Chapter 2
I stood on the pavement staring down at the lower-ground-floor Victorian flat that Jason and I had rented for the last three years and twenty-three days.
The keys dug into my palm while I watched the changing light of the TV screen flickering through the voile-covered window.
A cold wind tugged at my coat and tickled my nose.
I shivered and sniffed. Then I sniffed again, breathing in the unmistakeable aroma of a fresh, garlicky, homemade lasagne.
Jason made a mean lasagne when we first met.
He cooked a lot in the early days but now the freezer was packed with ready meals.
A feeling of nostalgia overcame me for those early happy days.
Maybe the smell was coming from our flat.
Maybe he’d have remembered it was my thirtieth and cooked as a birthday treat.
Yeah, right. And he’d have done the washing up and vacuumed the flat.
Was that a pig flying past? Jason was between shifts so would have spent a couple of hours at the gym followed by a bike ride and would now be lying on the sofa, game controller practically welded to his hands.
How had a whole year passed since the disastrous non-proposal?
I’d returned to the table that night to find Jason tucking into his starter.
If he noticed my red eyes and tear-stained cheeks, he never said a word.
My sudden loss of appetite was embraced as more free food for him and my silence on the train home was put down to fatigue following a tough week at work. Had he really been that clueless?
Could I face another year like this? I didn’t want to die all alone like my Uncle Alan, but was this really better than being alone?
A text arrived.
?? From Elise
Our Jess and Lee are back from Rome and they’re engaged!!! I’m at Minty’s with them just two drinks, a packet of Scampi Fries and an amicable conversation about what idiots we’d been to let it drag on so long.
We agreed to give notice on the flat and sell the car, and I’d get custody of the cats.
I couldn’t have felt more relieved that the ordeal was finally over although it had been so easy that I couldn’t stop kicking myself for not having the guts to end it sooner.
Jason kissed me goodnight – a gentle peck on the cheek – then hailed a cab to a friend’s house to avoid a night on the sofa and to give me some space to think.
Which is exactly what I did. In fact, I lay awake most of the night thinking.
And worrying. About the important stuff like where I’d live, how quickly we’d sell the car and how we’d detangle our finances, as well as the little things that suddenly seemed important at 3 a.m. like who’d keep the tea-light holders we’d bought in Greenwich Market last summer and whether I’d have to pay Jason for his share of the cat scratching post.
Rain tapped gently on the window, then with more ferocity. The rhythmic drumming eventually sent me into a troubled sleep where I reverted to my thirteen-year-old self, shivering outside Uncle Alan’s flat.
‘Uncle Alan? It’s only me,’ I shouted through his letterbox.
Drops of icy rain from the overflowing guttering splashed onto my head and trickled down my neck.
I sniffed as a large drop ran down my nose, then instantly recoiled from the letterbox, clutching my nose, as a stench akin to rotting meat hit me.
Urgh! He must have left the chicken out of the fridge again.
I held my breath as I lifted the flap again. ‘I’m going to let myself in.’
Tucking the carrier bag containing the Sunday papers under my arm, I fished in my jeans pocket for the spare key and unlocked the door, bracing myself against the overpowering stench. My stomach lurched and I pressed my hand over my nose and mouth, thankful that I’d skipped breakfast.
‘Uncle Alan?’ I called through my fingers. ‘Don’t say you can’t smell it this time.’
A few flies buzzed round my ears and I swatted at them with my hand.
Placing my bag down in the hall, I slowly removed my waterproof and hung it on the peg next to the beige mac that he never left home without.
My hands shook slightly as I eased off my wellies and called again, ‘Uncle Alan? Are you being a grump again today? I won’t help you with the crossword if you are. ’
Heart thumping, I waited for his response. Nothing.
I swatted a few more flies before creeping down the hall towards the lounge at the back of the flat. ‘Uncle Alan?’ I paused just before the lounge doorway and listened again. Over the rain, the thunder, and the flies, I could hear the thump, thump, thump of my heart.
With my hand still over my nose and mouth, it took all my strength and courage to step from the hall into the lounge because the sinking feeling in my stomach told me that our regular Sunday routine was about to be broken forever.
The curtains were partially closed so the lounge was in darkness.
I tentatively felt along the blown vinyl for the light switch.
As my fingers reached the plastic casing, a flash of lightning lit the room like a floodlight.
And that’s when I saw him. Lying there. Over the thunder I heard a scream.
A girl’s scream – a terrified, pained sound.
I sat upright now, heart thumping, as a flash of lightning lit my bedroom.
‘Uncle Alan?’ I whispered. When the thunder crashed, I shivered and dived under the covers, clutching my teddy bear, Mr Pink, reminding myself that I was thirty years old, not thirteen.
I needed to think positive thoughts. I needed to picture him alive instead.
I needed to focus the routine we used to have.
At 10 a.m. every Sunday, I’d announced my arrival through the letterbox, let myself in and headed for the lounge where I found him reclining in his favourite chair, dunking a plain digestive in milky tea.
With a life controlled by diabetes, that plain digestive was his one weekly treat.
A strawberry milkshake and a couple of chocolate digestives would be waiting for me.
I admired his restraint at never succumbing to the chocolate ones himself.
We’d have our drinks while I told him about my week at school and what I’d been doing in my after-school clubs, then I’d help him with the crossword.
I say help but I certainly wasn’t the brains of the partnership; my reading saved him the faff of putting on his glasses and my writing spared the arthritic aches in his hands.
His body may have let him down but his mind was sharp with a million facts and details.
Another flash of lightning lit the room and, with it, a vision of Uncle Alan flashed into my mind – the lightning revealing the swollen face, the marbled yellowy-grey skin, the soiled trousers – and I shuddered.
I wished I hadn’t been the one who found him that day.
But if I hadn’t, it would have been Mum, Dad or my brother, Ben and I wouldn’t have wished the gruesome discovery on any of them either.
If only I could erase that image from my mind and picture him instead as the grump with a heart that I knew him to be, with a big frown but twinkly grey eyes that teared up each time I hugged him goodbye.
I blinked back my own tears that came so easily every time I thought of him. I should have visited more often. Once a week wasn’t enough. He needed me. He had nobody but our small family. I wiped at a rogue tear and admonished myself. I was young, I did my best and he appreciated it.
Cowering under the duvet, my mind flitted between the day I’d found Uncle Alan and my current predicament with Jason.
When the storm finally subsided at dawn, I’d only reached one conclusion: I didn’t want to be alone all weekend.
The only close friend I had in London was Clare and she was away at a work event in Birmingham, which meant that home – the seaside town of Whitsborough Bay in North Yorkshire – was the place to run.
Unfortunately, I’d picked up a voicemail from Mum to say that Dad had whisked her to Paris for the weekend and she hoped Jason had planned an equally romantic weekend for my birthday (oh, the irony).
I couldn’t therefore stay with my parents.
I could turn to Mum’s sister, my Auntie Kay, though.
There was no need to ring ahead because I knew exactly where she’d be.
She was practically married to her business and never, ever took time off.
After throwing some clothes into a small case, I travelled the underground then caught the first train out of King’s Cross.