Chapter 51
Maggie
I don’t sleep. I don’t eat. I don’t work.
I don’t know how a week has passed since I said goodbye to Riz.
I pull the duvet tightly around me, as I shift into the corner of the sofa where I had leant against Jack.
I try to capture his smell, the feeling of his arms around me, to gather some comfort from my time with him, but I can’t stop Riz’s life passing behind my eyes.
It’s like I’ve lived her life right alongside her.
It was a privilege, but the aftershocks have left me with a life that feels empty, a scrappy home video with dodgy sound and pixilated images.
The letterbox snaps open and closed, post sinking on top of the rest of my bills for the last week that are piling up on the floor along with flyers for takeaway pizza that I have no appetite for. I bury myself deeper into the warmth of the duvet.
I close my eyes, but the terror Riz felt when Art proposed, the fear of not being good enough churns my stomach.
I knew she had turned down Art when he first proposed, but it was like a sidenote to her story, always told with a laugh and a shake of her head, but that’s not what it was.
Not anywhere close. The roll of loss and regret keeps sucking me under, and I know it’s not just Riz’s emotions I’m feeling.
For the last few months, I have forced my own emotions beneath the conviction that I made the right choice, for me, for Jack.
But then the image of Art at the door and her reasons for turning him down fell away, and instead, she stood before him, exposing her heart, giving him the most vulnerable part of herself.
The happiness of her life that followed that decision keeps playing on repeat.
I try to shake the gnawing feeling of regret. I have managed to create a life where I’m happy and safe. Being alone has never been something to be afraid of; it’s my sanctuary, a place where I can’t be harmed and can’t harm others.
My phone vibrates again. I send another message to Tess to tell her I’m fine.
She’s in Amsterdam where an agent is going to see her gig.
I hope this is the turning point of her career.
An unknown number flashes up on the screen.
It’s been trying to contact me all morning.
I suck in the stale air simmering around me and accept the call.
* * *
Outside Riz’s house, life is carrying on without her.
Her door is still bright red like her lips and the windows glint in the sun.
I take slow steps and rap on the door. It swings open, a man – suited and booted – greets me.
‘Margaret Wright?’ he asks. Kind brown eyes behind thick-rimmed glasses, a gentle lapping Jamaican accent.
I nod but don’t step inside. ‘Kingston Green,’ he puts out his hand.
‘Maggie.’ I gesture to his hand with a nod. ‘I have a…’
What? What do I have? The ability to hear thoughts, to hurt the people closest to me? To push people away?
‘Condition. I can’t touch people. No offence,’ I add at the quizzical look.
‘Of course, let me…’ He turns and takes some confident strides back. My purple boots click against the tiled floor and I pull my coat further around me. The house feels so cold, so devoid of life, so… empty.
Kingston Green smiles at me and sits down at the oak table. I pull out a dining chair and sink into the fabric.
‘I would imagine you’re eager to find out what this is all about?’
I nod.
‘I have been instructed by Messrs Bassett and Wick as executor of the last will and testament of Clarissa Hancock. I’ll cut straight to the chase, if that’s OK with you?’ I nod again. Words lost beneath the fog of her loss. ‘Clarissa has—’
‘Riz.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Her name is Riz.’
‘My apologies. Riz… named you as her sole heir.’
‘Sorry?’
‘As sole heir, you are now the owner of this beautiful home.’
‘I can’t be.’
‘I know this may be quite a shock and of course you will need time to process.’
‘She left me the house?’
For a second I can hear her laughter. See the sparkle behind her eyes at one last hurrah.
‘She did, and a rather generous inheritance.’
He passes me an envelope with Riz’s handwriting looped across the front.
‘Perhaps this will explain in more detail?’ He throws me a kind smile.
My hand is shaking as I run my finger along the seam of the envelope, ripping it open.
Dearest Maggie,
So it seems I’ve had my last waltz.
Please don’t be too sad. I’ve had the most wonderful life, filled with colour and texture, love and loss and everything in between.
Forgive me, my dear girl, but – if you can’t say the things that need to be said when the end is near, then when can you? – don’t waste your life on what-ifs and the fear of the unknown.
You are a spectacular woman, Maggie, full of spark and kindness, brimming with energy and love that is bursting to get out.
I wipe away the tears that are falling, going back to the paper in my hands.
Life is there to be lived, my darling girl, and you’re not living it. Life is a gift. Don’t squander it worrying about what could happen, protecting yourself from the pain you may not feel. Or protecting others from you. We all have to take a risk if we’re going to live.
It doesn’t matter what might happen; all that matters is you open that great big beating heart and let life in.
This house is yours. Call it payback. It’s not a gift, it’s to repay my debt of gratitude for all the kindness you’ve shown me. Fill it with laughter, with love, and a full life. Travel the world, my beautiful girl. Take that fear that is holding you back and kick it in the teeth. Use it.
Fear is power. The things we are most afraid of are usually the things that are the most precious.
Phillip says that psychiatrists don’t fix people, they just help them find the key to unlock the answers to their own story. Find the key to yours. Open the door, Maggie love.
Riz
I close the letter, reeling.
Kingston talks through the next steps and I follow him out, closing the door behind him, and stand still outside this empty house waiting to be filled.
I walk back to my flat, my mind full of all the things I’ve seen, that I have been told, her words and the vast empty rooms that I had seen through her eyes brimming with laughter and music and friends and love.
How can I own a house like that and do it justice?
Do Riz justice? I slide the key in the door and look around at my small space crammed with souvenirs and pictures of places I’ve never been to; to the bookshelf filled with DVDs of fake lives that I’ve fake-lived from in front of a screen.
None of this is real.
Not one part of this house reveals my life. My memories. My experiences. My home is a set, a carefully choreographed collection of things to make it look like a home when in reality none of it belongs to me.
I bend down and pick up the pile of bills and flyers. My hand stops shuffling and I stare at the postcard in my hand. It’s Ferris Bueller, lying back in a white T-shirt with the slogan talking about life moving by quickly, advising you to look around before you miss it.
I turn the card over – today’s date and time for the opening of Jack’s shop. How long has this been sitting on the hall floor?
Every part of me wants to go, to walk into his shop and hold him in my arms. But I can’t.
Too many people. Too many thoughts, memories and emotions that don’t belong to me.
Even with the progress I’ve been making with Phillip, I know I can’t do it.
And it’ll hurt too much to say goodbye to Jack again.
I drop the card.
And fall to my knees.
Find the key. Open the door, Maggie love.
I look down at my open palms, to the hands that have read and stolen people’s most private thoughts and emotions.
Take all of those holes and cracks that are holding you back… and find a way to mend them.
I look down to the creases and lines branching across my palms, my own life etched out in front of me… waiting.
I take a deep breath. Focus on my ability. Just as I did when I tried to help Jack find the answers he needed. It’s time for me to stop listening to the thoughts around me. I need to turn up the volume, to feel, to see, and to listen to myself.
I wrap my hands around my body. My movements intentional. My focus sharp.
My mind centres. I listen to the sound of my breath, the low steady beat of my heart inside my chest, the way my skin feels beneath my fingers: soft, cool, taut.
I close my eyes.
I picture my hand reaching for the dial. And slowly, while I concentrate on my breathing, I turn up the volume higher, past two, three, four, taking my time until the dial reaches ten in the hope that’s enough to hear the echoes of memories that have been buried for so long.
I lived in a small house.
There was a path.
A cherry blossom tree.
An image comes… blurry at first, but becoming sharper the more I listen, the more I take myself inside my own mind.
I walk along the path that leads to a small cottage with the cherry blossom tree outside.
The key is heavy in my pocket; my fingers lock around it.
I hear the clunk as I slide it in the keyhole, the click of the mechanism as the door swings open.
Flashes of a little girl, of me, of something I’ve pushed down inside for so long, bursts free from somewhere deep within me.
I’m sitting on a knee, a story about an enchanted wood is being read. I look at the woman.
Mummy.
Her face rips through my emotions, long curly hair, green eyes gleaming up at me. She passes me a cuddly toy in the shape of a fish.
What shall we call him?
Her voice. The cadence of her words, a soft accent, a Cornish burr.
Bruce.
The tinkle of my own laughter runs up and over my arms.