The Story of Our Life

by Shari Low

‘Why?’

  ‘Because he never pretended. Was I not even worth that? Could he not even have acted like he cared, called me up once in a while, took an interest, told me I mattered? Even if he didn’t feel it, even if we both knew it was a lie, I just… I would have taken that. I would have convinced myself it meant something and I would have been able to live with it. Why couldn’t he just have pretended to love me?’

  There were no tears left now, just my voice, distorted by heartache. Colm knew better than to make false protestations about my father’s feelings for me. He’d been around for a decade of my life, he’d lived through my parents’ disinterest in me and in Beth and there was no denying it. Still, he tried to look for explanations.

  ‘Perhaps he didn’t want to lie to you.’

  ‘He should have.’ The words were more forceful than I intended. I took a breath. ‘Sometimes it’s not about honesty, Colm. Sometimes loving someone, truly caring for them is about protecting them from the truth, guarding their heart. Even if the person you’re protecting them from is yourself.’

  His beautiful green eyes were locked on mine now, and I saw the recognition, the understanding, the very moment of realization.

  He knew. The conversation was about my father. But we were actually talking about us.

  45

  2016

  Moving On

  Fifteen years ago, I walked up the same church aisle.

  Back then, the first person I saw was the gloriously indomitable Annie, in dramatic purple and a hat that resembled a frisbee, disguising her tears because she was born of a stoic generation that was disdainful about crying in public. Now she was no longer here. A hole in my heart that I knew would never heal.

  I saw my parents. The woman who gave birth to me was preening, loving the attention being mother-of-the-bride brought her, while breezily overlooking the fact that she’d shown no interest whatsoever in her daughter’s wedding.

  Today, that thoughtless insouciance was gone, replaced by a woman whose soul was a void of loss and stony solitude. I wasn’t sure she would ever feel anything again. My whole life she’d refused to share her love with me. That hadn’t changed now that I was all she had left.

  At my back the last time, were my best friends, Lulu and Rose in matching pastel elegance. Now I saw Lulu, sitting next to Dan, their hands entwined. On the other side of Lulu was Rosie, her face swollen and distraught, a beautiful woman who had been broken. We’d survive this. I wasn’t sure how, but somehow we’d find a way to live with it.

  I stepped back to the past again.

  Back then, I’d walked towards Colm. My gorgeous Colm. Now, he walked beside me, his hand on my back, guiding, supporting me.

  Back then, I saw flowers, and light and love. I saw promise. Commitment. Belonging. Delight. Contentment. Lust. Excitement. The realization of dreams. An incredible future.

  I saw happy ever after.

  Now I knew there was no such thing.

  Fifteen years ago, I walked up the aisle in white.

  This time, I was wearing black.

  The service passed in a blur of platitudes, of empty words that proclaimed what an honourable man Jeff Williams was, a wonderful husband, a beloved father. He was none of those things.

  Only when the coffin was slowly lifted and removed by the church pallbearers did a sob escape me. Not for his loss, but for the waste of a life and the pain he left behind. My mother, no matter how unfathomable their relationship, had been cast adrift without her soulmate. My friend, inconsolable, her best years wasted on a man who didn’t deserve a minute of her time.

  I cried for the father I never had, for the memories I’d never cherish.

  I said goodbye to a man who had never loved me. Now all that mattered was keeping a man who did.

  As the last of the mourners left, I placed my hand on Colm’s arm.

  ‘Can we wait a moment?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course.’

  The rain was drizzling, but I didn’t care. I needed to walk. I took his hand and he offered no resistance, staying by my side in silence as I wandered across the grounds, eventually settling on a bench, protected from the rain by the huge oak tree that stood over it.

  We sat in silence, the first time in days that we hadn’t been surrounded by people.

  ‘Shauna, I’m sorry.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Everything.’

  I turned to him, his tired eyes the windows to a heavy heart.

  For a second, I wondered if he was going to tell me about Jess, but no. I’d seen it in his eyes that night. He had the courage to live with his illness and he had the courage to protect us from what happened with Jess.

  Neither of us was blameless in how our lives had come to that point or this one. It was time to let go of the fighting and the resentments and the pain.

  ‘Colm, don’t.’ I paused, so much to say, but no clear idea how to say it. ‘I’m so sorry too. I don’t know what happened to us. I think we got lost. But I don’t care any more about what you’ve done, or what I’ve done, or where we went wrong or who should have done what. Nothing matters. All that matters is now. Today.’

  After the longest time, he spoke, his voice low and thick with unfamiliar emotion. ‘You know, since they told me I was dying, I’ve thought so many times that I want to be given the chance to live my life again.’

  My heart stopped, terrified that this was going to be an admission of regret.

  ‘But every time I imagine how that would be, no matter how many times I could press rewind, I realized that every time, I’d want to do it with you.’

  It was all we needed. For however long was left, we had this and we had our family.

  Nothing else mattered.

  I stroked his hair, traced a line across his brow, down the bridge of his nose, ending with my fingertips on his lips. ‘I love you, Colm O’Flynn,’ I whispered. ‘You’re everything.’

  He kissed me, his touch leaving a memory that would last until there was no more breath in either of us.

  ‘You’re more,’ he said.

  46

  2016

  Until Death Do Us Part

  ‘Mummy, look what I can do. Look!’ Beth squealed, as she glided past me, one foot on her scooter, the other sticking out to the side in a feat of balance any six year old ballerina would be proud of.

  ‘Do you think Daddy can see me?’

  ‘I’m sure he can, darling.’

  She turned the scooter around and flew past me again. ‘Look, Daddy, look!’ she trilled to the sky.

  There was no sadness there. Just a little girl, on a scooter, gliding up and down a path in a deserted cemetery, her mum, sitting on a bench, laughing as she watched.

  I pulled my coat tighter around my neck to stop the December wind biting. If Colm were here, he’d have been laughing too. Then he’d have swept Beth over his shoulder, picked up her scooter, and demanded that we all went for ice cream, even in winter.

  I’d heard it said that after a loved one dies, you could forget their face, or their voice, but that hadn’t happened. Colm was still so vivid, so present in our lives. He was everywhere, in everything, especially his wild, crazy, mischievous daughter.

  God help us.

  ‘Mummy, there’s Auntie Lou!’

  Lulu and Dan both opened their arms as she ran to them. No-one who saw them could ever have guessed the turbulent path they’d travelled to get here. Somehow Colm’s death had glued them back together, made Lulu realise how precious their lives were. She swore she’d never let Dan go again. I believed her.

  Crouched down now, they enfolded Beth in a team hug, before Dan picked her up, swung her around. Just like Colm would have done. That made me smile again.

  Lulu joined me on the bench. We’d had it placed there a few weeks after Colm died, so we could sit, just be with him.

  ‘You remembered.’

  She leant over, hugged me. ‘Of course we did.’

  I grinned. ‘Be honest.’
>
  ‘Okay, so Dan remembered,’ she conceded ruefully. ‘But I would have too. Just got a bit of a hangover so it’s taking a while for information to process this morning.’

  Of course. Rosie’s party last night.

  ‘How did it go?’

  ‘It was quiet. She asked me to thank you for the card. We drank too much. She cried.’

  I didn’t respond. What was there to say? I was glad that Rosie had decided to lease out the café and go travelling for a year, pleased that she was moving on with her life. Our friendship had been wounded, but not fatally. We still talked occasionally, staying on neutral ground, trying to build a new foundation for a relationship based on truth this time.

  I’d thought about going to say goodbye, but in the end I’d stayed home. There had been too many goodbyes lately.

  Lulu slipped her arm through mine and rested her head on my shoulder, as we watched Dan running up and down, chasing a delighted Beth.

  ‘So what are you doing for the rest of the day?’

  ‘Jess and the boys are coming over for lunch.’

  Today was a special day, but visits from Jess and the boys weren’t an unusual event. We usually saw them every second weekend, keeping up the schedule that had bonded her boys to our lives for so long. Beth would hang on her brothers’ every words, utterly devoted to them, while Jess and I would cook and chat. After the kids had gone off to bed or to do whatever it was that teenagers did online, we would sit up, talk nonsense, watch a movie, drink wine. We’d even gone to Ireland together, taken the kids to visit Colm’s family and had a week of reminiscing filled with tears and laughter. It probably shouldn’t have been a surprise that we were so alike, because after all, Colm had loved us both.

  ‘Do you want to join us?’ I asked Lulu.

  ‘Depends on the hangover. But I’ll pop up and say hello.’

  Another lovely thing had happened over the last few months. I’d sold our home, and moved into one of the flats up above Lulu and Dan in the building they owned on Richmond Green. An uplift in the market and a decent offer had turned around the negative equity on our house, and given me enough to make a dent in the credit card bills we’d run up during Colm’s last year. Work was so busy that I’d soon have them cleared. Would I have done it again, allowed us to sink into debt, indulged his desire to travel and make the most of every minute?

  Without a shadow of a doubt.

  ‘Honey, it’s time to go.’

  Beth responded to my call by bounding over, an exhausted Dan following behind. Standing now, I hugged him, grateful that he continued to be such a great friend.

  ‘Mummy, the flowers. Can I do it?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Beth picked up the three sunflowers that he been beside me on the bench, and laid them on the grass in front of the granite headstone that bore her father’s name. One for Colm, one for Annie, and one for Daisy, the half sister that she’d never known.

  For the millionth time, I read the words carved on the stone in front of me.

  COLM O’FLYNN

  1.12.73 – 1.9.16

  A WONDERFUL SON, BROTHER, HUSBAND, FATHER.

  LOVED UNTIL THE END OF TIME.

  I smiled, my words to him unspoken.

  Goodbye, my love. Happy birthday.

  THE END

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  About Shari Low

  SHARI LOWS lives in Glasgow and writes a weekly opinion column and Book Club page for a well known newspaper. She is married to a very laid-back guy and has two athletic teenage sons, who think she’s fairly embarrassing, except when they need a lift.

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  Aria is the new digital-first fiction imprint from Head of Zeus.

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  First published in the United Kingdom in 2016 by Aria, an imprint of Head of Zeus Ltd

  Copyright © Shari Low, 2016

  Copyright © Sara Tessa, 2015

  Translation © Marco Condorelli, 2015

  The moral right of Shari Low to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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

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

  ISBN (E) 9781784978242

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