DAY 26
Reclaim a hobby
“So do you come here a lot?”
Annie shook her head. “Sometimes I can’t face it.” What kind of person was she, that she didn’t visit her own baby’s grave? “It’s just...it’s very painful,” she said. “And I’m always worried I might bump into Mike.”
“I get that. So where is it?” Polly turned on her heels, looking around the vast municipal graveyard. She was dressed in denim dungarees and Converses with flowers on them; she looked like she was in an Abercrombie and Fitch ad.
“Third row on the left.” Annie knew exactly. She could have walked here in her sleep—and she did sometimes, dreaming that she stood over his grave. Looking for him. It had been two years, but there were days when she still woke up expecting to hear his cry. She should have known, on the morning when he was silent. She wasn’t sure she’d ever forgive herself for the brief relief when she thought he’d slept right through, for that moment of happiness. If only she’d checked on him sooner. If only she’d woken up earlier. Annie shut the thought down—she knew that if she carried on with it, the what-ifs would kill her. “This is it.” She felt shame roll over her. It was such a mess. Weeds were almost swamping the little gray stone that read Jacob Matthew Hebden, and the jam jar she’d last brought flowers in was tipped on its side, full of dirty green water.
“Matthew,” Polly read. “Named after someone?”
“Mike’s dad.”
“Hmm. His, not yours.”
Annie shrugged. “Why would I name my son after someone I’ve never met? At least, not that I remember.”
Polly hunkered down on the grass. “You’ve never tried to look for him, all this time?”
“I wouldn’t know where to start. I don’t even remember him. He left when I was a few days old.”
“Your poor mum. That must have been tough.”
“Yeah. He was a bit of a loser, I guess. I always felt I didn’t need that in my life. Kind of ironic, isn’t it, that my husband ended up leaving me, too. A family trait, maybe.”
Polly tutted. “I hope you’re not expecting me to come to this pity party you’re throwing, Annie.”
“No, no. I don’t need him. It’s just strange, listening to Mum talk like he’s still about. They must have been happy at one point.”
“I think that about my parents sometimes.”
Annie frowned. “Your parents seem really happy.”
“Yes, well, appearances aren’t always the truth, Annie. But listen to me! No pity party. We’re here for Jacob, to remember him with love.”
Annie bent to pull up a weed. “I...I guess Mike hasn’t been coming here much, either. You must think I’m awful.”
Polly said nothing for a while. “You know, when I was little, my grandpa died. He was cremated, and his ashes were scattered at sea—he loved boats. I asked my mum once how we would visit him, if he didn’t have a grave. She said graves aren’t where the people are—they’re just a place we go to remember them. I bet you don’t need any help remembering Jacob.”
Annie shook her head, trying to swallow down the ball in her throat.
Polly bent down, wincing with a hand on her back, and spread a purple pashmina under her knees. “We can sort this no bother. Weed it, tidy it up.”
Annie wished she’d brought some garden tools. They’d all been left behind, along with her garden, at the house Mike and Jane were now living in not three miles away. She knelt herself, knowing she’d get grass stains on her jeans but not caring. She’d forgotten how the earth felt under her in spring, the gentle wet give of it. “Here.” Polly passed over a mini trowel and fork from her tote bag.
“Where did you get these?”
“Oh, they’re Mum’s. She never uses them—she has a gardener in. Thought they might come in handy.”
For a while they hoed and cut in silence, the sounds of the city far away. The only other people were on the other side of the graveyard, tending to someone else’s plot. Annie looked up at one point and saw Polly digging intently, a smudge of soil on her pale cheek, and thought how strange it all was, gardening at her baby’s grave, with this woman she hadn’t even known a month before.
“You should forgive them, you know,” Polly said quietly.
Annie didn’t need to ask who she meant. “I can’t.”
“I know. What they did was crap, beyond crap. But...it’s you who suffers when you don’t forgive people. It’s you who has to carry them around, day after day.”
Annie pulled up weeds in silence for a while. “They almost destroyed me.”
“I know. But they didn’t. You’re still here.”
Barely. There’d been times over the last two years when she wasn’t sure she’d make it. The feel of Jacob in her arms, the same lightness as always, but cold and still. The day she moved into her damp little flat, looked around her and wondered how the hell she’d slid back down so far in life. The day the police called to say they’d found her mother, confused and wandering, and she realized she’d been losing another person, right under her eyes, and she hadn’t been able to see past her own grief. She was barely living as it was—so what Mike and Jane had done felt insurmountable. She gave her standard response to most of Polly’s suggestions: “I’ll think about it.”
* * *
“Ta-da!”
Annie looked suspiciously at the daffodils in Polly’s arms. “Where did you get those?”
“They were just growing. Trust me, no one here will know the difference. Aren’t they pretty?” She examined the bold yellow trumpets, the green stems oozing sap. “I love the way they come up every year, out of this cold dead soil, just when you think winter’s going to go on forever. I think that’s what I’ll miss the most. I mean...not that I’ll know, I guess. I don’t know if I’ll even know it’s spring, or if I’ll just be...gone. Can I leave some for Jacob?”
They rinsed out the jar and filled it with fresh water from the tap the parks office provided. For once, Annie approved of the organization she worked for. She’d never thought of how they were there to jam up the cracks in people’s lives, take away rubbish, fix the holes in the roads, keep the parks nice. Polly shoved the flowers in, tidying them so the petals frilled out. “There. These are for you, Jacob. Nice to meet you.”
Annie stood in silence. “Can I say something weird?”
“Always.”
“I don’t think he can hear me. I tried to believe it, after we lost him... It hurt too much to think I’d never see him again. But I think he’s just gone. I guess that’s why I don’t visit very often. I used to come with Mum—she believes in all that—but it would be too cruel now, to remind her he’s gone. I’m not sure she even remembers she had a grandson, sometimes.”
Polly shrugged. “We’re not really built to understand death, I don’t think. I sometimes imagine what it would be like to go up to people on the tube, or in the street, and tap them on the arm and say, ‘Excuse me, do you realize you’re going to die? Maybe not today or tomorrow but one day.’ All those people rushing about to meetings and Pret and the gym. I wonder what would happen if they suddenly realized it. Let it sink in. Wouldn’t you drop everything and do the one thing you’d always dreamed of? Jump out of a plane. Quit your job. Tell that person you fancy him.”
Annie shot her a look. “This better not be about Dr. Quarani.”
“He is gorgeous, though. So stern.”
“He’s got a family photo on his desk.”
“Could be his sister.”
“Poll-ee.” Annie wasn’t sure if Polly herself had let it sink in that she was dying. How could she flirt with people, make plans, even make new friends, when her life had an expiry date? “Maybe it’s not possible to live being constantly aware you’re going to die. Hard to get the motivation to wash the floor and stuff.”
“I keep thinking I need to renew the car insurance or buy my summer bikini before all the good ones go,” said Polly. “Then I remind myself...but I can’t, you know? It’s impossible to not think about the future.” She hauled herself off her knees, with difficulty. “Anyway. Another thing you don’t have to do if you’re dying is quit sugar. In fact, I have actually taken up sugar. So, fancy a hot chocolate and cake?”
Annie looked down once more at the little grave. It was tidier now, the worst of the weeds gone and the grass trimmed. Jacob never got to make his mark on the world. He’d barely been there before he’d gone from them. But to her, and to Mike, and her mother—and if she was totally honest: to Jane, as well—Jacob’s short life meant nothing would ever be the same again. There was probably some quite profound thought in here somewhere, but she felt too overwhelmed to tease it out, and Polly was looking pale and tired, and slumping on the grass in a way that Annie now knew meant she was exhausted. “Sure,” she said. “Let’s go and have cake.”