Another Life

by Jodie Chapman

  She waits.

  ‘You found me first.’

  I repeat the story from Stella then nod at the letters dropped on the floor. She picks them up. Her eyes drink the words written by the first woman I loved. Mum’s rushed and inky scrawl has bled through the pages, leaving a light pattern of dashes on the back.

  ‘I’ve not heard her voice in nearly thirty years,’ I say, swallowing. ‘I’d forgotten how it sounded.’

  Anna stares at the letters. ‘This would break me too.’

  I draw up my legs and fold my arms across my body. The warmth of the whisky has faded and I suddenly feel very cold. ‘Why does everyone leave me?’

  Anna is very still. She stares at my feet. I know she is thinking of what to say, of which words will act like a balm. The silence grows heavy between us, and I want to cover my eyes again with my hands, but then she leans down and kisses my forehead. ‘That feels very motherly,’ she says, and bends lower to kiss next to my mouth. ‘Ex-lovers get cheeks.’

  Our eyes meet and we stare at each other for a brief moment. ‘It’s never been the right time for us,’ I say, catching her wrist as she holds my face.

  Anna strokes my cheek and looks at my mouth. ‘When is the right time?’ she says. ‘I grew up thinking I would never die. Any day, any day now, Armageddon would come and I’d pass through into Paradise. It was like a dream at times, foggy and abstract, but I believed it all the same. I would never die. It must sound so stupid.’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘You believe what you’re told.’

  ‘But what it does, living like that, it removes any urgency for your own life. You’re always living for another world, another life, and it means you never quite take hold of what you have right now.’ Anna stops and looks at me. ‘We’re not so different after all.’

  The light outside has faded. The mottled glass on the bathroom window is a pale shade of grey. ‘Where do we go from here?’ I say.

  She climbs into the bath with me, and I move my legs to let her in. We sit at each end, facing each other, except I am soaked through to my skin.

  ‘I know now I’m going to die,’ she says from the other end of the tub. ‘It feels like I’ve been given another chance and I don’t have years to waste, because nothing lasts forever. This is my time.’ She looks at me. ‘This is our time.’

  ‘I remember trying to get you to question your life, all those years ago, and now you’ve found your strength. It’s beautiful to see.’

  She smiles. ‘I was told I’d only find true love within my bubble, that the world would always hurt me. It’s not that I now think it won’t. It’s that I’m ready to risk it.’

  I swallow hard. ‘What if I loved you, though. What if I think about you in my worst times, and in my best times, and in all the rest of the times too? What if the reason I haven’t once cried for my dad and brother is because I’d also be crying for something else, and then I’d hate myself even more? What if all of that?’

  She is silent for a moment. She looks at where our legs are touching, where our bodies have no choice but to meet, confined within the cheap acrylic tub. ‘You’ve known the very worst of things,’ she says. ‘Maybe that can be your superpower. What is there left to fear?’

  ‘What if I never get back up again?’

  There is a light drip from the bath tap. Anna puts a finger to the spout and the water trickles over her hand and down her wrist.

  ‘I know you like making everything safe, but they don’t call it falling in love for nothing,’ she says. ‘You have to give up control. Take a leap and see where you land. The past can’t hurt us any more, Nick.’

  The inevitable pressure of several drams of whisky starts to beat against my skull. ‘You know I fucking love you,’ I say.

  Anna smiles. ‘I know. I’ve just been waiting for you to say it.’ She takes the ring. ‘Before I put this on,’ she says, ‘I need to know if we’re on the same page.’

  I reach out and slide the ring down her finger. It fits. ‘Let’s jump together.’

  She closes her hand around mine.

  I crawl to her and put one hand behind her head, burying my fingers in her black hair. I long for its darkness around my face again.

  ‘Wait,’ says Anna, taking my hand. ‘I don’t want to fix you, Nick. I don’t want to complete you or us to take ownership of each other. I don’t want to wave you off in the morning with a packed lunch, or iron your shirts, or pretend to like your shitty music. I want to be free just to love you, as you are, as I am. And remember it’s not just me you’d be taking on. There’s also a boy who’ll soon be a man.’ She touches my lips with her fingers. ‘If that’s not okay, then go ahead and kiss my cheek and I’ll be on my way.’

  Anna is so close to me now.

  Can people really start again?

  I push myself forward

  her lips taste of cherries

  Mid-Eighties

  It is perhaps my fourth summer.

  The air is warm and sweet. I am sitting on the grass, the Victorian rectory looming up on one side. Sal kicks away on a blanket, the wool with the Scottish check that itches my skin when I touch it. Perhaps that is why Sal kicks so hard.

  Mum comes through the French doors on to the veranda, holding a tray up high so she doesn’t trip. I can see the top of one of the sundae glasses, the ones with the fluted edge that Mum calls ‘very precious’. She says this about everything that can break. When she sets the tray down on the ground, I see she’s filled the glass with three perfect scoops of ice cream: pink, yellow and brown.

  Neapolitan, she calls it. I try to repeat the word and she laughs and sounds it out.

  Ne-a-pol-i-t’n.

  She smiles when I say it again. Here, she says, and she hands me the silver spoon with the long handle.

  I try the yellow first. It tastes like sunshine, and I let it melt on my tongue while Mum tickles Sal. She kisses his toes one by one, then moves up the inside of his bare leg until she gets to his nappy, where she pretends to chomp on his flesh. He is going out of his mind.

  I wear a daisy chain on my wrist that Mum made while Sal napped inside. It was my job to gather the best daisies from the lawn, and then she lay on the grass beside me and pierced the stalks with her fingernail before threading them through.

  When she finished, she took my wrist and passed it gently through the loop, then went inside to fetch Sal. It is rarely just the two of us any more. I waited and kept my wrist outstretched. I’m going to keep this forever, I said to myself while she was gone. It’s precious and I can’t let it break.

  As I eat the sundae, she sits cross-legged in a thin summer dress and drinks what looks like orange juice from a tumbler. The ice cubes chink against the glass and she closes her eyes after every sip. I ask if I can have some, but she says it’s just for grown-ups. I didn’t know they made an orange juice just for grown-ups.

  Eat up, she says. Dad will be home soon.

  My hand flies to my mouth and I wipe my lips with the back of my wrist, hiding the evidence of my good time. I look down at my clothes and the way I am sitting, in case there is anything about me he wouldn’t like.

  Shall we have some music?

  I nod, and she starts to stand but knocks over her glass. She says something then spins round and does the wagging finger. Don’t ever say that word, she says. It was naughty of me. Forget it now. And don’t for God’s sake tell your dad I said it, will you?

  I shrug and she goes inside with her empty glass.

  Fuck, I say in my head.

  Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuuuuuuuck.

  I’ll never forget it now.

  Mum returns with a full glass and the portable record player. She pops the clasp and lifts the lid, and a moment later, her favourite song starts to play.

  She begins to dance.

  Look at this! My beautiful family on a beautiful day!

  Mum puts a hand to her heart in shock.

  Dad has come through the side gate and is leaning ag
ainst the wall, watching us. His sleeves are rolled up and his cap pushed back on his head, spilling out black curls. He’s happy. He’s in a good mood.

  I clap my hands.

  Dad jogs over and kisses Mum’s cheek. He throws down his paper and drops to his knees in front of Sal, who is crawling around on the blanket and unsure of the grass. Sal laughs when he sees him, and he leans against Dad’s shoulder as he clambers to his feet and pulls his hair. Dad puts on a hurt look and kisses Sal’s cheek.

  Shall I make you a drink? asks Mum.

  It can wait, he says, pulling her close. Come here.

  Dad! I say. Do the dinosaur!

  Dad smiles as he stands. He walks away a few feet and turns his back to us, kicking off his shoes, getting into character. He throws down his cap and ruffles his own hair. He’s quiet, lulling us into a false sense of security, and then he jumps around, his hands and feet out like claws, a contorted face yelling ROOOOOAAAAARRRR like an extremely realistic T-Rex.

  I scream with delight.

  Sal just screams.

  Dad picks him up to comfort him, but this just makes it worse.

  Let’s have the song again, says Mum, moving the needle back to the beginning. She takes Sal from Dad and he buries his face in her hair.

  Dad picks daisies from the grass and tucks them behind her ears. You can’t dance to this without flowers in your hair, he says, and she looks away and smiles.

  Dance with me, Paul.

  Dad falls down next to me and props himself up on his elbows. He takes hold of my wrist and raises an eyebrow, but then drops my hand and turns back to Mum.

  I look at the daisy chain hanging limply against my skin. I must have crushed it in all the excitement.

  Look at your mother, says Dad, loud enough for her to hear. Isn’t she something? He gives a perfect wolf whistle.

  Mum says nothing but I watch her face turn pink. She kisses Sal’s curls and balances him on her hip as she begins to dance. Her bare feet twist on the lawn and she twirls her hand through the air. As the music builds to its crescendo, Mum starts to spin Sal round and I look up to see if he is laughing, but the sun is shining behind them and I can no longer see.

  2020

  We are here, in the field, with the sun on our faces.

  This week we got word that they would be open to the idea of the slaughterhouse being converted. But the walls must remain intact, they said. We would not be opposed to a sympathetic conversion with an extension of modern architectural merit … a merging of old and new. We’d already said we had no intention of pulling it down.

  Anna stands to the side of the building, working out the footprint. She asks me to hold the end of a tape measure while she walks off at varying angles and scribbles numbers on a notepad. I let go of the end and it hisses as it sucks back into the metal case.

  Joe is standing where a fire once roared. The patch of ground is grey and parched, thirsting for new life, and he jumps on the cracked white earth. Can this be my room? he says to his mum, and she smiles and looks at me. Please? It will be warm because I think this is where there was a great fire. The greatest fire the world has ever known.

  You’ll have to ask Nick, she says. It’s his house too.

  Please, Nick?

  I walk over and we high-five. It can be wherever you like, I say. In fact, we’ll build the rest of the house around your room. Yours will be the first room we decide on.

  His smile. Hers too. I slide my arm around her waist.

  Isn’t it something when you feel life greater than you ever hoped for rushing through your veins? When love comes looking.

  This boy, whose blood is not mine, and his mother, whose is.

  Nothing lasts forever. This is not a drill.

  Author’s Note

  To write the character of Anna, I drew partly on my own experience of growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness. The religion is not named in the novel – although a Witness will likely recognise the depiction – because it was never my intention for the book to be about dogma. It merely serves as the wedge between two people falling in love.

  Saying that, I was drawn to the idea of giving shade to a character in a doomsday religion. Most people’s idea of Jehovah’s Witnesses are of a strange, cloistered group who interrupt Saturday mornings by knocking on doors, or who don’t celebrate birthdays and allow their children to die rather than accept certain medical treatment. Witnesses believe they are famous for preaching the good news, but arguably they are known primarily for the more extreme aspects of the religion. When I would tell worldly people that I was a Jehovah’s Witness, the reaction was usually one of disbelief, as if it were impossible for them to reconcile the reality of regular old me with their preconceived notion of (what they assumed to be) an extremist cult member. This disconnect always fascinated me. In Anna, I wanted to sketch a person who is complicated and made up of flaws and good intentions, just as all people are. Indeed, just as Jehovah’s Witnesses are. I wanted to take away the ‘weirdness’, the idea of them being the other. Scratch away the surface of upbringing, world-view and circumstance, and we are all the same underneath.

  I mean no disrespect to the religion itself or those of my family who are still in the faith. It can be a wonderful way of life, with a strong sense of community and belonging, but sadly this does depend on its members being content to ignore any doubts, as well as accepting that any love they receive is conditional on remaining in the religion. I was not able to pay that price. The widespread cover-up of child sexual abuse within the organisation – unknown to the majority of its members due to the blanket distrust of anything from the outside world – the inability of its leaders to apologise for their handling of the matter, not to mention the subsequent shunning of victims who inevitably leave due to the ongoing trauma of seeing their abuser escape justice – all these overwhelmed my conscience. However, I respect the feelings and experiences of my family who are still active members of the faith, and I hope they can likewise respect mine.

  This is Nick and Anna’s story, and Sal’s too. As my editor Jill said during our first conversation, it is not just a love story, but a story about love.

  There is always room for love.

  Acknowledgements

  They say it takes a village to raise a child, but it can be equally said of publishing a book.

  To my agent Madeleine Milburn, thank you for plucking Another Life from the slush pile and seeing its potential. I’m hugely grateful to you and everyone at MMLA, especially Liane-Louise Smith, Georgina Simmonds, Georgia McVeigh, Rachel Yeoh and Anna Hogarty. You are all responsible for me dropping my phone on several occasions.

  To Jillian Taylor. From the moment I read your first letter after reading this book, I knew you would be the perfect editor. And you have been. Sharp and precise, encouraging, always cheerful, and a constant champion of Nick, Anna and Sal, not to mention of me as a writer. Thank you. I feel so lucky to have you polishing my words to make them sing.

  Thanks to everyone at Penguin Michael Joseph who played a part in bringing this novel to life: Jill, Emma Henderson, Sarah Bance, Lauren Wakefield, Claire Bush, Grace Long, Ellie Hughes and Ella Watkins to name a few. You have fielded my questions without an ounce of impatience.

  To my first readers – Sarah Barnett (sister extraordinaire), Ella Berman, Clare McVey, Katie Tether, Greg – thank you for your observant eyes. You all loved different things and identified the (same) parts that needed work. The book is stronger for it.

  Thanks to my brother John for his expert knowledge of Manhattan real estate and to Owen Nicholls for double-checking the cinema projection lingo when my own memory failed me. Also thanks to my brother Dan for proof-reading the golf scene. You’d think the sport would be hard-wired into my brain with it being the TV soundtrack to my early years, but thankfully all I retain is our collective love for Seve Ballesteros.

  To Mum and Dad, who may hate this book. Thanks for practising a sort of benign neglect that allowed me to spend my child
hood wrapped up in movies and books, absorbing story structure and being left to my own devices. My imagination could take flight and this is the result.

  To friends and family who stuck by me when I had no choice but to confront my doubts, and to the new friends I have gained. You have no idea how much I appreciate you. (And to those who have edged away … Despite the fallout convincing me more each day that I made the right decision, I still have nothing but love for you in my heart. My door is always open.)

  Thank you to Mr Smith and Mrs Cowley, my English teachers at Highworth. You read my words aloud in class and made me feel a million bucks. To my other teachers, whose lessons I found dull and rarely handed in homework for, and who used to say I would fail in life … Sorry to disappoint you. Your textbooks were the first to meet the bin. Even at fifteen, I was enough of a precocious brat to know life is too short to spend on things that don’t bring joy.

  Finally, thanks to Greg for your love and friendship, and to Roman, Remy and Val. The unconditional love I feel for you is what led me to unravel my life, and now I am stitching it up in new and brighter colours. This one’s for you, boys.

  THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING

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