Ten Years On (5 page)

I begin to unpack, but there is one box that remains untouched. Inside is a collection of things I put aside when packing up the flat, things I wanted to keep close to me. There’s Olly’s script, the book he had so nearly
finished. ‘All I have to do is write the synopsis, work out the pitch and who to send it to,’ he’d said with excitement when I asked (in a good mood) how it was going.

I’m not ready to read it yet, but one day I will. I’ve kept his navy jumper that he always wore round the flat, the funeral service sheet with Simon’s tribute typed out for me, a Schubert CD, a collection of photographs including one of my favourite wedding shots in an antique silver frame. We’re dancing. I slide the box under my bed and place a framed picture of the two of us in Florence, on our honeymoon, on my bedside table.

When Mum and I enter the clinic I watch a couple leave, holding hands. I imagine them returning home and pinning the sonogram to the fridge. I can hear them discussing whether they should find out the sex next time.

‘Oh, that’s us!’ say a couple seated next to us when a name is called. I glance at Mum. She’s wearing a chic red spotted dress with a leather belt clasped together by two small golden owls. I swear she’s owned that belt since I was born. A young man sits down opposite me, out of breath. I watch him take off his sunglasses. He tells his wife or partner that he’s put a couple of hours into the parking meter.

Olly should be here.

I shut my eyes, see us on holiday, in Spain, two years ago. We’re sunbathing on a sandy beach, watching children in stripy swimming costumes and shorts cling on to the hands of their fathers, enjoying the waves. I’m wearing a turquoise bikini; Olly’s in tropical swimming trunks. Next to us are a father and son, sitting on a red-checked rug, with remnants of a picnic around them. The boy must be about four or five, with chubby cheeks and Icelandic-blond hair, just like his father’s. While he’s building a sandcastle, ‘Daddy,’ he asks, patting the sand into his bucket, ‘how many waves are there in the sea?’

The father sits up, looks out to the ocean. ‘There are infinite waves,’ he replies, ‘and there always will be, Freddie, long after we’re gone.’

Olly and I gaze at the father, before turning to one another, and I can tell we’re thinking the same thing. ‘One day I’d love a family,’ he says, putting his paperback down.

‘Me too.’ I take Olly’s arm and rest it over my stomach.

‘I’d love a boy,’ he says.

‘I’d love a girl.’

‘Well, we’d better have two or three then.’

‘Well,’ I say, rolling over on to my front and handing
him the tube of sun cream, ‘we’d better get started soon then.’

‘Well,’ Olly laughs as he unclips the back of my bikini and rubs cream across my back. ‘What are we doing here?’ he whispers into my ear. ‘Why aren’t we … you know …?’

Soon we’re grabbing our paperbacks and towels and running across the beach, back towards the villa.

I hear a name being called out. It’s not mine.

I notice Mum fidgeting. I sense she wants to say something to me. ‘Rebecca, about Pippa’s message last night …’

‘It’s fine,’ I say, reaching over to the table, picking up a tattered
Take a Break
magazine.

‘The thing is …’ Mum breathes deeply. ‘It is going to be difficult, and your father and I, well we
are
nervous, we’re getting old and—’

‘Mum, it’s fine, I understand. I’m grateful to you for having me at all.’

Mum’s BlackBerry vibrates. Todd bought it for her. It’s an urgent text message from Pippa, saying there has been a drama. The washing machine has flooded. Can Mum pick the children up from nursery?

‘No mobile telephones,’ says the stony-faced receptionist. Mum whispers that she needs to go outside to
call Pippa, just to let her know she’s here. ‘Won’t be a minute,’ she reassures me.

I lie down on the examining bed, my bladder now so full I feel uncomfortable. ‘You’re on your own today?’ the nurse says, introducing herself as Sandra. She looks about my age, with dark hair tied back into a practical ponytail and a neat waist held in by an elasticized belt.

‘That’s what’s so wonderful about technology though,’ she continues, gathering the ultrasound instruments together. ‘You’ve got the picture, so you can show it to him later. Right,’ she begins, smearing gel on to my tummy. ‘Now, it’s a little cold.’

If Olly were here I’d be telling him exactly how cold it is. Freezing. But he’s not here.

‘It’s always nerve-racking,’ Sandra says, sensing my fear. ‘Exciting too, but it’s natural to be anxious.’

I curl my hands into fists to fight the tears.

‘Now if you look at the screen.’ Sandra points to something tiny within a funnel shape. That can’t be it. I can’t even see what she’s referring to. I close my eyes, can’t hear what she’s saying.

What if it’s a girl? Olly wanted a boy. But if it’s a boy he might look nothing like Olly. What if he doesn’t look
like him? I’ll be searching for Olly all the time, trying to find the warmth in his brown eyes, the small mole I loved so much on his left cheek, the smile that could melt the hardest of hearts. I’d trade this baby to have our old life back. I’d give up the world to see him again. I know our marriage wasn’t perfect, but it’s only once someone has gone …

I look up to the ceiling and start to count the dots. This baby will remind me of the accident every single day. I might shout at my child, be angry with him for not being Olly. I might not be able to care for him. Love him. I won’t be a good mum. How can I be?

I hear something exploding inside me. Somebody, stop it! Please stop it!

I place my hands over my ears.

See the coffin at the altar.

Hear the policeman telling me the news.

My baby – our baby – won’t know his father. I hear shouting. A door swings open. Someone is gripping my hand, another person restraining my arms. Someone is rocking me in their arms, as if I am a child.

‘OLLY!’ I scream.

When I open my eyes I see Mum, trying hard not to cry. She lets go of me, though one hand remains firmly around mine. A doctor stands by my side, telling me to
breathe, breathe in deeply, everything is fine. I realize then that all this noise is coming from me.

‘Those are the legs,’ Sandra says.

I’m looking at the screen as she points out the arms, the neck and the curve of the spine. I feel a strange sense of calm now. I can imagine Olly putting his glasses on, squinting at the monitor. I can hear him saying he can’t see a thing, it’s just a speck.

‘Look, that’s the heart.’ Sandra points to the screen.

I have a little boy or girl with a heartbeat inside me, a part of Olly fighting to be wanted and loved. ‘He’s perfect,’ I sigh.

‘So you think it’s a boy then?’ Sandra asks with a sympathetic smile.

‘I have a hunch, that’s all.’ I turn to Mum, tearful. ‘I think you should start knitting something blue.’

6

It’s early July, two weeks after my scan, and I’m eating breakfast with my parents in the kitchen. ‘You will wear your glasses driving, won’t you?’ Mum is saying to Dad, dressed optimistically in her tennis gear.

‘Oh, do stop nagging,’ he replies, carrying on reading the sport’s section of the newspaper. He’s an avid Wimbledon fan and is looking over the order of play for this afternoon.

Dad is going to Brighton today, to see his porcelain dealer, Mr Pullen. In his retirement he’s become passionate about nineteenth-century china. Mum has confided to me her delight that it keeps him busy and prevents him from asking what’s for lunch every day. Last week, in front of me, he rehearsed a speech he was giving to the Senior Wives Fellowship. Apparently they all found it riveting, especially hearing about his
early Minton with the pseudo-Sèvres marks and the ring handles he loves so much. The great drama, however, was when one of the old ladies fell off her chair during his presentation. An ambulance was called, but thankfully it was nothing serious. ‘You must have overexcited her, Dad,’ I had suggested, trying not to laugh. ‘Sent her into a state of flux over one of your cups and saucers.’

After breakfast I load the dishwasher. Dad ticks me off for putting the wooden-handled knives in. ‘It’s fine,’ Mum overrules him. ‘They’re so old.’

‘I don’t like the coffee mugs going in either.’ He swipes one from me. ‘The colour fades, you see!’ He brandishes it in front of me. ‘It damages them. And
please
, don’t ever put the crystal glasses in.’

‘OK, fine,’ I murmur.

Finally, when Dad heads off with a tatty empty suitcase, his spirits high, saying he’ll be back in good time for Federer’s match, Mum and I load the mugs and knives back into the dishwasher, feeling like conspirators. ‘But he’s right about the glasses,’ she says. ‘They were a wedding present.’ She then hands me a shopping list, saying it would be a great help if I could get the food for her supper party tonight, which I’m welcome to join. Since my scan, a barrier has lifted
between Mum and me, but we still haven’t talked about Olly. Mum and Dad ask how I am feeling, if I slept well, what am I up to that day, but none of us can bring ourselves to mention his name. I’ve also noticed how photographs of Olly and me have been removed or repositioned in the house. The wedding picture of us laughing as we cut the cake has been relegated from the mantelpiece to the window ledge, half covered by the curtains. Our engagement photograph, taken on the London Eye, has been covered over with a picture of the twins in a small dinghy with Todd.

‘Becca?’

‘Sorry?’ I say, absent-mindedly.

Mum picks up her tennis racket and a tin of old balls. ‘I’m off,’ she says. ‘Can you bring the washing in if it starts to rain?’

‘Yep, sure.’ Mum is still staring at me. ‘See you later,’ I say, refilling my cup of tea and sitting down at the table to read Dad’s paper.

‘Your mug,’ she points out. ‘It marks the wooden table.’

I breathe a sigh of relief when the front door shuts. At last, I’m on my own, no one ticking me off. My mobile rings and I consider letting it go to voicemail until I see it’s from Glitz. ‘Well, we haven’t killed each other
yet,’ I tell him when he asks how it’s going. ‘What’s it like working with Marty?’

‘We’re heading for divorce. She set the burglar alarm off. Mind you, I was impressed by how quickly the cops came.’

After a trip to Sainsbury’s, spent largely hiding behind aisles to avoid bumping into my parents’ friends, I walk towards Maison Joe, which is in The Square, close to the cathedral grounds. I’ve decided to see Joe today. Get it over with. He has a right to know about Olly.

I haven’t seen him in over ten years. Why did he quit Bristol without telling Olly? ‘Friends don’t just disappear,’ Olly had said to me, hurt. ‘Something must have happened.’

Why is he back here? What will he look like? I picture his thick dark hair, those grey eyes that gripped you. Olly was laid-back and chatty; Joe spoke only when he felt like it, and could be cutting with just one glance. However, on the rare occasions that he did smile, his entire expression changed, his face lighting up the room.

The closer I get to The Square, the more apprehensive I feel. It was about five years ago when Joe called. I was twenty-six and working from home as a freelance illustrator. I’d run out to buy some milk, returned to
see the red button on our answer machine flashing. It was an awkward message; he’d tracked us down, he said. He left various numbers to ring him back. He was working in London for some wine shop. That surprised me. I deleted the message. I didn’t do it lightly. I thought about it all day, but in the end I was a coward. I feared Joe coming back into our lives; it would only remind me of our past. I felt guilty not telling Olly about the message, but we were in our second year of marriage and happy, so happy that selfishly I wanted nothing to threaten that.

As I approach the Buttercross I see a group of tourists in shorts and sundresses, taking photographs, a plump curly-haired guide saying, ‘It was erected in the fifteenth century … as you can see it’s set on a plinth of five octagonal steps …’

The closer I get to Maison Joe, the more I want to turn and run, but something is telling me to keep going.

A section of the high street outside Lloyds Bank is partitioned off. ‘Cheer up, love! It might never happen!’ one of the builders calls out to me, over the sound of drilling. He’s wearing a luminous yellow top with a matching hard helmet. He winks.

‘Maybe it has already happened,’ says a voice inside my head, as clear as daylight. ‘Maybe I have just fallen
into a cesspit or discovered I’m sitting next to you on a twenty-four-hour flight, you twat.’

I stop dead. Olly was the only person I knew who used to say the word ‘twat.’.

Tentatively I turn the corner and walk past a young man with his mongrel dog camping outside a bakery. I move on.

‘Talk to him, Becca. He hasn’t got leprosy. The poor bloke’s starving.’

People are pushing past me in a hurry. I’m imagining it. God, I’m an idiot.

On I go.

‘You’re not imagining it. Go and talk to him,’ the familiar voice persists.

I hesitate; feel for my purse in my handbag. Nervously I look behind me …

The homeless man is sitting on a sleeping bag. His hair is greasy; face unshaven, shoelaces undone …

‘He’s all right, Becca, just needs a bath,’ the voice goes on, ‘a good old scrub.’

Olly would say that. I’m frightened now. I’m going mad. I stand, paralysed, getting in everyone’s way.

It’s not Olly. It can’t be.

But I find myself turning round and walking back towards the man and his dog. Anxiously I peer at him.
Beneath the grime is a handsome man, with pale-blue eyes, who can’t be much older than me.

‘All right?’ he says. ‘Nice day.’ He doesn’t ask for any money.

I ask him what his dog is called. He looks up at me, warmth in his eyes. ‘Noodle,’ he smiles. ‘Go on. He doesn’t bite.’

I stroke Noodle. I don’t know what to say next. ‘Are you hungry?’

‘Could murder a fillet steak.’

I look at him, longing to know how his life has brought him to sleeping on the streets. I tell him I’ll be back.