‘Is it that you don’t want to go to the cemetery? Is that it?’
Ellie exhales a heavily burdened breath and tentatively nods her head.
It pains me even though I know it shouldn’t. Rationally I know that no seven-year-old would relish the prospect of visiting a cemetery. Maternally I know that she’s too fragile to suffer repeated grief. And yet I still fear the possibility of getting lost in the labyrinth of Ellie’s memory, of becoming nothing more than a word spoken without remembrance or thought or feeling attached. But I’m not sure what more Max could possibly do to try and keep alive in her mind the mother who loved her so very much and who never wanted to leave her.
‘Sweetheart, can you look at me?’
Max tries to pull Ellie’s head from where it’s still burrowed against his body, but it’s as if she’s stuck to him with glue, such is her determination to shield herself from the grief she’s so far from being ready to face.
‘Okay, you stay there. But do you think you can tell me what it is you don’t like about the cemetery? Because I think if you can tell me it might not feel so bad.’
There’s a long pause while Ellie considers Max’s proposition.
‘It’s scary.’
The words, mumbled into Max’s chest, are only just audible, as though to say them clearly, out loud, may bring upon the speaker some bad fortune even worse than the one she’s already endured.
I’d thought that there was no greater guilt beyond that of dying and leaving your daughter motherless. I thought I’d accepted that I had no control over my death, that it wasn’t in my power not to leave Ellie, that sometimes there’s simply no correlation between the things we feel guilty about and our complicity in their cause. I’d thought perhaps the guilt might begin to erode with time.
But guilt, it would seem, is the titanium of emotions.
‘Angel, I think everyone finds cemeteries a bit scary. Why don’t you tell me what scares you most and maybe we can make your fears go away?’
Max manages to prise Ellie’s head from his chest where she’s finally ready to open her eyes and face the world that’s betrayed her.
‘It’s all those dead bodies. They’re horrible. How do you know they’re not going to come out of the ground like in Scooby Doo?’
Ellie’s more assertive now, confident that the cartoon world must surely mirror her own.
‘In Scooby Doo, it’s never really a monster or a zombie that goes around scaring people, though, is it? It’s always just a person dressed up like that, like at Halloween. You know there’s no such thing as people coming back from the dead, don’t you?’
I can’t help but wonder if it wouldn’t be preferable to Ellie if the dead were to come back to haunt the living. At least in that case death wouldn’t be final. At least then she might not have lost me forever.
‘But it’s so quiet there. It really gives me the creeps.’
Ellie’s looking at Max imploringly now. Maybe they should just wait until next year, or the year after that, or whatever time in the unforeseeable future she’s ready to face the inanimate commemoration of me. It’s not as though my headstone’s going anywhere, after all.
‘I know cemeteries can be a bit spooky, sweetheart, but I’d be there with you. How about this: how about we just pop along after school and if you really don’t like it after five minutes, we’ll leave. How does that sound?’
That sounds like the perfect solution, Max.
‘Mmm … okay, Daddy. If you find it scary too then I don’t want you to have to go all by yourself. But you promise that if we get creeped out we can leave?’
‘I promise, angel. Hand on heart.’
And hope not to die.
As Max and Ellie settle into the final few minutes of their morning embrace, Max pulls Ellie into his arms and kisses her, protectively, on the top of her head.
I always knew Max would be a great father. I just hadn’t been prepared for the extent to which my own love for him would multiply when I witnessed quite how great. I’d thought, during those first few years together when it was just the two of us, that it wasn’t possible to love him any more than I already did. I thought I knew the unrivalled depths of his patience, his generosity, his compassion, of his uncanny ability to make every situation – however difficult – seem manageable. But then along came Ellie and with her the proof that even those you think you know best still have the capacity to surprise you, as I witnessed the tenderness and awe with which he greeted our little girl into the world.
And now, here he is, parenting our child without me. I’d never really considered that possibility when I was alive. I don’t suppose anyone does. I don’t suppose many people can bear to acknowledge the chance, however remote, that they may not be around to guide their children into adulthood.
As the seven o’clock beeps ring out from the bedside alarm clock, the whiteness begins to gather beneath me and I know, for this morning at least, that my access is coming to an end. I watch Max and Ellie slowly fade out of view, leaving me with the image of them huddled under a duvet together, sharing the cosiest of morning rituals, a sight that would fill any mother’s heart – even my defunct one – with love and with longing.
Chapter 2
The clouds clear to reveal Max sitting in a coffee shop around the corner from his school with an overpriced chicken-and-pesto panini and my best friend, Harriet. This is an unprecedented event; I’ve never known Max leave the school premises for lunch during his sixteen years as a history teacher, and Harriet’s job as a corporate lawyer rarely releases her with sufficient time to get home before midnight, let alone traipse across town from her office in Holborn to our life in Acton in the middle of the day. I can only assume that my absence has been just a matter of hours and that this unparalleled lunchtime get-together has something to do with the day’s commemorative date.
Harriet’s been my best friend since university. I’m sure to most outsiders it’s an unlikely friendship, but I’d always known – from that very first term when we confided secrets to one another that we rarely dared acknowledge, even to ourselves – that our differences were only skin deep. Despite Harriet’s confidence and her apparent brashness and her refusal ever to admit being in the wrong – all characteristics which I’ve no doubt make her a fantastic lawyer – she and I aren’t that different, really. Perhaps she’s done a better job of concealing her insecurities than I ever did but I think we both knew somehow in those early days of our friendship – unconsciously, perhaps – that there was an affinity between us that transcended the superficial personality differences. It wasn’t until later that we discovered the absent fathers we had in common, whose disappearances had fashioned the people we’d become and the lives we aspired to, albeit in different ways.
When Ellie was born, there was never any question in my mind that Harriet deserved a more meaningful role than the ubiquitous ‘auntie’ epithet, and so the woman who’d vowed for two decades never to want a child of her own became godmother to mine instead. And now that I’m dead, I couldn’t be more grateful that she is. Because not only is she everything you’d want a godmother to be – doting, devoted and defiantly unconventional – she’s also one of only three women whose presence in my daughter’s life doesn’t now overwhelm me with feelings of envy and exclusion. And of those three, Harriet’s the only one who isn’t related to Ellie by blood.
‘So, how are you doing?’
It should be Max answering the question but instead he’s asking it. Even today, of all days, he’s playing the stoical role as he’s done so much over the past twelve months, putting everyone else’s feelings before his own.
‘Oh, you know, it just feels weird, doesn’t it? I mean, she was my best friend and I miss her like hell but that doesn’t mean I have a clue how I’m supposed to act today. Is it enough that we’ve got together to talk about her? It doesn’t feel like enough but then I’m not sure what else there is to do. But how are you doing, more importantly?’
&
nbsp; ‘Honestly? I think I feel pretty much the same as I did this time last year. All that stuff about time being a great healer? It’s rubbish. I still think about her all the time. I think about her when I’m awake and I dream about her when I’m asleep and then my dreams wake me up and I spend half the night just missing her. I don’t think I can remember the last time I had a proper night’s sleep. I never imagined grief would be so exhausting.’
That’s one thing you and I have in common now, my darling. People always talk about the dead being at rest but I don’t remember ever being this tired in my whole life.
‘You know, I never really appreciated before how sleep deprivation totally destroys you. I look back to when we first had Ellie, when Rachel was feeding her two or three times a night, and I genuinely don’t know now how she coped during the day without going mad. I feel like I’m constantly on the verge of insanity these days. Quite a lot of the time I act like I am too. Do you know, the other day I took Ellie round to my mum and dad’s and when I came home I realized I’d left the keys in the front door. It was a miracle we hadn’t been burgled.’
That’s not the first time Max has escaped a minor disaster in the past year. There was the time he forgot the food he’d left cooking in the oven until the hallway smoke alarm furiously alerted him to the impending danger. There were the times he’d get up in the middle of the night, convinced it was morning and head for the shower, often not realizing his error until he switched on the radio to discover an eclectic mix of World Service programmes filling up the twilight hours instead of the morning news bulletin. And then there was the time he went out for an early morning run one weekend Ellie was staying with my mum, returning home an hour later to discover that he’d left the bath taps running, the contents of which had since flooded the kitchen below. It was a mess. He was a mess. His dad had to come over the next weekend to help him redecorate both rooms. That was at the beginning, though. He’s definitely been less dazed and confused lately. At least, I think he has. But perhaps that’s just my own wishful thinking.
‘Don’t beat yourself up, Max. Things like that can happen to anyone. It doesn’t make you a nut job to forget the odd thing now and again.’
‘So when was the last time you did something like that, Harriet? I can’t see you being that forgetful.’
‘Of course I’d never do anything so stupid as to leave my keys in the front door but that’s because I’m a control freak with mild OCD who has to check that everything’s locked a dozen times before I’ll so much as close the garden gate behind me. Don’t go judging yourself by my standards, Max, because therein lies a whole different path to Crazyville.’
Max raises a wry smile. I do too. Harriet may be the most exacting person I’ve ever known, but you can’t accuse her of lacking self-awareness.
‘Talking of crazy decisions, I’m taking Ellie to the cemetery later. I thought it was important to mark the day somehow. She doesn’t really want to go and I don’t know whether I’m doing the right thing in coercing her into it. I’m not sure if I want her to go because I think it’s right for her or because I think it’s right for me or because I think it’s right for Rachel, and I know that sounds ridiculous because it’s not like Rachel’s going to know if we go or not.’
Max pauses for a second to consider the implication of what he’s just said, as if saying those words out loud reminds him again and afresh that I really am dead.
‘I don’t know, Harriet. Am I doing the right thing? What do you think? God, welcome to the world of widower parenting where every decision you make is almost certainly the wrong one.’
And to the world where a single sentence has the power to break my heart all over again.
‘I think you’ve got to stop being so bloody hard on yourself, Max. Everyone tells you what a great job you’re doing, all the time. For god’s sake, even I tell you how great you are with Ellie and I’m not exactly renowned for handing out compliments just to make other people feel better. You’re like the poster boy for single fatherhood.’
It’s true. Max has been amazing. I just wish I could be the one to tell him that. Actually, that’s not true. I wish no one were telling him that. I wish there was no need for him to be told that in the first place.
‘That’s good of you to say, Harriet. Really, I do appreciate it. I’m just not sure it stops me feeling guilty.’
‘Guilty about what, for god’s sake? You’re doing the best you can and, let me tell you Max, that’s pretty damn good by anyone’s standards.’
Max looks down at the solitary remaining mouthful of his sandwich and doesn’t look up again, even as he begins to answer Harriet’s question, slowly and quietly.
‘How did I not know? That’s the question that keeps going round and round in my head, all the time, day and night. It’s driving me mad. If I really loved her, how on earth can I not have known?’
‘Not known what?’
‘That she was ill. That her heart was broken, literally broken. I still don’t understand it. There was no sign, not even on that last night. How can I not have noticed there was something so catastrophically wrong? What kind of husband does that make me? Really, Harriet, what kind of husband?’
I’ve never heard Max talk like this before. Maybe he has and I just haven’t been there to witness it. Or maybe he hasn’t and this is the first time these feelings have found a voice.
‘Max, it makes you the kind of husband who doesn’t also happen to be a cardiologist. Seriously, you can’t actually be blaming yourself for Rach’s death? No one knew there was anything wrong with her. No doctors, not her mum, not even Rach herself as far as we know.’
Harriet’s right. No one had ever identified that fault line in my most vital of organs. Four and a half thousand beats an hour, over a hundred thousand a day, and yet no one had ever detected that a few of mine – enough to matter – were missing. I try not to get angry about it, about the fact that not a single doctor I’d seen for thirty-six years had ever discovered that critical imperfection. I try but I don’t always succeed.
Harriet’s right as well that I’d been oblivious to the signs. I’d thought that the shortness of breath and the tiredness and the occasional dizzy spells were the result of nothing more than my own lack of fitness. I’d been promising myself, even as Max and I headed out for dinner that last evening, that I really was going to join a gym. I’m not sure whether it would have made any difference if I had. I suspect not. I suspect it was already too late by then.
‘I can’t help thinking, if only we hadn’t gone out that night, perhaps she’d still be here now. If only I hadn’t ordered that bottle of champagne … I was just feeling celebratory, you know, and I’d just wanted us to have a really special evening. Rachel had put up with so much from me in those weeks I was gearing up for the deputy head interview … I’d been so preoccupied with the prospect of not getting it and what that would mean. I wasn’t sure I’d even stay at the school if they didn’t give me the job. And then I got it and all I wanted to do was give Rachel a great evening to thank her for her support. But now I can’t stop thinking that if we’d stayed home that night perhaps none of this would have happened.’
‘Hey now, Max. You’ve got to stop thinking like that. You know as well as I do that a single evening out wasn’t the difference between life and death. You’ve got to stop beating yourself up. It’s not going to bring Rach back. None of this is your fault, you must know that. You didn’t know Rach was ill, you couldn’t possibly have known, and so there’s nothing you could have done to change what happened.’
‘I should have been able to save her.’
Max almost whispers these eight words and by the end of them he seems spent.
These are the moments when I most want to be able to shout through the invisible barrier that separates us, to make my voice heard to Max, to let him know just how little I blame him. To tell him how sorry I am for inflicting this on him. To reassure him – to implore him to believe – that he ha
s nothing whatsoever to feel guilty about. To acknowledge that if anyone should feel guilty it’s me; for failing to identify the signs of that internal time bomb, for being unable to save myself, for leaving my husband without a wife and my daughter without a mother.
People say that hindsight is a wonderful thing. It seems to me that the purpose of hindsight is simply to taunt us with our own failings.
Max and Harriet have been sitting in silence for a minute or so now, Harriet’s hand resting on the arm of Max’s grey suit jacket, him still head bowed, her staring out of the window knowing – rightly – that there are no words of comfort to offer.
‘I’m sorry, Harriet. I shouldn’t be offloading all of this on you. I’m sure you’d have thought twice about traipsing across town to meet me today if you’d known you were going to be fed a lunch of self-indulgence. God, I hate myself for being like this.’
‘For being like what? For being miserable? For grieving? Honestly, Max, I’d think you were weird if you weren’t upset today.’
‘For not being able to haul myself out of this trench of self-pity. It feels pathetic. I feel pathetic.’
‘Max, if there’s one thing you don’t need to do, it’s apologize. To be perfectly frank, I’m surprised we haven’t had more of these conversations over the past year. I didn’t want to push you and I assumed you were talking all of this over with other people. Have you?’
‘Honestly? Not really, no. It hasn’t seemed fair to dump it on anyone else. My mum would only worry and Celia would find it too upsetting – it’s enough that she’s lost her daughter without bearing the emotional brunt of her grieving son-in-law too.’
‘What about Connor?’
Max nearly manages a smile.
The Dead Wife's Handbook Page 2