Chapter 25
25
Less than a year after we’d got married, Aidan and I were in a car accident, which killed him. He was thirty-five, no age at all.
The shock of his sudden death shifted me off my axis into a world where everything and everyone was alien.
Compared to Aidan’s, my own physical injuries were small—a dislocated knee, a broken arm, an injured face. The emotional injuries, though, were huge: I simply couldn’t grasp my reality. There had to be a parallel universe where the crash hadn’t happened and he was still alive; I just needed to find a way into it.
Because if he really was dead, I knew how much he’d hate it. The thought of him being all alone, in a strange place, broke me over and over.
Even worse was the disconnection I felt from everyone I’d once loved. An unimaginable distance separated us, as if I was being beamed in from another dimension, millions of light years away.
I could attempt sociability but an hour was all I could manage before panic threatened to consume me.
It was head-spinning how quickly the world expected me to behave normally. Not to mention those with no experience of bereavement, who told me, “It’ll be a while before you’re back to your old self.” Then expected my old self anyway. There was no chance of that, though—the guilt that Aidan had died and I’d survived made me feel I deserved nothing.
Except for those fractured moments when it seemed I owed it to Aidan to grab every second of life and wring it dry.
All around me, while everyone lived their regular lives and had their regular dramas, I’d started a covert other existence, consulting psychics and attending a Spiritualist Church in the hope of finding Aidan. Results were poor: I got swindled by a fake medium and the only “spirit” who made contact was dead Granny Maguire. In real life, I’d been terrified of her; for “The laugh” (hers, I should clarify) she set her two greyhounds on me whenever I visited. She wasn’t any more likable in death.
Meanwhile, the world kept turning. Five months after Aidan died, it was my birthday, my thirty-third. Rachel insisted that “lovely people who love you” would take me for dinner. I warned her I was in no way capable but, undeterred, she rounded up, among others, Teenie and Jennifer from work, Aidan’s friends Leon and Dana, the inner circle of Real Men and, of course, Jacqui.
The night was such a disaster it was almost funny.
In the glitzy, buzzy restaurant, I saw nothing but death. While the “lovely people who loved me” worked their socks off to create a mood of celebration, I delivered long, slurred monologues on mortality. “You’re going to die,” I kept saying. “And it might not be in fifty years’ time. You could be like Aidan and go like…that!” Every time I said it, I tried to click my fingers but was so drunk that it was just a disappointing flub.
As soon as was mannerly, each person ran away from me to the nearest source of limitless alcohol, where they drank with dark desperation. I can still see poor Gaz, sitting at the bar, pounding tumbler after tumbler of Jack Daniel’s, casting occasional terrified glances in my direction. He refused to return to the table, even when the candlelit cake emerged from the kitchen.
In the midst of the gloom, Joey began singing a mean song about Jacqui to the tune of “Uptown Girl.” “Wannabe Girl, she only hangs out with the rich and famous…” My nerves were so frayed that I had to ask him to stop.
Then, as if through a wall of thick glass, I understood that Joey fancied Jacqui! When did this start?
Did she fancy him? Without much curiosity, I focused properly. She was ignoring him and his sarky song, but that meant nothing, she’d never had any time for him. Tonight, in a pink satin camisole, super-glittery sandals and a tiny denim skirt exposing yards of tanned leg, she looked shiny and sexy.
Unsmiling but rapt, Joey was fixed on her, his eyes flickering as if a series of calculations was going on in his head. How best to get her into bed, I guessed. Not that he had a chance. Or perhaps he did?
It was wild to think that I’d ever fancied him. Not just because he was such hard work, but because it was unimaginable I’d ever wanted anyone but Aidan.
The night lurched on, and by the end I’d unsettled everyone to the point of crazed despair. Outside the restaurant the Real Men began howling at the moon, yelling about playing Scrabble until the sun came up. Off everyone went, clinging to each other, willing to do anything to avoid being alone. I’d broken them all.
The next morning, my actual birthday, my hangover was as crippling as my loneliness. Aidan’s absence was even more pronounced than usual. “I wish you were here,” I told the empty space in my bed, my apartment, my soul. “I miss you so so much.”
A breathless email had arrived from Mum, offering cursory birthday wishes. (“I am remembering this time thirty-three years ago. Another girl, we said.”) Then she asked if it was true that during last night’s game of Scrabble, Joey had taken one of Jacqui’s tiles and put it in his jocks, so that she had to rummage around to retrieve it.
I hadn’t a clue. But I had to admit it tracked: courtship, Joey Armstrong style.
I rang Rachel, who confirmed that Joey had been “outrageous,” doing nonstop meaningful staring at Jacqui and putting words like “hot” and “sex” on the board. Then he’d grabbed Jacqui’s J tile (worth a not inconsiderable eight points), slid it into his underpants and announced that if she wanted it back, she’d have to get it herself. Undaunted, she rolled up her sleeve, dived in, rummaged until she’d located it, gave it a good wash and went on to win the game.
“Does Jacqui fancy Joey?” I asked Rachel.
“Anna…” Her voice was a little what-the-fuck? “She’s your friend.”
The unvarnished truth was that Rachel and Jacqui weren’t wild about each other. They were so very different. Rachel was all “The unexamined life isn’t worth living.” Whereas Jacqui balked at any introspection.
Somehow the talk of last night’s goings-on had breached the thick cladding of my emotions: I was curious. So I rang Jacqui. Who was at home, in bed, alone. She admitted that she’d taken her time as she’d rummaged for her Scrabble tile, but that she had no interest in Joey.
But a few weeks later, that all changed. The starter’s whistle blew and she and Joey spent three days in bed. Unlike Brigit, Helen and Teenie, Jacqui—although she spared me the nitty-gritty—had nothing but praise for his performance. Then again, as the person who’d invented Feathery Strokers, her greatest compliment was: “Now he looks like a man who’d pile-drive you into a headboard.”
Perhaps Joey gave good pile-driving? Or perhaps this time was different?
Perhaps Joey was in love?
Because he certainly behaved that way. He and Jacqui went out, in public, as a couple, his arm slung casually but possessively over her shoulder. They made a good-looking pair.
Next thing, Jacqui was pregnant. It had actually happened sometime during their inaugural three-day love bender. As soon as she told him, Joey cashed in his chips: he was out.
Even I, who found it hard to feel anything except my own grief, was appalled. This had been Joey’s chance to do the right thing and, as always, he’d blown it.
Over the nine months, Jacqui’s mood swung from devastation to fury, but seasoned with a good sprinkling of I’m A Survivor, I’m Gonna Make It. Somehow I was co-opted as her birthing partner. It was the last thing I wanted but the will to resist just wasn’t there. I was still struggling to get to the end of each day, still trying—and failing—to reach Aidan by supernatural means, still fighting off the pain from my injuries.
The first anniversary of Aidan’s death came and went. I’d hoped for some sort of sign from him. But nothing. However, a couple of days later, I woke up feeling…different. No longer in physical pain. Something had shifted; perhaps a tiny amount of light had entered?
The old wives’ tale about waiting a year and a day after a death made sense. I’d had to live through all of my Aidan milestones—his birthday, mine, our wedding anniversary, everything—without him, before I could know in my heart as well as my head that he wasn’t coming back.
About two months later, Jacqui went into labour. We’d actually had a great day, Jacqui and I. Waiting for her contractions to be close enough together for the hospital to accept her, we wandered arm-in-arm through her neighborhood, singing songs about what an arse Joey was. In ever-decreasing intervals, we’d pause for her to writhe with agony as another contraction seized her, then we’d recommence our singing.
During one of her contractions, she ended up lying on the sidewalk. Quickly, two policemen appeared, one of whom—Handsome Karl—was known to Jacqui. She gave him her number.
Finally the hospital admitted her. First she wasn’t dilated enough to have an epidural, then suddenly she was too far along. Then, with perfect, dramatic timing, just as Trea’s head began to appear, Joey rushed into the cubicle and announced that he loved Jacqui.