Rachel spread the property paper out on the tabletop, holding her coffee in one hand as she perused the flats for rent, running her finger up and down the columns. Vicky rocked the pushchair back and forth in an effort to calm Francisco, who wailed loudly. There were some pretty one-bedroom places off the Gloucester Road and at rates that were affordable. She knew she and James had savings that would more than cover the costs, and it was only going to be a temporary measure while she figured out what to do next, but this was still a new direction for her and felt very different from when they spent money together as a married couple with a common goal and one earning pot. This felt very different indeed.
‘Bless him, is it wind?’ Glen’s mother, Sandra, asked, as she whipped by with a plate of bacon and eggs resting in her palms.
‘Don’t think so, he might be teething, but I can’t see anything,’ Vicky answered. Her breathing grew faster and her cheeks reddened as her agitation increased. ‘I think I’ll take him outside.’ She looked at the handful of other patrons, wary of disturbing their peace.
‘No, don’t be daft; it’s raining! Give him here!’ Sandra, having deposited the plate, tucked the dishcloth into the leather loop that hung from her funky apron. Francisco almost instantly calmed and rested his head on her shoulder.
‘Ah, love him! This takes me right back!’ Sandra jostled on the spot, patting his narrow back and smiling. Rachel swallowed the tears that surged; she could still feel the imprint of that little bundle in her arms.
It’s a boy! Congratulations! . . . Oh my God, Rach, we did it! We did it! Look at him!
‘Avocado and poached egg on toast!’ came the call from the kitchen, as Keith placed the food at the pass.
‘Glen! Order up for table five, but I’ve got my hands full!’ Sandra called across to the bar where her son made coffee; clearly she had no intention of handing back the baby and getting on with her job.
‘Oh, Sandra, give him to me.’ Vicky stepped forward.
‘No, love, I’m having the time of my life!’
‘Avocado and poached egg on toast!’ The call this time was louder and sharper.
Rachel scooted away from the table and walked to the back.
‘I’ll take it. Table five?’
‘Yes, and come straight back for the soup.’ The grumpy-faced Keith tutted.
She wasn’t sure if he was joking, having expected at least a small nod of thanks. Glen smiled at her from the coffee bar as she placed the plate on the table and pointed to the jam jar full of cutlery. ‘Soup won’t be a sec.’
‘Can I get some ketchup?’ the girl with the avocado called after her. Rachel bit her lip, wanting to ask who in their right mind would put ketchup on avocado? She got to the bar as Glen pulled a bottle from under the counter and slid it over to her, whilst taking payment from one customer who was leaving and monitoring the progress of a coffee spewing from the complex machine for another. With the ketchup deposited, Glen’s grumpy dad called, ‘Soup!’
She rushed past Vicky and Sandra, who laughed quietly as she collected the bowl and chunk of soda bread and took it to the table.
Sandra sat in the seat she had vacated as another customer grabbed her arm. ‘Where’s the loo?’
‘Oh, at the back, on the left. Mind the step as you go in!’
‘Excuse me, but can I get more toast?’ a man at the bar called.
‘Of course.’ She nodded and went off to ask Keith for the order.
Things settled after the mid-morning brunch rush and Rachel went back to the table where Francisco now slept soundly and Vicky laughed, looking quite at home.
‘You are a doll. Thank you.’ Sandra smiled at her, careful not to move and disturb the slumbering infant on her shoulder.
‘Yes, thank you for that,’ Glen chimed. ‘Don’t suppose you want a job?’
‘A job?’ She wrinkled her brow.
‘Yes. Doing what you have done this morning, but we give you money in exchange for your services!’ He laughed.
‘I know how a job works.’ She looked at her friend, seeking support. What she got was something quite different.
‘You should definitely take the job. We would probably get a discount on carrot cake and that alone is worth it. Plus, I now know where I can get free babysitting. I might never leave.’
‘Trouble is I don’t know how long I’m going to be here.’ She looked down at the floor, feeling torn.
To take a job made things seem permanent, but she had to admit the idea of earning her own money and doing so in a place in which she liked to spend time was quite appealing. She remembered the day she left her job in digital marketing, a senior role she reluctantly relinquished when she was eight-and-a-half-months pregnant and her boss, Irene, was worried about her waters breaking on the new carpet.
‘You’ll be back in the saddle before you know it!’ Irene had boomed and Rachel had believed her, unable to imagine choosing to stay at home and look after her baby full-time, thinking it would be a matter of balancing her career and motherhood. But one look at Oscar and stay at home she had, and she had loved it, every second.
‘Long enough to rent a flat by the look of things.’ Sandra drew her from her thoughts, eyeing the paper, still spread on the tabletop.
‘Have you worked in a café before?’ Glen asked, his brawny arms folded across his chest.
‘Yes, but not for a long time – while I was at uni.’
‘And what did you do after uni, what was your last job?’
She looked at Vicky, wondering how her morning coffee had turned into a work-experience session and now this informal interview.
‘I worked for a train company, before moving abroad.’
‘Oh well, customer service is customer service, isn’t that right, Glen?’ Sandra chirped.
‘Yep.’ He nodded. ‘You’d get your own apron.’ He twirled around, modelling the thing that he considered might be the enticement she needed.
Rachel raised a small smile. She and Vicky exchanged a look and neither divulged the fact that Rachel had ended up as head of digital marketing before giving it up to become a mum, Oscar’s mum. Employment laws meant it wasn’t possible for her, as a non-permanent resident, to work in Bermuda. Her plan had always been to re-establish her career when they came back to the UK, whenever that might be. Running around a café with plates of toast could not have been further from her mind. It felt a bit like starting again.
She heard Cee-Cee’s words loud and clear: And then one day, like you, I realised that I needed to navigate this new life. Start over. You need to find a way, like I did.
She looked at Glen’s hopeful expression. ‘I’ll think about it.’
‘So this is the sitting room, it’s bright and sunny.’ The estate agent stood back and let her walk into the room on the first floor. He was right; it was bright and sunny and with a glorious view along the street of chimney pots – it would do just fine. And though it was a far, far cry from the view out over the horizon on North Shore Road, she liked the neat galley kitchen that looked on to the sitting room, the big bedroom and the Victorian-styled bathroom.
‘I think I’ll take it.’ She made the decision there and then. The main advantage too was that it was mere minutes from Vicky and Gino’s – a safety blanket of sorts.
‘I don’t think you’ll regret it; it’s a cracking flat and will be nice once you’ve made it your own, brought all your furniture and your bits and bobs in.’
Rachel looked from the grey matte walls and white skirting boards, cast-iron fireplace and empty bookshelves to the letting agent. ‘Furniture,’ she muttered, as if realising for the first time that all she had in the UK was a bag of clothes, a rather ratty stuffed toy and a small Tic-Tac box full of sand.
When the day of the move came, her mum and dad insisted on donating a mattress that had lived under the bed in Peter’s old room for some time. It would do. It was after all only for six months and then she would either be heading back to Bermuda or seeking something more permanent. She tried not to think too far ahead, ridiculously hoping that a solution would present itself and save her the anguish of making the difficult decision about what came next. The result was this half measure, a sparse flat dotted with her meagre possessions – limbo. It did, however, feel quite pleasing to hang her clothes in a wardrobe without worrying that she was encroaching on someone else’s living space. She declined the offer of donated pictures and a TV, not wanting to make it too homey or established, not wanting to get too attached and also at some level quite liking the austerity, the hint of discomfort that kept in her a place of mourning and suffering. It helped to keep her ache for Oscar alive.
As she finished arranging the bouquet of lilies, a gift from Vicky and Gino, into a glass vase, also gifted by her friend, her phone rang. She popped the vase on the windowsill in the bedroom, the blooms instantly brightening the place.
‘Hi, James.’ There was a split second when she forgot their estrangement and, concentrating on the flowers in the window, answered the call with her usual joy at seeing his number pop up, just as she had done thousands of times. In the past they had been quick calls from him to share something funny he had seen or to ask what was for supper or if she wanted to attend a function they’d been invited to or to see how Oscar was. She gathered herself just in time, reeling in her note of enthusiasm for her next question: ‘How is Cee-Cee doing?’
‘Well, she’s back at work and as you can imagine doesn’t want any fuss.’
‘I can imagine. I spoke to her on the phone; we had a lovely long chat.’
‘Yes, she said; I think it made her day. I’d say she’s a bit slower than usual. I left for work the other morning and she’d arrived early, and as I was leaving I saw her asleep on the sofa, so I put a blanket on her and drew the curtains.’
‘You are a good man, James.’ This she meant.
‘Of course she didn’t mention it when I next saw her and clearly doesn’t want it mentioned.’
She pictured the quiet, industrious lady with the upright stance and sense of pride.
‘So,’ he began, ‘I got your email with your new address and stuff. You went for it, found the flat.’ His tone was neither congratulatory nor disapproving, but rather neutral, which to her mind was more damning, indicating his lack of passion either way.
‘Yes. It’s small, but fine and handy for where I need to be. I’ve kind of been offered a job. Which I think I might take.’
‘A job?’ She heard a note of disapproval. ‘What job?’
Rachel felt awkward discussing it; it had been one of the hardest things about living in Bermuda, her inability to work, and having taken a break to look after Oscar before they left the UK, it had always irked her how any career aspirations had been put on hold while James worked hard and soared ever higher. Not that she would have given up one day of being a stay-at-home mum, recognising it as the privilege it was. But she had always felt a little torn once Oscar had started school, Cee-Cee had come into their lives and her time was her own to be spent idling. And I missed out, I know I did; all the days I chose not to collect him from school, time wasted when I could have been with him – my own private torture.
‘It’s working in a café. I think it might be good for me to do something now that I can. It gets me back in the habit of working, plus it means I won’t be raiding our account. I want to pay my own way,’ she whispered.
‘So a new home and a job, that’s quite a move forward, Rach. I’m pleased for you.’
His words felt like a new distancing between them and she was surprised by the twist of regret in her gut.
‘Well, it feels right for now, that’s all, and I’ve taken the lease for six months so I can regroup after that and take stock.’
‘Six months?’ he questioned. ‘That can feel like a lifetime.’
She knew he referred to the fact that it was a little over eight months since they had lost Oscar. ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘And yet at the same time a blink of an eye.’
‘Yep. I don’t go into his room. I can’t bear to, but I suppose we should talk about his things.’
‘There is nothing to talk about,’ she answered in a clipped tone, feeling the grip of helplessness at the fact that if he decided to disturb Oscar’s room, or God forbid get rid of any of his belongings, there was very little she could physically do about it, being so far away.
‘Okay. Okay, Rach.’
She changed the topic. ‘I know you said that working hard was a good distraction for you, stopped you thinking.’
‘That’s true.’ He sighed. ‘I am almost on autopilot during the day, and if I can climb into bed exhausted then there’s a good chance I might get some sleep; otherwise I lie awake listening to the sea and thinking, overthinking.’
Rachel closed her eyes and could hear the sound of the sea lapping the boat on the morning she had woken on that bright, beautiful, terrible, life-changing day, and just like that her tears manifested themselves and she was again lost to a tidal wave of sorrow. ‘I have to go, James . . . I’m sorry. I have come over really sad.’
‘That’s okay, happens to me all the time. I understand.’
She nodded, knowing that he might be the only other person in the whole wide world who did.
‘Speak soon, James,’ she mumbled before ending the call and sinking down on to the duvet-covered mattress that sat in a corner of the bedroom of her rented flat.
It was the second day of her new job at rewer – it made her smile now every time she walked through the door and she spied the spot from where someone had stolen Glen’s B. James had been right: she had fallen on to her mattress the night before with a welcome ache to her legs and a tiredness that helped switch off her brain. It was a rare treat to fall into such a deep sleep without the need of a tablet or the torture of watching the clock creep slowly towards dawn, pleading for the release of slumber.
She arrived early and donned her apron. Glen came out of the storeroom adjacent to the kitchen. ‘Morning, Rachel – so you came back?’
‘You sound surprised.’ She smiled at him.
‘I guess I thought it was about fifty–fifty. My dad thought eighty–twenty, and not in your favour.’
‘What about your mum?’
‘She was one hundred per cent – reckons she can spot staying power, commitment.’
Rachel tied her apron around her waist. There was something about putting on the uniform of the place that gave her a sense of belonging.
‘Well, I’m glad you did. And we got you this.’ He pulled a white envelope from his apron pocket and handed it to her in a rather theatrical pose.
‘Oh.’ She was a little taken aback and for a moment had to ask herself if she had forgotten her own birthday. Her brain was such a muddle nothing would have surprised her. It was however, a welcome-to-your-new-home card, with a picture of a slug crawling towards a snail shell and grinning widely. Glen, Sandra and Keith had all signed it.
‘Thank you. That’s really kind.’ She was touched and folded the card into the wide front pocket, removing the Tic-Tac box so she could lay it safely at the bottom.
‘What’s that?’ He nodded at the small square container that she handled with such care.
‘It’s . . .’ She looked at it, trying to think how best to describe just what this little plastic box meant to her, but realised that there were no such words. ‘It’s just something I like to carry around and keep close to me.’ She replaced the box and straightened, avoiding eye contact and hoping he didn’t probe further. ‘So, what’s first today?’ She twisted her long hair into a bun.
‘Tables could do with a good wipe over, and if you check the salt and pepper and clean up the ketchup bottles that’ll be a good start.’
‘On it.’ Rachel made her way to the kitchen, happy to still keep her secret sadness close to her chest. It was no one’s business but hers.
After five weeks, Rachel fell into a steady routine. It amazed and petrified her how, when fully occupied, she had on occasion let Oscar slip from her mind for a moment or two, and when realisation dawned, she would flee to the bathroom and sob, repeating over and over, I am sorry, Oscar. I love you, my darling boy. I am with you, always.
Her calls with James grew less and less frequent until once every ten days or so it was almost a surprise to see his name on her phone screen. At these times she would rub her thumb over the gold band that sat neatly on the third finger of her left hand, a reminder of vows spoken with conviction in a flower-filled chapel under a blue June sky, unable to have foreseen a situation when all that they had and all that they planned could go up in smoke quicker than she could strike a match.
Her favourite days were when Vicky came into the café with Francisco and sometimes with Gino too. There was something wonderfully social about handing her friends cake and hot tea and chatting to them when the crowds dispersed. She liked how Glen joined in too. He and his mum had always been inclusive; grumpy Keith, however, who apparently had only given her a twenty per cent chance of holding down the job, was another matter entirely.
It was the end of another long day. Sandra and Keith had finished up and she now mopped the wooden floor of the café as Glen totted up the day’s banking at the bar, counting coins into piles before tipping them into small, fiddly plastic bags of single denomination in a rounded number.
‘Would you like a coffee, Rachel?’
‘Oh, yes, I really would, that’d be lovely. Thank you.’ She looked forward to the restorative caffeine that would fuel her walk home via the supermarket where she would pick up a granary loaf and some fruit. She pulled out one of the bar stools and watched as Glen pressed buttons and banged the grill of the space-age-looking machine that created the best coffee in Bristol. And one she had yet to master. She and Sandra had shared a moment over how protective Glen was of the contraption.
‘It’s been a busy day, thank you for your hard work.’ He spoke over his shoulder.
‘No worries. It’s good for me.’ She made the remark off the cuff.
‘Good for you how?’ He grabbed the small jug of milk from the countertop fridge propped against the back wall and topped up her mug.
‘Thank you.’ She took the coffee into her palms and sipped it. ‘Lovely.’
‘I was asking how is it good for you to be so busy?’ he pushed.
Rachel considered her answer. ‘I guess when I am really busy it stops me from dwelling on things, keeps my head occupied.’
Glen grabbed a stool and pulled it up on the other side of the bar. The two sat facing each other with the cool countertop beneath their forearms.
‘You need to keep your head occupied?’
She nodded and stared at the foamy head of her drink.
‘What, as a distraction?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘So come on, Rachel, what’s your story?’
She shrugged. ‘What’s your story?’ she fired back, figuring if she could deflect the enquiry it would at worst give her time to think of a suitable response and at best make him forget that he had asked. She had yet had to say out loud what had happened to her, why she was in Bristol, and it was something she dreaded – exposing her sadness to relative strangers.
Glen took a deep breath. ‘Well, I was, until this time last year, engaged to be married, but a fortnight before the big day, with invites sent, dress bought and honeymoon booked, it finished.’ He chopped his hand on the counter. ‘That was it, over.’
‘Oh, Glen, I am so sorry. That’s not good. I bet she will regret it.’ Glen was nice-looking, funny and kind, and she tried to picture the girl who had broken his heart, wondering what bit of him his fiancée didn’t like.
‘Why would you assume it was her that ended it? Charming!’ He looked at her quizzically.
‘Oh, was it not? I don’t know why! Maybe the way you said it, with a real sense of heartbreak.’
He gave a short snort of laughter. ‘I’m only teasing you; it was heartbreaking, and it was me who called a halt. Not that that makes any difference at all; hurting someone was, I found out, just as hard as getting hurt. My main regret is that I didn’t find the courage to say anything sooner, when I first had the inkling and before things went too far.’
‘When did you first have the inkling?’ She was curious.
‘I think the moment we started talking about marriage and I felt more cornered than overjoyed. You’re married, right?’ He nodded towards her left hand.
She nodded. ‘I didn’t feel like that.’ She pictured driving from her parents’ house to the church in a shiny, flashy car with her hand resting inside her dad’s on the wide, leather seat with nothing but the flutter of joy in her stomach. ‘I was just excited and happy to be getting married, so I guess that was a red flag for you.’
‘Yes. The thing is, I don’t believe that either of us was that happy, not properly happy. Carly – her name is Carly – was preoccupied with the wedding plans and used to talk about the day a lot; each and every tiny detail, from table decorations to sugared bloody almonds in a net as favours, but never about us or what was important. I had this feeling that it was the big event that was propping us up and I sensed that once the wedding was out of the way, neither of us would be satisfied with our everyday lives. The mundane wasn’t enough for her, she was always planning the next big thing, whether we could afford it or not, and I couldn’t see me keeping up. Truth is, I didn’t want to. I pictured us standing in the aftermath of the reception and wondering what to do next, whilst juggling the ever-increasing credit-card balance, and that’s not right, is it?’ He yawned; the day’s work seemed to be catching up with him.
‘No, it’s not.’
‘I think you have to be happy in the now; that’s all we’ve got, really. That said, I chickened out for months.’ He gave a wry laugh. ‘It was hard to start the conversation about ending things while she was squealing over a bit of taffeta or on the phone to her mates about the hen weekend. You get the idea.’ He slapped his thigh.
‘So what was the thing that forced your hand, made you speak up?’
Glen ran his palm over his dark beard. ‘She was getting more and more frustrated with me. She kept saying that I didn’t know the right thing to do, didn’t know instinctively how to make her happy, and the irony is that she was wrong. I did know instinctively what the right thing to do was; I was just finding it hard to pluck up the courage to do it. But that phrase rang in my head – the fact that I didn’t know how to make her happy struck the bell of awareness. So I sat her down—’
‘Here?’ Rachel tried to picture them.
‘No! Not here. I was working as a graphic designer in London. This’ – he looked around the café – ‘is my plan B.’
‘Shame someone stole it,’ she quipped.
‘Yes!’ He laughed. ‘But this is what I always wanted to do deep down and I figured that as I’d found the courage to end my relationship, I should also jack in my flourishing corporate career and come back to Bristol and open a coffee shop and kitchen, right around the corner from where I grew up!’
‘You really went for it.’
‘I did. Several friends and my parents all thought I was having some kind of breakdown. I mean, end my engagement, yes, but give up my fancy car for this? They thought I must be crazy. But they hadn’t seen my coffee machine!’
She smiled. ‘And what do you think now, a year on?’
‘I think it’s harder work than I realised, but I know it was the right decision. I wake up happy. I like my days, I like every day, and I can’t remember feeling like that before. It’s what we were talking about earlier, about being happy in the now.’
‘I get that.’ She took a glug of her coffee.
‘So come on, Rachel Croft, that’s me laid bare, now it’s your turn. What’s your story?’
She shifted in her seat and tried to think how to begin. Her words were slowly delivered, paced, allowing her to keep control of the rise of sadness in her chest. It was time for her to face her fear and say it out loud. All of it.
‘I am married, yes, but not living with my husband; he is abroad.’
‘Abroad where?’ He sat forward.
‘Bermuda.’
‘Bermuda? Who lives in Bermuda? That’s like paradise! Is it in the Caribbean? I’ve seen pictures of it but can’t picture it on a map.’
Rachel envisioned the little fishhook-shaped island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, twenty-one miles in length and only one across in places, dotted with palm-fringed coves and verdant, twisty lanes that all held special places in her heart.
‘Lots of people think that, but it’s not in the Caribbean; it’s in the North Atlantic and it’s a group of islands – five main ones and hundreds of little ones. And it is paradise, or at least it can be.’
‘So you were living there too?’ he asked, wide-eyed, interested.
‘Yes.’ She nodded.
‘Near the beach?’
‘Yes.’ With a view of the big, deep, blue ocean . . .
‘And just to get this straight, you gave up living in paradise for a flat off the Gloucester Road and to come and work in my coffee shop?’
‘Yes.’
‘Now why on earth would anyone do that?’ He chuckled.
‘Because I needed to be somewhere different,’ she began, reaching into her apron and running her fingers over her Tic-Tac box. ‘Something . . . something bad happened,’ she almost whispered. This was new territory, bringing up the subject that lived at the front of her mind day and night. It was terrifying.
Glen reached over and grabbed a handful of paper napkins, pushing them across the countertop towards her, his expression one of concern. She hadn’t realised she was crying; it had become as natural and as unremarkable to her as breathing.
‘Thank you.’ She folded one and pushed it under her lower lashes, watching her tears form rounded, mascara-tinged blobs on the paper, before continuing. ‘We had a son, I have a son, I had a son . . .’ Rachel shook her head, hating the confusion on her tongue. ‘And we lost him.’
‘You lost him?’ he asked softly.
‘He disappeared at sea. From our boat. I woke up one morning and I couldn’t find him.’
‘Oh my God! He died?’ Glen asked with a visible lump to his throat, and his eyes crinkled in the understanding of sadness.
‘Yes.’ She took a great gulp of air. ‘He died.’
It was a strange thing; these words, this fact that she had carried around in her gut like a boulder floated from her mouth with ease, and once it had gone, she felt lighter because of it.
‘How old was he, is he?’ He clearly picked up on her confusion and sensitivity.
‘Seven.’
‘Seven . . .’ He repeated the small number that made the tale that much more horrific. ‘What’s his name?’ he asked softly.
‘Oscar.’ She mouthed the word that used to fly from her mouth a hundred times a day.
Oscar! We are leaving in five minutes! Oscar! Your breakfast is ready! Oscar! Come and say goodbye to Cee-Cee! Oscar! Please take your Lego off the stairs before someone trips up on it!
And now it was a name archived in her memory, a word with no use in the present because she didn’t need to call him any more, didn’t need to speak to him any more. To say it out loud, to introduce him to Glen felt like a wonderful reminder of the little person she had grown and lost. She again saw him astride the giant turtle, tanned and with sea spray sitting around him like a halo.
‘Oscar.’ He nodded. ‘I can’t imagine what it must be like.’
‘It’s a living hell.’ She looked him in the eye, speaking without guile.
‘I bet.’ He held her gaze.
‘It’s the worst kind of torture and it doesn’t go away. My grief is relentless and exhausting and it hurts physically and mentally. I am so broken that frankly, Glen, I am amazed that I am still alive, still functioning.’ She found it surprisingly easy to be this bold with the stranger, knowing that if she were to be this blunt with her parents, James, or even Vicky, they would worry, intervene, rally around, and what she needed was exactly what she got from Glen: the acceptance of her words without judgment or suggestion.
It was liberating.
‘And your husband is still in Bermuda?’
‘Yes.’
‘That must be tough on you both.’
‘It is, but we are’ – she looked up to the ceiling – ‘we are pretty broken and that’s a sadness all in itself. He’s a good man, a really good man, but we are . . .’ She took a breath. ‘We are bent out of shape.’
She heard James’s words, whispered, choked: I love you; you know I do, but I don’t know how we go forward from here. I can’t picture it.
‘I am sorry for what you’ve been through, Rachel, you and your husband. It’s horrible.’
‘It is horrible.’ She could only agree.
The two sat quietly, letting the enormity of her story, freely told in the heat of the moment, settle over them like dust.
It was Glen who broke the silence, speaking in no more than a hush.
‘Has it lessened in any way, even a little?’ She noted the way his eyebrows lifted in hope.
Rachel considered this. ‘It hasn’t lessened, but it has changed.’ She looked out on to the street, at all the people sauntering by on their way home or heading out for supper. She tried to think of how best to phrase it. ‘It’s not the raw, uncontrollable grief that it was at the beginning, and actually that whole time feels like a bit of a blur. I remember the feeling but not the detail, if that makes any sense.’
‘It does.’ He nodded.
‘And now . . . now it’s like if you’ve ever trapped a nerve in your back or when your eyesight goes. It is the same every day, painful or a struggle, but you adapt, learn to live with it. The pain I feel has become normal, part of me, part of how I live now. I am not as shocked as I was by what has happened. I accept it, but I still don’t think it’s real.’ She blew her nose. It was hard to explain.
‘Well, I think you are amazing to be coping in any way at all. Thank you for telling me. I know there is nothing I can say that will make it better or take away your sadness, but if ever you want to talk to someone or you need a diversion, then let me know and I will do my best to try to make you feel less sad.’
Rachel looked at him in the half-light. ‘Thank you, Glen.’ She dabbed again at her eyes and took her empty coffee mug to the kitchen; it was time she thought about heading home.
We are pretty broken, aren’t we, James? She spoke to him in her mind, wondering if her thoughts would float across the water.