The Unfinished Tale Of Sophie Anderson (13 page)

12.

At some point, when the grief and the sentiments and the letters stopped coming, I think I finally came to grips with what had happened. I’m not sure I’ll ever really come to terms with it. How do you? People die of cancer. People die of heart disease or Parkinson’s or just old age. We grow up with that kind of stuff like it’s a good enough explanation for why some people leave us and some don’t. But murder. I don’t know what to do with that and I’m not sure I ever will.

From what I could gather, the moment Mel and Tom had left her parent’s house, he’d been waiting in his car. I’m piecing this together from what the Police were able to tell me and what Sandra had managed to say just before she’d stopped wanting to live too; before one of her nosy, busy-body neighbours had found her asleep forever in her bed surrounded by empty pill bottles that had once been rose petals when she and Reg had first moved in there. When the funerals and the goodbyes had been said she’d returned to Wales to die. Alone.

Jake had waited in his car after arriving and hour behind me and Tom. He hadn’t seen us arrive together, I guess, which if he had might not have changed the outcome anyway. Maybe it would have. I’ll never know now but sometimes, in my dreams, I think it would have.

Tom and Mel left the house and crossed the road; the shop being on the other side of the street and about half a mile down the road that led towards the beach. Knowing Mel she’d have had her arm in Tom’s, playfully, like a sister, but to someone who never really knew her heart it might have looked like they were together. That he was her boyfriend and not mine. Like the smile on his face was for her and not for me.

Jake collided with them at about fifty miles per hour which meant he’d floored his red Corsa from his waiting position near the house to where they were about to enter the shop. At first they hit the wall and the Police said they’d have died instantly which was perhaps the only small mercy to be found on that day. The car then crumpled as it slid down the brickwork and was brought to a halt by the cast iron post box that had been there for as long as I could remember.

Sandra and I had heard the crash and we’d run out onto the road to see what had happened. The neighbours say I saw the carnage and called out his name. I don’t remember any of it. I only remember bits and pieces that flash in front of my eyes when I can’t see anymore because of the tears that just won’t stop coming. I must have seen something, part of them, the blood maybe, but I think I’ve blocked it out. That’s what the nice woman at the clinic keeps telling me in her firm but gentle way. Sandra fainted but someone caught her in time. I stood there staring until the ambulances showed up and was taken away at some point when I became unresponsive.

I think I’d wanted to die there and then and my body had shut down to stop me from carrying out that desire. Who knows how the whole thing works. I don’t.

The funeral was real. I see it from time to time in my head in shocking high-definition. The coffin. The procession. Rebecca and Sean at the front of the church as they say all kinds of nice things about him. I’m on the back row as far from him as they can put me. Dave and Frank, the boss, some of the others, they’ve turned out to say goodbye to a work mate but everyone can see that he was more than that to me. His ex-wife refuses to acknowledge it, but I know she knows somehow.

They destroy his remains with fire and I have to face it all over again the following day when they lay Mel to rest also. Sandra asked me to speak but I couldn’t. I have loads to say about her. How she was my sister in everything but blood. How I’d miss her. How life wouldn’t be the same. How my flat would be a tomb without either of them in my life. How…

I refuse. I sit at the front this time and sob into my coat sleeve until I think I might just dry up and drop down dead there and then. As Sandra weeps over the glossy black vessel my best friend lies in I feel something snap inside me and my world turns sepia before bleeding into black and white. I’m done. Finished. I’m tapping out.

That was me until one morning when I started to feel a tiny ember of something inside me that might have been my heart thumping back into life. I’d spent days in the flat surrounded by Mel and Tom –
her
furnishings and
her
clothes and
her
shoes and
his
overnight bag that Rebecca didn’t know
he’d left
at Sandra’s house. I wore
his
jumper and cried into it and sucked in my lifeless breaths through
his
t-shirt until the remnants of
his
cologne clung to me. It was final. It was over. As the scents faded so did the best of me.

13.

I returned to Riley’s a week or so later when my phone had rung. It was the foreman and he was gently warning me that I’d need to come in and face work if I wanted to keep my job. He didn’t say it like that and I appreciated his tact, but that was what he was saying.

So when Monday came I drove in as usual and went and sat in my corner with the heater on and looked at a blank space on the wall until the others began to arrive. They avoided my bay. They avoided
me
. It was only when the bell was about to ring that Dave came in with two steaming cups and set one down in front of me.

“Morning,” he said softly.

“Morning,” I replied. It didn’t feel like the words came from my lips. They felt distant. Someone else.

“Tea, two sugars,” he said, sitting down on the corner of a low table.

I heard him sigh so quietly that it felt like a blessing, like he was praying over me in some strange way. A hot tear ran down my cheek and I lifted the cup to my lips. It was heavier than mine and when I looked I realised it was Tom’s.

“I saved it from her,” he said. “And this.”

He passed me something that was folded in half and looked aged. When I opened it I saw Tom looking back at me, his hands on his hips and his unruly hair a mess in the wind that was blowing around his ears.

“I took that when he first came here. We were working on site together, having a laugh like you do. We had to take pictures of the work we’d done on this old disposable camera and this was one of them. I thought you might like it.”

I clasped my hand over my mouth and tried to hold back the violent sobs that followed but it was no use. I convulsed with them and the hot tears rolled down my cheeks and spilled onto the floor at my feet. Dave sat there and waited until I wrestled myself into control again. He knew his way around grief. He’d had his own share to deal with and I respected that.

“He’s gone, Dave,” I managed to say.

“Yes, love. They both have.”

“What the hell am I supposed to do?” I asked. “How the hell do I go on?”

He adjusted himself on the table. The bell hadn’t gone. Someone had overthrown the machine. Work began but somehow everyone knew to leave us alone for a few minutes, to let us have a chance to see if there was any way forward.

“I don’t know how. I just know that we do.”

“Does it get easier?” I asked.

“No,” he replied, shaking his time-worn head from side to side. “It never does. It sneaks up on you when you least expect it. It ambushes you in the night. It’s always waiting to grab you and drag you down to your knees. Grief knows your name now and you know his.”

“I loved him, Dave. I loved him so much but no one knows it. No one believes me.”

“They won’t. But believe
me
– you loved him and you saw the best of him.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you got the very best out of him even if it was only for a few days. You didn’t see the worst, you didn’t see the years of life that stops you remembering what it was like in those early times. You got the joy and no one can take that away from you.”

“So I was right then. That’s how it would have been,” I said, looking at his picture and remembering our conversation in the restaurant.

“I don’t know about that,” said Dave, standing to go. “All I know is you loved each other. It’s more than some of us will ever know.”

Dave went back to his work and I stood to look at mine. The grey building and the throbbing, monotonous machinery thrummed into life. People started the week again and life resumed its daily grind towards its unknown destination. Bills needed paying and the cupboards wouldn’t fill themselves. The car didn’t run on fresh air.

Before I put on my mask I placed the photo of Tom on my toolbox where my mobile used to be, took one more look at him and smiled.

Then I started up the set and carried on.