Three-And-A-Half Heartbeats

by Amanda Prowse

  She felt her shoulders sink. There was something very comforting about knowing that someone would be watching over her as she slept. ‘I miss her. I miss her so much. And I just can’t accept that I won’t see her again. I can’t!’ she mumbled as hot tears slid across her face and down into the duvet.

  ‘I know,’ he whispered. ‘I know.’

  Grace wasn’t sure how long she’d slept, but as her eyes flickered open, she saw that Huw was dozing, his head resting on his chest, his breath even. Bertha was pushing a soft orange light into the room.

  Grace scraped the hair from her eyes and sat up. The bed creaked and woke Huw.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Bit better.’ She answered honestly and with a clearer head, more than a little embarrassed by the situation in which they found themselves. ‘I’m sorry, Huw. I don’t know what happened. I just suddenly couldn’t cope.’

  ‘It’s okay. You don’t have to say sorry.’ He took a deep breath.

  ‘I’m a bit hungry.’

  He stood and stretched his arms over his head. ‘I’ll let you get on.’ Monty lifted his head in case they were on the move.

  ‘Stay and have some cheese. If you’d like to.’ She was suddenly nervous, not wanting to impose her friendship on him, but feeling quite fearful of being alone.

  ‘Sure,’ he said noncommittally as he made his way over to the kitchen area.

  ‘Sit yourself down. It feels weird saying that to you in your house on your sofa, but you know what I mean.’

  Huw nodded and sat.

  Grace walked to the dresser and collected plates, which she placed on the breakfast bar, followed by the wheel of cheese, the sourdough loaf and the muffins. ‘Wine?’ She lifted the bottle of red in his direction.

  ‘Sure.’ He shrugged.

  She plonked two of the fat wine glasses by the plates and fished in the drawer for a corkscrew.

  ‘Here.’ Huw stood and took the bottle from her. Removing his keys from his pocket, he unfurled a natty penknife and used it to twist and lever the cork. Then he took his place on one of the stools.

  Grace sat next to him and cut the bread. ‘Bread and cheese – not much of a supper, I’m afraid.’ She smiled.

  ‘Do you like to cook?’

  ‘Not really, I bake occasionally with Chloe…’ She swallowed. ‘Used to bake… but not really. Tom does the cooking and I go to work. At least that’s how it used to be, but I’m not sure now.’ She drank the wine he’d poured for her. ‘I’m sorry about today.’ She stared at her glass.

  ‘As I said nothing to be sorry about. It can hit you like that, suddenly and without warning, and it can be the smallest thing.’

  ‘Does that still happen to you?’

  ‘Yes.’ He raked his beard. ‘Leanne was a stickler for lists, she was always consulting a list, or transferring things to a different list or ticking things off…’ He paused and sipped his wine. ‘I was going through a box of stuff I found in the garage a few weeks ago and I found one of her lists.’ He stopped and briefly clenched his teeth. ‘It was one she’d made for our wedding – you know, check flower ribbon colour, write the table plan, hire cake stand, loads of detail.’ He shook his head, clearly having memorised it. ‘And then the last thing on the list was…’ He paused. ‘Marry Huw and live happily ever after!’ He downed his wine. ‘And it reminded me of how she used to make me feel, how we used to laugh and laugh because we were so happy; how sunny she was, how excited, not just about the wedding, about everything, and how she made me sunny and excited. And now I’m not; I’m cloudy and miserable.’

  ‘I think you’re lucky to have had someone who loved you that much.’

  ‘As I said before, that’s me – lucky!’ He gave a snort of laughter.

  ‘Was she a teacher too?’

  Huw shook his head and took a slice of bread. ‘No, she was learning about horticulture, she wanted to be a gardener and a florist. She had grand plans to landscape places in the city, make urban environments more beautiful. She replanted the whole garden up here when my nan died – not just shoving plants in to fill gaps, she knew what plants should go where. She put a lot of thought into it. What job do you do?’

  ‘I work for a marketing agency. I’m on leave – enforced leave, but I didn’t punch anyone—’

  ‘Good, because punching someone is never the answer.’

  ‘No. I went to work with no shoes on and practically wearing my pyjamas and I didn’t even notice.’

  Huw gave a small laugh. ‘Weren’t your feet cold?’

  It was Grace’s turn to smile. ‘No, not really. As I said, I didn’t even notice.’

  ‘What are we like?’ Huw said, reaching for the bottle and refilling her glass and then his own. ‘It’s not the solution either, getting drunk, but sometimes it sure feels like it!’

  They clinked glasses and sipped their medicine.

  With half the cheese eaten, a large chunk of the loaf missing, the muffins reduced to crumbs and two empty wine bottles lying in the sink, Huw nipped to the cottage and reappeared with a bottle of port. He sloshed large measures into their wine glasses, then pulled the steamer chairs together on the deck. They sat in one each, with the duvet thrown over their legs.

  ‘I’ve never done this, never sat outside in the cold and dark and had a drink!’ He lifted his glass to the early evening sky.

  ‘Me either, but it feels good, like I’m connected to something bigger than this shitty little life.’ She took some more sips.

  ‘It’s not shitty or little, you’re just at the cliff edge and it’s scary and uncomfortable.’

  ‘Are you saying I should jump?’ She slurred slightly; the wine and port mixture was doing its job.

  ‘I guess it’s the only way you’ll know if you can fly.’ He threw his head back and laughed. ‘Why is it so easy to give you advice I can’t take myself!’

  ‘Ah, well, that’s the million-dollar question. If I was looking at my mates’ lives, looking at their marriages, and they lived like me, I’d know what to say, but I can’t see through the fog. It clouds everything.’

  ‘Do you love him, Grace? Do you love your husband?’ His inhibitions had departed with the last of the daylight. Sitting in the darkness, he felt comfortable asking.

  Her response was slow and considered. ‘I did. I do. I don’t know. It used to be perfect and I thought we were happy. No, that’s not fair, we were happy for a very long time. But if I’m being honest, the cracks were there before we lost Chloe. I work so hard, and I guess I resent that sometimes, it doesn’t feel fair. We had a terrible row and we both said some terrible things. Not just heat-of-the-moment stuff, but as though we’d been storing up the bad things and that was the time to say it all. And, boy, did we!’

  Grace sipped the warming liquor. ‘It’s as if we’ve been twisted apart and got so badly broken that no matter how hard we try, we can’t fit back together because we’re different shapes now.’

  ‘Have you tried to fit back together?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘No. No, we haven’t. We’ve been avoiding each other and now I’m here, I’ve run away. But there is nowhere else I want to be, Huw. I can cope here, away from everything and with you here to bundle me off the streets when I lose the plot. Thank you for that.’

  She put her free hand under the duvet and sought out his fingers. Taking them into her palm, she squeezed them tightly. It felt strangely familiar and comfortable.

  He responded by knitting his fingers with hers and laying them entwined against his thigh. ‘I can’t imagine not trying, not fighting for Leanne.’

  They sat in silence for a moment, each reflecting on the other’s words and enjoying the physical closeness of their joined hands.

  It was nearly midnight when Grace felt her head loll against her chest. ‘I need to go to sleep.’

  She jumped up, pulled the duvet from them both and stumbled across the deck. Her feet caught in the quilt cover, which was hanging loosely arou
nd her toes, and she pitched forward and hit her head on the handrail for the stairs. Tumbling forward through the dark, with her hands outstretched, she landed in a crumpled heap in the mud.

  She truly didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The alcohol had numbed her sufficiently so that she wasn’t in pain, but when she put her hand to her forehead and pulled it away, it was wet. She sniffed the liquid that was falling in a warm trickle down her face and recognised it as blood.

  Monty barked through the French doors, not liking the disturbance outside.

  ‘Shit! Grace!’ Huw leapt up and hurried to her side. Crouching down, he tried to assess the damage in his slightly sloshed state. ‘Are you okay? Talk to me! Have you broken anything?’

  ‘I think I’ve cut my face,’ she whispered.

  ‘Heaven’s above!’ He sighed. ‘Come up to the cottage. I need to look at that in the light – you might need stitches.’

  Grace stared to cry. ‘I don’t believe in heaven above. I don’t believe in anything. So where is she, where is she now, if not in heaven?’ She wiped her hand over her nose and face, smearing tears and blood into her hair and over her cheeks and fingers.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’ He put his arms around her and cradled her to his chest. ‘But I do know that I need to get you cleaned up. Come on, come up to the cottage, there’s a first-aid kit somewhere.’

  Gingerly she stood, clinging on to him for fear of falling again and finding it hard to see through the blood, tears, snot and hair that clogged her eyes.

  Monty circled them, sniffing and whining. ‘It’s okay, Mont. Good boy.’ Huw slapped his thigh and the dog stayed close.

  The inside of the cottage was very different to The Old Sheep Shed. It wasn’t pretty by intent, there was no particular design to it and nothing matched. It looked like the sagging, cotton-covered furniture, fringed standard lamps and dark-wood bureau had been there since it was built. Large potted plants took up space on the deep window sills and the floral wallpaper had long since faded to sepia, though it remained firmly glued to the thick walls. A large fireplace had coal and ashes spilling from it onto the flagstone hearth and a tarnished companion set stood like a sentinel to the side of the tiled surround. Small watercolours, capturing the bend in the river and the mountain tops, hung in clusters in the wall space between the dado rail and the sloped ceiling. A thick wool rug lay on the flags in front of the fire.

  Monty flopped down onto another rug and sighed, indicating that this was his home, taking ownership, as if the carpet of dog hair wasn’t proof enough. Huw lowered Grace gently onto the sofa and thundered up a narrow twist of wooden stairs, only to return minutes later with a tartan wool blanket, a large green first-aid kit and a glass bowl full of water.

  ‘Lie down,’ he instructed.

  Grace did as she was told, twisting on the cushions until her head rested on one arm of the sofa and her feet, from which she had kicked her trainers, on the other. She inched her bottom across the base until she was comfy.

  Huw flipped open the box and pulled out some cotton wool that he dipped into the bowl of water. He patted her face, chin and eyes; the cotton wool came away red. He squeezed it dry and dipped it into the bowl again, repeating the process before reaching once again into the tin and pulling out a bottle of TCP.

  ‘This might sting a bit.’

  Grace kept her eyes closed.

  He tipped the strong-smelling disinfectant onto a fresh piece of cotton wool and dabbed it around her forehead, hesitating as he got closer to the gash on her forehead. It was a curved cut about an inch in length.

  ‘Owwww!’ She screwed up her nose and scrunched her eyes even tighter, which helped ease the pain.

  ‘Sorry.’ He winced. ‘I’ve got some butterfly sutures, they might hold it, otherwise we’ll have to get you to casualty. I’m in no state to drive, Grace. I’m sorry.’

  ‘‘S’not your fault. And now it’s your turn to stop saying sorry.’

  Huw peeled the sutures from their backing and pushed one over the cut and then another and another. She grimaced again.

  ‘We’ll see how these hold and if they aren’t up to the job, I’ll take you to the hospital in the morning.’

  Grace nodded. ‘Are all your guests as much of a pain in the arse as me?’

  ‘No.’ Huw sat back against the sofa. ‘I don’t usually see them, not really. Maybe a quick hello when they arrive and a bye when they leave, but that’s it.’

  ‘Why do you think it’s different for us?’ she asked as Huw began screwing up sheets of newspaper and laying them in twisted bundles in the fireplace.

  He sat back as if considering this. ‘I guess we’re kindred spirits.’ He smiled.

  Grace smiled too as she pulled the blanket up to her chin, ready to let sleep overcome her. ‘I like that. Kindred spirits,’ she whispered as her breathing turned to snoring and Huw lit the fire.

  13

  In the UK, sepsis kills more people than road accidents, breast, bowel and prostate cancer combined

  The scab on her forehead healed in barely more than a week, leaving a thin white line that amused Huw no end. He delighted in pointing at it and saying, ‘You’re a wizard, Penderford!’ But she cared little about the scar; her appearance was no longer of interest to her.

  It was now the end of a long day in which Grace had hiked the river trail, stocked up on wine, olives and more of that fabulous sourdough bread, and cleaned her car with a sponge and some washing-up liquid. Monty had helped by barking and chasing the water from the hose, making the whole exercise a darn sight messier and more complicated than she had envisaged; she ended up drenched.

  She sat in her sparklingly clean car with the engine purring, parked in a lay-by up on the road, drinking in the incredible views down over the valley. She exhaled and swiped the screen of her phone, feeling ridiculously nervous. It was hard for her to fully understand how she and Tom had fallen into this state, hard to picture how they’d been before, when they were happy. Happy parents. She was apprehensive about making the connection, but knew that the longer she left it, the more difficult it would be. Her finger hovered over the icon that meant home. As she closed her eyes, pressed the button and waited, she half wished there’d be no reply.

  It took Tom a good thirty seconds to register that the phone was ringing – it had been days since he’d last spoken to anyone – and then to negotiate his way to the handset in the kitchen. The place was barely recognisable as the room he’d once kept in such immaculate condition. Every inch of available surface was now covered with dirty crockery and the foil containers and detritus of a dozen takeaways, and there was actually fungus growing on the tiles behind the sink.

  He eventually located the phone and answered. ‘Yup.’

  ‘Tom?’ Grace couldn’t be sure that it was him; he had given her too little to go on. Was that the voice she had woken up to on countless mornings? The voice that had made those heartfelt vows on their wedding day?

  ‘Grace.’ He sighed. She couldn’t tell if this was in irritation or relief.

  ‘Yes, it’s me. I’m sorry, Tom, this isn’t a very good line. The signal here is a bit sketchy.’

  ‘Yes, I figured that must be it. Why I got no answer or return call when I phoned. At least I hoped it was that and not just that you’re avoiding me.’

  There were a few silent seconds while she made the decision to ignore the jibe. She didn’t want to spar with him, had no energy for verbal jousting.

  ‘How are you?’ she asked.

  He laughed at her enquiry and surveyed the empty bottles of wine, crushed beer cans and stinking bin bags that surrounded him. ‘Oh, you know, Grace, peachy, living the life…’

  She had prayed that this conversation would go differently. ‘I just wanted to see how you are.’

  ‘Well, that’s good of you. I’m still here.’ He laughed again.

  ‘Tom, I don’t want to fight.’ I can’t. I don’t have the strength or the will.

&n
bsp; His tone changed. ‘I don’t want to fight either.’

  There was another pause while both considered how to continue. It was Tom who spoke first.

  ‘To be completely honest with you, I don’t know how I am, Grace. Sometimes I can get by okay for hours and the next minute I fall apart – you know?’ He hesitated. ‘And it can hit me at the oddest of times, over the smallest of things.’

  ‘Yes, I do know. I’m the same.’ She thought about sliding to the ground in the middle of Hay, the way people had ushered their children past, afraid of the wailing lady. She felt a flush of embarrassment.

  ‘You’re the same, but doing it with a prettier view!’ He sounded genuinely amused and she smiled.

  ‘Yeah, something like that…’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Wales. I told you.’

  ‘Yes, I know it’s Wales, but whereabouts? It’s a big country.’

  ‘I’m staying in a kind of shed, but fancier than a shed. It’s nice. Near Hay, on the River Wye. The Old Sheep Shed. It’s pretty and peaceful.’

  It was hard to explain her reluctance to give him too much detail, but she felt that this was her refuge and she wanted to protect it. She was also wary of giving too much away, in case he picked up a hint, a nuance in her voice, that she was enjoying someone else’s company as well as the location. Not that she and Huw had any reason to feel guilty, none at all. They had simply become friends, linked by grief, members of the worst club in the world. There was no more to it than that.

  ‘It sounds lovely.’ There was an awkward pause. ‘When do you think you might come home?’

  When are you going home? she asked herself. ‘I’m not sure. I’ve got the shed booked for another couple of weeks yet, so we’ll see.’

  She was aware that she sounded distant and it had little to do with her geographical location. This level of formality and awkwardness was odd for them both.

  ‘Yes, Grace, I know, another couple of weeks, but I’m wondering if that will be the end of it, will you be coming home then?’