Rachel had had the strangest sensation of someone watching her while she slept; in truth she had rather liked it, taken comfort from it. She was frustrated now that she had woken here in this present. She lay on her side and stared towards the ocean. Three days on and there was still no place she wanted to be. She eyed the tablets on the nightstand, comforted by their very presence. They were a mild sedative prescribed by the young doctor whose name she now knew was Dr Kent, like Clark, but alas he was without any special powers. How she wished this were not the case. How she wished he could make time go backward like the Superman of her youth, flying faster and faster the wrong way around the earth until he stopped it spinning and sent it back a little and then with his grief exhausted, he had been able to swoop down and take his love into his arms and she was present, not gone; restored. Like magic.
How can I do that? How can I make time go backward? I have read books – The Time Traveler’s Wife, The Time Machine – are they true? Who knows? Maybe fiction is a cover! Who can I ask? Maybe there are people on this earth who can take me back to that moment when I shouted ‘Love you!’ from the shower room and then James asked me, ‘How about another glass of fizz? It’s not going to drink itself,’ and I would say no! I would scream no! NO! NO! NO! And I would run to Oscar’s cabin and I would sit on the floor in front of the door and I would watch him sleep, watch him move in slumber, never leaving my post and if he stirred, I would say, ‘Go back to sleep, my darling, Mummy’s right here.’ Oh, oh, to have that moment again!
She crept down the stairs in her nightdress and hovered in the hallway. She looked through to the kitchen and stared at James through the open door, feeling her top lip curl in an expression of distaste. He was eating breakfast cereal. Eating! Filling a stomach with fuel for the day ahead. It was alien to her how he could do any such thing, how could he dance to the pulse of life when for her, time was fractured and her needs reduced to simply crying and seeking oblivion. How could he carry on? Did he not care? Or was it simply that he didn’t care as much? It had to be that, and she hated him a little for it because if he didn’t care as much as she did, wasn’t as affected, then she truly was all alone.
‘Morning,’ he called from the table, she was aware now that he looked straight at her. ‘I . . . I didn’t know whether to wake you. I came up for a couple of hours, but mainly I sat on the sofa last night.’
She nodded. I didn’t ask.
‘Do you want some coffee, love, or . . . or some toast?’ He faltered, his voice soft.
‘Do I want some toast?’ She stared at him and her body folded. ‘I can’t eat. I can’t.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t know how you can, to be honest.’
She watched as he slowly placed the spoon on the table and swallowed hard, as if he had a lump in his throat.
‘This isn’t a competition of grief. This isn’t about who hurts the most, who has suffered the most.’ He spoke gently.
Me. I can’t say it out loud, but that is me. I win! I win this fucking competition because I am destroyed but you – you seem to be functioning. You can exist! I win! I fucking win!
‘I know that, James.’ She blinked.
‘I need to . . . I need to try. I need to.’ He broke away in tears, burying his face in his hands as he sobbed noisily, his shoulders shaking.
Slowly she made her way back up the stairs and fell into the bed only recently vacated where she pulled the duvet over her legs, ready for her next bout of oblivion. Her tears slipped from her eyes, tracing a familiar path over her nose and temples, dripping into the already damp pillowslip. Glancing at the clock was her private torture. She tried not to, but it was as if her eyes were drawn to the digital display by something stronger than her will.
When she woke she realised she had again slept away most of the day.
Sixty hours. Since I noticed him gone.
Six was a record.
Ten times six, sixty . . . don’t think about it. Don’t think about it!
As her eyelids, which felt full of grit, grew heavy, she heard the bedroom door creak open. Cee-Cee crept forward and bent low. ‘You need to eat something.’ Her tone, as ever, quiet, calm and matter-of-fact. Steady.
Rachel shook her head; the thought of eating was repellent.
‘I can’t. I can’t eat.’
‘You need to try.’
She watched the woman place a dish of chopped fruit on the nightstand.
‘Cee-Cee – I wish . . .’ Her voice was a little slurred. ‘I wish I could turn back time.’
The woman took a deep breath that was part sigh. ‘There isn’t a single soul the world over who hasn’t thought the very same thing. But truly there ain’t no point in wishing; you have to let yourself heal. Sleep and heal.’ Cee-Cee walked over to the bed and smoothed the hair from Rachel’s forehead. It was an unusual act of intimacy and warmth and she was grateful for the human contact that gave the smallest lift to her spirits. Rachel reached up and held her arm. ‘Can . . . can you hold me, Cee-Cee?’
‘Oh, sweet child!’ The housekeeper sat on the edge of the bed and held her in her arms, rocking her slowly like she was an infant. Rachel laid her face against her chest and breathed slowly, holding on to her tightly, as if she were a lifeline.
‘I can’t do it, Cee-Cee. I can’t be like this. I need to be out looking,’ she whispered, before closing her eyes again.
‘Shh. Sleep, child. Sleep.’
In her pre-doze state she thought about the conversation between her and James about four months after they had moved into the house on North Shore Road. Cee-Cee had kind of come with the property, having worked for the previous incumbents for decades. The reference they’d supplied had been more a glowing testimonial of someone they’d clearly held deep in their hearts, rather than a professional recommendation for a member of staff.
Rachel had not only been glad of the help, something she had never had before, but also Cee-Cee’s quiet efficiency meant that finding her feet in this new house and new island was a doddle. The woman took care of everything, and she was just wonderful, wonderful with Oscar! When Cee-Cee spoke to him, held him, her whole demeanour changed, as if he lit something within her. At the very sight of him her face broke into a smile, her eyes widened and her hands joined together, as if giving thanks for his very presence.
Of course it was no substitute for having Rachel’s mum on speed dial and only a couple of hours away, or being able to call on her friends if she had a question or had run out of Calpol, but listening to Cee-Cee sing to her boy as she bathed him, watching the extreme care and attention with which she pressed his clothes, told him stories and prepared his food – it warmed Rachel’s heart and it certainly gladdened Oscar’s.
There was no doubt he loved her.
‘Cee-Cee! Cee-Cee!’ He would run to her, launching into her arms when she arrived in the morning or when he came out of school.
‘Careful now, little Oscar,’ Cee-Cee would scold mockingly. ‘I am not a young woman any more and you will knock me over one of these fine days and then who is going to fix your breakfast?’ This she delivered before kissing his face and holding him close to her, as if relishing the contact.
The two played endless games of hide-and-seek. Oscar liked to hide and Cee-Cee would call out, ‘I’m coming to find you!’ often without properly applying herself as, with a small wink in Rachel’s direction, she went about her business. When she did locate him – behind a curtain, sitting under a cushion or in the bottom of the closet – he would ask, ‘How many counts, Cee-Cee? How long did it take for you to find me?’ And she would reply, ‘Oh, hundreds and it took an hour!’ This pretty much satisfied him.
‘How old do you think Cee-Cee is?’ Rachel asked once, as she flicked through her magazine, sitting on the steamer chair on the balcony next to James, who tip-tapped into his laptop. He worked ridiculously long hours and when he did finally manage to extricate himself from the office, would then spend a further hour or two working at home. She nagged him occasionally but knew that this was part of the price they paid for this house, this life.
He looked up at her and smiled. ‘Well, actually I know how old she is, so you guess.’
Rachel considered the housekeeper’s wiry frame, smooth, burnished skin and her nippy movement.
‘I’m going to say late fifties, but she looks good!’ She tilted her head to one side.
James laughed. ‘Wrong.’
‘Older or younger?’ she quizzed.
‘Cee-Cee is seventy.’ He held her eyeline, waiting for her reaction.
She pulled off her sunglasses and squealed her response. ‘Seventy? Are you kidding me?’
‘I am not.’ He sucked his teeth. ‘I did a double take when I saw and had to check. It’s true; she is seventy.’
‘Flipping heck, I want to go to the secret fountain that she drinks from; she looks amazing!’
‘That’s what island life does for you. Doubt she has a worry in the world,’ James surmised.
‘I think she’s beautiful.’ Rachel looked out to sea, picturing the older woman’s high cheekbones and deep-set grey eyes, her wide mouth, and beautiful, elegant hands.
‘I guess she could be, but good God, it’s hard to see past the fact that most of the time she looks so miserable !’ he shuddered.
‘Don’t be mean, James.’ Nonetheless, she giggled over the top of her Diet Coke.
‘I am not! I’m just saying! My grandma used to have a phrase – “a face that could curdle milk” – and I never fully appreciated it until I started to look at Cee-Cee over the breakfast table each morning.’ He reached out his hand and ran his fingers up along her smooth, toned calf. ‘Do you think she was born that way?’
‘No!’ she tutted. ‘And you are being mean, James, and I don’t like it.’
‘I’m only joking with you. You know I love Cee-Cee.’
‘No one is born sad.’
‘Maybe Cee-Cee is the exception,’ he whispered.
It was only a minute later that she heard the shuffle in the bedroom behind them and the light tread of a slipper on the tiled floor. She turned to watch their housekeeper move rhythmically across the room with a stiff broom between her palms, swishing it left and right in a hypnotic dance.
A few days later, mid-morning, Oscar was at school in Hamilton and Rachel sat at the dressing table, slathering cream over her neck and face and jutting her chin to look for the re-emergence of the stubborn stray hair that had taken up residence there. Gripping the tweezers – her weapon of choice – in readiness, she clacked the little metal prongs together as a warning. Announcing her intention to the offending stubble, letting it know it would never be given refuge on her face, not while she was still in possession of her faculties. It was like a battle. It was incredible to her how this woody little interloper seemed to spring up in less time than you would think it possible to cultivate.
Cee-Cee arrived to strip the bed linen from the king-sized bed and fold it into the laundry basket. It must be Friday. As was customary, the beds would then be left bare to ‘air’ until late afternoon, when fresh-scented sheets would be tucked in just so, and the plump feather pillows decked in immaculately pressed pillowslips. Friday-night bedtime was always her favourite, the scent alone enough to make her dizzy with joy.
‘Let me help you, Cee-Cee. I’m only being vain. Truth is I don’t bother with make-up and stuff half as much as I used to when I lived in England. It’s so hot it just slides off my face!’
As was her way, Cee-Cee ignored her, busy with the task. Rachel pulled off the bottom sheet and folded it into the hands of the housekeeper.
‘I hope you don’t mind me saying, Cee-Cee, but two things: James told me how old you are and I wanted to say that if at any time the job gets too much for you—’
‘It’s not too much for me,’ she fired back. ‘But if you have any complaints—’
‘No! God, no! You are absolutely amazing,’ she interrupted, keen to reassure her. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you. I really don’t. I can’t imagine being here alone; please don’t think that’s what I was getting at. I was just going to say that I am more than happy to do more, anything you need me to. In fact, I hate my laziness; it’s very seductive, doing nothing, and I can’t work here, which is fair enough – jobs for Bermudians is right – but please make use of me. I don’t want to step on your toes or interfere when it comes to chores. I know you have a particular way of doing things and I don’t want to mess that up. Plus, I know you are the custodian of this house, I am just passing through, but I was thinking that maybe you could sit down sometimes and I can get you a nice cup of tea? How would that be?’
Cee-Cee paused, staring at her as if she were talking nonsense.
‘And secondly, I just wanted to say that I can’t believe you are knocking seventy. You are beautiful. Really beautiful.’
Rachel felt her face colour. Cee-Cee stuffed the linen into the wicker basket and stood with her hands clasped in front of her.
‘I heard what Mr Croft said about me looking miserable and sad.’
‘Oh.’ The comment was unexpected and she felt the spread of shame across her chest and neck. ‘He was joking, ignore him. He can be an idiot sometimes.’
She stared at Cee-Cee, who held her gaze, quite unabashed and undeterred by the awkward nature of the topic.
‘He spoke the truth. I am sad, sadder than sad. But I was not born this way. In fact, I was always happy. My childhood was wonderful. Wonderful.’
Rachel took a step forward and placed her hand on Cee-Cee’s warm, slender arm. ‘Oh Cee-Cee! No! Why are you sad? I hope it’s not because of us? I would hate that. We absolutely love having you here, love having you in the house – as I have said, I don’t know what we’d do without you! And Oscar just adores you. He really does. You and he have a special bond. You know that, don’t you?’
The woman ignored the compliment. ‘I’m not sad because of you. I’m not sad because of working here. I like working here—’
‘Good! That’s good,’ she interrupted, relieved.
‘The fact is my sadness came to me over five decades ago and that’s just how it is.’ She shrugged. ‘I lost my baby boy. He died.’
The topic was so horrible, the announcement so unexpected, so at odds with the shield of privacy under which the woman ordinarily operated, that it rather threw her.
‘Oh, Cee-Cee, he did? That is the most awful thing.’ It felt awkward to be the recipient of information so very personal when she didn’t know the most basic thing about her. These felt like facts she had no right to.
‘Yes. Yes, it is. But there it is. That’s what happened. He died.’ She nodded.
‘How old was he?’
‘He was seven weeks old.’ The woman did nothing to try to stem the fat tears that fell down her cheeks and dripped from her chin. Rachel jumped to her nightstand and grabbed a fistful of soft tissues, balling them into the housekeeper’s hand. Cee-Cee blotted at her distress as she cried unabashed in the bedroom.
‘I am so sorry to hear that.’ Instinct told her to pull the woman into a tight hug, but Cee-Cee had always kept her distance – never with Oscar, but certainly with her and James – and she was acutely aware of crossing a line, embarrassing her. They were different generations from very different worlds.
‘I can’t begin to imagine what that must have been like.’ Again she laid her hand briefly on her arm and shook her head; this was the truth. ‘What was his name?’ She felt her embarrassment flare; was it okay to ask for this detail? Did discussing him bring relief or merely prolong the agony of the moment? Rachel swallowed, relieved by the slight lift of a smile to the corners of Cee-Cee’s mouth. This tiny memory, this one question enough to bring a flicker of joy.
‘He was called Willard after his daddy.’
‘Willard,’ she repeated, trying to picture a baby with sweet, fat cheeks and the beautiful eyes of his mum.
‘And he was perfect.’ Cee-Cee shrugged, as if that was all that needed to be said; no reason, no disease, no understanding. Rachel saw the pain etched across her brow.
‘It must have been a terrible, terrible thing.’
‘It is a terrible, terrible thing.’ Cee-Cee shot her a look, almost instinctual, a sharp lesson that this pain did not diminish, nor did the shock fade and that the image of a baby boy called Willard, forever stuck at seven weeks old, still had the power to reduce this lady, now in her seventies, to tears. ‘Lord only knows that’s the truth. It is terrible,’ she repeated. ‘He was fine.’ She looked into the middle distance, as if still struggling to accept that this might have happened. ‘I fed him, I put on the cotton nightdress my grandma had sewed for him and he was cosy and fine. I put him in his bassinet on my bed and I went to sit on the terrace, trying to catch the breeze coming up from Warwick Long Bay; it was a fearful hot night. And not more than an hour later I went to check on him and he wasn’t right. He was cool.’ She shivered, rubbing her arms as if remembering the feel of that temperate skin. ‘And that’s when I got sad. And I am sad, sadder than sad, and I won’t ever stop. Not till I see him again in heaven. Because that is what I believe – that when you get to heaven, you get to gaze upon the thing you loved the most.’ Again the corners of her mouth lifted in the beginnings of a smile.
Rachel swallowed; the woman’s grief was tangible. It spun a cloak that covered them, there in that beautiful room on that bright, sunshine-filled day. The walls were suddenly dark and the corners gloomy because talk of death pervaded them, coating everything they touched. She felt the rise of discomfort in her gut, but she wanted to show Cee-Cee that she cared and was interested. ‘And you didn’t have any more children?’ She was trying to piece the puzzle together, using snippets of the woman’s life. The woman who had a hand in each and every intimate aspect of their lives: who counted while Oscar hid, who sang sweet songs as she bathed him, told him stories, washed their clothes, prepared their food. A woman whom Rachel knew so very little about.
Cee-Cee looked up and drew a breath, straightening her shoulders, as if rallying. ‘No more children. No more husband.’ And there it was again, an admission so stark it cut the air around them. ‘Willard would be fifty on June twenty-fourth. Fifty,’ she repeated, as if still trying to figure out how this could have happened, how the boy she’d fed and loved was no longer here and how the sneaky thief of time had stolen decades from right under her nose.
Rachel felt a wave of sorrow and wished she knew what to say, what to do. James was so much better than her in situations like this. It was his skill: the ability to work a room, say the right thing, chameleon-like in his attentions with the right gesture, pitch and always, always with something fast, funny or appropriate up his sleeve that could divert any conversation, anyone.
‘I expect you want to get on,’ she’d whispered.
‘I expect I do.’ Cee-Cee lifted her arms wide and folded the bulky duvet cover in half and half again, gathering it into a bundle and placing it in the basket.
Now, she felt Cee-Cee’s arms slip from her as she stood, vaguely aware of her creeping from the room. Rachel placed her head on the pillow and closed her eyes.
I sleep.
And then I sleep some more.
It’s like someone has shut off my awake valve.
It’s like having to navigate in a strange city where each narrow road looks the same; there are no landmarks, no hints and no signs. I am driving fast and yet can’t see the road. All I know, is that in one direction lies a sheer cliff and in the other, an open meadow and it’s only when I reach one that I shall know which is which.
I am terrified.
I am sad – no, I need a word beyond sad . . . I am bereft.
I am broken.
I am so broken that what I want to do is put my foot hard to the floor and head for the cliff.
Yes, that’s what I want.
So why don’t I?
Two things.
Cowardice and the fact that no matter how small, how unlikely, there is the tiniest of chances that I will get to hold my boy in my arms once more.
Yes, just for one second of feeling his face next to mine, I would wear this cloak of grief for ten lifetimes . . .
Rachel sat up quickly in the bed. This was how she woke now – alarmed, gasping for breath and with the churn of sickness at the cloudy thought somewhere at the back of her mind that she had to be somewhere or had missed something very important. As if someone had thrown something cold over her. It usually took a second for her to remember the event that had cleaved open her world. And when she did remember, her tears fell, and it was like it was the first time she had heard the news.
Images of Oscar crowded her thoughts, and the sickness in her gut and the feeling that she needed to get to him were almost paralysing.
Sadder than sad.
These words she now fully understood.
Slipping her arms into her dressing gown, she pulled on some cotton socks; her grief had left her with a permanent chill that made her bones ache and kept her skin dappled in goosebumps. Collecting the Tic-Tac box from the dresser, she ran its smooth surface over her cheek, and with it safely ensconced in her palm, made her way along the hallway. Pausing at Oscar’s bedroom door, she placed her hand on the white-painted wood and smiled. This was a little trick she played on herself, picturing him on the other side of the door, either snug in his bed with an open book lifted over his face or sitting cross-legged on his rug with his cars spread around him in a traffic jam. By not opening the door, it was easy to imagine and it helped soften the spike of thoughts that threatened to lance her sanity.
Weakened, she gripped the wooden handrail and trod the wide, curved stairs, making her way across the vast double-height hallway, heading toward the kitchen.
The phone on the table rang. She rushed to it, swallowing the optimism that rose in her throat, able to picture nothing but sweet reunion, the moment when she might take her boy in her arms once again!
Where have you been, my love? On a boat? You swam to a boat? You clever thing! But you are home now and I will never, ever let you go . . .
‘Hello?’
‘Rachel?’
‘Mum,’ she managed, caring little for the ricochet of disappointment that echoed around the word.
‘Oh, my little love, my little girl! Your dad spoke to James a couple of times and I didn’t know whether to call straight away or what to do.’ She paused. Rachel cried silently. Her mum spoke softly: ‘I have sat up for two nights just thinking about you all and praying, something I haven’t done for a long while, but, Rachel, I will try anything and everything. I can’t get you out of my mind. I thought you might be sleeping or busy, and truth is we are all just in bits; we don’t know what to do for the best, and I am so worried about you. My heart is broken.’
She nodded. And mine . . . shattered into a million pieces and scattered into the deep, deep sea.
‘Is there any news?’
‘No. No news,’ she whispered from a throat lined with broken glass so every word cut.
‘I just can’t . . . I just can’t imagine . . . my poor little Oscar. He was such a lovely little thing.’
He is such a lovely little thing. Her brain made the adjustment as her mum continued.
‘It doesn’t seem real, Rachel; it doesn’t seem true and I hate that we are so far away; I feel helpless. I went up to the big Tesco to get some bits in and I was all of a daze. I saw Mrs Hicks and she said I looked peaky and I just broke down right there and then. I abandoned my trolley and Dad was waiting in the car and he didn’t know what to do. Should we try to come over? Your dad says we can get a loan and Peter said he could help us with the fare.’
She pictured her parents and brother having the chat around the little kitchen table in their house in Yate. Of course if she wanted them there Rachel would pay for flights – if only all problems could be fixed so simply with a quick flourish of her credit card. ‘There’s no need to come, Mum, thank you, though. There’s nothing to do.’ Her response, she knew, was neutral, numb. Nothing to do that will make a difference or help bring Oscar home, otherwise I would be doing it.
‘I don’t really understand. What happened? Did he fall in? I hate boats, you know I do, and I hate the sea and this is why . . .’ She faltered. ‘My mum, your gran, lost her brother at Dunkirk, never got over it. He was weighed down with his kit and whatnot.’ She sniffed and Rachel erased the image that formed, unable to cope with a thought like that. ‘I can’t stop thinking about that little boy, our lovely little boy. I hear his sweet voice on Skype, “Hello, Nana!” he’d always say, so excited to show me something and talking nineteen to the dozen. And I can’t believe he’s gone.’
‘He’s not gone,’ she spat. ‘We don’t know what happened and until we do—’
‘But, Rachel, James said that there had been a terrible accident and that he’d been killed, drowned—’ Her mum broke away, crying.
‘James said that?’ She felt an incendiary flash in her veins and hung up the phone. Racing into the kitchen, she spied Cee-Cee at the sink. ‘Cee-Cee, where is James?’
Cee-Cee turned slowly, her lack of speed in itself an irritation.
‘Where’s James?’ she fired.
‘I think in the garage.’ The woman blinked and looked as if she had been about to say more.
Rachel dashed out of the back door, along the path and around the house. She yanked open the side door to the triple garage and almost ran to where he stood. There was a second where she registered the look of surprise on his thinned face.
‘Rach,’ he began.
‘How could you? How could you tell my mum the things you did?’
‘What things?’ He blinked.
‘You made it very clear to her that things are . . . final. You gave her no hope!’
‘Because I need to be able to tell someone what’s going on, and I can’t talk to you.’
‘That’s bullshit!’ she shouted. ‘You have no right to say that stuff to her, to anyone!’
He opened his mouth as if to speak, but closed it again.
She looked down, noticing for the first time several envelopes on the arm of the chair. He followed her gaze.
‘There have been hundreds of emails too, literally hundreds. One very long one from Vicky and Gino. I only skimmed it, but it was very kind. Vicky called, she left you a message, sent you her love.’
She nodded, unable to picture having the conversation with her best friend at home, the girl she had grown up with, the first person after James she had shared news of her pregnancy with.
Guess what? Guess what? She had held the tops of her arms and they had jumped together like a skipping duo.
Clever, clever girl ! Vicky had hugged her tightly and kissed her face.
Rachel only saw Vicky when she went home, but they regularly swapped emails and messages. It was one of those cherished relationships where they simply picked up where they had left off. She half sat, half collapsed into the chair and reached for the envelopes. James wiped his face with his palm. ‘I was putting them out of sight; I figured you weren’t ready. There are others.’ He paused as she gathered them to her chest. Most had stamps, a couple had been hand-delivered. Some addressed to Mr and Mrs Croft, others to Oscar’s mum and dad. She placed her finger in the small gap under the gummed flap of an envelope and pulled out the pale-blue card with a white dove on the front. Gingerly, she opened the stiff card and read aloud, ‘So sorry to hear of your terrible loss. Keeping you in our thoughts and prayers, Mr and Mrs Wentworth.’ She looked at her husband. ‘I don’t know who they are.’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know who most of them are. We’ve had dozens, from all over the island, all walks of life.’
She handed him the card and felt a flare in her chest. ‘How dare they send things like this to us? How dare they? Everyone has given up on him. These seem so final!’
‘I think’ – he coughed – ‘I think it’s that everyone is a few steps ahead of you, of us, and that’s easy for them because they are not torn apart like we are.’
‘Well you need to set them straight! There is still the chance . . .’ She paused, losing her thread. ‘You need to stand up for him, James!’
‘I . . .’ He gasped.
‘What’s the matter with you? We don’t know anything, nothing! He might be on a boat, he might, he might . . .’ She looked up at the ceiling, trying to find the words.
‘He might what?’ He spoke through a quivering mouth, battling a fresh wave of tears as he took a step towards her. His words when they came were slow, considered. ‘He’s not coming back, Rachel. He’s gone. He died and the fact that you won’t accept it is making me dread every phone call, every knock on the door because when it gets confirmed, when they find . . .’ He paused. ‘I am so afraid of how you are going to react, how you are going to cope that it is making this living hell even worse, if you can possibly imagine that.’ He rubbed his eyes and face and slumped down on the battered armchair that sat by the wall, surrounded by an assortment of cardboard boxes and old tennis rackets, buckets and spades, inflatables, and a mountain of sandals and beach shoes; the detritus of family life. ‘I feel like it’s okay for you, you only have to worry about you, you have submitted entirely to your grief, but I don’t have that luxury. I need to keep things going and I am so, so worried about you.’ He looked up.
‘You think it’s okay for me? Did you really just say that?’ Her chest heaved.
‘I . . . I didn’t mean it like that, I meant—’
‘You don’t know anything!’ she screamed with her fists clenched, white-knuckled, as she shook.
She watched as his face crumpled once again and his head hung down. ‘Please, please, Rachel.’
‘Don’t you “please, Rachel” me! I will not give up on him, I won’t! He might be on a boat, he might—’
‘No! He is not on a fucking boat! It has been three days and if he was on a boat or had been picked up by a boat or had swum to a boat – if anyone knew anything, they would have come forward! We would know, it would have been picked up by now.’ He raised his voice. ‘It was an accident. He either fell or jumped, we will never know, but he is gone! He is gone!’
With teeth bared, she lunged for him. James caught her by the wrists as she sank, hollowed by grief and weakened by sadness, falling until her head nestled in his lap. He held her fast, until her limbs stopped thrashing and her breathing steadied. They were silent and still for some minutes, as the distasteful dance came to an end.
‘I can’t accept it, James. I can’t let myself think it might be true. I want to stop every clock. Break every watch. I don’t want there to be any more time or any future, not for anyone if there isn’t for one him and there isn’t one for me.’ She whispered the admission. ‘It’s like the universe has placed two hooks here and here – one through my heart one through my head – so that every breath, every movement, even blinking, hurts and it’s exhausting, but necessary because if these hooks are removed . . .’ She closed her eyes, tightly. ‘They are the only things keeping me upright. Keeping me anchored. Without them I’m nothing, just a puddle of skin and bones melted by grief.’
‘I know.’ He knotted his fingers in her hair and soothed her scalp. ‘I know.’
She continued to talk. ‘I can’t stand it. I don’t know how I am going to get through this. It’s too tough, too hard. I don’t think I can do it. I don’t think I want to do it. I wish I could just disappear.’
‘Don’t say that! Don’t ever say that! You can do it, you have to, and we can, because we have no choice.’
‘I . . .’ She sat up, resting her arms on his knees, sitting now on the cool floor. ‘I blame myself. And I blame you, too.’
James nodded, as if this much he knew and these too were his feelings.
‘When I see you sleeping by my side, I detest your peace. I want to shove you awake and shout at you; why . . . why didn’t you remind him, “Stay in your room, Oscar! Never go up on deck without us!” Why . . . why didn’t you shackle him to the bed, nail up the door, lie across the floor, anything – anything to keep him where he was supposed to be, to keep him safe—’ She halted at the sound of his sob.
‘I think that too. Why didn’t I? Why didn’t I?’ he cried.
‘And why did you get the fucking boat in the first place? Why did you do that?’ She sobbed. ‘You were just showing off! You knew they could be dangerous!’
‘I . . . I thought Oscar would love it. I thought we would love it. I don’t . . . I don’t know.’ He covered his face with his hands. ‘I don’t know anything any more.’
And again the silent minutes passed, while these latest hot words of destruction pierced their core and neither made further comment on the terrible phrases they sharpened and fired as weapons.
Standing shakily and mentally heading back to the sanctuary of her bed, she looked back at her husband. ‘Throw those cards and letters away. All of them. Throw them away! Can you imagine what it would be like for Oscar if he saw them?’