Chapter 5
Amy: Our House
I miss James all the time. A lot of the time it’s like a dull ache inside me, something I can never shake, but which doesn’t stop me from functioning.
But then there are the moments when the grief just comes up and full-on attacks.
When I was first told he had passed, it was as though someone had stuck a knife into my stomach.
Not deep enough to kill me – perhaps that would have been less cruel – but deep enough to leave a terrible wound.
A wound that never heals. I’ll never forget that moment as long as I live.
I still get some repeats of that searing grief, which cuts through to the core of me.
And it’s not like it follows any kind of logical pattern.
The grief usually strikes when I’m least expecting it, and often when I could really do without it, like when I’m about to go into a meeting, or when Carol’s just knocked on the door, or when I get to the checkout in the supermarket.
People say grief is just a kind of love.
And obviously it is – except it’s not a useful love.
Grief is love that’s been made redundant.
Homeless love. Love with a name emblazoned on it, and no use for anyone else.
Love that’s custom-made for just one person, the very person that it can’t be given to.
But now, for a couple of hours, I’m going to pretend I can still give this love to the man it’s meant for.
I’m going up to the crem to talk to James, or maybe to talk to the ether and convince myself that I’m talking to James.
Thankfully I’m not the only one who does this. Tom does too.
He’s there, bright and early, seated on the bench he bought years ago in memory of Daphne.
At each end of the bench there are beautiful daphne shrubs which have the most incredible scented flowers in spring.
The perfect memorial to a much-missed lady.
As usual, Tom is asking her for help with the difficult clues in the crossword.
‘Six letters: blank, O, blank, blank, T, blank. What do you think, Daph?’
‘Morning, Tom!’ I call over as I head into the café to grab a take-out tea.
Tom looks up from his crossword, smiles and gives me a wave.
Tom is so lovely. He’s always cheerful, and that smile is enough to brighten up anyone’s day.
It’s not quite so hard for me to switch on cheerful mode today anyway – it’s one of those crisp autumn days, the reds and golds of the fallen leaves look so beautiful against the green of the lawns.
Someone will be along to rake up the leaves a bit later on.
They keep the gardens here at the crem so beautifully tended.
And I love that. It feels right that they’re so well cared for.
There’s a lot of love in this place. I think it’s really important, especially for the older generations, that things are kept neat.
If the gardens were neglected and overgrown it would be disrespectful in their eyes, and I get that.
As it happens, we all do our bit to keep the gardens neat.
‘Ship shape and Bristol fashion,’ as Laurence would say.
He used to be in the military, like James, except Laurence was in the RAF, not the army.
He is always immaculately dressed; smart jacket, trousers pressed, shoes polished.
Old habits die hard. He probably still wants to look smart for Celia too, just in case she’s checking on him from above!
I think one of the younger gardeners was a bit worried for a while that we were going to do him out of a job.
But now he’s got to know us, he seems to understand.
He can see that helping to keep little bits of the gardens nice is one of the few things we can do to try to stay connected to the people we’ve lost and show them we love them.
Our garden at home is only small, but it’s somewhere James and I could chill, have barbecues with a few friends and neighbours, or have family over.
It’s been a bit of an effort to keep the house on just my salary.
I could have asked my mum to help out with the mortgage for a while – she’s got plenty of money, and I mean plenty.
She owns a house by the river in Henley-on-Thames, and an apartment in Chelsea, as well as the villa in the South of France.
To be fair, she earned it all. When my dad left, she was adamant we would want for nothing.
Work became her sole focus, and she never re-married.
‘I may be rubbish at finding talent for myself,’ she would say, ‘but it turns out I’m rather good at scouting for talent for others.
’ And she was right. At least if you measure talent in terms of financial return.
Not always so much in terms of musical ability.
My mum is in large part responsible for the launching of several arguably talentless boy bands.
Nevertheless, it paid the bills, and some.
But the thing with my mum is she’s kind of a fair-weather mother, happy to see you when everything’s going well, but she really doesn’t like hearing about problems or sadness, and since I’ve had such an extreme case of sadness, it’s not been easy to have that much contact with her recently.
The house was James’ place originally, but he hadn’t really lived in it until we got together.
We moved in when we’d been seeing each other for six months.
Lots of people told me it was too soon, that I should wait and get to know him better first, just to make sure.
But I knew. Don’t ask me how. I just knew that he was the one for me – and always would be.
And now I am so glad I did take the plunge, because it meant we had as long as possible living together before he went.
James had been in army accommodation for years, but he’d bought this lovely little bungalow, partly as an investment, and also so he’d always have something to fall back on.
His gran had left him quite a lot of money in her will, so he was able to put down a big deposit on it, and it made the mortgage more manageable.
As it turned out, it came in handy sooner than he’d anticipated.
I’m not sure why he’d expected to be a bachelor for so long.
He was such a catch. But he was so into the army and his ‘brothers’, you couldn’t have found someone more loyal than he was.
So perhaps he never envisaged moving out to live with someone else.
It’s ideal because it’s really close to the base, so he can, I mean he could, be at work in fifteen minutes.
For a long time I wondered why he’d chosen a bungalow – it was something I usually associated with older people.
But when he introduced me to his friend Martin, who’d lost a leg because of an IED, I could see there had probably been something at the back of James’ mind telling him a single-storey home mightn’t be a bad idea.
Just in case the worst happened. But, of course, that wasn’t the worst that could happen.
Anyway, I’ve been so glad to stay here. So, it’s been worth cutting back on a few things, being a bit broke some months so I could keep the place.
This is where I want to be, it’s where his energy is.
It feels like it’s in everything he ever touched – his clothes (I know, I know, I need to get rid of them sometime), his books, his vinyl collection, his cycling trophies, the furniture, even the walls seem to have soaked up his energy, it’s all around me here. And I love that. I need that.
I’ve been really busy these last few days with planning for the séance.
Janice is helping me arrange it, as promised, and weirdly it’s been kind of fun so far, although there’s quite a lot to think about.
I know it all seems a bit strange, and I haven’t told any of my pre-death friends, not that I see many of them these days.
It’s just the FFC, the Frequent Flowers Club.
I’m worried that some of them are quietly a little bit wary of it, but mostly they just see it as a bit of fun, and Janice is reassuring everyone that it will all be fine.
Janice has offered to host it, which is great because her place is a lot bigger than our house. There, I’ve done it again – I mean my house. Not sure I’ll ever remember to stop saying ‘our’ and ‘us’. Trouble is, I’m not sure I really want to. It’s too final.
I’m having a meet up with Janice today to plan it all.
I’ve told James to watch out for the séance and make sure he joins us.
I talk to him a lot, sometimes when I’m at home, and of course always here at the crem, which is where I feel closest to him.
I try not to talk to him when I’m walking around town, although that has happened on occasion.
I suppose people think I’m talking on my mobile with AirPods hidden under my long hair.
It’s kind of comforting to imagine James listening to me, even though mostly I think I’m just going a bit mad.
So here I am, hands wrapped round my tea for warmth, sitting on my favourite bench at the crem, next to the tree where I have started to hang little ceramic hearts for James.
One is inscribed with the words ‘Every time I think of you I hug you in my heart’, and another, ‘If I had my life to live again I would find you sooner so I could love you longer’, both of which are so true.
And I just start talking to him, as I always do.
‘You know next week is going to be the séance. So I really need you to be there. You know it would mean everything to me to be sure you’re out there, and that you’re okay.
And that you’re still mine.’ The thought of him not being out there or not being okay is so awful, a stab of pain cuts into my stomach again and the tears start up out of nowhere.
I hear footsteps on the path behind the hedge and quickly wipe my face. Janice walks round the corner. ‘I thought I might find you here,’ she says with her sweet gentle smile, and comes over to sit beside me on the bench. She takes my hand in hers. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Just talking to him,’ I reply. ‘Reminding him about Friday.’
‘Good idea,’ says Janice. ‘Are you ready to get on with our planning? Sarah’s just put out a freshly made cappuccino cake.’
‘Well, in that case I’m definitely ready,’ I say, brushing away the last tears that were escaping from my eyes. Janice links her arm through mine as we make our way to the café, and once again I am reminded of how lucky I am to have these wonderful, caring friends at the crem.