The Story of Us

by Dani Atkins

  ‘Are you two finally speaking again?’ she said with undisguised delight.

  ‘No. No we’re not. Not really,’ I replied, determined not to let her divert me from what I wanted to say. How was I going to put this? I shook my head. There was no easy way.

  ‘Caroline, you did not kill Amy.’

  Caroline gasped. ‘Wow, the diplomatic corps are crying out for people like you, you know.’

  ‘I’m being deadly serious here, Caroline. Amy’s death wasn’t down to you. Not at all.’

  ‘I was driving the car,’ she stated baldly.

  ‘And it was my hen night,’ I countered. ‘Does that make it my fault too?’

  ‘Of course not,’ she refuted.

  I picked up her hand and held it tightly within my own. ‘She had just taken off her seat belt. And you did everything you could to avoid the accident,’ I told her, recalling that her memories of the final moments before the impact were hazy. ‘And afterwards, if it hadn’t been for you bravely climbing out of the wreck and finding Amy on the road, well Jack would never have known we were there, and wouldn’t have stopped and well… everything would have been different.’ In more ways than I could even begin to count.

  I could see a familiar furrow crease her brow. It was the one she used to wear when faced with an impossibly hard problem which refused to be solved. I pressed home my point. ‘Jack might have been the one who pulled me from the wreckage, but you saved me every bit as much as he did, Caroline. You have to believe that. I owe you my life.’

  It had been a good decision to stay the night, I decided, as we prepared for bed some hours later. I suspected that half the reason for Caroline’s mini-breakdown at the cemetery had been due to a long sleepless night without Nick. She had stopped taking the sleeping pills her doctor had prescribed, but so far had adamantly refused to listen to his advice to attend bereavement counselling. I’d actually found several screwed up leaflets for support groups stuffed into a kitchen drawer when I’d been looking for takeaway menus.

  ‘There’s no shame in needing help,’ I said, as I unwrapped a brand new toothbrush Caroline kept for unexpected guests (incidentally, who does that?).

  Caroline was cleaning her own teeth in the adjacent sink, and I had to wait until she’d expelled a foaming mouthful before she bargained. ‘Maybe I’ll go, if you will. ‘Have you considered counselling? Relationship not bereavement. For you and Richard.’

  I patted my lips on the thick fluffy guest towel and shook my head.

  ‘That’s for people who have a problem that can be fixed in their relationship. This isn’t fixable. It’s irreparably broken.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be,’ she continued, stepping cautiously through the minefield of my shattered engagement. ‘I know you really don’t want to hear this, but Nick says he’s never seen Richard like this before. It’s way worse than when you guys broke up last time.’ I bit my lip, but didn’t reply. ‘He’s really sorry, Emma. He knows he made a dreadful mistake.’

  ‘Good. I’m glad he appreciates that. It saves me having to keep pointing it out to him, and by the way, I thought you guys were on my side.’ This is what we’ve come down to, I thought sadly: who gets custody of the shared friends.

  ‘We’re not on anyone’s side. We’re Switzerland.’ I glowered at her reflection in the mirror. ‘Okay, I’m on your side. But Nick’s Switzerland. All right? It’s not like Richard has anyone else to talk to.

  ‘You’re going to get past this, aren’t you?’ she continued desperately, switching off the bathroom light and padding ahead of me into her bedroom. ‘People do. They find it in their hearts to forgive and then they move on.’

  I ran my comb through my hair before climbing into Nick’s side of the bed. There were two perfectly good spare rooms in the house, but for some reason neither Caroline nor I had considered I would sleep anywhere else except in her room. She climbed into the other side of the bed and switched off the light. Perhaps she didn’t want me to see her face when she asked her final question. ‘The reason why you don’t want to get back with Richard, that wouldn’t have anything at all to do with Jack Monroe, would it?’

  The question hovered in the darkened room between us. ‘Goodnight, Caroline,’ I said firmly.

  I lay awake for quite a while after the gentle pattern of Caroline’s breathing told me she had already fallen asleep. It took me longer to drop off, and it wasn’t really surprising that memories of countless sleepovers from our past were keeping me awake. Except there would have been one other person in the room, occupying a narrow foldaway bed pushed as close as possible to Caroline’s divan. The memories were so vivid that I almost expected Caroline’s mother to come through the door at any minute, telling us with exasperation, ‘For the last time, girls, go to sleep.’ My eyes grew heavy and I turned on to my side, curling my legs up in tight foetal curl.

  ‘G’night, Caroline,’ I murmured sleepily into the silent room. ‘G’night, Amy.’

  I saw it as soon as I looked out the window the following morning. It looked, I thought, a little shinier than the last time I’d seen it, as though it might possibly have been through a car wash.

  ‘Your car,’ said Caroline in bewilderment, staring through the front windows at the older and shabbier vehicle parked neatly beside her own, as yet unused, model. ‘How did it get here?’

  I’d set the alarm on my phone extra early, to give me enough time to call a cab, retrieve my abandoned car from the cemetery and still get to work well before the shop opened. At the very least I owed Monique an early start and an explanation.

  ‘Ohh,’ Caroline answered her own question. ‘Richard. He’s got a spare key, has he?’

  He did. It was one of many things I’d been meaning to retrieve from his flat. There were also several items of clothing hanging at the far end of his wardrobe, a shelf of toiletries in his bathroom and quite a few books and DVDs slotted among his throughout the flat.

  ‘Well, that was thoughtful of him,’ Caroline put forward, popping two slices of bread into the toaster. ‘Wasn’t it?’

  I gave her a watery smile but didn’t reply as I savagely buttered and mutilated a slice of toast. I think that said it all.

  As much as I didn’t want to, I had to acknowledge the return of my car. In the end I took the coward’s way out and did it by text. Thank you for retrieving my car. I hesitated, wondering what to add. I flexed my fingers over the screen, before allowing them to type in a quick flurry. Can you please drop my spare key into the shop next time you are passing? I hit Send before I could change either the message or my mind.

  ‘There,’ I said with a smile, leaning back in my seat to survey my handiwork. ‘What do you think?’ My mother extended both her hands, carefully considering the deep pink varnish I had just applied to her nails.

  She looked up at me and smiled. ‘They’re beautiful, Emma, so pretty. Thank you.’

  I began gathering up the tools from our home manicure, screwing lids on to various creams and lotions and slipping bottles back into a vanity case. My mum positioned her hand so that the late afternoon sunlight slanting through the window could showcase the neatly shaped and polished nails. ‘Such a pretty colour, it’s exactly the same shade as Magenta Sunset from the Fisher colour chart that we order from at school.’

  I raised my eyes and looked at her with a sad smile. How cruel was Fate when it decided that she should be able to recall the brand name of practically every colour on a chart she hadn’t set eyes on in years, but couldn’t remember a thousand lost memories of her life as a wife and mother.

  We both really enjoyed the hour or so we spent on her weekly manicure, but probably for vastly different reasons. Over the months, as I filed and shaped and painted, I never once forgot the memory of what had prompted me to introduce this new ritual into our lives. Richard and I had gone to visit a care home which someone had recommended as having excellent facilities for Alzheimer’s patients. Of course my dad had categorically refused to accompan
y us, which in hindsight had been no bad thing. Not that there was anything particularly terrible about the home; the building was modern, the facilities were more than satisfactory and the staff seemed friendly and attentive enough.

  But as we toured the building, past the bedrooms which though filled with photos, cushions and throws still looked like they belonged in a hospital, a feeling of immense sadness started to wash over me. We walked down a long corridor passing rooms occupied by vacant-faced elderly residents, often sitting in the dark, staring distantly at… at nothing. This wasn’t the place for my mum, not now, not ever. This wasn’t where my warm-hearted parent with the quick and easy smile and the irrepressible sense of humour belonged. The creative woman with the keen eye and artistic flair had no business being here. She wouldn’t fit in at all.

  We came to the end of the corridor and the manager, who had been showing us around, reached into his pocket and extracted a key to unlock a pair of wide double doors.

  ‘And this day room is kept specifically for our dementia patients. We have to keep it locked as some of them have a tendency to go walkabout.’

  The door swung open and I felt my heart sink as I realised I was wrong. Mum would fit right in. The aroma of incontinence was hard to ignore, but that wasn’t the reason why I didn’t want to cross the threshold into the room. Suddenly my hand was gripped and squeezed firmly, and I turned to see Richard looking at me with concern. He shook his head gently and brought his face closer to mine.

  ‘This isn’t the place for her. Don’t get upset.’

  I had nodded back at him, my throat too tight for words, but I truly don’t think I had ever loved him more than I did at that moment, just because he understood everything I was feeling without me having to say a single word.

  Of course we couldn’t just abandon the tour; that would have been rude. We had to at least make it look as though we were seriously considering the respite care package we had come to view. There were several residents within the day room, most of whom looked further down the road to dementia than Mum was currently positioned. But looking around at their lost and empty faces was a horrible preview that I knew was going to stay with me for a long time to come.

  There were boxes of jigsaw puzzles piled upon a table, which no one was attempting, shelves full of books with no revealing gaps to indicate any had been taken down, and the baby grand piano positioned in a bay by the window had a faint layer of dust upon it. The room, like the people in it, seemed to have lost its purpose. I could hardly hear the manager’s words over the noise of a wide-screen television with the volume blasting out so loudly I was surprised no one’s hearing aid had blown a fuse.

  I turned away, and that was when I saw her. She looked old, way older than my mum, and was sitting slumped in what appeared to be a very sophisticated electric wheelchair. Her sparse hair was a white candyfloss bird’s nest, with her pink and shiny scalp showing through. She was wearing a nightdress that looked clean enough, and a hideous green dressing gown with fresh stains down the front. She was staring far away into a distant corner of the room, at the point where the wall met the ceiling. I followed her gaze and saw nothing but cornice and plasterwork, but her eyes were transfixed as though she saw so much more. There was nothing of her; she was a jumble of bones in a dressing gown, with paper-thin wrinkled skin covering the places where flesh ought to be. Who are you? I thought sadly. You’re someone’s daughter, someone’s wife, probably someone’s mum. How did you get so lost?

  I turned to walk away, my eyes beginning to fill; my dad had been right not to come today, I wished I had made the same decision. I dropped my gaze, and that was when I saw them, the old lady’s shrivelled and wasted bare feet, with the prominent blue veins and gnarled toes, whose nails were finished off with a perfectly immaculate pillar-box red coat of varnish. It was the single most incongruous thing I had ever seen. Those nails were absolutely perfect. Someone had spent time and effort giving a woman who clearly went nowhere and probably couldn’t even remember her life before this place, an outstanding and beautiful pedicure. Someone cared. She hadn’t been cast adrift and abandoned after all.

  That care home wasn’t the right one for us. But that old lady with the brightly painted toenails gave me the strength and determination to keep looking at others, not for now, but maybe for the future. Something else came out of that visit too, because now whatever else was going on in my life, whatever else I was doing, I set aside the time each week to paint my mum’s nails.

  ‘Some post arrived for you this morning,’ announced my father, walking past with a cup of tea in hand and the newspaper tucked under one arm. ‘I’ve left it in your room.’

  I didn’t look up from my task of slicking a coat of clear varnish over Mum’s nails. ‘Thanks, Dad, I’ll check it out when I go upstairs.’

  Four letters were propped up against my mirror. I examined each in turn before dropping them back on to the dressing table: one from the bank; one mobile phone statement; a reminder about my car tax and a letter from my dead friend’s mother. Linda’s extravagant handwriting was instantly recognisable, even though I’d only seen it once before on the package returning Jack’s leather jacket. This envelope felt too small for her to be returning anything, and I had no idea why she was writing to me. Inside the envelope was a single sheet of paper, carefully wrapped around another sealed envelope, like we were playing pass the parcel… from beyond the grave. Because of course I had instantly recognised the handwriting on the second envelope too. It was different from her mother’s, untidier. There was only one word on the envelope, my name. So she’d clearly never intended for it to be posted. You’d have thought I’d have wanted to read whatever it was that Amy had to say, but I didn’t. Instead I picked up the letter from Linda.

  Dear Emma,

  Donald and I have finally finished packing up Amy’s flat. It was very difficult and emotional, and we’d been putting it off for weeks. I think if he’d had his way, Donald would have kept on paying the rent for years, and have kept the place as a shrine to her, but, well, that would have just been morbid, wouldn’t it? Amy wouldn’t have wanted us to do that.

  Anyway, I found the enclosed letter tucked away with Amy’s important papers. She obviously meant for you to have it, and I wonder if she’d intended to give it to you on your wedding day? Anyhow, here it is. I hope you don’t find whatever she had to say to you too distressing. You’re lucky. I would give anything to hear from her one last time.

  All my love,

  Linda xxxx

  Linda’s final sentence made me feel unbearably guilty. How much better would it have been for Amy’s parents to have found a letter addressed to them in her flat, and not to me. And as for finding it distressing to read, well, I’m sure it would be. If I had any intention of reading it, which I didn’t. I didn’t want to read Amy’s well-wishes for my wedding-which-never-was, and if she was writing about anything else… well, I didn’t want to read that either. Not now. Not yet. Maybe never.

  I went to my wardrobe and pulled from its depths a tattered old shoebox I hadn’t looked in for years. It was held down with a broad elastic band, its cardboard lid bulging upwards under a pile of teenage mementos and souvenirs. I placed the pristine white envelope in its new resting place and bound down the lid. Then I buried the box back in my wardrobe.

  ‘Oh look,’ said Monique with false good cheer, during a lunchtime lull later that week, ‘one of your men has come to see you. I am so glad. The day was beginning to drag a little.’

  I gave her the sort of withering look that only employees who share a genuine and long-standing affection with their bosses are allowed to get away with. I saw Richard climb out of his car, having parked it with uncharacteristic recklessness on the double yellow lines which flanked the kerb outside the bookshop.

  He entered the shop wordlessly, placed my spare car key on the polished wooden counter and slid it towards me.

  ‘Your key. As requested.’

  There was no
thing on his face that gave away what he was feeling. Not a solitary trace. But if you’d been there when he’d fallen out of a tree when he was nine years old, and had steadfastly refused to cry, even though his arm was broken in two places, you’d have recognised the pain he was concealing. I know I did.

  I tried to swallow down a nagging feeling of guilt. Richard didn’t look well. Beneath the tan he’d acquired while skiing, he looked pale and tired. I told myself I didn’t care.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, covering the key with my hand, feeling the sharp edges digging into my palm. ‘You didn’t have to make a special journey,’ I added.

  ‘I got the impression you didn’t want me hanging on to it any longer than necessary.’

  ‘Well, no,’ I replied uncomfortably. ‘Actually, there are some other things of mine that are still at your place, things I’d like to collect…’ He winced, as though I’d knifed him. ‘Perhaps I could call round one lunchtime in the week and get them?’ I didn’t have to translate that ‘lunchtime in the week’ was a euphemism for ‘when you’re not there’. I could see from his eyes that he got it.

  We stood awkwardly facing each other, strangers travelling through a weird and unfamiliar territory. Frankly, it had been easier when we were still yelling at each other.

  ‘Yes. Whatever you want. You still have your door key?’

  I nodded, mentally reminding myself to leave that behind when I’d finished.

  ‘How’s Caroline?’ he asked abruptly, and I could sense our mutual relief. Here at least was a neutral topic, with no hidden undertow to suck us under.

  ‘Much better. She went for her first counselling session the other day, and she sounded quite positive about it. Nick’s really relieved; he’s been so worried about her.’

  Richard nodded, opened his mouth to say something and then thought better of it. This was awful. Excruciating. Every sentence was a minefield. It was impossible to pick a pathway through the dismembered remains of our relationship without causing injury. Where was Monique with her acid-tongued bon mots when you needed her? I glanced behind me, but my boss, for the first time ever, had tactfully left us alone to talk.