Afterwife (29 page)

There is a rumble like thunder in the distance. I’m not sure if it’s a train or something far worse hurtling toward us on the tracks.

“About what?”

“Nothing,” she says quietly, pulling her dressing gown tight over her slim, tanned body. “Nothing.”

“Tell me.”

“Look, Sophie told me about Sam’s roving eye.” She wrinkles her nose in faux empathy. “Hardly a best friend’s discretion,” she scoffs.

Shit!
It’s something far worse.

“Roving eye?” Jenny’s hands are shaking. She pales. “She said that to you?”

Oh, God. It was just school-mum drinks chat (“A friend of mine…”). I told them, I think it was at Suze’s one night, that I had a best mate who was waiting to get married to someone with a wandering eye and wondering what I should say or if I should say anything. We ummed and ahhed and drank and debated the ethics of interfering in friends’ relationships. What you should say, what you shouldn’t, how it’s best to stay out of it and let matters run their course. Drunken, silly stuff. That was the end of it. Or so I thought. I didn’t imagine anyone would remember the conversation. Or they’d ever get to know Jenny.

“You’re full of bullshit.” Jenny shakes her head, refusing to believe it. “You’re unbelievable.”

“What about Dominique, then?”

Jenny gets one shade paler. “Dominique?” Her voice is very quiet, little more than a whisper.

Tash presses her fingers into the lids of her closed eyes and winces. “Look, Jenny, I don’t know how we got here. I like you. I really do. This is all a bad look. I’m really sorry. Can we make peace?”

Jenny slumps against the table, the rage from earlier evaporated. “You can’t say that and just expect me to forget you said it.”

“It’s no big deal. It’s in the past, Jenny. I’m sorry I ever mentioned it. I really am.”

“
How do you know Dominique?” Jenny whispers hoarsely.

“Oh, from years ago. She’s a sister of someone I used to work with.”

Something shifts in Jenny’s face. She’s made the connection. “The guy you and Sam both know?”

Tash studies the floor. “From my marketing days, yeah.”

Jenny stands up straight, urgent. “You have a number?”

“A number?” Tash looks flustered. “Er, no.”

“Please, Tash. This is important.”

Tash hesitates. “I’ll have a pop at tracking down her number if you agree not to tell the others about me and Ollie.”

I
t is eight thirty p.m. Freddie’s light is off, but the burnished evening sunlight is seeping from the sides of his blackout blinds and he is sitting up in bed, twisting the limbs of Buzz Lightyear. He lifts Buzz in front of him and addresses him sternly. “Mum, do you remember that Joe kid in my class?”

Whoa! I am Buzz now. I am a Space Ranger. Excited by my transformation and the possibility that we may finally be able to communicate via the third party of a clairvoyant toy, I try to make Buzz do something, for the laser to flash on his arm. Needless to say, it doesn’t. “Yes, of course I remember, darling,” I say. Buzz’s mouth doesn’t open. Freddie doesn’t seem to care.

“Joe jacked my Ben Ten ruler that Granny gave me.”

“Have you told the teacher?”

Freddie purses his lips thoughtfully. Is he receiving me? He is silent for a moment, head cocked to one side like he is listening.

“Okay, I’ll speak to the teacher,” he says.

Explode with joy! How mad is that? I am communicating beyond
the grave! Or is it just that he is
my
boy still? That the glorious six years we spent together was enough to cement me—and my love—in his bone marrow. He knows what I would say to him because he still knows his mother.

“To infinity and beyond,” whispers Freddie, flying Buzz up into the air and whirling him around his bed, his wings clipping the blobs of Blu Tack on the walls.

You see, while everything else is going grayer as the weeks pass, Freddie’s resilience gets ever brighter. He is sad and he misses me and he talks to me and he opens the memory book that Jenny made and brushes photographs of me with his little fingers. And sometimes he sleeps with my old nightie pressed into his nose. But this is okay. I believe he will be okay. I really do. While I know that problems may manifest themselves later after my death, probably in his teenage years when he hates me for deserting him and being so stupid as to step out into the road drunk, right now he is my little warrior. He still smiles and laughs and plays. He has a solid hidden ore of happiness buried deep inside.

I watch over him until morning. I watch over him as he sings a song in the year two assembly about rain forests. I bob against the ceiling like a balloon, buoyant with pride, anxious he’ll screw up. But he sings his heart out, gazing fearlessly at the audience, some of whom, feeling the poignancy of my absence, wipe away tears with their sleeves while holding up their camera phones. His voice, the wonderful voice he gets from Ollie, is clear and pure, life itself. He finishes the song. Applause erupts. I am a shower of sparks, a berserk Catherine wheel that has come loose from the monkey bars on the gym wall. Ollie and Jenny are watching too, sitting four rows from the back, clapping wildly. And we are all united in one thing. Our love for Freddie.

After the assembly Joe returns the stolen ruler.

Leaving Freddie to bask in the triumphant return of the ruler, I leave with the huddle of proud parents out of the sweaty, echoey hall.
Ollie shoots off to the studio. Liz and Jenny break ranks with the other 2Bers—how they manage to escape Suze’s clutches I have no idea—and slip off for coffee. It’s incongruous seeing Jenny in my old haunts, on the coffee mum circuit. She looks far more comfortable than I’d ever have given her credit for. I feel a wave of guilt for having compartmentalized my life so brutally.

The cafés on the broadway are cluttered with children and huddles of Fortismere School pupils with their dog-eared Penguin paperbacks and iPods, the girls in thigh-skimming floral tea dresses, the boys flicking their long lanky hair out of their eyes. Liz and Jenny squeeze onto a little round table near the open window of a café and order brownies. Liz is wearing a billowy orange dress that clashes brilliantly with the scarlet tips in her hair poking out beneath her seventies-style fedora. Jenny is wearing navy.

“Hey, it’s good to catch up after all this time,” says Liz cheerfully, her cheeks chipmunked with brownie. “Sure I can’t tempt you with a glass of vino?” She raises an impish eyebrow.

“Sadly, can’t edit with wine goggles on,” says Jenny. “One glass of wine and I think every manuscript is a masterpiece.”

Liz gasps with mock drama. “You mean they’re not?”

Jenny laughs and sips her Diet Coke.

Liz shoves the plate of brownies toward her. “Please finish them off. I’m a stone heavier than I was last year. If I carry on like this they’ll have to winch me out of my bedroom through the ceiling using a crane.”

Jenny obliges. Glad to see she’s not gone off puddings. There is a lull in the conversation. They people watch. A teenager bounces by on chunky neon trainers. A elderly lady totters past licking a Fab ice lolly with a lap dog under her arm. There’s a flotilla of prams as a baby massage group spills out of their session.

“I feel quite the fugitive,” laughs Liz. “Breaking ranks.” She leans back in her chair, lifts her face to the sunshine and closes her eyes.

Jenny rests her chin in her hand and gazes at the pavement, her face clouded by thoughts.

Liz opens one eye and peeks at her. “So you’re geared up for the wedding?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Jenny’s face shadows. I don’t like it when Jenny’s face shadows. I’m finding it harder and harder to read. Something funny happens to her face when she talks about the wedding.

“Do you need a hand with anything?”

“That’s very sweet of you, but no. Future mother-in-law is very much on the case.”

“Ah, I see.” Liz smiles, eyeing her more watchfully. “Nervous?”

Jenny stiffens, puts her cake fork down. “Yeah, guess that’s what it must be.”

Liz smiles kindly. “It’s normal to have wobbles, Jenny.”

Hmmm.

“I had
huge
wobbles.” Liz ruffles her hair, depositing a brownie crumb in its rosy thatch. “But it was a dream on the day, a total dream. And we had the best bonk afterwards!”

Jenny laughs and blushes, then she looks pensive.

Liz sees it too. “You’re not having second thoughts, are you?”

Jenny bites down hard on her lower lip. How I wish she would talk! Liz is a sane woman. She’d understand! Tell her!

“Jenny?” Liz looks more concerned now. She’s on the scent. “There’s no one else muddying the waters here, is there?”

“No!” Jenny practically ejects herself from her rattan café seat. “It’s just that marriage is such a big step. Bigger than I thought. I know that sounds deeply immature.”

“It doesn’t, not at all.” Liz hesitates, unsure how to push the conversation forward. “It must be hard, you know, losing Sophie and…well, spending so much time with Ollie.”

“Ollie hasn’t got anything to do with this,” Jenny retorts quickly.

Liz twiddles a spike of scarlet hair, not taking her eyes off Jenny’s
strained face. “Sometimes feelings can be confusing, that’s all.” She looks away wistfully. And I wonder if she’s thinking of her ex, Riley. The one she finally defriended on Facebook this morning and by doing so deleted all the past-mooning and embraced her lovely present. “There’s not one woman alive who hasn’t been confused about who she loves at some point in her life.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Liz, sorry.” (I’m not sure quite where she’s going with this either.) She bends down and picks up her handbag. “Sadly, I’ve really got to get back to work.”

“Me too.” Liz scoops up the last bit of brownie with her fork. She looks up and smiles cheerfully. “But you know what, Jenny? It’s not over till the fat lady sings. Remember that.”

J
enny’s heart leapt when the phone rang. Could it be Tash with Dominique’s details, finally? It had been two weeks since the showdown in Tash’s house and she still hadn’t given anything to her. It was almost impossible not to say anything to Sam, to go on as normal. But she didn’t want to say anything until she had the facts, if there were facts, if Tash wasn’t making the whole thing up, which was the most likely scenario. She wasn’t going to hand-grenade her relationship for nothing. She picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“Jennifer.” Her mother was the only person in the world who called her Jennifer.

“Oh, Mum. Hi. Yes, yes, I’m really well, things are great. I’m at work right now, though. Yes, I know it’s the weekend.” She’d taken on extra work so she didn’t have to think too much, or spend too much time with Sam. “I know, I know, it’s just that I’ve got this massive manuscript.” Explanations were fruitless. For as long as she worked at home her mother would not believe that she was actually working. Work was something you went to. It was something that required
a smart pencil skirt and a commute and a cookie at eleven a.m. “How are things, Mum?”

Her mother paused, cleared her throat, the throat clearance giving Jenny a taster of the answer. “I’m worried, Jennifer.”

Not this. Not again. “The wedding is all under control. Promise,” she said in what she hoped was the reassuring voice of a calm, organized bride rather than one who was trying to sleuth into the past life of her fiancé and went to bed every night and had weird dreams about her dead best friend’s husband.

“Your father’s concerned.”

“Look, Mum, the marquee is going up in ten days’ time.” As she spoke it was like listening to badly dubbed telly, as if there was a time lag and it wasn’t her speaking. “I have shoes! Lovely white shoes. I have a wedding dress! I will have my hair colored at the weekend. I will not look like Shrek, okay? Everything, I promise, has been crossed off the list. Do not fret,” she said, wondering how long she could keep up the wedding prattle before her brain seized up. It was as if the whole subject was too big and complicated for her to process, the nuptial equivalent of quantum physics.

Her mother did one of her tight little coughs. “I have no doubt that Penelope will have organized everything expertly down to the last napkin ring.”

Jenny felt a wave of sympathy for her mother, who understandably felt usurped.

“Don’t you want more of a say, love?”

“I’ve had my say, Mum.” Yes, she’d let the details ride over her. And Penelope had such fixed ideas. She really did care about whether the guests should have little net pockets filled with pink almonds.

Her mother sniffed. “I just think the Vales should be more involved, that’s all.”

“How about I ask Penelope today if there’s anything you can sink your teeth into? She’s coming over for dinner tonight.”

“But don’t say anything, Jennifer. I don’t want to cause an atmosphere.” There was nothing her mother hated more than atmosphere.

“I’ll have a run through Sam’s spreadsheet later and phone you tomorrow with an update.” The word “update” always sounded impressive and efficient. “Right, let’s speak soon…”

“Don’t ‘update’ me, Jennifer.”

“Sorry.”

“Darling, you sound down, very down.”

“I’m not down. Just a bit tired.”

“Why are you tired?”

“I don’t know. Work, I guess.”

“You need to stop working. Working doesn’t suit brides.”

“I’m committed right until the wedding. I need to get it all done before the honeymoon.”

“Ooh, any idea where…”

She glanced up at Sam, who was engrossed in tapping something into his iPhone. “No. Sam is proving very good at keeping secrets.”

The moment she hung up, her mobile started vibrating on the kitchen table.

“Like living in a bloody call center,” said Sam, lighting a cigarette and blowing smoke out the open window grumpily.

Once that phone call was finished she sat down next to Sam, wondering how to break it to him. “That was Ollie in New York.”

“I know that. You were using your girlie talk-to-Ollie voice.”

She’d ignore this. “Freddie’s got chicken pox.”

“Tell him not to pick.”

“Actually he’s really sick, Sam.” She hesitated, unsure how to sell this one. “He’s been calling for me.”