateful to Sophie Goodfellow at FMcM Associates for her PR magic, to Penny Hunter for her careful copy edit, and to Mark Swan for the beautiful cover design.

  Other thanks are due to Jill Pickett for Honey’s scene with Elizabeth and to Andrew Hooper of Hoopers Residential for letting me quiz him about the working life of an estate agent. All mistakes, omissions or errors of judgement in these matters are entirely my own.

  Thanks are also due to Robert Seatter for allowing me to use some words from The Book of Snow, to Alan Hester for his poem ‘This Time Last Week’, and to Chez and Dave for good times in Kalkan and for introducing me to Chez’s brother, Boyd, thus giving me the idea for the name.

  Many lovely people have helped me stay on my writing feet over the past few years and so to Adrienne Dines, Alison Sherlock, Amanda Jennings, Annabelle Thorpe, Colette Dartford, Hilary Boyd, Hilary Hares, Iona Grey, Isabel Costello, Jane Cable, Jane Adams, Jenny Ashcroft, Josh Williams, Julie Cohen, Kendra Smith, Kerry Fisher, Liz Fenwick, Louise Ordish, Lynn Smith, Rosanna Ley, Shelley Harris, Stephanie Butland, Susan Martineau, Sue Squires, Tracy Rees, all at Reading Writers and in Kathryn Maris’s classes at The Poetry School, my Creative Writing students at Bracknell & Wokingham College, my lovely poetry publishers, Two Rivers Press, and my cup-half-full guru (you know who you are) I say a HUGE and soppy thank you.

  This book is also in memory of AH and to acknowledge the work of the Genesis Research Trust (www.genesisresearchtrust.com).

  Finally, thank you to my parents (to whom this book is dedicated), my family and cats for putting up with me, but especially to J, J, L & T.

  Published by The Dome Press, 2018

  Copyright © 2018 Claire Dyer

  The moral right of Claire Dyer to be recognised as the author

  of this work has been asserted in
accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organisations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9780995751064

  The Dome Press

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  London WC2N 4EZ

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