If I Could Say Goodbye

by Emma Cooper

  Which brings me to Nessa.

  Jen and Nessa, Nessa and Jen.

  Jen is spending more and more time with Nessa. Lots more time. Judith seems to think it’s a good idea, that Jen has someone to talk to. That is what she said to me. But I’m not so sure; I mean, it’s not as if Nessa is in the best place either, is she? It wasn’t long ago that Jen was the one looking after her.

  ‘It’s good that she’s got Nessa to talk to.’

  ‘Why? She’s got me to talk to,’ I retorted. Even to my own ears I sounded snappy and impatient, but in my defence, I was practising a plait with three pieces of rope tied onto the back of a kitchen chair. The chair stays still and doesn’t wriggle around and complain about how I’m hurting its head.

  ‘Oh you know what I mean, Edward, sometimes you just need a girlfriend to talk to. She’s not only lost her sister, she lost her best friend too.’

  ‘Daddy. You’re hurting my head.’

  ‘Sorry.’ I stop the Dutch plait that my fingers have recently learnt to make. Thank the Lord for YouTube. Thanks to the chair and the rope, I’ve become quite proficient at girls’ hairstyles recently. ‘Almost done. Pass me the purple bobble.’

  ‘But my swimsuit is green.’

  ‘Oh. Pass me the green one then.’

  ‘We don’t have any green bobbles.’

  ‘Yellow?’

  ‘I have banana ones or lemon. Which do you think, Daddy?’

  I look over to where Oscar is listening to our conversation, the scrunch of his nose expressing my own confusion. ‘They’re both yellow. It doesn’t matter, does it?’ I question as Oscar rummages into the hair bobble pot and holds up the bobbles in question in each hand.

  Hailey takes a deep breath and I feel the familiar tug of my heart, the pride that sits on my lips as she explains in layman terms the error of my ways.

  ‘No, Daddy, they aren’t the same. The banana ones go with the bright colours and the lemon go with the pale ones.’ She pushes her glasses up her nose and points to the banana variety.

  ‘There’re pineapple ones too. What about thems?’ Oscar drops the lemon and dangles the pineapple variety from his finger.

  ‘Hmmm. What do you think, Daddy?’

  ‘Well, I think that the tone of your swimsuit is of the lime persuasion so I would go with the pineapple, then you’ve got a tropical theme going on. The banana is a little more pina colada and the pineapple hints at a more refined palate . . . more margarita?’

  Girls’ outfits are another thing that I’m finding it hard to negotiate with. It took me ten minutes to work out how to do the straps on Hailey’s swimsuit. They criss-cross her back and attach themselves onto the suit in some weird clip things. Oscar is wearing swimming shorts. One leg through the hole, the other leg through the other. Simple.

  Hailey pulls a face that says my dad is weird, then points to the pineapple bobbles. ‘I like the pineapple ones, I think,’ she concludes; Oscar pulls back the elastic and catapults it in our direction, then runs into the kitchen laughing.

  I bank this conversation, ready to tell Jen. I find myself doing this, storing the good things into one part of my brain like a filing cabinet. ‘Things that are OK to tell Jen.’ Every night for the past few weeks, Oscar has woken screaming in the middle of the night because he’s had a nightmare. At first, he was easily consoled but last night, try as I might, I couldn’t. It took Hailey to come into his bedroom and snuggle up to him. She sang ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ like Jen does and he soon went back to sleep. That goes into the file marked ‘Things that are not OK to tell Jen’.

  ‘Can you help me make a volcano, Daddy?’

  ‘Ouch!’ The pineapple band twangs against my finger. I twist it back into place at the end of Hailey’s plait. ‘A volcano?’

  ‘Yeah, for the end-of-term science day.’

  ‘Um . . . OK.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to. Rachel Rodriguez always wins anyway.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Her daddy is a gineer.’

  ‘A gineer?’

  ‘He makes stuff.’

  ‘Oh! An engineer. There you go.’ I release the plait and spin her around to face me so I can check that she doesn’t look totally ridiculous.

  ‘That’s what I said. A gineer.’

  ‘Well, I got an A in technology so I’m sure we can knock something up that will give Rachel Rodriguez a run for her money.’

  ‘OK.’ Her face tries to not look impressed, or excited, or anything but nonchalant about the whole thing, but I can see a smile tugging at her clamped-down lips.

  I make a mental note to Google how to make a volcano. It’s going to be the best homemade volcano in the history of homemade volcanoes.

  I have to make sure of it if I’m going to keep that smile on my daughter’s face.

  Chapter Fifty

  Jennifer

  ‘Hi, Jennifer? Jenny?’

  ‘Just Jen.’ I smile at the psychiatrist.

  ‘I’m Doctor Popescu. Please, sit down.’

  Kerry is watching him, her eyes widening as she mimics me flicking my hair, fluttering my eyelashes and mouthing ‘Just Jen’. I try not to laugh. Dr Popescu is gorgeous and clearly my subconscious is only too aware of this fact. He looks Italian – long nose, dark eyes, thick hair – but his accent is more Eastern European, I think.

  Dr Popescu smiles. He has a nice smile, not like Ed’s or anything – Ed’s smile can make me weak at the knees even after all these years – but he’s good-looking, in a carefully maintained gym-and-daily-skin-care-routine kind of way.

  ‘So, how are things? Dr Faulkner has passed on your notes and explained a little about your situation. I understand you’re taking olanzapine?’

  As nothing has changed since taking the antidepressants, my doctor has started to give me some antipsychotic drugs ‘to help control the neural transmitters in your brain’. I baulked at the mention of them, and ignored my husband, this man who was sitting next to me and spouting medical terms like he’d swallowed a whole medical dictionary. I mean, I’m seeing a deceased relative, but does that mean I’m psychotic? I check myself. Nobody has said that. Am I psychotic?

  ‘And you’re living with your parents?’ he continues.

  I nod. ‘Just for a little while, until, well, until . . .’ I look over to Kerry, who is mimicking tying a noose around her neck. He tracks my focus and smiles.

  ‘And your sister, Kerry . . . How is she today?’

  ‘I’m very well thank you,’ Kerry replies, perching herself on the end of the desk and grinning at him. ‘Thank you for asking.’

  His question has startled me slightly. ‘She’s . . . fine, thank you. She’s sitting on the edge of your desk.’

  He tilts his head and smiles at me. ‘You seem pleased that she’s here with you?’

  I bite my bottom lip and consider the correct response. He seems to instinctively know that I’m being careful of my words. ‘It’s OK to say you’re pleased she’s here. If I had the chance to talk to my best friend who died of meningitis eleven years ago, I would be smiling too.’ He gets up and gestures to the coffee pot; I nod as he pours me a cup. ‘Milk? Sugar?’

  ‘Just milk, please.’

  He passes me the cup and sits back down again. ‘I’d imagine it must be good to see your sister again after losing her so tragically?’

  I nod and take a sip of my coffee.

  ‘Can you tell me how it feels? To be able to talk to her again?’

  I take a moment and try to explain how I feel. The fist of anxiety which is knitted inside my chest flexes as I begin to talk.

  ‘When Kerry died . . .’

  Kerry is miming: her two hands are careering towards each other, fists colliding, as she fakes her own death by closing her eyes, her tongue lolling out of the corner of her mouth. She looks up and grins before giving me a ‘go on’ nod of her head.

  ‘. . . all I could think about was the logistics of her death. How
her chest wouldn’t ever move because her lungs weren’t breathing, how her eyelids would never blink, how I would never hear her laugh. I would think about the gap she had created in our lives, how she wouldn’t be on the end of the phone after I had a bad day or if I heard something funny. For months after she died, these were the things that I thought about. But eventually, those thoughts started to subside and I felt like I was coming to terms with her death, you know?’

  He leans back and takes a sip of his coffee.

  ‘And then I started having these memories of her and they were so vivid that her loss started to feel a little less painful.’ I lean forward and put the cup on the desk. ‘I’d read this article about healthy grieving and it said that you shouldn’t be scared to let yourself remember the good times, so that’s what I did. Every time I saw her, it felt like I was getting a bit better, that I was getting on with life. And seeing her makes me . . .’

  Kerry grins over at me from where she is straightening a landscape picture that is slightly wonky.

  ‘Happy?’ he questions. Tears prickle behind my eyelids as I admit to this stranger what I haven’t been able to admit to my husband. Seeing Kerry makes me happy, even though seeing her is tearing my life apart.

  ‘Yes.’ The word comes out in a whisper.

  ‘Your sister died in a car crash, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’ I clear my throat. ‘I mean no . . . she was hit by a car, but we, we were crossing the road. On a zebra crossing. She pushed me out of the way.’ I look over to where Kerry has her back turned and is looking out of the window. ‘I can’t get the image out of my head. Sometimes it’s the first thing I see when I wake up.’ I close my eyes as I describe it to him. ‘Her body flying backwards, her arms and feet in front of her as though she was trying to touch her toes, her blue eyes staring straight ahead, the clothes she was wearing.’ I open my eyes and meet his. ‘A red coat, red boots and the sound of the brakes screaming.’ I wipe away a tear that is rolling down my cheek.

  ‘You know, Jennifer, we have a long road ahead of us. It may be that the tablets aren’t the right ones for you, it may be that they take away your hallucinations but replace them with other symptoms. It may be that they don’t work at all. We don’t have a diagnosis for you yet, it’s very early days. But I can tell you that grief is an incredibly powerful emotion, it can affect your mental health in many ways. You’ve suffered some of these already, sleep deprivation for instance, which then interferes with your ability to think clearly, it can hamper how you make decisions, so problem-solving can become difficult.’

  I nod as he reels off these things like a shopping list.

  ‘Have you ever heard of complicated grief?’

  ‘Isn’t all grief complicated?’ I ask with a sad smile.

  He nods. ‘It is, but for some, complicated grief can be like clinical depression, it even resembles post-traumatic stress disorder, even though it is neither of these things. Jennifer, it is clear that you are grieving deeply for your sister, for Kerry, but what you are also dealing with is guilt . . . and guilt can be just as hard to eradicate as ghosts.’

  ‘So, what’s it like being away from home for so long?’

  I reach down to the side of the sun lounger and reach for the sun hat Nessa is passing me – a huge floppy white one, more suited to Audrey Hepburn than me. ‘It’s . . . quiet. I’m reading a book for the first time in ages.’

  She straightens the scarlet cups of her bikini, unravels the hosepipe and begins filling the paddling pool in preparation for the kids’ arrival. It’s large, half-way between a hot tub and a small swimming pool, and sits in a neat square of lawn. The yellow nozzle coughs and splutters before a surge of water spews from its mouth and pounds against the turquoise plastic of the pool. ‘And Ed? How’s Ed doing?’

  ‘Fine. I think.’

  Nessa steps into the pool.

  ‘I don’t know really. I mean, I get the feeling if things were bad, he wouldn’t tell me anyway.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, it’s like our conversations are . . . censored? Like I’m trying to protect him and he’s trying to protect me so neither of us are really having a conversation at all. It’s different because now, when we see each other, we always have the kids . . . we’re never really alone any more.’

  ‘And Kerry?’

  Kerry is red in the face as she blows up the inflatable Lilo that we took on holiday to Lanzarote.

  ‘Kerry is about to pass out.’ I laugh and look in her direction towards the fence where ivy weaves between the wooden slats and honeysuckle leans over from next door. Nessa follows my gaze. ‘She’s blowing up the pink Lilo that we took on holiday,’ I say, explaining.

  ‘When’s your brain scan?’

  I blink.

  Kerry has gone.

  ‘Next week.’

  ‘Have you started taking the tablets yet?’

  I nod. ‘They make me feel sick.’

  ‘Well, there’s bound to be some side effects.’

  I don’t tell her that every time I take one, they make Kerry sick too.

  When we were kids, Kerry would suffer from tonsillitis; every November it would take hold of her. Her temperature would rocket; her skin would be glistening with sweat as her whole body shook. She would get delirious, the world around her becoming distorted and fictional.

  A few days after I began to take the tablets, I woke in my old bed in my parents’ house with my dead sister lying next to me. Her skin grey and pallid, her body shaking; she actually looked dead.

  ‘Yes,’ I reply, ‘I suppose there are always going to be side effects.’ Killing my sister, for the second time, being one. If someone was to ask you the question of whether you could kill your sibling to stay married, to live with your own children, could you do it?

  I peer over the top of my sunglasses at Nessa, who is going red across the tops of her shoulders, and offer to put some sun cream on her back. She positions the hose so it stays dropping over the edge of the pool and sits on the lounger next to me. I squirt the lotion directly onto her back.

  ‘That’s fucking freezing!’ she yelps. ‘Your sister was much more forgiving, she always warmed it in her hands first.’

  ‘Are you scared that you’ll forget the small things like that?’ I ask as my hands rub small circles of lotion onto her shoulder blades.

  Nessa pulls her hair across the nape of her neck out of the way of my hands. ‘Sometimes . . . but I’m trying not to.’

  ‘I keep remembering things that I haven’t thought about for years, like when we were little, she would make little cardboard houses for insects. She’d spend hours decorating them. Dad would get her ripped-off pieces of wallpaper when he went to the DIY shop. Ages she would spend, creating these homes for them.’

  ‘Maybe we could do that with the kids?’

  ‘She would have liked that.’ I flick the lid shut on the bottle as Nessa lies on the sunbed, tummy down, and undoes her strap. ‘Maybe I should do more things like that – things that Kerry would have liked – instead of thinking about all the things she can’t.’

  An alarm plays on my phone, reminding me that I need to take another pill. Kerry drops the Lilo and sits next to Nessa’s feet. She watches as I reach into my bag and toss the bottle between my hands. Her chin lifts in defiance: go on then, I know you have to. Her gestures mimic the time Mum caught her sneaking back into the house at half-one in the morning.

  ‘Did you know about this?’ Mum had asked me: hands on hips, no-messing-about expression. I’d shaken my head: not me, I know nothing.

  ‘Then who let her in?’

  I was beaten; Kerry gave me the look and we were both grounded for two weeks.

  I close my eyes behind my sunglasses and Hailey’s face hangs on the inside of my eyelids, scared and upset. My eyes flash open and I avert my gaze from Kerry, instead glancing down to the pills in my hand, throwing them to the back of my throat, hitting it like flint, scraping down my insides,
cutting away at me. Their capsules separate, the insides spilling out, firing off in different directions, I can feel it . . .

  Kerry coughs, covering her mouth with a tissue and bending herself forward.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

  ‘What?’ Nessa asks. Her head is turned away from me and she’s humming along to the radio. I reach down and pick up my paperback and ignore the fireworks that are exploding in my veins. The sound of the gate creaking open is quickly followed by Oscar’s voice clambering towards me; it throws its arms around my neck before his body can follow it.

  ‘Muuuummmmy!’

  I lean into him, my arms desperate to be filled with his skin, his hair, his smell. The ridiculous hat falls from my head; my daughter watches it land on the floor.

  ‘Hello, Mummy.’ Her voice saunters over to me, ambles and hovers awkwardly.

  I reach out my arm towards her. I smile and can feel the red lipstick that I had applied cracking. I never wear this colour, but I wanted to make an effort; I wanted to look my best for him. He isn’t looking at my red lips though, he’s looking anywhere but at me. I, on the other hand, can’t take my eyes off him. His eyes are red-rimmed: he’s not sleeping.

  ‘I love your hair, Hales!’ My body is desperate to hold her, to inhale her smell, but hesitation sticks to her skin like insect repellent. Instead, I begin to stroke the peculiar plaits that are hanging parallel to her lopsided parting. My heart swells as I imagine her trying to plait her hair by herself.

  ‘Thanks! Daddy has YouTubed.’