Chapter 27
‘I really want another beer,’ Adam announces at nine o’clock.
‘You can’t, you said you’d drive Bridget home,’ Charlie replies resolutely. He’s had one too many himself to get behind the wheel.
‘I can walk,’ I scoff.
‘I don’t want to drive myself home,’ Adam cuts off whatever it was Charlie had opened his mouth to say. ‘Can’t we just crash here?’
‘You can. Bridget won’t want to sleep on the sofa.’ Charlie casts me a sidelong glance.
‘Are you kidding? This is the comfiest sofa in the world,’ I reply. ‘I never want to leave.’ I’m tucked up under a fleecy blanket that he dragged out of an upstairs cupboard for me. We’re sharing the larger of the two sofas, but he said I could lie down. He’s right at the other end. I did protest, but he insisted.
‘You can stay if you want,’ Charlie tells me.
‘You’re not worried about leaving us in the same room together?’ Adam chips in cheekily.
Charlie lets out a sharp laugh. ‘Nope, not any more. Bridget is more than capable of fending you off.’
‘I thank you for your faith in me,’ I say to Charlie, mock-sincerely.
‘Awesome.’ Adam stands up. ‘Who wants one?’
I assume he means a drink, so I reply in the affirmative.
‘I’ll probably still walk home,’ I say to Charlie when Adam has left the room, calling out to us to pause the DVD until he gets back. We’re watching Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Charlie missed it when it came out at the cinema last December.
He was a bit preoccupied at the time.
‘You should stay,’ Charlie says, draping his arm across my ankles. I don’t know why, but this makes me feel squirmy, until he casually squeezes my toes in such a friendly manner that all I want to do is smile at him.
‘Maybe,’ I murmur, staring at the paused TV.
‘What’s he doing?’ Charlie mutters after ages of our waiting. ‘Adam?’ he calls out. He cocks his head to one side, listening. ‘Is he on the phone?’
I lift my ear free of the sofa to check. He definitely sounds like he’s talking to someone.
‘Fuck this.’ Charlie unpauses the movie.
A moment later, Adam returns.
‘We got tired of waiting,’ Charlie says, glancing up at him. The sudden change in Charlie’s expression makes me whip my head around. ‘What is it?’ Charlie asks Adam uneasily as his brother kneels in front of me.
‘That was Michelle,’ Adam tells me gravely, as I push myself up on my palm, wondering what the hell is going on. All of his cheeky humour has vanished from his face.
‘Bridget, Beau died two years ago.’
‘What?’ I ask, even though I heard him perfectly.
He looks pained. ‘It was a drug overdose.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘Not Beau.’
I sit up properly, folding my legs up underneath myself. I’m vaguely aware of Charlie pausing the film again and staring ahead in a daze.
If I were lying on Beau’s sofa, he’d somehow manage to squeeze into the gap behind me. He’d wrap his arms around me and pull me tight against his torso so that we’d both fit side by side. We could stay there for hours in that position, watching telly. He was so warm and affectionate. I adored him. I loved him. And now he’s gone.
I can’t believe he’s gone.
Despite their attempts to persuade me otherwise, I tell Adam and Charlie that I’m going back to the campsite. I insist on walking – I need the fresh air – but I’m also craving my own space. I’m intensely aware that my sadness might be causing Charlie pain or bringing back memories of his own.
I know that what I’m feeling is minor in comparison with what he went through – is still going through – but, even though Beau might not have been my childhood sweetheart, my husband of many years or the father of my beloved child, he still meant a lot to me, and I’m crushed by the news of his death.
My mind is racing as I set off at a fast pace along the footpath. It was a heroin overdose – a heroin overdose! Michelle told Adam that Beau fell in with a bad crowd a few years ago, but, even though he occasionally dabbled in recreational drugs at parties, I never thought he’d go that far.
Who the hell was he when he died? What on earth happened to my Beau?
It hurts so much to think about it.
I hear the sound of footsteps jogging closer on the footpath behind me and I look over my shoulder, preparing to move aside, but instead I stop in my tracks, because it’s Charlie.
‘Don’t argue,’ he states firmly when he catches up with me. He knows from the look on my face that I was about to scold him, but then I’m in his arms and he’s holding me so tight I can hardly breathe.
‘You don’t have to be here,’ I say in a strangled voice.
‘It’s okay,’ he replies into my ear. ‘I want to be here.’
I lose it then, right there on the Camel Trail.
I have very troubled dreams that night. Beau is in them, and Charlie, too, but when I wake up I can’t quite remember what they were about.
I have a feeling it’s just as well.
Beau is buried in Yealmpton, near Plymouth, about an hour and a half away. Charlie has offered to drive me there. I don’t say much in the car. April has her nap and we listen to the radio.
I’ve brought my camera and my notepad, but I don’t feel like putting pen to paper. I sit and stare out of the window for the most part.
Beau’s parents chose to bury their free-spirited boy on a grassy hilltop with far-reaching views of Dartmoor and the Yealm estuary. It’s a natural burial site, and, to preserve the environment, his coffin was made of willow, which will return to the soil as nature intended and won’t impede the growth of the saplings that will be planted in memory of those who are buried here. One day this entire hill will be covered with trees.
No headstones are allowed, but one of the Woodland Burial Association’s employees shows us the site where Beau’s body was lowered into the ground.
Charlie takes April for a wander and I’m left in peace.
‘I wish you could see the sea, Beau,’ I whisper, as I sit there on the grass, surrounded by wildflowers. Skylarks sing overhead as I take time to remember the boy who once took a piece of my heart.
And there is no way now that I can ever ask for it back.
‘I can’t write about this,’ I tell Charlie later, when we’re in the car on our way home. My notepad lies open in my lap, the blank pages rustling in the wind from the open window.
‘No,’ he says. ‘No.’
As if it really were that simple.