He nodded. ‘If… I guess that’s the big question.’
‘It is,’ she agreed. ‘And I’ve been thinking that Chloe’s not here in these bricks or in the air – she’s in us, in here.’ She patted her heart. ‘And that won’t change, ever. We don’t need to be here.’
‘Would you like to move?’ He looked at her. ‘Because if that would make you happy, if that’s what it’s going to take, then that’s what we should do.’
‘I don’t think anything can make me happy, not truly happy, not ever again, but I think I might find it easier if I didn’t have to walk across the landing every day, see the place where…’ Once again, she pictured Chloe’s little feet sticking out of the end of her nightie. ‘I don’t want to see it any more, Tom, and I think a new start might be a good thing.’
‘Maybe you’re right.’ Tom nodded as his tummy rumbled. ‘Jeez, I wish I hadn’t put all that scampi up my arse, I’m bloody starving!’ And the two chuckled, as though life was normal, as though they had come home from the pub and Chloe was asleep upstairs and all was right in the world, like they had in the time before the nothingness.
‘Cheese on toast and a glass of red?’ Tom offered as he released her feet and stood from the sofa.
‘Lovely.’ She nodded. ‘D’you want me to make it?’
He stared at her from the doorframe. ‘Blimey, Grace, one step at a time.’ He smiled at her and she smiled up at him. He turned to leave, but hesitated. ‘You look beautiful,’ he said, knitting his brows earnestly.
‘Thank you.’ She felt suddenly coy.
‘I’ve missed you, Gracie. I’ve missed us.’ He swallowed.
‘Me too.’
‘We can only do our very best, can’t we?’ he said.
‘Yes.’ She took a deep breath. ‘That’s all we can do, Tom. Our very best.’ And she nodded. Lesson learnt.
Sepsis will kill approximately one hundred people today in the UK. That’s one hundred families like yours and mine…
It was hard for Grace to believe that it had been six whole months since she’d last dialled the number and nervously paced the kitchen.
‘Jason, hello!’
‘Ah, Grace, it’s really good to hear from you, and you sound a lot better – brighter, if you don’t mind me saying.’ As usual, he cut to the chase, blunt and to the point. Yet today she found this far from irritating, today she found it quite reassuring that he wasn’t pussyfooting around.
‘Small steps, Jason, but, yes, I do feel a lot better.’
‘Good. That’s really good news. We were all so worried about you. So, when are you coming back? I’m having to do twice the work here! Every time I get a doctor’s note, for another month, another month, all I can think about is how much paperwork you’re causing me! You are an admin vortex, woman!’ he joked.
She pictured him with his feet up on the desk and the phone resting under his chin as he formed his fingers into a pyramid over his chest.
‘Ah, well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’
‘Uh-oh. That sounds suspiciously like the preamble to a resignation.’
‘You’re good.’ She smiled.
‘Obviously Grace, I’ve been half expecting it.’
‘Have you already stolen my desk clock and business-card holder?’ She laughed.
‘Oh, Grace, I had them off you while you were still wandering up and down the stairs without your shoes!’
‘God, Jason, that was a bad day. A really bad day.’ She shook her head; even his humour couldn’t ease the wave of distress and embarrassment that rippled through her.
‘It really was. We were all in bits, no one knew what to do for the best, me included. When you left in the cab, we all just sat here in silence, shocked by how little we could do for you, how helpless we were to make things better.’
‘Ah, well, that’s the thing – no one can make it better.’
‘I’m really glad to hear you’ve got some of your bounce back.’
‘Thank you.’ His warmth touched her. She found it hard to reconcile his tone with the bastard who had continually used fair means or foul to try and get one over on her. ‘I’ll drop you a line, make it formal.’ She sighed, realising that this was it: she was walking away from the career she had carved out so carefully, made sacrifices for and clung to.
‘I shall miss you, you know Grace. I’ve enjoyed learning from you over the years.’ He coughed.
‘Learning from
me
?’ She chuckled.
‘Absolutely. You’re the best. You were always the best. I had to keep on my toes. I think you could do anything you put your mind to.’
‘Thank you, Jason. Thank you for everything.’ Grace ended the call and swallowed the lump in her throat.
As Grace and Tom pottered in the garden later, she told him what Jason had said. He listened intently, pausing from cutting back the hawthorn bush.
‘He was probably a bit intimidated by you.’
‘But I’m not scary!’ Grace looked up from weeding the bed beneath the kitchen window.
‘Well, you can be sometimes, especially when you get an idea that you can’t and won’t be deflected from.’
‘Really? Like when?’
‘Like… God, Grace, I have so many examples, I honestly don’t know where to begin.’ He shook his head.
She sat back on her haunches. ‘That’s not how I see myself at all.’
Tom threw the secateurs on the ground and pulled off the leather gauntlet with which he’d been handling the prickles. ‘Okay, what about the extension on this house?’
Grace looked up at the red bricks that towered above them. ‘What about it?’
‘Do you remember the hours and hours of drawing up plans, going over ideas, looking at budgets and debating the detail until the early hours?’
‘Of course, but luckily I was married to the architect, so I got all that consultancy for free.’ She smiled.
‘Yes, you did, but that’s not the point. The point is that you didn’t want to wait until we could afford the top floor as well, you wanted to rush it through so we could get the kitchen done first and then, if and when possible, go through a
second
extension in a few years’ time, with all the mess, dirt, upheaval and expense doubled up. And I told you that was crazy, but you were adamant.’
She twitched her nose at him. ‘So what’s your point?’
‘My point is, what’s the first thing you said when it was finished?’ He placed his hands on his hips.
‘I can’t remember.’ She turned her attention to a rather stubborn dandelion root that was wedged in a crevice between the paving slabs on the path.
‘You said, “I wish we’d waited and done the top floor at the same time. There’s no way I want to go through all that mess and hassle again.” And I had to bite my tongue not to say I told you so!’
She smiled as she dug the trowel into the sandy crack, conveniently deaf to his rambling.
‘Or what about when you were pregnant and you would only think of boys’ names, totally convinced you were having a boy because someone had told you an old wives’ tale about the way you were carrying. You refused to even think about having a girl and then when you had her…’ Tom realised he was crying.
Grace quickly stood, threw the trowel onto the path, took her husband into her arms and held him tightly, matching him tear for tear.
‘When I had her,’ she continued for him, ‘it was the most wonderful gift I had ever been given. I couldn’t believe that she was mine, that she was ours! Half you and half me. She was without a doubt the best thing we ever did, the very best.’
‘She was, Gracie. She was. And I loved her because she was so like you.’
‘And I loved her because she was so like you.’ Grace kissed his wet face as she held him close. The two stood on the path, letting tendrils of affection and understanding entwine them, fragile strands that in time would bind them together once again.
It was the very next day that the estate agent had turned up – promptly, at 11 a.m., as agreed. He knocked on the front door and Grace had been ready for him, having mentally prepared herself for the ordeal. He had shiny shoes, shiny hair and a shiny car and looked to be about fourteen. Grace didn’t know whether to offer him coffee or squash.
She could sense a certain shyness about him that his established patter could not disguise; his nervous glances into corners and around doors made her feel jumpy in her own house. She tried her best to put him at his ease.
‘So, really, Darren, we want it sold and wrapped up as quickly as possible. The price matters of course, but we don’t want to drag it out for the sake of a few grand. We figure we’d rather have the equity sitting in a bank than tied up here while we haggle over money.’
Darren nodded, but Grace wasn’t sure that he was listening; his mind appeared to be elsewhere. He then came out with it, quickly and with obvious relief. She correctly suspected that the words had been hovering on his tongue from the moment he’d arrived.
‘I saw your daughter’s funeral, Mrs Penderford.’
The admission threw her. She hadn’t been expecting the subject to crop up. She mentally lost her balance and reached for the chair in front of her.
‘You did?’
He nodded again, this time looking her in the eye. ‘Not the actual service, but I saw the car drive past the office and I went out to stand alongside the route to pay my respects. We all did, actually.’
Grace listened. It was odd to hear about that day from the perspective of a stranger, especially as the whole thing had passed in such a blur; she could recall only patches of detail.
‘Thank you for doing that, it was very kind; in fact, people’s response generally has been very kind. It does make a difference, you know, so thank you.’ She didn’t know what else to say, or what he expected her to say.
He continued. ‘It was one of the saddest and most significant days of my life.’
Grace smiled at him, not understanding. ‘How do you mean, saddest and most significant?’
The boy studied his highly polished shoes, unsure about whether to go on. Eventually he found his voice.
‘I couldn’t get my head around the fact that someone with their whole life ahead of them could go, just like that. It seemed so… so unfair.’ He grimaced at the inadequacy of the word and the inadequacy of his vocabulary.
‘It is unfair,’ she concurred. ‘She died of sepsis – do you know what that is?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t. I’m really sorry.’
‘No don’t be, that’s not unusual, lots of people haven’t heard of it. Look it up, Darren, when you get back to your office. Look it up and learn about the symptoms. People need to know what to look for. If we’d known… Well, just do that for me, will you?’
‘I will and I’ll tell my friends to do it too.’
Grace nodded, quite overcome by the lad’s offer.
‘Something weird happened to me on the day of the funeral, Mrs Penderford.’
‘What was that?’
‘It made me realise that life can end just like that, whether you’re old or young, or even very young. And so I decided not to waste a single day, not one. And so far I haven’t.’ He grinned at her, clearly proud of his achievement.
They were both silent for a while. Eventually Grace smiled. ‘So what do you do differently?’
He thought for a second. ‘What do I do differently? Nothing really. I just feel different. I feel lucky and I appreciate every small thing. I don’t take anything for granted and I’m being much nicer to my mum and dad. And if someone offers me the chance to do something, anything, then I always say yes. Because you don’t know what’s going to happen to you tomorrow, whether you’ll get another chance. So that’s it really – I say yes and I do more stuff.’
Grace smiled at him and fought her tears. ‘You are so right, Darren. You never know what’s going to happen to you tomorrow.’
Once he’d exorcised what he’d wanted to say, he relaxed and opened up. They drank a cup of much-needed tea and he regaled Grace with his plans to go to college and become a surveyor; he told her how he wanted to buy his own house eventually, and filled her in on all his other short- and long-term goals. She felt strangely privileged to be the recipient of this information, sensing that he didn’t disclose it to many people. Business was dealt with just as he was about to leave, almost as an afterthought.
‘Your house is lovely, Mrs Penderford, really lovely. We’ll have no trouble selling it at all. In fact, my colleague tipped the wink to a few couples who are in a good position, told them that we might be taking it onto the market, and we already have quite a bit of interest.’
It was Grace’s turn to be barely listening; she was thinking instead about his words from earlier. You really never did know what was going to happen tomorrow.
‘That’s great. Thank you.’ She smiled.
‘Are you and your husband moving locally, Mrs Penderford?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I said, are you and your husband moving somewhere local?’
She stared at him as though the thought of moving locally, or indeed anywhere, had not occurred to her. And in truth it hadn’t. For the first time she tried to consider the options, but kept drawing a mental blank. One thing was for sure, with this house gone, they would need to live somewhere.
Tom came into the kitchen. ‘Hi there!’ He shook Darren’s hand. ‘Good to meet you. How are we doing here?’ he asked.
Grace looked up at her husband. ‘We’re doing great. Darren was just asking where we’re moving to.’ She bit her bottom lip.
Tom stared at her. ‘That’s a good point.’ He placed his hands on his hips and looked skyward. The silence was acute. For some reason this made Grace chuckle.
‘Tom?’ she shouted through her giggles. ‘Where are we moving to?’
Once she’d started, she couldn’t stop; she was laughing so hard, she wheezed with tears. Tom placed his hand over his mouth and tried to stem his giggles. It seemed incredible that they’d forgotten to find a place to move to.
‘I haven’t got the foggiest idea!’
And for the first time in as long as either of them could remember, the two laughed without awkwardness, guilt or embarrassment. Grace banged her palm on the table and Tom leant against the kitchen cupboard.
Darren, crimson faced, looked from one to the other. He gathered up his folder and slipped from the room. The poor Penderfords had clearly lost the plot. He let himself out of the house and looked back through the kitchen window before jumping into his car. He watched them laughing, with tears running down their faces, before Mr Penderford grabbed his wife, pulled her from the table and kissed her hard on the mouth.