Afterwife (11 page)

So do I, my love. So do I.

They sit there watching the flames leap blue and orange. I desperately want to curl up beside them, run my fingers along the coiled ridges of their earlobes. Surely my love must conduct itself to them somehow. Love can’t just expire. It’s not got a pulse. Therefore it cannot die. Lateral thinking for you.

Freddie looks thoughtful. “If you emailed Mummy on your computer what would happen?”

“Nothing, Fred.”

“Have you tried?”

He hesitates. “Yeah. I did once.” He looks down, embarrassed. “Didn’t get a reply. The account is closed now anyway.”

“What about the thingy on the computer when you get the face like it’s a telly?”

“Skype?”

Freddie nods. “The one we use to talk to Granny sometimes.”

Ollie’s eyes are filling. The lump in his throat is rising up his neck. He’s trying really hard. “She’s not there either, Freddie.”

“But she’s somewhere!” Freddie shouts. “I
know
she is.”

Ollie takes Freddie’s face in his hands and holds it. “She is somewhere. And she loves you. She loves you so much. But she is not on the earth, not like you and me.”

It’s a valiant attempt. How would I explain it?

“Like an angel? A superhero?”

“An angel.”

Look, no wings!

Freddie clenches his jaw. “It’s still
not
fair.”

“It’s not fair. It’s absolutely not fair.”

“Why did the bus driver not die? Why Mummy?”

Ollie’s face darkens. “The bus driver dying would not bring Mummy back, would it?”

“No,” acknowledges Freddie with heartbreaking forgiveness. I hope he holds on to this gift as he gets older, my sweet soulful boy.

“It was an accident.”

Freddie looks unsatisfied. “But…”

“Bad things sometimes happen to people. Not very often. But they do.”

“Like when Granny lost her purse in the supermarket.”

“Worse stuff.”

“Like what happened to Mummy?”

“You can be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Like Jenny.”

Ollie laughs. “What do you mean?”

“Jenny looks like she is in the wrong place sometimes.”

Out of the mouths of babes.

“You mean she looks sad?” says Ollie, serious now.

Freddie nods.

“I think she just misses your mummy, Fred.”

He spreads his hands in front of the fire and warms them like toast. “Why doesn’t someone kiss Jenny better?”

Ha! God, I love this boy.

Ollie smiles softly. “I’m sure Sam kisses her better.”

Freddie considers this for a moment, wrinkles his nose in distaste. “I’d rather Sam got run over than Jenny.”

Me too! Bring on the No. 23!

“Look, Freddie. It’s not an either-or thing. Sam’s not about to get run over. Nor is Jenny.” He bends down and talks close to his ear. “Jen’s here for you.”

“Like you?”

“Like me.” Ollie strokes Freddie’s cheek. “I’m not going anywhere, Freddie.”

“Promise?”

He gives a military salute. “Scout’s honor.”

Freddie still looks worried. “So it’s just us two now?”

“Just us two. We’ll make Mummy proud.”

And
how
proud!

Freddie’s forehead knits. There is something bothering him. “I won’t get another mummy?”

The room vibrates. I freeze on the mantelpiece.

“Ludo says he now has two mummies,” Freddie continues. “One at home. One with his dad. He doesn’t like it. I don’t think I’d like it either.”

“It does sound kind of complicated.” A muscle in Ollie’s jaw twitches.

He’s skirting it! He’s not saying there won’t be another mummy.

“Anyway, I don’t need another mummy. Jenny can take me swimming.”

“Fred, no one will ever replace your mummy. I will always love her, and you, more than anyone else in the whole world.”

That’s better. Almost.

“Universe?” says Freddie.

“Galaxy.”

“Cool,” says Freddie, leaning his head back on Ollie’s shoulder, satisfied at last. Within seconds he is asleep.

I
want a date, Jen,” Sam said as he walked into the apartment, shaking glittering blobs of rain off his suit onto the polished hardwood surfaces and clamping shut his black golf umbrella.

“Good idea.” Jenny pushed away her manuscript, happy to be disturbed and to finish work for the day. “Wouldn’t mind going to that new place in Camden Lock. I’m totally starving and there’s no food here, sorry. I’ve been on the phone to Soph’s mum for
hours
…”

He dumped his briefcase. “Please turn off that crap.”

“What crap?”

“The music.”

“It’s Lonnie Donegan!”

“Jenny.” He pulled off his tie, grinned. “I’m talking about a date for the wedding.”

“Wedding?” Jenny froze. Better turn off Lonnie.

“Or have you forgotten that we are engaged?”

“No!” It was just that, compared to the death of Sophie, it, like everything else in the universe, had begun to feel almost insignificant,
abstract, a date in the diary that wouldn’t happen for a while and could comfortably be ignored in the meantime.

Hurt flickered over his rain-wet face. “Curb your enthusiasm.”

She stood up, slipped her arms around his waist. “Oh, Sam, I’m sorry. I’m a little stunned, that’s all. We’ve been engaged for so long and…” She kissed him. “After all this time. Why now?”

“Death. It focuses the mind, no?” He stroked her hair off her face. “We’ve got one life. Let’s seize it, babes.”

A random, weird thought jumped up in her head: I don’t believe him. I don’t believe that’s why he wants to marry me right now. She pushed the upstart thought away. Yes, they’d been getting on so badly. This must be his way of trying to make things right again.

He put his hand on her jaw, turned her head to face him, to regain her attention. “Life goes on, right, babe?”

She nodded but couldn’t help noting that actually it was death that went on and on, and on. Not life.

“Don’t cry. I’m not worth it.”

She laughed, wiped the rogue tear away. “I don’t want you to marry me to
save
me, Sam. I don’t need saving. I just need…” She hesitated. What did she need? “I think I just need time.”

“How much more?” His voice had an edge to it now. “We’ve been engaged for ages.”

Part of her couldn’t believe they were having the conversation at all. So many months she’d craved a date, prodded him gently for it, wanted to prove to Sophie, to her parents, that the wedding would happen and she wasn’t Waity Jenny. And now? Well, she still felt funereal.

“I’d like to do it as soon as possible.”

“As soon as possible?”

“In the summer.”

“Next year?”

“This year.”

“But…but that’s not long.”

“What’s stopping us?”

“Well, nothing, I guess.” She dug her nails into her palms.

“You look worried.”

“I’m not worried.” She was worried. “We’re not ready, though. I haven’t got a dress. We haven’t decided on the venue.…”

“Well, you can get a dress easily enough, can’t you? And I always assumed we’d just bang up a large tent in my folks’ garden.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” That was logical enough. Her own parents lived in a bungalow built in 1982 with far-reaching views of a chicken farm. His family house was Georgian, enormous, garden like a deer park. What did it matter that she’d failed to enjoy so many Sunday lunches at that house? No, it didn’t matter at all.

“I’m reading hesitancy, baby.”

“It’s just…there’s so much to do. And I’m really up to my neck in this Help Ollie thing right now. It’s taking up a lot of time and…”

“Mum will help with all the organizing.” Sam’s features tightened. “Anyway, you need to get the Muswell Hill ladies to do the donkeywork. It shouldn’t fall to you. You’re just the…the consultant.”

“Hardly!” It was now six weeks since that first meeting. They’d had a meeting once a week since, and countless phone calls and emails. Sam already said he wanted her to scale it back. Funnily enough she was discovering that she didn’t want to scale it back. That despite her initial doubts she was enjoying being involved. She woke up thinking about what Ollie and Freddie needed, thinking up ways that might make them happier. If nothing else, Help Ollie had given her reason to crawl out from under the duvet in the morning. In a way, and it was hard to accept, given the morbidity of their task, it was kind of fun too, she had to concede that, what with the other women, the collective sense of purpose. And by getting to know Sophie’s friends—the life she’d hidden away up there in north
London—Jenny felt she was getting to know another side to Sophie too. And this was important. It meant that in some small way she was still alive. That the story wasn’t totally over.

“The wedding will be lovely,” he said softly. “It’ll make you feel better.”

She tried to imagine it. The white dress. The flowers. The confetti. And it made her cry. Oh, God, she was turning into Lydia.

“Don’t cry,” he said softly. “What is it?”

“A wedding without Sophie.”

“Hey, come on.” He hugged her.

“She would have been matron of honor and now she won’t.”

Sam held her by the shoulders. “You can ask someone else.”

“No, if she can’t do it then no one can. I can’t replace her. It would be like pretending I still have a best friend and I don’t.”

“You might change your mind nearer the time.”

“I won’t.”

“No, you won’t, will you?” He sighed, let go of her shoulders and walked over to the fridge to retrieve a beer. “There must be something you can do to get over this.” He looked thoughtful, frothed the beer into a glass. “A shrink? Do you think you should see a shrink?”

“Actually I’d like to talk to Ollie.” Sam’s forehead knitted. She chose her words more carefully. How to explain that without Sophie around to give her blessing she needed Ollie’s? “Just let him know, I mean, so he’s the first to know. I think that would make a difference.”

“For fuck’s sake, Jenny.” He squeezed the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “This is about
us
. It’s got nothing to do with Ollie.”

S
omething should have stopped them from reaching the altar. That something should have been me. Unfortunately I spent my last meeting with Jenny talking about supermarket loyalty cards. These were not meant to be my last words! They really were not. And now he’s gone and set a wedding date.

A few things happened, you see. With Sam. Sam and me. Some were little things. Unsaid things. Others existed only as suspicions and hunches. Others…well, there were other things too. I’m not proud of them.

A party, two years ago. It was Wendy Law’s thirty-fifth. Tufnell Park, north London. It was a hot, sticky summer’s night. Too hot for shoes or long hair. Sweaty and grimy, the streets of London pulsed in the heat. Music poured out of open windows. People fainted on the Tube. Dealers cruised the noisy, hot streets in their convertibles, stereos blaring. It looked like the pavement on Brecknock Road was melting. And in a little walled patio garden off that road we celebrated Wendy’s new sapphic epiphany—she’d fallen
madly, deliriously in love with a math teacher called Penny. We all had. Penny was totally delicious, supersmart and the dream lesbo lover for any woman. Wendy had never been happier. Their coupling was startling and sexy and satisfyingly ruffled her retard ex who had treated her appallingly. We were all dancing madly outside, old early nineties tunes. Arms in the air. Like you just don’t care. That sort of thing. The music whooshed me right back to the time before Freddie was born and I was wild and free and wore red Kickers. I felt sexy for the first time in months. Not like someone who had emptied her boobs of their bounce with excessive lactation or who had a zipper of stitches on her perineum. In short, I felt hot, sexy and twenty-five again.

By two a.m. a hard-core group of inebriated thirtysomethings were dancing wildly. I had the beginnings of what would become a giant blister on the ball of my left foot, the neighbors were complaining and the police had been called. In other words, it was a rockin’ party. Even Jenny was dancing with an abandon I hadn’t seen before. After months of crap singleton dates with men who were allergic to oral sex—not making this up—she’d settled in with Sam, who was a walking, talking cunnilingus-loving vindication that the crap date purgatory had all been worth it. He was the upbeat end to a women’s magazine article. The twist at the end of a comic rom-com. Apart from fancying the pants off him, Jenny saw the idealistic, good man beneath the lawyer’s crisp suit, the soft heart beneath the laddish wit. We all did. We thought Sam was great.

We’d done quite a lot of hanging out, me, Ollie, Sam and Jenny. A day trip to Whitstable. Dinners at number thirty-three. A remarkably debauched New Year’s Eve involving absinthe and lobster. While Ollie and Sam weren’t exactly bosom buddies—Ollie is not the most social animal; he’d happily see no one other than his family and his music studio—they got on pretty well, in the tolerant, buddyish manner of men who are thrust together because of the closeness of their other halves.

I didn’t plan to need the loo at the same time as Sam. It just happened that our bladders synchronized. We left Ollie and Jenny dancing to Kylie while we queued outside the endlessly locked bathroom door. I say queuing. Actually we were trying to outdo each other in bad taste seventies rock. Journey! Starship! Kenny Loggins! It was funny, really funny, as things tend to be in the early morning, drunk, after the babysitter has texted to say, “Don’t rush back, all fine.” I remember snorting with laughter, howling out the lyrics at the top of my voice, thinking I might pee myself. Then suddenly, without warning, it wasn’t funny. I hadn’t peed myself. No. It wasn’t that. It was that his hand was on my bottom. It took a moment to register. Yes, Sam’s hand was definitely on my bottom and it wasn’t moving. I wiggled it off and made a joke of it, telling him that he was drunk and should go and sober up somewhere and keep his paws to himself. I even tried to think of a seventies rock lyric that would sum it up nicely and make light of the accidental hand but couldn’t. Mostly I couldn’t because he was looking into my eyes, I mean really looking, like he’d lost something in them. Then he said coolly, “I’m not in the least drunk, Sophie.”