Epilogue #2
So much so that I called my mother in 2007.
Or rather, I called the laundrette in St. Albans where she used to work.
I should have been surprised when she answered the phone – at the age of seventy-one she should have long ago retired in an ideal world – but I wasn’t.
What did surprise me was that we talked, for a long time.
I told her about Sharon and Daniel and about the MBE I’d been given for my service on Princess Diana Ward.
She listened. She didn’t say much, but when I asked if she would like to meet her grandson, she said yes.
It was a bumpy road, but she attended our wedding in 2013. And all three of us were at her funeral three years later when she died of a heart attack while working late at her sewing machine one night.
“Are you alright?” Sharon puts down a couple of glasses and steps closer to me. Her hands come to my hips and she looks intently into my eyes. “You look a little pale.”
“Just tired,” I say, which is true. You’re always tired when you’re sixty-one it seems.
“Early night for you,” she says and kisses the tip of my nose. She moves to pull away, no doubt to set the table but I stop her, holding her forearms and bringing her close again.
“I’m tired and happy,” I tell her. I won’t remind her what day it is yet. Not while Jake is here. I know she won’t have forgotten but still, we’ll acknowledge it together later.
“I’m happy you’re happy,” Sharon says. “But you’re also scaring me a bit. Did something sad happen at work? Did…”
“No, it’s not that,” I tell her. “It’s the magic of a normal day.”
She nods knowingly. We’ve talked about this before. About the beauty in the mundane when you are surrounded by pain and grief and loss. We talked about it a lot when we were mourning Danny.
“The magic of a normal day,” she repeats and then she pulls me in for a tight, warm hug like only Sharon and her beautiful, big body can give me.
“Are they always like this?” I hear Jake’s voice.
“Yeah,” Daniel says in his typically quiet voice. “Pretty much.”
“How insufferable,” Jake comments and I can hear the sarcasm and the teasing in it but I’m not sure Daniel will.
“Actually,” Daniel says. “I like it. I like that they’re still together and happy.”
Me too, baobao, I think. Me too.
*****
Sharon
“You’re very lucky,” Jake says and it’s his tone that has me twisting my head to look at him sitting across from me at the dining table. Or rather, it’s his lack of tone. There’s no sarcasm, no wit. Just honesty. And accuracy.
Because I am very, very lucky, and funnily enough I was just thinking the exact same thing as I watched Kate and Daniel together in the kitchen. That’s one of only a few rules we have in this house; whoever cooks can relax after dinner while those who relaxed before tidy and clean up.
“I know,” I tell Jake, my eyes drifting back to the kitchen. “And there was a time, a long time ago—”
“A long, long, long, long time ago,” Jake teases, the edge back in his voice.
“Yeah, yeah,” I wave a hand at him dismissively. “Whenever it was, I didn’t think I was going to have…” I nod at Daniel and Kate who are standing side by side at the sink with their backs to us “…this.”
“I often think I won’t get to have it,” Jake says so quietly I almost miss it.
“Why would you say that?” I ask. He doesn’t know it, but him saying that hurts me more than it probably should.
Jake reminds me of Danny. A lot. His quick wit, that occasional acerbic tone and more than occasional criticism of my fashion sense, not to mention his campness, his big, bold laughter and his enthusiasm for the finer things in life.
They don’t look alike – Jake’s colouring is fairer, his hair is much more tamed and I don’t think he’d be caught dead with a moustache – but physically they’re almost identical; tall, lean men with hands that talk just as much as their mouths.
I’d thought it the first day Jake had walked into the office and I find myself thinking it, feeling it, very often during our days together.
Considering this is almost certainly my last full-time position before I retire, I can’t believe my luck that I get to work with Jake rather than some old stuff-pot who gets me to choose his wife’s – and girlfriend’s – birthday presents.
So yes, it hurts to imagine Jake ending up alone in the same way it still hurts that Danny never got to experience the kind of love that Kate and I share.
“Oh, because I’m pushing forty and haven’t had one single relationship last longer than my subscription to Men’s Health.”
I suppress a smile. Danny and his Men’s Health magazines.
“Well, if you keep moaning about it,” I say, mostly playfully.
“That is not moaning. If you really want me to moan, I can absolutely arrange that for you. In fact, let’s have a whole day of moaning tomorrow,” Jake pulls out his phone and pretends to type.
“I’ll schedule it in. Nine o’clock, moan about Sharon’s outfit which will be questionable at best. Ten o’clock, moan about my takeaway coffee getting cold because Sharon spent fifteen minutes gossiping with Lucy and Eugenie on front desk—”
“They see and know everything!” I add, indulging him for now.
“Eleven o’clock, two-hour moan about Tasha because she always sends over itineraries two or more weeks late, leaving my teams scrambling to cater to her every whim.”
“That’s actually a valid moan. She is terrible at that,” I nod.
“One o’clock, pause for lunch and gym. Two o’clock, moan about that bitch from Procurement being on my favourite elliptical machine at the gym, and also moan about you not getting my favourite Pret sandwiches, again.”
“Every day I go on my way to work and every day they’re already sold out of BLATs. And I refuse to come into work any earlier than eight-thirty. I have a life and a very hot woman keeping me warm in bed. It’s hell enough to leave her at seven o’clock each day.”
Kate turns and throws me a wink. Jake wrinkles his nose at us both.
“I think I have to leave, Sharon. You two are just… too fucking happy.”
“Yeah, we are,” I sigh, mostly to piss Jake off but also because sometimes my only reaction to being Kate’s wife is a very contented sigh. “One day you’ll be this fucking happy too.”
He snorts as he stands and lifts his suit jacket from off the chair’s back. “I highly doubt it. Pretty sure I’ve fucked all the men in London at this point, and not one of them made me sigh like you just did.”
I spare a quick glance for Daniel after Jake’s crude language but then I correct myself. He’s a grown man. Kate’s always telling me not to infantilise him because he’s autistic.
“You never know what the future holds,” I tell Jake as I follow him through the room towards our hallway and the front door. Suddenly he stops and turns back to me.
“Three o’clock, moan about Sharon’s sudden nasty case of optimism. There’s no place for that sort of thing in our office.”
I pull a face at him and he pulls one straight back.
Kate approaches us wiping her hands dry on a tea towel. “I can see why this relationship works so well.”
“Kate, is it wrong to say that your wife’s insanity keeps me sane?”
She laughs and then loops her arm around my back. “No, that makes complete sense.”
“And thank you both, and you, Daniel, for your hospitality. I’m going to head home to my empty apartment where nobody is waiting for me before I slip into my ice-cold bed that has one lonely imprint of my curled-up body because I—”
“Fine,” I step forward and grab Jake into a bear hug. “If this is what I have to do to shut you up, this is what I’ll do.”
I expect Jake to push away and to wave his hands around in some kind of flap, but he doesn’t. He stays perfectly still for a moment and then his whole body relaxes. A second later, his arms envelop my shoulders and he squeezes me back.
I close my eyes, thinking this can’t be a coincidence. Not today of all days.
When Jake does step back, I’m not quite ready, but I have time to regain my composure as he goes about giving Kate a quick hug and Daniel a firm shake of the hand.
He passes on a few more tips for sculpting eyebrows, tells Kate he doesn’t know how she puts up with me and then he bends down to give me a quick kiss on my cheek.
“Goodbye, you old battleaxe,” he says.
“Goodnight, you raving queen,” I reply.
We share a smile and then he’s gone. I close the door, already looking forward to seeing him tomorrow even though I suspect he’ll be absolutely delivering on his Day of Moaning.
*****
“I’m going to bed,” Daniel says after he’s beaten us at yet another game of cards. I don’t know why we bother sometimes, but then one of us will do something to make everyone laugh, or Daniel will trump both Kate and I, leaving us astounded, and I know exactly why we always play after dinner.
“Goodnight, son,” I say as he gets up.
We don’t expect a hug or a kiss. He’s not always comfortable with physical touch, but today he surprises us both by standing behind our chairs and pecking us on the head, one at a time.