Chapter 81
Rachel
Thirteen years after Graveyard Heart was first published, the film is finally released.
Josh invites me to the premiere in London.
For weeks he tag-teams with Emma on trying to persuade me.
But I am resolute. I know there’s no way I could walk a red carpet with him now, no matter how meaningful the occasion.
I have to do things at my own pace these days, in private, well away from the glare of observation.
I haven’t told him I’ve been struggling for balance recently, reluctant to leave the house in case I topple and hit my head.
The thought of doing so at an event in front of cameras is almost unbearable.
Most of the time, I’m worried people might assume I’m drunk.
In the end, we agree to go together to see it at the cinema.
I am late, of course, as I so often am now. I end up doing two laps of the block before I see that Josh has come outside the cinema to wait for me and I remember what it is I am meant to be doing. But I brazen it out – just apologise, and pretend the bus was delayed.
Before the film starts, as the cinema plays a needlessly explosive advert for a new streaming service, I lean over and say to Josh, ‘I need to ask you something. It’s to do with Emma.’
‘Sure,’ he says, through a mouthful of popcorn. He extends the carton to me, but I shake my head. The last time I ate popcorn, I cracked a tooth on a rogue kernel and had to pay an extortionate amount of money for emergency dental work.
‘I need you to promise that . . . if anything happens to me, you’ll look after her. Properly take care of her. Whatever she needs.’
I see him swallow, a muscle leap in his neck. ‘I really hate it when you say shit like that, Rach.’
‘She would need you, though. If I wasn’t here.’
‘Ah, she wouldn’t. Fussing around her like some tragic long-lost uncle.’
It’s funny, because I think Josh often feels like a sixty-something now, just as I do. Not in his body, but his soul.
‘You know I’d be there for her,’ he says. ‘That’s a given. But Emma . . . she’s strong.’
I feel myself starting to get worked up. It can happen so quickly these days. ‘She isn’t always,’ I insist. ‘And especially after Lawrence . . .’
Lawrence had a heart attack last year, but – true to form – he responded as though it had been nothing more than a mild inconvenience, like sunburn, or a hangover.
He broke up with his long-term girlfriend shortly afterwards, and has apparently been partying hard ever since. And I know it worries Emma.
The trailers draw to a close, and all the lights go out.
Josh reaches for my hand in the blackness, wrapping his fingers over mine. The way he used to in cinemas, back when we were married. I would feel for the writer’s bump on his finger, eating white-chocolate jazzies with my free hand, and my heart in the dark would be bright as a summer sky.
‘Look,’ Josh whispers, ‘this hardly needs to be said. But you know I would take care of Emma.’
‘Promise?’
‘I promise.’
The music starts, and the opening credits come up. Based on the bestselling novel by Josh Foster.
‘Hey,’ I whisper, my heart swelling with pride. ‘It’s you.’
The film begins, but he doesn’t let go of my hand.
It’s late when we get out, so Josh drops me back at home, where we come to a pause together in the hallway.
His eyes are filled with tears, and he asks me the question without words.
I just nod.
A few months back, following gentle but persistent pressure from Emma and Josh and my friends, I went with Emma to see one of Lo’s daughters, now a GP.
I probably downplayed my difficulties, in the hope that she might say I had nothing to worry about.
But she seemed concerned enough to refer me.
And now, after a series of scans and appointments with three different specialists, it has been confirmed.
The changes in my brain have been made official. They can no longer be argued with.
Josh drops to the floor in a crouch, puts his head in his hands.
With some effort, I lower myself to join him, slipping my arms around his back.
He inclines right into me, grips me tight.
And then we just sit there for a while, our bodies a warm knot on the cold hallway tiles.
It takes me right back to that morning we hid in a wardrobe together, on New Year’s Day a million years ago.
It is agonising, the idea that these memories will one day start to fade. I want to cling to them – little lifebelts that might save me from disappearing completely – for as long as I can.
Eventually, I laugh softly. ‘Maybe I should have taken that second pill after all. I went to my own mother’s funeral, but I still never thought it could happen to me.’ I shake my head. ‘I was determined it wouldn’t happen to me.’
And of course I know it’s not a question of willpower. But I still feel determined, just in a different way. I am determined not to fear this. Because I have seen, long ago, what fear can do to a person.
In my arms, Josh turns to look at me.
‘Don’t say it.’
He smiles, the softest of smiles. And then he blinks, a single tear slipping free. ‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’
After that, we remain where we are on the floor together, talking until the light has long-since sunk from the sky.
He makes tiny, tender confessions. Things I never knew before.
I do the same. And, as we trade feelings and memories, the world – for the first time in a while – begins to feel normal again. Less warped, no longer a labyrinth.
Just how it always was.
Eventually, because I really do get quite tired these days, I find myself drifting towards sleep.
Josh is telling me about his flat, something to do with those paint samples on his bedroom wall still being in situ, nearly three decades on.
‘Turns out it’s too hard to decide between vanilla and vanilla,’ he says, and I smile, and the last thing I hear as I close my eyes is the sound of his voice.
It is, I think, the last sound I would ever want to hear.