Cassette #24
Hello Sean.
You’re still listening, then? I’m so glad about that. Because I’ve still so much I want to tell you. And don’t worry. There are no more lovers in the pipeline. What happened with Jake is awful and terrible and unforgivable, I know. But it was truly a one-off, for whatever that’s worth.
So, the third of April, 1996. Do you know, I can hardly remember any of it?
Oh, I remember bits and bobs. I remember opening the door to the policeman. I thought something had happened to April at first. I was relieved, even, when he said that April was fine.
I remember random words from that conversation, too. “In the supermarket” for instance, and “heart attack” of course. Then everything jumps to Margate General, to that cold green room. I have no memory, for instance, of how we got from one place to another. You must have driven me, I suppose.
After that, there’s another blank space and then the funeral. April cried and cried and cried until I wanted to shake her. I had no room for her grief. I didn’t even have room for my own.
It had been so unexpected, that was the thing. She was only fifty-one. Which is what trying to live on oven chips, Stella Artois and Silk Cut will do for you, I suppose.
As to how it was all organised, how all the little things one has to arrange came to pass, I really don’t have the foggiest. I can only assume that you did all of it.
I remember you as this great presence, this warm, benevolent mass beside me. You were there when the doorbell rang and you were there when the coffin sank into the floor. And you organised it all, you paid for it all. You must have. And you held us all together. I don’t think I ever even thanked you.
The grief lasted for months. There were different phases and different intensities. There were different styles of grief, from the wailing screaming of that first day through the weak-kneed collapse at the morgue and finally those hopeless, seemingly endless weeks of grinding, grey misery.
Eventually, though I never thought it would happen, the fog started to lift. And as I came out of my grief for Mum, I fell headlong into my love for you. It was as if I had such intensity of feeling back then that I needed somewhere new to put it. And what better place than in you?
I became able to see you for who you were again, and it was like a revelation. You were suddenly this brand new shiny thing in my life all over again.
As my needing you faded, my love for you returned and I became aware, very gradually, that you were on your way out. You were heading for the door. That came as a terrible, terrifying shock to me.
Between Jake and Mum, I’d been gone too long. I had left you on your own and I hadn’t even been aware of the fact. The more I analysed it, the more convinced I became that you had worked out about Jake, you had seen just how selfish I was, and you were just waiting for the right time to leave me. You had been, I decided, on the verge of leaving when Mum died. This selflessness was, I came to understand, your final act of kindness before you walked out the door.
For months, every time you sat down to say something to me, my heart leapt into my mouth. Because every single time, I thought you were about to announce our end-date.
I was, by then, as in love with you as I had ever been. It’s amazing how imminent loss concentrates the senses. And you’d been so incredible about Mum’s death, so… empathetic, I suppose, is the word.
Other people expressed sympathy, they said, “Oh, I’m so sorry. But at least you loved her, right?” Or they said, “I’m so sorry, but it will get better, even if it doesn’t feel like that right now.” Or, “At least you have Sean and April.” None of that was of any use to me.
You were different, though. You had this ability to join me in the darkness. You would press your forehead to mine and cry with me. You would pull April to your chest and cry with her. And that readiness to go there, to feel the pain, even when it wasn’t your pain, was magnificent. And unique. And, to me, infinitely loveable.
I couldn’t stand the idea of you leaving, I really couldn’t. I used to imagine committing suicide if it came to pass because a world without you and a world without Mum – a world without either of you – felt like trying to survive on Mars. I imagined it would be like trying to breathe on a planet with no oxygen. Something like that, anyway.
I wanted to get back to you, but there were still walls between us, walls I couldn’t even seem to name – a barrier I had built because of Jake, perhaps, and a wall of grief from losing Mum. And I couldn’t work out how to break through them.
The letter came from the council in June – recorded delivery. By the time we got around to picking the letter up from the Post Office, Mum’s house had to be vacated within ten days.
Selfless as ever, you took a week off work and we rented a van and left April with Mags, and drove down to Margate. You tried singing that awful Chas and Dave song to cheer me up. It didn’t work.
I was useless all over again. I don’t think I did anything much except stare at objects and burst into tears. And again, you did it all, filling the boxes and stuffing the bags and driving all Mum’s rubbish to the tip. You cooked her remaining oven chips, which we ate as if it was a memorial service – I remember that. After I’d eaten the last one, you held me and I wept for the umpteenth time that day.
And then, while clearing out the bookshelf, you found the photo.
I was sitting in the garden having a “moment” by smoking one of Mum’s cigarettes when you came rushing out waving it at me. You were so excited. You looked about the same age as you are in the photo.
“This photo!” you said. “Look what I’ve found! This photo. I have the same photo at home. Look!”
You sat down next to me on that damp, mouldy sofa and put your arm around me. “Look!” you said again. “Your mum’s got the same photo I’ve got at home.”
You were back. For the first time in months, you were back, but I didn’t understand yet what was happening because I was only just realising that you had been gone. Yes, you’d been there to love and cherish and support me. But that magical thing of being in love was a distant memory for both of us. It was only then that I understood that perhaps this was what I had been looking for from Jake. So I must have just frowned at you, I think. I frowned at you and looked at the photo, and looked at your face. I noticed how happy you were. I looked at how beautiful you were. There was love in your eyes, deep, painful, bewildered love – like back at the beginning. For the first time in years.
“It’s you, isn’t it?” you said, pointing at the little girl hiding behind her hair. “Look, it’s you and me. Christ, I’ve known you since I was seven. My Mum told me about it, too, but it was you! On holiday. In Cornwall. The inseparables. It was you! Was it? Was it you? Look, your mum’s got the same bloody photo. Say something!”
And then you squeezed me excitedly and snatched the cigarette from my fingers and took a drag. “That’s just… wow,” you said. “Do you understand what I’m saying? Do you understand how mind-blowing this is?”
At that moment there was nothing in the world that I wanted more than to reconnect with you and I could see that there was nothing in the world that you wanted more, either. I nodded and smiled. And when you tried to get me to speak again, I kissed you.