Chapter 9
CONVERSATIONS WITH THE RECENTLY DECEASED
Laura
Laura reads the exchange between Niamh and Becca once again and feels sick to the pit of her stomach.
No, she does not have one single notion what her brother is at, but she really hasn’t got the impression from him that he wants to break up with Becca. That doesn’t stop her feeling sick anyway.
Because she has been here before – and she knows what will happen if things go tits up.
As much as she has been happy for her friend and her brother finding some second-act love story with each other, she has – from that very first day – lived with fear over what it could mean for her if it all goes wrong.
She is pretty sure she wouldn’t cope with another big freeze-out. It had absolutely devastated her when she and Becca, and then by association, Niamh, had fallen out during Becca’s divorce.
She’d understood at the time why her friend was upset – of course she did.
Laura herself was not a big fan of Simon Cooke and how he had treated Becca and their sons.
But Simon was Aidan’s best friend, and her husband had wanted to play the role of the supportive confidant.
She was hardly going to tell him he couldn’t.
When Aidan had invited Simon to stay with them for a bit post break-up, she had been horrified but again didn’t feel she could put her foot down. After all, if Becca had needed a roof over her head, Laura would have had no hesitation whatsoever in providing one.
It had been her hope that Becca would understand this on some level, but of course Becca was much too hurt, and had felt betrayed.
And wherever Becca Burnside went, Niamh Cassidy followed.
Though they are their own little triumvirate, there is no doubt in her mind that if push came to shove it is she who would be pushed and shoved. Once again.
Her fingers hover over her phone, stuck in a pattern of typing and deleting and typing and deleting a response until Aidan takes her phone from her.
‘Whatever that is about, it’s not doing you any good,’ he says. ‘You’re supposed to be relaxing and celebrating your first day at uni, not getting caught up in any drama. Let me guess, it’s Becks and Niamh again?’
She nods. ‘Becca is worried Conal might be going to break up with her.’
Aidan rolls his eyes. ‘Has he given any indication he might be going to break up with her?’
There is something in the way he rolls his eyes that sets her even more on edge.
Things have been tense between them anyway.
Ever since he finally came home at gone eight, her restaurant booking long missed, and asked her what was for tea.
He’d eventually ordered a pizza while she couldn’t bring herself to tell him about the plans she had made for them.
He’d only tell her she should’ve let him know and somehow it will all be her fault. Which, she thought, it probably was…
Snatching her phone back, she tries to tell herself that he is trying to be supportive, but there is something she can’t put her finger on that annoys her.
The casual dismissing of her friend’s worries, perhaps.
Or maybe it’s the casual dismissing of her own.
How could this man she has known most of her adult life not instinctively know anything about her emotional needs, and that she sometimes feels exceptionally insecure in her friendships?
How can he not know how triggering all of this is for her?
Then again, this is a man who never thought she might want to celebrate her big return to school with him.
Who came home and ordered pizza, not asking her if she wanted any.
Assuming she had already eaten. Or not caring. She isn’t entirely sure.
Ten minutes later, and with Aidan now sleeping, blissfully unaware of her inner turmoil, she looks at her phone again – any attempt at a response to her friends now abandoned – wondering if things are about to go wrong for her, just as she is embracing her new beginning with her studies.
She’s not a negative person, normally. And maybe it’s just because she’s tired but her earlier joie de vivre has turned into a mal de vivre.
Giving up the ghost on drifting off, especially now Aidan’s gentle snores have turned into something more ground-shaking, she gets up, pulls her big woolly pink cardigan on and pads downstairs.
She wanders their kitchen like a Victorian child desperately in need of sustenance, but finds nothing that would please her.
She opens the cupboards and the fridge multiple times, hoping in vain that they will somehow magically replenish themselves.
‘I’m not even hungry,’ she whispers to herself as she instead pulls a can of Wild Strawberry Trip from the fridge.
Okay, so fizzy drinks might be a very bad decision right now, but this one is a health drink, infused with magnesium to calm her restless mind.
Being honest with herself, she’d love a crispy Diet Coke but even she is wise enough to know that a caffeine hit at this time of night will do her no good when it comes to eventually getting the sleep she needs.
Carrying her drink through to the sunroom, Laura sits and looks out into the black night.
Having kept the lights off on purpose, so as to see the stars through the glass, she is thankful to see that the clouds are mercifully few and the stars are there, like little diamonds on a bed of black velvet.
‘Overthinking again?’ She hears her mother’s voice as clearly as if Kitty really were in the room with her.
‘Always,’ Laura says. ‘It’s hard to make sense of the world when you’re not in it.’
‘Ah now, you can do it. You’ve been doing it for a year. I raised you to be a strong, independent thinker.’
‘Who still needs her mammy,’ Laura says. ‘It’s really rather selfish of you to persist with this whole being dead thing.’
‘I know. I’m all about “me” these days.’
Laura can hear her mother’s laugh, her sharp sarcasm, the way they would banter back and forth even when things were awful.
Even when Kitty was in the worst pain imaginable, and they knew that time was starting to run out, they still managed to find something to laugh and joke about.
Laura would tease her mother that she would make sure she was laid out in her coffin with no make-up and whatever chin hairs that had managed to survive the chemo still on show.
Kitty had in return vowed to haunt her daughter from the afterlife forever.
Laura would give anything for that to be true.
She’s found herself quoting Heathcliff’s famous lament from Wuthering Heights: ‘Haunt me, then! Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!’
She knows it isn’t really an abyss, and instead a really nice semi-detached house in the suburbs. But it still feels it has an abyss quality sometimes.
If anyone were to walk in on her having these chats with her dead mother they’d probably tell her it was time to up her medication.
Laura will deal with that if and when the time comes, but for now, she likes these little chats.
She’s not crazy – she knows they are not real.
She knows she is talking to herself, but right now she doesn’t feel like she has anyone else to talk to.
And she swears it’s her mother’s voice she hears talk back to her, grateful that her mind can still conjure it up so easily and so authentically even now.
‘I wish you were here,’ she whispers, looking up at the stars, wondering, not for the first time, if heaven even exists. It has to, she thinks, doesn’t it?
‘I am.’ She hears her mother’s voice as she pulls the woollen throw from the back of the sofa and curls up under it.