The Last Goodbye (39 page)

“You would have loved her, Ben – she didn’t suffer fools gladly,” I said wistfully.

“This is the first time you’ve let me in, you know,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Let me right in close, let me get to know the real you.”

“But you’ve known me for seven years!” I said, drying my eyes with a tissue.

“Yeah, but only up to a point. There was always this . . . I don’t know . . . wall or something around you that I couldn’t get past. You were always so guarded with your emotions.”

“Jesus, Ben – a wall – you’re not half dramatic, are you? I never knew you had such depth!” I picked up one of the cushions off the sofa and playfully hit him over the head with it.

I rang Dad on my way to work the next morning. He said Gran had done well overnight and they were hoping she would be allowed home later that day. She would be going to stay with Dad, and Aoife was going to move in with them too. I hoped the arrangement worked out for them because it would be really hard to see Gran going into a nursing home. I told him I’d ring him later to see how she was.

As I walked along the street, I felt so much lighter. I can’t explain it but I felt a huge weight had been lifted off me. All the years that I had been running away and I was now finally ready to step up and face it. I didn’t care when people wouldn’t make room for me to get on the Tube – I just let it go and waited for the next one. Or when the escalators were out of order yet again so that I had to climb a mountain of stairs to get out of the Tube station it didn’t make me mad like it usually would. Although I hadn’t realised it, those years of being angry and carrying all that guilt around had taken their toll on me.

Nat was in first when I reached the gallery. I told her about Gran and about Dad and Aoife.

“I’m so proud of you, Kate – I know it can’t have been easy dealing with everything you’ve gone through over the last few days.” She handed me a cup of coffee.

She was slowly coming back down to earth from her exhibition. Cards sat on top of the counter, thanking her for a wonderful evening. She had been overwhelmed by the feedback to her work and she was buoyed up and encouraged to go out and take more photos. I was delighted to see that the old Nat was slowly returning.

We decided to tackle the dusting – we tried to do it once a week – one of us would do downstairs and the other would do the mezzanine although sometimes it must be admitted that neither of us could be bothered. But today I didn’t mind doing it. As I ran the cloth over the tops of the frames, up along the banister, across the desk and the computer screen, I was able to switch off and get my head around everything that had happened over the last few days.

I suggested to Nat that we should go to Portobello Market the following Saturday. I thought it was something that she might enjoy – she used to love going there for a browse. It had been ages since we’d been – we used to be regulars, scouting around the stalls and then grabbing something to eat afterwards. She agreed, so the following Saturday afternoon we took the Tube down to Notting Hill Gate. The street was already thronged when we got there – it had got really popular over the last few years with tourists. Since it had featured in the film
Notting Hill
they would come in their droves, photographing themselves in front of the pastel-coloured buildings or standing beneath the Portobello Road street signs as the fed-up locals walked around them impatiently. We browsed through some of the antique stalls, which I loved. Old trunks and suitcases stacked on top of each other stood beside a stand of leather rugby balls and cricket bats. There were tables full of cloth-covered books with their old inked inscriptions from loved ones. Other stalls displayed antique china sets and silverware.

I always said that if Ben and I ever managed to afford to buy a house, I would come here and fill my house full of stuff from this market.

“Remind me never to come here again on a Saturday,” I said as a wall of people pushed me to the left as we walked along.

We stood and listened to a girl sing in French and play an accordion before strolling along until we came to the food stalls. The smell of fresh cheeses and baked goods filled the air. Nat was sampling the foods on offer from the different stalls and taking photos. At least she had started taking photos again, which was a good sign. Another man was shouting, “
Peaches three for a parnd, three for a parnd!
” from behind his table of fresh fruit. We sampled some delicious baklava from another stall.

“Hello, darling. It’s a sunny one today, innit?”

The sticky sweetness was delicious so I bought a few to take home with me.

We continued on to the clothing stalls. Fashion students displayed their designs, trying desperately to stand out from the rest of the stalls and to make a name for themselves.

Soon we were at the cheaper end of the market. These were the tacky stalls selling plastic toys from China and offering 2 for 1 deals on washing powders.

“Kate, isn’t that your bag?” Nat said suddenly.

She was pointing at a stall claiming to sell ‘vintage’ handbags. There were lots of stalls here claiming to sell vintage clothing, some of it was genuine, some not so.

I swung around from the rail that I had been thumbing through on a nearby stall. My eye was immediately drawn to the bright yellow of my satchel, which was sitting on the table amongst all the other bags. I would know it anywhere. I ran over towards it.

“That bag – where did you get it?” I asked the Asian guy manning the table.

He shrugged his shoulders at me. I wasn’t sure if he understood me.

“I think it’s mine.” I went to lift it up but his hand moved across my arm to block me.

“No try – you must buy.”

“How much?” I said quickly.

“Twenty pounds.”

I rooted in my purse but I only had a ten-pound note.

“Here, I have money,” Nat said taking another ten-pound note from her pocket and putting it with mine to give to the stallholder. “I can’t believe you’ve got to pay to get your own bloody bag back!”

He handed me the bag then. I took it from him and examined it – it was slightly scuffed on one of the corners, exactly like my one had been. It was definitely mine. We stood to the side of the stall, out of the way of people.

My heart started beating wildly. Nervously, I opened up the bag. There was a small zipped pocket inside the bag, disguised against the turquoise lining. That was where I had last put the letter. I begged Mam, if she was listening, to let the letter be still inside it. With trepidation, I pulled back the zip and saw the white envelope was still there. I carefully took the letter out of it and unfolded it. I held her letter in my two hands, studying her familiar words once more. I felt tears come into my eyes.
Oh thank you, thank you, thank you!

Nat and I both started jumping up and down. People in the market started to look at us but I didn’t care, I was so elated. It felt as though I was somehow closer to her by touching the paper that she had once touched too. It was like a little part of her was still living.

“She’s looking down on you, Kate,” Nat said.

And she was right – I could definitely feel her presence around me right then. It was like what Dad said – there was a sense of her whispering in the breeze around me.

Chapter 54

A few weeks later, Gran and Aoife were settling well into Dad’s house. They had a routine worked out and Seán, Patrick and Luisa took turns to help out. The health board had approved a home help for a few hours each day too. Gran’s speech, although still affected, was starting to improve but the power in her right arm never recovered. Aoife had installed Skype on Dad’s computer and I called them on it after work every evening. They were all delighted when I told them that I had found the letter and we laughed together that I had to buy back my own handbag.

The bell tinkled and I looked up to see the man who had been acting strangely at Nat’s exhibition come in through the door again. He shook the rain off his umbrella before folding it down. He nodded in acknowledgement to us before heading upstairs. He was starting to make me nervous.

“Oh my God, what is he doing here again?” Nat said.

“I’m starting to think that he has a screw loose. What do you think he wants?” I whispered as I observed him over the balcony.

“I don’t know but he’s really freaking me out!” she hissed.

He came back down the stairs a while later and walked over towards me. Nat was in the storeroom out the back, looking for a frame. I felt myself tense up.

“Does she have any more?” He opened his satchel and took out the photo of the woman on the bench that he had bought a few weeks ago.

“Yes, there’s some more of her work upstairs,” I said, confused. He was after spending the best part of thirty minutes staring at it all.

“No, I mean more photos of
this
woman.”

“Okay, well, I’ll just go and check with the photographer.” This was such a strange request. He was really creeping me out. I left him standing there and went out the back to Nat. She was bent over, pulling out frames and examining them.

“Nat, strange one for you – that man wants to know if you have any more photos of this woman?”

“The woman? What, is he stalking her or something? I’ll have to check through the shots from that day.”

She followed me back out to the front.

“If you just want to hang on for a minute, I’ll check through the other photos from that day,” she said to him.

“Thank you,” he said.

He stood at the desk while Nat clicked through files on the computer. She brought him around behind her, to show him what she had. “I just have a few more of the same shot, I’m afraid.” In one the woman’s eyes were closed, caught mid-blink. “Sorry, that’s all I have.”

“Can you check what date they were taken on?”

“Okay . . . em . . . hang on a sec and I’ll see . . .” She clicked on the photos. “March third last. Look, do you know her or something?”

“She’s my sister.”

“Oh, I see. Well, I hope she likes the photo.” I could hear the nervousness in Nat’s voice.

“She died last month.”

We both stopped what we were doing and looked up at him.

Nat’s hands flew towards her mouth. “Oh God, I’m so sorry – I’m so, so sorry. I had no idea.”

“You weren’t to know.” I could hear the emotion in his voice, which threatened to break at any moment.

“Well, you are most welcome to have any of these other shots, if you’d like, although they’re all pretty much the same, I’m afraid.”

“Thanks. It’s the way you’ve shot her – she looks so beautiful, so pensive. She was a painter and she would often go to the park and sit there lost in her own world. Hours could pass her by and she wouldn’t feel it. Look at it . . .” He held the photo back for us to see. “She doesn’t even notice the birds around her feet.” He started to laugh then. “Even as a child her head was always stuck up in the clouds. You’ve captured everything that I loved about her in that photo.”

“How did she die?” Nat asked softly.

“A car accident on the M25. There was a pile-up in bad fog.” He lowered his voice. “She didn’t stand a chance.”

“I am truly sorry,” said Nat.

“She was only twenty-nine. The family, well . . . we’ve all taken it pretty badly actually.”

“I can only imagine.”

“That’s why, when I came in here and saw this picture, I just felt it was a sign, y’know, that she’s okay wherever she is out there . . .”

I of all people could relate to everything he was saying and I felt awful for misjudging him as some psychopathic weirdo when really he was just lost under a mountain of grief, trying to make sense of a needless tragedy like I had done for so long.

“Sorry, I never asked your names?”

“I’m Nat and this is Kate.”

“Well, it’s lovely to meet you,” he said, shaking our hands. “I’m Richard.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said, shaking his hand. “And I’m so sorry about your sister.”

“Thanks, Kate.” He turned to Nat. “Your work is really good, Nat, by the way – you’re very talented. I’m so grateful you took this picture – you will never know how much this means to me and my family.”

“I’m just glad it might give you all some small comfort.”

The next day a bouquet of sunflowers arrived for Nat with a note to say thank you. His name and number were scribbled on the bottom of the card. Nat called him to thank him and they chatted away easily on the phone. It turned out he had his own graphic-design business just up the street. They decided to meet for a coffee and I listened as they made arrangements.

“What?” Nat said at my smile when she had hung up the phone.

“I said nothing!” I put my hands up in mock defence.