Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
ANNA
‘Are you sure you’re up to having it here?’ I’d asked Gray three days before. ‘We can easily change the plans. Orla would host, or Sarah or Cathy.’
‘I’m not missing my daughter’s sixteenth birthday party, Anna.’ He pushed himself up on the pillows, his face mutinous.
‘I’m not saying you should miss it. Of course not. I just thought it might be easier…’
‘To cart me next door? Or to Richmond? Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘I… Okay. You’re right, of course. But if it gets too much you must just say, and we’ll get you upstairs. Promise?’
So Gray had promised, and Lulu’s party was going ahead as planned.
She and Barney had been up the previous evening until late, cutting out bunting from green and white paper – balloons being deemed environmentally unacceptable, and pink babyish – and strung it up from the exposed beams in the dining room.
I’d baked a three-tier cake with a not-very-successful attempt at ombre icing.
Bottles of champagne, wine, beer and soda water for Aperol spritz were chilling in a zinc tub on the terrace.
Cathy’s husband, Richard, had volunteered to man the barbecue.
And Lulu had modelled her dress for me – a vintage find from eBay, which she’d altered thanks to Orla’s sewing machine.
‘It’s awfully short,’ I’d told Gray, perching on the edge of his bed. ‘You can practically see her knickers.’
‘She’s sixteen, Anna. She can wear what she likes.’
‘It’s precisely because she’s sixteen that I don’t want her wearing what she likes.’
‘It’s a family party. Stop pearl-clutching.’
So I’d stopped, and told Lulu she looked beautiful in the strappy satin ’90s number, which showed off the smooth curves of her legs and arms, and which thankfully she’d elected to wear with her usual trainers instead of high heels.
Barney moved an armchair from the family room through to the kitchen, where the folding doors were open to the garden. Richard and I helped Gray downstairs and made him comfortable there, a rug over his knees even though the day was warm.
‘Christ, I feel like an old man,’ he grumbled.
‘Better than feeling like a cold man,’ I said as cheerily as I could. ‘Do you want a drink?’
He hesitated. ‘I’ll wait a bit. Don’t want to be shitfaced when I make my speech.’
An hour later, the house had filled up with people.
Lulu was handing round snacks, her little cousins trailing admiringly behind her.
Three of my recently divorced friends were getting stuck into the rosé and exchanging online-dating horror stories.
A group of our neighbours were getting stuck into the Pimm’s and exchanging house renovation horror stories.
Barney was drifting between the television, which was showing the cricket, and the food.
Orla had pulled a chair over to Gray and was talking and laughing with him.
I approached them, a bottle of champagne in my hand. ‘I think it’s about time for you to do the honours.’
‘Before I get too pissed?’ he said.
‘Before everyone else does,’ I corrected, although what I had wanted to say was, Before you get too tired.
‘Right you are. Make sure everyone’s got a drink, send our firstborn over and I’ll get cracking.’
With Orla’s help, Gray got to his feet. I poured him a glass of fizz and handed him a teaspoon and he pinged the glass. Lulu put down the platter of blinis she’d been carrying and moved over to her father, standing shyly beside him. The room fell silent.
‘Family and friends,’ he began, clearing his throat.
‘Thank you all for being here with us today. As you all know, this has been a hell of a year for us as a family, particularly for Anna, my wife and my rock. But we’re not here to talk about all that – tempted as I am to make every occasion all about me, I’m not going to be doing that today.
‘Because today is all about our daughter, Lulu, who turned sixteen a week ago. When she was born, she took my breath away – and that was after I’d fainted on the delivery room floor.’
There was a murmur of laughter, and Gray carried on. ‘I couldn’t believe that Anna and I had created something – someone – so absolutely perfect. Sixteen years later, I don’t think she’s perfect any more – maybe if you could put your dirty clothes in the basket like your mother asks, darling.’
‘Daaaad,’ Lulu protested, although she was beaming.
‘But she still takes my breath away. Lulu is beautiful. She’s clever.
She’s hilarious. She makes the world’s best cheese toastie.
Everyone who meets her loves her – except maybe that religious studies teacher she had in Year Eight.
And most of all, she’s the kindest, most loving daughter we could have dreamed of. ’
The room had fallen silent; all I could hear was the crackling of the coals on the barbecue and the sound of Augustus slurping up a bit of smoked salmon that had fallen on the floor. Then Orla sniffed and Lulu let out a half-sob that might have been a hiccup.
‘I know…’ Gray began, and then seemed to choke up himself, before carrying on.
‘Just to briefly address the elephant in the room. I know I won’t see Lulu’s eighteenth birthday or her twenty-first. I won’t get to make a speech on her wedding day.
But I don’t want anyone to be sad about that – not today, anyway.
Because today is about celebrating the life of this gorgeous girl, who makes me and Anna so proud every single day.
‘We love you, little Lulu. Happy birthday.’
Someone started singing ‘Happy Birthday to You’, and everyone else joined in seconds later. I sang myself – sang my heart out, not wanting my daughter to know in that moment that it was breaking.
By midnight, all the guests had left. Orla had stayed to help me clear up, before departing for number five an hour before.
The leftover food was packed away in the fridge ready to be raided by the children in the morning.
The cake had been reduced to a few crumbs on its stand.
The impressive haul of presents was stacked in the family room ready for Lulu to open the next day.
The bunting was curling on its strings, but I’d decided to leave it up for the kids to enjoy for another few days.
Gray’s carer had been and helped him into the shower and back to bed.
I poured myself a final glass of red wine, checked that the back doors were locked and went upstairs.
The first floor was in darkness; I could see a faint glow from upstairs where Lulu was awake in her room, up late texting her friends, and could hear the faint splash of water from the bathroom as Augustus drank from his bowl, thirsty after all the smoked salmon.
I didn’t knock on the bedroom door in case Gray was asleep, but opened it as silently as I could and crept in. He was lying down, his face as white as the pillows, but his eyes were open.
‘Hey.’ I sat down next to him, putting my glass on the bedside table. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Knackered.’ He eased himself higher on the pillow and I could see lines of pain flicker across his face. ‘But not too sore. The meds are kicking in.’
‘You smashed it today. I was really proud. Hopefully you’ll sleep well.’
I passed him the water, but he didn’t take the glass; instead, he guided my hand to his lips and kissed it. It was just the slightest brush of his dry lips, but it brought a lump to my throat.
‘Hopefully,’ he said. ‘Morphine dreams are wild – better even than coke.’
I tutted, hiding my emotion as I knew he was hiding his. ‘I’m not sure you’re meant to enjoy it.’
‘I reckon I can enjoy whatever I want at this point.’
‘True.’ I rested a hand on his shoulder. ‘Gray? Today made me think – what do you want to happen for your funeral?’
His eyes were drifting closed, but he opened them again and said indistinctly, ‘I told you. Chuck me in a plain pine box and take me to the tip, and then everyone get pissed down the Crooked Billet.’
‘Right. I know that’s what you said. I just wanted to make sure you hadn’t changed your mind.’
‘A deathbed conversion?’ He turned over, pulling a pillow from the other side of the bed and hugging it to his chest. ‘Not likely.’
That should be me, I thought with a stab of anguish. Me he’s holding while he sleeps. I should be with him, for however many nights we have left. But I couldn’t ask him if he wanted that – I was too afraid of what the answer might be.
‘There’s nothing special you want, though?’ I persisted. ‘No particular music or anything?’
‘Fuck, no,’ he said. ‘None of that maudlin shite.’
I half-laughed, then asked, ‘What maudlin shite did you have at your mum’s funeral? Can you remember?’
He turned over again, still clinging to the pillow. The sleepiness was gone from his eyes now; they were wide open, dark and trippy-looking from the morphine.
‘Jesus, Anna. I don’t know. Probably “Ar Hyd y Nos”.’
‘A what now?’
‘It’s a Welsh lullaby. Everyone has it – it’s a massive cliché. Like English people having “Jerusalem” at their weddings.’
He closed his eyes and sang faintly, ‘Holl amrantau’r sêr ddywedant, Ar hyd y nos, “Dyma’r ffordd i fro gogoniant”, Ar hyd y nos.’
I felt as if a heavy weight was being pressed on to my chest. ‘I remember that. You used to sing it to Lulu and Barney when they were babies.’
‘No I didn’t. You’re imagining it. I never sing.’ A flicker of sadness flashed across his face. He turned on to his side away from me. ‘I need to sleep, Anna.’
‘Okay.’ I stood up. ‘Call me if you need anything. And – like you said, pine box, no music. But maybe not the council tip.’
‘Thanks, Anna,’ he murmured. Then, half-muffled by the pillow, I heard him say, ‘I love you.’
That weight pressed on me again, feeling as if it might crush the life out of me. ‘I love you too.’
I got up and left him for the spare room, which I couldn’t quite bring myself to think of as my room. I washed my make-up off, cleaned my teeth in the en-suite bathroom and got into bed.
But I couldn’t sleep. I lay there, staring into the darkness, thinking of that song, which had sounded so familiar. The song Gray said he thought had probably been played at his mother’s funeral, which he’d sung to Lulu and Barney at night.
He had. In spite of his denial, I could remember it clearly – the darkened house, still a building site, the smell of paint and plaster dust everywhere.
Me lying in the bath exhausted, fretting that somehow we were poisoning our baby daughter with airborne chemicals.
And Gray’s voice drifting from the bedroom, low and sweet, accompanying his steady footfalls as he paced up and down with her.
He was right – he never sang. But he’d sung then, when he was soothing our babies to sleep, and I’d loved him for it.
And even if my memory was playing tricks on me – even if it was something else he’d sung to them, even if he couldn’t recall what music had played at his mother’s funeral – how come he remembered the lyrics so clearly, years later after Lulu and Barney were born, and still now, every word, in a language he no longer ever spoke?