After You (5 page)

We all stopped and stared at him.

‘What? What did I say?’

‘Bernard –’

‘Ah, come on. Our Lou doesn’t think I mean
her
–’

‘Oh, my sweet Lord.’ Mum’s hand flew to her face.

My sister had started to push Thomas out of the room. ‘Oh, boy,’ she hissed. ‘Thomas, you’d better get out of here right now. Because I swear when your grandpa gets hold of you –’

‘What?’ Dad frowned. ‘What’s the matter?’

Granddad barked a laugh. He held up a shaking finger.

It was almost magnificent. Thomas had coloured in the whole of Dad’s face with blue marker pen. His eyes emerged like two gooseberries from a sea of cobalt blue. ‘What?’

Thomas’s voice, as he disappeared down the corridor, was a wail of protest. ‘We were watching
Avatar
! He said he wouldn’t mind being an avatar!’

Dad’s eyes widened. He strode to the mirror over the mantelpiece.

There was a brief silence. ‘Oh, my God.’

‘Bernard, don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.’

‘He’s turned me bloody blue, Josie. I think I’m entitled to take the Lord’s name to Butlins in a flipping wheelbarrow. Is this permanent pen? THOMMO? IS THIS PERMANENT PEN?’

‘We’ll get it off, Dad.’ My sister closed the door to the garden behind her. Beyond it you could just make out Thomas’s wailing.

‘I’m meant to be overseeing the new fencing at the castle tomorrow. I have contractors coming. How the hell am I meant to deal with contractors if I’m
blue
?’ Dad spat on his hand and started to rub at his face. The faintest smudging appeared, but mostly seemed to spread onto his palm. ‘It’s not coming off. Josie,
it’s not coming off
!’

Mum shifted her attention from Granddad and set about Dad with the scouring pad. ‘Just stay still, Bernard. I’m doing what I can.’

Treena went for her laptop bag. ‘I’ll go on the internet. I’m sure there’s something. Toothpaste or nail-polish remover or bleach or –’

‘You are not putting bleach on my ruddy face!’ Dad roared. Granddad, with his new pirate moustache, sat giggling in the corner of the room.

I began to edge past them.

Mum was holding Dad’s face with her left hand as she scrubbed. She turned, as if she’d only just seen me. ‘Lou! I didn’t ask – are you okay, love? Did you have a nice walk?’ Everyone
stopped abruptly to smile at me; a smile that said,
Everything’s okay here, Lou. You don’t have to worry
. I hated that smile.

‘Fine.’

It was the answer they all wanted. Mum turned to Dad. ‘That’s grand. Isn’t it grand, Bernard?’

‘It is. Great news.’

‘If you sort out your whites, love, I’ll pop them in the wash with Daddy’s later.’

‘Actually,’ I said, ‘don’t bother. I’ve been thinking. It’s time for me to go home.’

Nobody spoke. Mum glanced at Dad. Granddad let out another little giggle and clamped his hand over his mouth.

‘Fair enough,’ said Dad, with as much dignity as a middle-aged, blueberry-coloured man could muster. ‘But if you go back to that flat, Louisa, you go on one condition …’

‘My name is Natasha and I lost my husband to cancer three years ago.’

On a humid Monday night, the members of the Moving On Circle sat in a ring of orange office chairs in the Pentecostal Church Hall, alongside Marc, the leader, a tall, moustachioed man, whose whole being exuded a kind of exhausted melancholy, and one empty chair.

‘I’m Fred. My wife, Jilly, died in September. She was seventy-four.’

‘Sunil. My twin brother died of leukaemia two years ago.’

‘William. Dead father, six months ago. All a bit ridiculous, frankly, as we never really got on when he was alive. I keep asking myself why I’m here.’

There was a peculiar scent to grief. It smelt of damp, imperfectly ventilated church halls and poor-quality teabags. It smelt of meals for one and stale cigarettes, smoked hunched against the cold. It smelt of spritzed hair and armpits, little practical victories against a morass of despair. That smell alone told me I did not belong there, whatever I had promised Dad.

I felt like a fraud. Plus they all looked so …
sad.

I shifted uneasily in my seat, and Marc caught me. He gave me a reassuring smile.
We know
, it said.
We’ve been here before.

I bet you haven’t
, I responded silently.

‘Sorry. Sorry I’m late.’ The door opened, letting in a blast of warm air, and the empty chair was taken by a mop-headed teenager, who folded his limbs into place as if they were always somehow too long for the space they were in.

‘Jake. You missed last week. Everything okay?’

‘Sorry. Dad messed up at work and he couldn’t get me here.’

‘Don’t worry. It’s good you made it. You know where the drinks are.’

The boy glanced around the room from under his long fringe, hesitating slightly when his gaze landed on my glittery green skirt. I pulled my bag onto my lap in an attempt to hide it and he looked away.

‘Hello, dear. I’m Daphne. My husband took his own life. I don’t think it was the nagging!’ The woman’s half-laugh seemed to leak pain. She patted her carefully set hair and peered down awkwardly at her knees. ‘We were happy. We were.’

The boy’s hands were tucked under his thighs. ‘Jake. Mum. Two years ago. I’ve been coming here for the past year because my dad can’t deal with it, and I needed someone to talk to.’

‘How is your dad this week, Jake?’ said Marc.

‘Not bad. I mean, he brought a woman home last Friday night but, like, he didn’t sit on the sofa and cry afterwards. So that’s something.’

‘Jake’s father is handling his own grief in his own way,’ Marc said in my direction.

‘Shagging,’ said Jake. ‘Mostly shagging.’

‘I wish I was younger,’ said Fred, wistfully. He was wearing a collar and tie, the kind of man who considers himself undressed without one. ‘I think that would have been a marvellous way to handle Jilly dying.’

‘My cousin picked up a man at my aunt’s funeral,’ said a woman in the corner who might have been called Leanne; I couldn’t remember. She was small and round and had a thick fringe of chocolate-coloured hair.

‘Actually during the funeral?’

‘She said they went to a Travelodge after the sandwiches.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s the heightened emotions, apparently.’

I was in the wrong place. I could see that now. Surreptitiously, I gathered my belongings, wondering whether I should announce my leaving or whether it would be simpler just to run.

Then Marc turned to me expectantly.

I stared blankly at him.

He raised his eyebrows.

‘Oh. Me? Actually, I was just leaving. I think I’ve … I mean, I don’t think I’m –’

‘Oh, everyone wants to leave on their first day, dear.’

‘I wanted to leave on my second and third too.’

‘That’s the biscuits. I keep telling Marc we should have better ones.’

‘Just tell us the bare bones of it, if you like. Don’t worry. You’re among friends.’

They were all waiting. I couldn’t run. I hunched back into my seat. ‘Um. Okay. Well, my name’s Louisa and the man I … I loved … died at thirty-five.’

There were a few nods of sympathy.

‘Too young. When did this happen, Louisa?’

‘Twenty months ago. And a week. And two days.’

‘Three years, two weeks and two days.’ Natasha smiled at me from across the room.

There was a low murmur of commiseration. Daphne, beside me, reached out a plump, beringed hand and patted my leg.

‘We’ve had many discussions in this room about the particular difficulties when someone dies young,’ said Marc. ‘How long were you together?’

‘Uh. We … well … a little less than six months.’

A few barely hidden looks of surprise.

‘That’s – quite brief,’ a voice said.

‘I’m sure Louisa’s pain is just as valid,’ said Marc, smoothly. ‘And how did he pass, Louisa?’

‘Pass what?’

‘Die,’ said Fred, helpfully.

‘Oh. He – uh – he took his own life.’

‘That must have been a great shock.’

‘Not really. I knew he was planning it.’

There is a peculiar sort of silence, it turns out, when you tell a room full of people who think they know everything there is to know about the death of a loved one that they don’t.

I took a breath. ‘He knew he wanted to do it before I met him. I tried to change his mind and I couldn’t. So I went along with it, because I loved him, and it seemed to make sense at the time. And now it makes a lot less sense. Which is why I’m here.’

‘Death never makes sense,’ said Daphne.

‘Unless you’re Buddhist,’ said Natasha. ‘I keep trying to think Buddhist thoughts but I’m worried that Olaf is going to come back as a mouse or something and I’m going to poison him.’ She sighed. ‘I have to put poison down. We have a terrible mouse problem in our block.’

‘You’ll never get rid of them. They’re like fleas,’ said Sunil. ‘For every one you see, there are hundreds of them behind the scenes.’

‘You might want to think about what you’re doing, Natasha, love,’ said Daphne. ‘There could be hundreds of little Olafs running around. My Alan could be one of them. You could actually be poisoning the both of them.’

‘Well,’ said Fred, ‘if it’s Buddhist, he’d just come back as something else, wouldn’t he?’

‘But what if it’s a fly or something and Natasha kills that too?’

‘I’d hate to come back as a fly,’ said William. ‘Horrible black hairy things.’ He shuddered.

‘I’m not, like, some mass murderer,’ said Natasha. ‘You’re
making it sound like I’m out there slaughtering everyone’s reincarnated husbands.’

‘Well, that mouse might be someone’s husband. Even if it isn’t Olaf.’

‘I think we should try to steer this session back on track,’ said Marc, rubbing his temple. ‘Louisa, it’s brave of you to come and tell your story. Why don’t you tell us a bit more about how you and – what was his name? – how you met. You’re in a circle of trust. We’ve all pledged that our stories go no further than these walls.’

It was at this point that I happened to catch Jake’s eye. He glanced at Daphne, then at me, and shook his head subtly.

‘I met him at work,’ I said. ‘And his name was … Bill.’

Despite what I had promised Dad, I wasn’t planning to attend the Moving On Circle. But my return to work had been so awful that by the time the day ended I hadn’t been able to face going home to an empty flat.

‘You’re back!’ Carly had placed the cup of coffee on the bar, taken the businessman’s change, and hugged me, all while dropping the coins into the correct sections of the till drawer, in one fluid motion. ‘What the hell happened? Tim just told us you had an accident. And then he left so I wasn’t even sure you were coming back.’

‘Long story.’ I stared at her. ‘Uh … what are you wearing?’

Nine o’clock on Monday morning and the airport had been a blue-grey blur of men charging laptops, staring into iPhones, reading the City pages or talking discreetly into handsets about market share. Carly caught the eye of someone on the other side of the till. ‘Yeah. Well, things have changed since you’ve been gone.’

I turned to see a businessman standing on the wrong side of the bar. I blinked at him and put my bag down. ‘Um – if
you’d like to wait there, I’ll serve you –’

‘You must be Louise.’ His handshake was emphatic and without warmth. ‘I’m the new bar manager. Richard Percival.’ I took in his slick hair, his suit, his pale blue shirt, and wondered what kind of bars he had actually managed.

‘Nice to meet you.’

‘You’re the one who’s been off for two months.’

‘Well. Yes. I –’

He walked along the optics, scanning each bottle. ‘I just want you to know that I’m not a fan of people taking endless sick leave.’

My neck shifted a few centimetres back in my collar.

‘I’m just laying down a marker, Louise. I’m not one of those managers who turn a blind eye. I know that in many companies time off is pretty much considered a staff perk. But not in companies where I work.’

‘Believe me, I’ve not thought of the last nine weeks as a perk.’

He examined the underside of a tap, and rubbed at it meditatively with his thumb.

I took a breath before I spoke. ‘I fell off a building. Perhaps I could show you my surgery scars. So, you know, you can be reassured that I’m unlikely to want to do it again.’

He stared at me. ‘There’s no need to be sarcastic. I’m not saying you’re about to have other accidents, but your sick leave is,
pro rata
, at an unusually high level for someone who has worked for this company a relatively short time. That’s all I wanted to point out. That it has been noted.’

He wore cufflinks with racing cars on them.

‘Message received, Mr Percival.’ I said. ‘I’ll do my best to avoid further near-fatal accidents.’

‘You’ll need a uniform. If you give me five minutes I’ll get one out of the stockroom. What size are you? Twelve? Fourteen?’

I stared at him. ‘Ten.’

He raised an eyebrow. I raised one back. As he walked to his office, Carly leaned over from the coffee machine and smiled sweetly in his direction. ‘Utter, utter bellend,’ she said, from the side of her mouth.

She wasn’t wrong. From the moment I returned, Richard Percival was, in the words of my father, all over me like a bad suit. He measured my measures, checked every corner of the bar for molecular peanut crumbs, was in and out of the loos checking on hygiene and wouldn’t let us leave until he had stood over us cashing up and ensuring each till roll matched takings to the last penny.

I no longer had time to chat to the customers, to look up departure times, hand over lost passports, contemplate the planes we could see taking off through the great glass window. I didn’t even have time to be irritated by
Celtic Pan Pipes, Vol. III
. If a customer was left waiting to be served for more than ten seconds Richard would magically appear from his office, sighing ostentatiously, then apologize loudly and repeatedly because they had been kept waiting
so long
. Carly and I, usually busy with other customers, would exchange secret glances of resignation and contempt.

He spent half the day meeting reps, the rest on the phone to Head Office, bleating about Footfall and Spend Per Head. We were encouraged to upsell with every transaction, and taken to one side for a talking-to if we forgot. All that was bad enough.

But then there was the uniform.

Carly came into the Ladies as I was finishing getting changed and stood beside me in front of the mirror. ‘We look like a pair of eejits,’ she said.

Not content with dark skirts and white shirts, some marketing
genius high up the corporate ladder had decided that the atmosphere of the Shamrock and Clover chain would benefit from genuine Irish clothing. This genuine Irish clothing had evidently been thought up by someone who believed that across Dublin, right this minute, businesswomen and checkout girls were pirouetting across their workplaces dressed in embroidered tabards, knee-high socks and laced-up dancing shoes, all in glittering emerald green. With accompanying ringlet wigs.

‘Jesus. If my boyfriend saw me dressed like this he’d dump me.’ Carly lit a cigarette, and climbed up on the sink to disable the smoke alarm on the ceiling. ‘Mind you, he’d probably want to do me first. The perv.’

‘What do the men have to wear?’ I pulled my short skirt out at the sides and eyed Carly’s lighter nervously, wondering how flammable I was.

‘Look outside. There’s only Richard. And he has to wear that shirt with a green logo. The poor thing.’

‘That’s it? No pixie shoes? Or little leprechaun hat?’

‘Surprise, surprise. It’s only us girls who have to work looking like porno Munchkins.’

‘I look like Dolly Parton: The Early Years in this wig.’

‘Grab a red one. Lucky us, we have a choice of three colours.’

From somewhere outside we could hear Richard calling. My stomach had begun to clench reflexively when I heard his voice.

‘Anyway, I’m not staying. I’m going to
Riverdance
my way out of this place and into another job,’ Carly said. ‘He can stick his bloody shamrocks up his tight little corporate arse.’ She had given what I could only describe as a sarcastic skip, and left the Ladies. I spent the rest of the day getting little electric shocks from the static.

The Moving On Circle ended at half past nine. I walked out into the humid summer evening, exhausted by the twin trials of work and the evening’s events. I took off my jacket, too hot, feeling suddenly that, having laid myself bare in front of a room full of strangers, being seen in a
faux
-Irish dancer uniform, which was, in truth, ever so slightly too small, didn’t really make much difference.

I hadn’t been able to talk about Will – not the way they talked, as if their loved ones were still part of their lives, perhaps in the next room.

– Oh yes, my Jilly used to do that all the time.

– I can’t delete my brother’s voicemail message. I have a little listen to his voice when I feel like I’m going to forget what he sounded like.

– Sometimes I can hear him in the next room.

I could barely even say Will’s name. And listening to their tales of family relationships, of thirty-year marriages, shared houses, lives, children, I felt like a fraud. I had been a carer for someone for six months. I’d loved him, and watched him end his life. How could these strangers possibly understand what Will and I had been to each other during that time? How could I explain the way we had so swiftly understood each other, the shorthand jokes, the blunt truths and raw secrets? How could I convey the way those short months had changed the way I felt about everything? The way he had skewed my world so totally that it made no sense without him in it?