‘It’s fine, honestly,’ I say softly. ‘I don’t lead such an interesting life anyway. Very little to report. No parents, no children, no partner. Just little old me.’ I shift my gaze to the window, staring outside to the azure, cloudless sky. It’s warm for springtime. Maybe we are in for a hot summer.
He sighs and folds his arms over his chest. ‘There must be something you can tell me about yourself.’ He pulls his chair closer and cocks his head to one side, grinning at me. ‘Come on, I’m listening now. I promise not to interrupt.’
He looks insistent. Determined. So I relent and speak. I tell him how much I’m enjoying the sessions at church. I don’t tell him that he’s the reason I find them so appealing. I don’t tell him he is the reason I attend. Instead, I tell him that I rarely venture out and that I enjoy reading, finding solace and comfort in my books, and that I like listening to music. I’m lying. I find books monotonous and music irritating, no more than white noise in the background, but felt the need to say something in return, something that will tell him nothing about me, about who I actually am.
‘What was your partner’s name?’ He shifts in his seat, moving closer to me. I can feel the heat from his body, am able to smell the strong, slightly stale nicotine odour of coffee on his breath.
‘Stuart,’ I reply, swallowing down a swig of my latte.
He nods, smiles. A genuine, compassionate expression, not a thin-lipped grimace. I like that. No barriers. No concealed emotions. Makes it easier for me to get close to him. To get my own way.
‘I think I recall you talking about him at the sessions,’ he says casually. ‘How did he die?’ Peter shakes his head and lets out a long stream of air from between his pursed lips. ‘Bit crass of me to say that. Sorry. I guess being so close to death has made me a tad insensitive.’
I suppress my sigh, keeping it trapped within my chest. He doesn’t look or sound particularly sorry. ‘Car crash,’ I whisper, my hands clasped together on my lap. ‘Stuart died in a car crash last year.’
He nods, turning away from me, scrutinising the clock on the wall. ‘Sophia was murdered,’ he says, his tone now dark, menacing even. The air around us thickens. I swallow and think of something to say. Anything to shatter the murkiness that has settled on us. I want to keep things light – need to if I am to succeed with this pursuit of Peter. I suppress a smile at my alliterative phrase. It has a nice ring to it.
‘You must have loved her very much.’ I resist reaching over and placing my hand over his. Too familiar. Too soon. It’s all about timing.
‘She was on her way home from an evening out with colleagues.’ He lets out a small laugh, his voice bitter and cutting. ‘A jogger found her body the following morning. I woke up to find her missing.’
His eyes are glassy, filled with unshed tears. I’ll bet Peter isn’t one for crying, bottling it all up instead, all those festering emotions bubbling within his gut. He stops, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he clears his throat and wearily runs his fingers through his hair.
‘I’m really sorry to hear that.’
We sit in silence for a few seconds until he speaks again, his eyes once more full of their usual sparkle, his body straightening and springing back to life. ‘Anyway, sorry for being morose and dragging you down. It’s all in the past, isn’t it?’
‘We have a lot in common, you and I, it would appear.’ I try to laugh, to inject some levity into the situation. ‘Not what you’d call the easiest of topics, is it – death? Especially if it’s the very thing that draws us together but we both know how it feels to lose somebody, don’t we? To have that void in our lives that needs filling.’
Peter nods and gives me a bright smile. I feel easy in his company, as if we have known each other for the longest time. This is good. This is exactly how I want it to be – lacking in any kind of tension or awkwardness.
‘Thanks for the coffee,’ I murmur, my heart starting up as I wait for his response to my words, hoping this isn’t it. I’ve waited a long time for this man to notice me. Please don’t let this be the end of us before we have even begun.
3LAUREN
The days are long without her. I do kind of miss her. I know Dad does too. We wander around this house, rattling around in it like a couple of strangers, barely noticing one another. I don’t know how it’s meant to be after somebody dies, but I didn’t expect it to feel like this. There are self-help books for people who’ve just had a baby, or people who need some sort of stimulus to exist, the sort of people who need help to get their life in order by using those silly motivational phrases and relaxation techniques, but I’ve yet to see any guide books on how to get through the day after a family member dies. So we just get up every morning and go about our daily business, heads down, tongues too tied to speak to one another.
It’s sad, really. We used to be so close, Dad and me, but now things feel so difficult. I want to open up to him, hear him talk freely about Mum, about anything really, but no matter how hard we try, the words just won’t come. He’s afraid of speaking to me, that’s what it is. Afraid of what might come spilling out of his mouth, and I can’t talk to him because I don’t know what it is he wants to hear, what he wants me to say that will make everything better for us.
I don’t cry about Mum dying. I can’t. I won’t. Dad does on occasion. I hear him sometimes when he thinks I’m asleep. It’s a soft sobbing, not a howl or a self-pitying wail. Just a gentle sound that tells me he’s still grieving.
Sometimes, Grandma calls over, but truthfully, she causes more problems than she solves. Her remit seems to be cleaning things that don’t need cleaning and moving things around so we can’t find them the following day. Last week, she called over while we were both out and cleaned and moved all the crockery around into different cupboards.
‘Easier for you to find it,’ she had said later, on the phone. ‘You had all your plates mixed up with your cups and saucers. I’ve separated them all into colours and sizes. And by the way,’ she added as an aside, ‘pyjamas and dressing gowns need washing as well, you know. Not just left hanging on the backs of doors for weeks and months at a time.’
She’s actually really lovely and we know that this is her way of trying to help us out but sometimes, it drives me insane. I shouldn’t complain. Dad isn’t the tidiest of people and it saves me having to continually pick up after him. I like cleanliness and order, strange I know for a seventeen-year-old, but that’s just how I am, a hygiene freak, whereas Dad can wreck a room just by looking at it. Still, we’ve always rubbed along together nicely without any real arguments worth speaking of. Maybe opposites do attract after all.
Dad going to church is a new thing and I’m not sure how I feel about it. He always claimed he was an atheist so this U-turn in his thinking is a bit a shock and not something I could ever have predicted. It’s a massive shock, actually. Many men in his position would turn to drink, spending their days propping up the bar in the local pub, or go out running, or smash a ball around a squash court to vent their anger and grief, but Dad appears to have turned to God instead. It makes me uneasy and I’ve tried asking him about it but he just waves me away with a half-hearted smile.
‘It’s just somewhere to go where nobody bothers me,’ he said the last time I tried to probe him.
He’s busy at work, I get that. He works for a cut-throat company in their sales department selling engineering parts and from what I can gather, they are an organisation who show no interest in grieving employees and their difficult personal home lives. It’s a hectic occupation and during the day, he has hardly any time or energy to think about our circumstances so I imagine some downtime and solace is much needed and perhaps the church provides him with just that. I’m not denying him it; I’m just concerned that somebody will attach themselves to him, some overzealous religious person who wants to indoctrinate him, twist his mind round to their way of thinking. If I’m being truthful, I’m afraid he’ll become so besotted by the church that he’ll forget all about me. Does that sound selfish? It probably does but Dad and I only have each other. We can’t afford to drift apart.
Mum was a Catholic but a lapsed one. She came from an Italian family so it was a given that she would carry on the faith, but she didn’t. Her parents still live in Italy and have weird little religious artefacts all over their house. Mum would laugh when they sent photographs, saying that they’d added to their collection again and that they had more crucifixes than the Vatican.
It must be tricky for them though, being so far away, but Dad has said that their faith has helped them through. He’s probably right. Maybe that’s what drew him to the church. Or maybe it was something else that he doesn’t want to talk about. Something that he wants to keep secret. Maybe one day, he’ll talk to me about it, or maybe he won’t. Maybe we’ll continue wandering around this house in a fog of secrecy and confusion, the subject of Mum’s murder a massive, unscalable wall between us. It’s probably better that way because for all everyone thinks their marriage was a terrific one, solid and impenetrable, there were things that people didn’t see, acts of injustice that set them apart. I love my dad, I really do, but a part of me thinks that this church attendance for the grief counselling is just a ruse, a way of concealing what he really thought before Mum was murdered.
I’m no mind reader or fortune teller, I’m just a young girl for God’s sake, but I’m not thick and I do know this – had Mum not died, my parents would probably now be living apart, their marriage too fragmented to ever be put back together. I once read that it’s easier to move on with your life after a death than it is after a divorce. Perhaps Mum dying has been easier for us to handle than having her live apart from us. Apart and with somebody else who isn’t my dad.
4ALICE
A warm glow settles inside me as we part. I stand and watch Peter as he leaves the café, heads off down the street and disappears amongst the crowds. It took him a while to ask to see me again but we got there in the end. I nudged and hinted, gently pushed him into a corner until he relented and we agreed to meet next week after the session at church. Same time, same place. This café is hardly the height of sophistication and elegance with its vinyl seats and Formica tables, but it’s a start.
Behind me, the coffee machine whirrs and sizzles, chairs scrape across the tiled floor, people chatter. A myriad of everyday noises that help soothe me. For all I have waited for this moment, for Peter to finally notice me, now it has happened, I am both nervous and excited in equal measure, my stomach clenching and unclenching, my skin rippling with delight and dread. I take a deep breath to steady myself, repeating over and over that this is my chance to start again, to claw back some of my life. The life I had before it was cruelly and thoughtlessly torn apart. I think back to the devastation, to the unending heartache that was almost the undoing of me. I bite at my lip, knowing that I deserve some semblance of normality as much as the next person. I deserve to be happy. And I was for a while. I had Tom, and then I didn’t. Now there’s just me. And Peter. A dart of something resembling happiness bolts through me. Not yet, though. I don’t want to push things too quickly or too far.
I stand, feeling as if the watching world can read my thoughts, and leave the café, enjoying the breeze outside as it passes over me, caressing my hot skin. Crowds bustle past, the street remarkably busy for a Sunday morning. I suppose most places open on a Sunday now. No difference between a religious day and any other day of the week. Life has changed – the pace faster, people busier. Too busy to notice the likes of me. I prefer that. I like the anonymity that busyness brings. My life is my life and nobody else’s. Heartache, loss and death have taught me how to be private, how to lose myself in a crowd of one.
People pass by me as I make my way home, their eyes glued to their phones. They weave through the crowds, deftly and rapidly, never looking up, never noticing me. I am a ghost in their presence, a wandering soul, searching for the things I lost. Constantly scanning and scratching around for the things that have been taken from me.
The house is cool as I let myself in. The blinds remain closed, everything a wash of light grey. I prefer it this way. It helps clear my head, allows me to breathe properly, the air clean and pure, not sullied by sunlight and warmth. Just me and my thoughts. Me and my loneliness.
I stare at the bare walls, at the plain furniture and wonder where it all went wrong. I am living a half-life, a watered-down version of myself. But not for much longer. Things are ripe for change. No more diluting my existence. I can start again, focus on Peter, focus on me. Become once again, the person I used to be.
The walls are cool as I trail my fingers over them, thinking about the past and how it almost robbed me of my future. Being on my own has been miserable. I’ve survived but it hasn’t been easy. I used to have a family, a life, until things turned sour that is, like curdled milk: the scent of it never leaving me, a foul stench trailing in its wake. The unshakeable odour of death and loneliness. Of grief and anger.
And then there’s this house. So many memories, a combination of good and bad, delightful and dire. I should have moved, done the right thing. Learned to start again. But I didn’t. I’m still here and he is everywhere. Everywhere and nowhere. The bricks and mortar, and furniture holding onto his memory, his soul embedded in them. And yet I’m still very much alone. For now.
My job is menial and mind numbing, but it pays the bills – bills that were automatically taken care of by my husband when he was here. I’m now employed as a nanny for a wealthy couple. It sounds easy but being a nanny for people who have high expectations for their children is exhausting. As well as caring for their children, I’m also left lists of tasks to do such as doing the laundry and tidying the children’s bedrooms. My employers rarely speak to me, leaving instead notes for me on the sideboard, directing me to the required tasks. Only once did the lady of the house stop to talk to me, commenting on my hair, something that made me flinch.
