The Story of Our Life

by Shari Low

  It would all come good, turn out fine in the end. That was my mantra and it had worked for me so far.

  The phone on my desk rang and I considered ignoring it. No one would be calling at 6 p.m. at night unless it was a cold call or someone looking for money.

  ‘Answer the phone, you lazy git,’ Dan moaned.

  ‘Hello, COMP Consultants.’ COMP. Channing O’Flynn Management Practices. Dan and I had used a professional, scientific method to decide whose name should go first – he won on the third round of rock, paper, scissors. To be fair, OCMP Consultants didn’t roll off the tongue quite as well.

  ‘Mr O’Flynn?’ Formal. Must be looking for money. ‘This is Cathy Rett at Masters Young.’ My feet slid off the desk and I immediately gave this one my full attention. Cathy was the managing partner in a national distribution company I’d pitched our services to the week before. I’d thought then that it was fifty-fifty whether we’d get the business, and asked her to let us know either way. Now it looked like she was following through.

  Across the room I could see Dan looking at me quizzically so I flipped the button to put the call on to loudspeaker.

  ‘Cathy! How are you?’

  ‘Excellent, thank you. You?’

  ‘Grand. How can I help you?’

  I couldn’t read her voice so it was impossible to tell if this was a ‘we’re giving you the contract’ or a ‘sorry, we’re going elsewhere but please re-tender next year’ call.

  ‘Sorry, to call so late in the day…’

  ‘No problem at all…’

  Dan was out of his seat now, crossing to my desk, eyes wide and hopeful.

  ‘I said I’d let you know the result of your tender as soon as possible…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Our management team has just reviewed all of the applications…’

  Christ, she was stringing this out.

  ‘And we’ve decided to award the contract to your company.’

  I immediately shot out of my seat and joined Dan in a move that involved a wide open mouth, a dance and repetitive punching of the air. All of which was done in complete silence, while I maintained a professional, formal tone as I said, ‘That’s wonderful news, Cathy. Many thanks for letting me know. I’ll have the contracts drawn up and couriered over to you tomorrow.’

  ‘Lovely. I’ll call you if I have any questions.’

  ‘Please do, Cathy. And thanks for calling – I appreciate it.’

  ‘You’re very welcome. Goodnight.’

  As soon as the dial tone clicked in, our yells matched our movements. Yesssss! This was a major score for us. It wasn’t going to pay off the starter loan or cover the expenses, but it was a step in the right direction.

  ‘Come on, let’s head over to the Slug and celebrate properly. I’ll call Lulu, you call Shauna.’

  ‘Ah, she’s working. Bollocks. She’s catering a charity thing in Fulham. Call Lulu and have her meet us, and then we’ll let Shauna know to drop in on the way home.’

  ‘Sounds like a plan,’ said Dan, reaching for his phone.

  The adrenalin was kicking the end-of-day fatigue out of the way and replacing it with pure excitement. This was brilliant news.

  Shauna would be knackered – this was the seventh night in a row that she’d worked, She’d been slogging her guts out since we formed the company, pulling up the slack in our finances. We’d known that was going to be the case for the first few months, but I guess neither of us had realized how tough it would be. She and Vincent were doing breakfast meetings, lunches, parties, dinners, weekend events, anything she could get in the diary. But no matter how tired she was today, I knew she’d be totally up for celebrating this

  She answered in the first ring.

  ‘Darlin’, it’s me. Listen, we got the contact with Masters Young.’

  ‘That’s fantastic! Well done, honey, you deserve it. You really do.’ She sounded tired, like she was trying really hard to sound enthusiastic, but not quite getting there.

  ‘So look, we’re heading out to celebrate at the Slug,’ I said. ‘Come join us when you’re done.’

  There was a pause on the other end before she finally spoke, sounding even wearier now. ‘Honey, I can’t. I’ve been up since six a.m. this morning and I won’t get done here until after ten. Then I need to get home, unpack the van, repack it for tomorrow and be back out in the morning at six.’

  ‘Come on love, just a couple of drinks. It’s a celebration! Can’t you leave Vincent there to do it himself?’

  ‘Colm, are you kidding? Vincent is working the same hours as me. The two of us are like the walking dead over here. I’m not bailing out and leaving him to do the function and then clear up by himself. Don’t be ridiculous.’

  I was getting pissed off now. Okay, so she was doing this to pay our bills, but couldn’t she just make a bit of an effort here for me? Didn’t she want to share in this?

  ‘Fine. Don’t worry about it.’ I wasn’t going to beg. She didn’t want to come, fine by me. I was perfectly capable of celebrating on my own.

  ‘You’ve forgotten, haven’t you?’ she was saying now.

  ‘Forgotten what?’

  ‘Tonight.’

  Shit. Bollocks.

  ‘It’s important, Colm.’

  ‘Shauna, I’m not saying it isn’t, but it doesn’t mean we have to put our lives on hold until…’

  The click of the phone told me I was no longer speaking to anyone on the other end. I tossed it on the desk and lifted my beer, chugging back what was left of the bottle.

  ‘So that sounds like it went well then,’ Dan jibed, before following up with, ‘Sorry, just want to savour this moment. Usually it’s Lu and me who are killing each other. Good to see Mr and Mrs Perfect ain’t so perfect.’

  ‘Shut it,’ I replied, closing him down, before casually adding, ‘Anyway, I’m still perfect. It’s just the missus that’s got issues.’

  I was joking, but there was no point going into it all – not when we’d just had the best news since starting the company. I’d sort it out later with Shauna, but in the meantime, we had some celebrating to do.

  Dan cracked open two more beers and handed one to me. ‘Lulu is going to meet us there in half an hour, so time for one more here. She’s with Rosie, so she’s coming too. Apparently it’s all off with Yogaman, so she’s up for a cocktail or six.’

  ‘Ah bugger, what happened this time?’ I said, taking the beer.

  ‘No idea. Lu didn’t say. Anyway, on the same subject, what’s the deal with Shauna just now then? Feel free to tell me to shut my face, but things seem a bit tense lately.’

  If there was ever a way to burst the bubble of happiness over landing the new deal this was it. I contemplated changing the subject. Dan and me had spent most of the last ten years together and I was pretty sure the number of deep, emotional discussions we’d had about relationships added up to… yep, that one, solitary profound exchange on the morning of his wedding. But hey, we had half an hour to kill, and if there was anyone who could give an expert take on dealing with tough spots, it was him.

  ‘Och, just a rough patch.’ It was weird even saying that. The first eight years of our lives together had been so great it still felt strange that we’d got to this point. I remembered it from when I was with Jess. The stage where you said something and it was taken the wrong way. Or didn’t say something and that was taken the wrong way too. Either way, couldn’t win. In saying that, with Jess and me, it went too far for us to fix. This wasn’t the same. Just a bit of a dip. A rough patch, not a relationship-ending situation.

  Dan laughed. ‘Is that it? Is that your idea of baring your soul?’

  ‘Absolutely. I’m happy in my emotionally stunted self,’ I replied.

  ‘Is it that Vincent guy?’ he went on, in full-scale detective mode. ‘There’s no way I’d let him anywhere near Lu. I’d never see her again.’

  ‘Nah, Vincent and her have been mates for ever. If anything was going to happen
it would have been long before we met. They’re just mates. And even if he fancied her, Shauna wouldn’t go there. No way she’d mess around. She’s too decent – not her style.’

  Too late, I realised that could be taken as a criticism of Lu. And him. Things seemed to be okay with them since they worked out the last issue a few months ago. Not that that meant much. The two of them careering to the brink of divorce was pretty much an annual event. But to his credit, Dan let it go.

  ‘So what’s the problem then? If you want, I can track down a couch and you can lie on it while you tell me your problems.’ Now he was really taking the piss, so I decided to go for it.

  ‘Okay, then, but you’ll regret asking,’ I warned him.

  ‘Bring it on. Whatever it is, Dr Dan can take it.’

  I decided to test his confidence on that.

  ‘She’s knackered, so she’s touchy. I don’t remember the last time she had a day off. She totally grafts day in and day out. But it’s the whole kids thing that’s stressing her out. It’s the wrong time to have a baby now, what with us starting up here, but we’ve been trying for so long that she didn’t want to give up. They’ve got her on some fertility drug and I don’t think that’s helping with the stress, but before you and I set this up, we’d agreed to give it a try and she still wanted to go ahead with it. Anyway, feel free to cover your ears if this bit is too much information, but tonight is the first night of ovulation so we were supposed to… you know.’

  ‘Perform on demand?’ Dan offered smartly, enjoying this whole thing way too much.

  ‘That’s it. Tough job, but someone’s got to do it,’ I joked. There was a twinge of reality in there too though. All that ‘shagging to a timetable’ had changed things. It used to be that we couldn’t keep our hands off each other anyway, but in the last year things had changed – probably around the time she started putting her legs up the wall straight after sex and filling herself full of hormones. It’s not that I didn’t want more kids, but if it didn’t happen, it wouldn’t be the end of the world for me. We’d be fine, just the two of us. Great holidays, no sleepless nights, no hassles with childcare.

  So now I was stuck with a decision to make. Two choices – go out, have a long overdue night on the town, or go home, wait for Shauna and probably end up in a fight anyway.

  No contest.

  I tossed the empty beer bottle in the bin and grabbed my jacket off the back of my chair.

  ‘You ready to go?’

  25

  2015

  Making Memories

  Rosie filled the kettle and flicked it on, while I got two cups out of the cupboard and then opened the fridge and pulled out the plate of eclairs that had been left over from my afternoon booking today. It had been an eightieth birthday party for a lovely man in a nursing home in Acton.

  ‘Did the party go okay?’ Rosie asked.

  I stopped, put the eclairs on the kitchen worktop and rested my head against the wall cupboard, desperately hoping that the coolness of the wood would salve the pain of the memory.

  ‘It wasn’t my finest moment,’ I replied.

  ‘Oh God, what happened?’

  What happened? I really wasn’t sure. Since Colm’s illness, I’d learned that no one explains how this living grief thing works, or gives any warning of the flashpoints to look out for. No one tells you that you’ll be perfectly fine, going about some daily task and then before you’ve got time to catch yourself, you’ve slid down a wall and you’re helpless to do anything but hold your stomach and roar until the pain subsides. Or that you’ll be driving along and suddenly notice that tears are streaming down your face in a torrent that forces you to pull over and weep, pitifully breaking your heart, until your throat is raw and you can barely breathe.

  No one tells you any of that, but I’ve been finding it out by myself, every day, every night, in the six weeks since Colm’s operation.

  Today I was ambushed. ‘Turns out the birthday gent was an Elvis fan. I’ve no idea why that matters. But he blew out his candles and the next minutes we were all singing ‘Blue Suede Shoes’. And then ‘Jailhouse Rock’. ‘Viva Las Vegas’ was a spectacle involving his lady friend and some nifty dance moves.’

  ‘This is all sounding great so far,’ Rosie said hopefully.

  ‘And then I looked at him, dancing away, singing his heart out, making sure the party was in full swing and I thought… that’s exactly what Colm will be like when he’s that age. Then I realized…’ I stopped to shove the palms of my hands in my eyes to stem the torrent that was stinging once again. ‘… I realized that he won’t be. He’ll never do that. He’ll be gone.’

  We’d never grow old together. I wouldn’t bake him a cake when he turned eighty. Or seventy. Or even fifty. We wouldn’t get those years, all those Christmas Days, the summer holidays. He wouldn’t be at Beth’s wedding, and our grandchildren would never know him. He’d be gone. A memory. And every day took us closer to the moment we’d say goodbye.

  The pain was so acute it felt physical, the stab of a hot blade of loss, inserted between my ribs and twisting, slowly, making sure every sinew screamed for it to stop.

  Rosie wrapped her arms around me and held me until I had to step back. That’s the other thing no one tells you – sympathy makes it worse. I can be holding it together, strong and coping, and then someone is kind, or understanding, or puts a hand on your arm and says they’re sorry and your heart is right back down on the floor, broken in two, bleeding on the pavement.

  I exhaled, blowing the pain out, roughly wiping my face, desperate to get some composure back before Colm came home. Today was his last radiotherapy treatment, a cause for celebration, he said.

  ‘How’s Colm been?’ Rosie asked, back on the task of pouring tea. She brought the two steaming red mugs over to the battered but loved oak table and sat across from me.

  ‘He’s been Colm,’ I answered truthfully. ‘He doesn’t want to talk about it. Says he’s feeling better every day.’ On the outside, the physical changes would back that theory up. He now looked so much better than he had a month ago. The radiotherapy had taken out a letter-box of hair across the back of his scalp, a loss that the doctors said would be permanent. But that aside, the rest of his hair had grown back and the wound had healed, he’d regained the weight he lost after the op and he was looking more rested and stronger than he had for months.

  ‘Do you think he’s in denial?’ Rosie asked.

  I shook my head, sure that it wasn’t the case. Every spare minute over the last month and a half I had spent researching this tumour and the effects on the patient, both physical and psychological. Denial was a typical reaction. As were anger, fear, depression, sorrow, resentment and rage. Colm had definitely shown flashes of anger. There was no doubt there had been a personality shift towards irritation and intolerance, and I wasn’t sure if that was caused by the operation, the tumour or the medication he was taking. Whatever it was, I could handle it. I was pretty fucking angry too. However, other aspects of his behaviour were less easy to wrap my head around.

  ‘I don’t. I think it’s more complicated than that. You know, over the years it’s not always been easy to handle the way Colm shrugs stuff off. Doesn’t let it touch him. Just sails through life on an even keel, blocking out anything that is in the least bit uncomfortable. It’s always driven me crazy.’ I wasn’t sure I was explaining it well, but Rosie had known Colm for as long as I had, so she’d been a spectator to his determination to meander through life avoiding pain and staying far away from anyone else’s heartache. Once upon a time, that’s how I handled life too. Before responsibilities and necessities made me grow up.

  I kept going, needing to talk, ‘When sad things happen, it’s like he shrugs it off, doesn’t let it stick to him. Oh the fucking irony that the saddest thing of all has happened to him. And that’s how he’s dealing with it now. It’s in a box in his mind, and he’s not for opening it. Compartmentalized. Move along people, nothing to see here. Everything�
��s under control. I’d almost wish he raged or made a plan or cried or did something that let me communicate with him, work through it, but he doesn’t want that. He just wants normality.’

  I lifted an éclair, realized I didn’t have the stomach for it and put it back on the plate.

  ‘So I just get up every morning, slap a smile on my face, and get through the day. Pretending there’s nothing wrong, when it couldn’t be more so. Inside, everything is screaming at me. What’s going to happen to him? How could we possibly live without him? Will he hurt? Will he need special care? How will Beth cope with losing him? What impact will this have on the rest of her life? How will we tell the boys? How can we help them deal with the grief? And this one’s way down the list, but how will I support us on my own in my negative-fucking-equity house with our outstanding business loan and credit card debt that could take down a small nation? How will we pay the mortgage and the bills? I just want to make everything okay. But most of all, I just want him to live, to be here. I want to fix this, Rosie, but I can’t.’

  That summed it up. I couldn’t fix this. Early in our relationship, I’d slipped into the fixer role, become the person who organized, planned, solved problems, sorted out everything in this family and yet here was the biggest problem we’d ever faced and I was powerless to resolve it.

  Rosie’s face was etched with concern. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Just… love him. Every day. And hope. Maybe drink a lot of wine, too.’ I said, desperately trying to add a light-hearted moment. God, I was getting as bad as Colm, joking when completely inappropriate. Fourteen years and he was finally rubbing off on me.