I texted Mum and said something had come up with Alan and that I wasn’t going to make it tonight. I’ll be over in the morning, I promised. She wasn’t happy, but she took it. It’s not as if I make a habit of standing her up.
Relief, despair, when I finally unlocked my door. I love that barn more than I ever imagined loving bricks and mortar, but it’s also a grim reminder of the facts of my life. To the outsider, my barn says, The Good Life. Glasses of crisp Picpoul as the sun sets over the trees! Dinner made of foraged organic vegetables while the birds roost! Crystal-clear Cotswold water, pulled fresh from the earth!
They have no idea how trapped I am. Even if I told them what it’s like with Mum, they wouldn’t believe me.
Later on I gave the workshop a bit of a tidy and organized the whiteboard for tomorrow. I didn’t make dinner. When I walked into the kitchen, I was assaulted by memories of Sarah and me in that same space, cooking and talking and laughing, our minds galloping wildly into the future. And of course then I couldn’t face cooking alone, in silence. So I ate some Bombay mix and went to bed. Letting Sarah go was the right thing to do, I reminded myself, while I was brushing my teeth. I noticed I had a minor suntan.
Then I lay under my skylight, stars winching slowly across the sky, congratulating myself on my fortitude, my determination, my willpower. Well done, mate. It wasn’t easy but you had to do it.
Only, the longer I waited for sleep, the less I believed that.
For a while I got up and tried to watch television. Take my mind off things. But all I got was a news report about a terrible pile-up on the M25, multiple fatalities and severe injuries, and before I knew it, there was a voice in my head asking me how I would feel if Sarah died. (Really helpful.) What if you had a call to say she’d been in a motorway pile-up? it asked. Caught in a cartel shoot-out? Run over by a truck? Would you still feel like you’d done the right thing?
I turned off the telly and went back to bed, but the idea was there by then. Like a rusty hook in my consciousness. Pulling and dragging. If Sarah died, would you still think you’d done the right thing?
And that’s the problem, Alex, because – if I’m honest with myself – I would not. If Sarah died, I would regret it for the rest of my life.
I’ve lived well these last two decades. Fought my way out of grief and into life. But I’ve allowed Mum to be more important than me, all that time, because I’ve felt I had no choice. What decent human being wouldn’t look after his mother if she needed help? But something changed when I walked away from Sarah on the beach. Choosing Mum didn’t feel right. And it still doesn’t.
It’s 3.58 a.m. Am literally praying for sleep.
Me x
Chapter Forty-One
‘That man. He keeps staring at me.’
I look at Mum, pressed back into her seat, her neck thrust forward like a turtle. Then I look at the man, who’s vast, poor sod, absolutely enormous, spilling over three chairs and chain-drinking Diet Coke from a two-litre bottle. Above his head, a bluebottle bats at the window, again and again, like a child telling the same joke because it made someone laugh half an hour ago.
I watch the man for a while, but he doesn’t look at Mum. He’s reading an NHS leaflet entitled ‘Let’s Talk’.
‘He’s not staring at you,’ I whisper. ‘But we can go and sit over there if you’d prefer.’
I point at a row of green chairs, facing away from this perfectly innocent man, but I know she won’t go for it. At the end of the row, there’s a mother with her baby asleep in a buggy, and Mum can’t cope with children these days. Last month she locked herself in the toilet at her GP practice because a toddler was handing her Duplo bricks in the waiting room.
‘I think I’ll stay here,’ she says eventually. ‘Sorry, Eddie, I don’t want to make a fuss, but will you keep an eye on him?’
I nod, closing my eyes. It’s too warm in here. Nothing to do with the sunshine outside; it’s that flabby medical- waiting-room heat, fired by anxious breath and underused bodies.
‘Are you missing the beach?’ Mum says. She has on that tone she uses when she’s worried she’s annoyed me. Lighter than normal, full of over-inflection. ‘Santa Monica?’
‘Ha! No, not really. Did I tell you about it?’
She nods, her eyes skittering over to the Diet Coke man before returning to my face. ‘It sounded lovely,’ she adds, and I wonder what jet-lagged lie I told her about my day on that beach. I can’t stand lying to her. It’s hard not to take the view that life has betrayed my mother, so it feels extra sickening when I do the same. No matter that I do it for her own good.
Mum turns away and my thoughts return to the funeral procession I saw earlier, heading down past the green towards Frampton Mansell. The hearse had been full of wildflowers, bunches and sprays of them, toppling down over the sides of the wooden box as if on the banks of a stream. It was followed by three empty black cars. Must be a young person , I thought. The aged seldom had so many mourners. I wondered who they were off to collect. Which broken, desperate family was gathered in a house somewhere nearby, draining their coffees, adjusting their uncomfortable black clothes and wondering, over and over again, How can this be happening to us?
I’d glanced sideways at Mum as the procession passed, hoping it wouldn’t throw her off-balance.
I found her with an ugly expression on her face. ‘Looks like they’re heading for Frampton Mansell,’ she observed, sounding oddly pleased. Spiteful, even. ‘Let’s hope it’s that girl who’s died. Sarah.’ Then she looked at me, as if expecting me to agree.
I couldn’t say anything for several minutes. I just breathed through my mouth – a sort of Eddie Emergency Response that I remember well from the weeks following Alex’s death. I felt sick. Physically sick, a banding round my chest. I tried with every resource I had to bury what she’d just said, but I couldn’t.
No wonder Sarah moved to the other side of the world, I thought weakly. How could she ever have survived here?
The bluebottle at the window falls silent for a moment, and I think, now, about how strongly Sarah would approve of wildflowers on a coffin. She brought bunches of them into my house during our week together. Filled almost every mug I own. ‘Is there anything more beautiful?’ she asked, smiling down at them.
You, I thought. You’re the most beautiful thing that has ever come into this house.
Save for my mate Baz, who works for the Natural History Unit in Bristol, Sarah’s the first person I’ve met under sixty who knows much about wildlife. I remember her voice rising in excitement when I quizzed her on birds from that Collins Gem book. Nuthatch! Stonechat! Then her laughter, wonderfully dirty and full of life.
God, it hurts. It hurts in ways I never imagined.
I turn to look at Mum, to reinforce to myself that Sarah is the very last woman on earth with whom I could have a relationship. This is your mother , I tell myself. Your mother, a mental health services user for nearly two decades. A woman who can’t remember the textures of life, the rhythm of the world, because she’s become so isolated. She needs you.
Mum’s pretending to rest her head in her hands, as if dead tired, but she’s just watching the guy with the Diet Coke through splayed fingers.
‘Mum,’ I whisper. ‘It’s OK. ’
I’m not sure she even hears me.
When I went over to Alan’s the other night, he said I should join Tinder. I said OK, because that’s what he wanted me to say, and then had to go to the loo, as if to flush away, turd-like, the horror I felt. Tinder? Nobody warns you that life continues to be complicated after you’ve Done the Right Thing. That there is no reward, beyond some intangible sense of moral fortitude. I’ve been back eleven days now, and if anything, I feel worse than I did when I left Sarah standing on the beach.
Tinder! I mean, for fuck’s sake!
‘Where’s Arun?’ Mum whispers. ‘We’ve been waiting ages.’
I check my watch. We’ve been waiting ten minutes.
‘Do you think he’s off sick, Eddie?’ she asks. ‘Do you think he’s left?’ Her face clouds at the thought.