Chapter 2
TWO
Half an hour later, I was in the thick of what felt like a normal morning. Patch was in the shower. I was spreading toast with peanut butter (Meredith) and strawberry jam (Toby), making sure not to use the same knife for both even if I’d wiped it (okay, licked it before showing it back in the jar) in between, because I knew a hunger strike would ensue.
I’d already put my coffee in the microwave twice to warm it up, and still not drunk it. I still hadn’t checked whether my purple dress fitted (or even still existed – there was a very real chance it had been sent to the charity shop months before) or I had any intact tights. The window of opportunity for my own shower was narrowing at speed, and I’d said goodbye to any prospect of giving my hair a decent blow dry.
‘Okay, breakfast.’ I plonked one plate in front of each twin and took a sip of my coffee – lukewarm already.
‘Can’t I have Coco Pops?’ Meredith asked, looking mournfully at her toast.
‘No, you can’t.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they’re full of sugar.’
‘Why?’
‘Because otherwise they’d taste like cardboard.’
‘I want cardboard,’ announced Toby.
‘Well, you can’t have it. I’ve made you toast and jam and anyway cardboard isn’t food.’
‘Why?’
Teeth gritted, I put my coffee back in the microwave. Upstairs, I could hear the water still running – clearly Patch was having one of his mega-showers, involving exfoliating his face, shaving with a cut-throat razor and putting a treatment on his hair before nicking my hairdryer to style it.
‘Can we have Peppa Pig on the tablet?’ Meredith asked, sensing weakness.
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s upstairs.’ And once I go upstairs, I don’t intend to come down again until I’m showered and dressed in whatever I can find that fits.
‘Why have we got to go to Granny’s?’ asked Toby, for the millionth time.
‘Because Mummy and Daddy have to go to a funeral.’
‘What’s a funeral?’
I sipped my coffee, wincing as it burned my lips. I felt like we’d done the careful, age-appropriate explanation a million times before, but with four-year-old twins, stuck-record territory was familiar to me.
‘It’s when someone dies and all the people who love them get together to say goodbye to them.’
‘Like when Daddy goes to Aberdeen?’ asked Meredith.
‘No! Nothing like that at all, because when Daddy goes to Aberdeen he always comes back, doesn’t he?’
Two pairs of wide, dark eyes, identical to their father’s, gazed at me, then Toby said, ‘When’s Uncle Andy coming back?’
I closed my eyes. I felt like I’d spent the past ten days either crying or about to cry, and here I was again, about to cry.
‘Uncle Andy’s not coming back.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he died.’
And if you ask me why, I’ll legit scream, because I’ve already tried to tell you about six million times, even though I don’t really understand it myself, because it’s the most fucking unfair thing that’s ever happened.
‘Why did he?—’
Hearing the hairdryer shut off, I fled upstairs.
‘Patch, please can you get the kids to your mum’s, like, now?’
‘There’s no rush, is there?’ He hitched the towel higher up on his hips. ‘We don’t need to leave for another hour and I’m not dressed.’
I could see his suit hanging on the wardrobe door, encased in a dry-cleaner’s bag. There’d be a lengthy faff while he dressed, I knew, with me expected to play personal stylist and advise on his choice of everything from shirt to socks.
‘Just put on jeans and go, please? I’ve been getting the third degree down there and I can’t stand it any more.’
For a second, he looked mutinous, the way his daughter had earlier when I’d vetoed the Coco Pops. Then his face softened and he hugged me, fragrant from the shower. ‘On it. Are you sure they’ll be all right with Mum all day?’
‘More like whether she’ll be all right with them. But what can we do? We couldn’t exactly take them, could we?’
‘Well, we?—’
‘Couldn’t. Come on. It’s out of the question. It’s not going to be one of those funerals where the person’s led a long and happy life and died in their sleep at ninety, and everyone goes on about how they had a good innings. It’s going to be fucking traumatic.’
Patch pulled a jumper over his head and forced his feet into trainers without undoing the laces. ‘Right. I’ll be back in fifteen.’
‘I’ll be in the shower, so don’t forget your keys.’
I heard his feet thumping down the stairs and his voice calling for the children to get their coats on because he was taking them to Granny’s in the car, and flopped down on the unmade bed, immediately remembering that I’d left my phone downstairs. The effort of getting up to fetch it, straightening the duvet and hanging up Patch’s wet towel on my way, felt almost too much to bear. Then I remembered my half-drunk coffee and the children’s breakfast plates, the dishwasher still unemptied from the previous night, the load of wet stuff in the washing machine.
The ache that had settled on my heart days before had gradually spread, infecting every muscle and bone in my body so I could only move very slowly; like an old woman, I got up.
But I did nothing about the dishes or the laundry. Instead, I sat down at the kitchen table, surrounded by toast crumbs and butter smears, winced at the taste of my cold, stale coffee and opened WhatsApp.
There’d been no new messages since our greetings half an hour earlier – like me, everyone would have been getting ready for the day. Kate would have spent the night in the converted South East London warehouse where her boyfriend, Daniel, lived, maybe getting up to feed Jigsaw, their kitten – or maybe still in bed having the kind of life-affirming shag that would temporarily banish the shadow of death. Rowan and Alex would be having breakfast with Rowan’s daughter, Clara, assuring her that crying at funerals was fine, everyone did it and there was no shame in it. Abbie and Matt would be getting dressed together in silence, knowing each other’s thoughts so well neither of them needed to say anything, only occasionally locking eyes or touching hands to reassure the other that they were there and they felt the same.
All of us, getting ready for an event we’d dreaded on one level for a long time, but also blindly, bloody-mindedly believed would never happen.
And how do you? I thought despairingly. How do you even prepare for this? You can’t. And it’s not just one day that’ll be over soon, like going to the dentist. It’s one day that’s just a kind of punctuation mark in a story we’ve all been living for years and will have to carry on living forever.
Someone had to get the day’s conversation under way, I thought, and it might as well be me. I knew that when we saw one another later, there’d be tears, reminiscences and laughter – now, though, some instinct told me that what my friends needed was what I needed – a brief interlude of normality.
How’s everyone doing?
I posted.
Patch has taken the kids to his mum’s. God knows whether we’ll get them back – she’ll probably take them to McDonald’s and lose them en route.
There was a pause after my message popped up on the screen. I pictured my friends glancing at their phones, seeing it was me and thinking, I don’t need to leave for an hour and a half. There’s time for a chat . Just the same as I’d thought.
Rowan:
Clara just puked up her breakfast. I’m hoping it’s nerves not bulimia (jokes). I’m kind of tempted to puke mine up too, I feel horrible.
Naomi:
Maybe if I’d spent more time puking I’d have a chance of fitting into that purple dress. Someone bring safety pins.
Abbie:
Matt’s gone for a walk. He didn’t sleep at all last night, just lay there next to me pretending. Of course I was pretending too, so…
Kate:
I’m shitting myself about that reading. What if I cry when I get to the ‘Let me go’ bit?
Abbie:
What Andy would’ve wanted, innit? Max drama. Everyone weeping and rending their garments.
Naomi:
You flinging yourself on top of the coffin demanding to be buried – OK I’ll stop. Too soon, right?
Kate:
Damn it, I’m laughing now. That’s way too dark but you just know Andy would love it.
Rowan:
Has anyone spoken to his mother?
Abbie:
Yep, Matt did yesterday. She’s in bits. He thinks she mostly feels like crap because she and Andy weren’t in touch for so long before it happened. She’s okay with us having organised just about everything – says she’s far too emotionally fragile but actually he reckons she knows she doesn’t have a clue what he’d have wanted.
I raised my eyes from the screen and stared out into the gloomy, barren garden for a moment. The branches of the silver birch tree, naked of leaves, were whipping in the wind. The kids’ plastic toys, which we should have put away in autumn but hadn’t, were up-ended and splattered with mud.
I’d never met Andy’s mother – as far as I knew their relationship had been somewhere between frosty and non-existent for years – but the guilt I imagined she must be feeling now was almost unbearable. I wished I’d kissed my own children goodbye instead of hustling them out of the door with Patch.
Naomi:
And we do know. Right, gang? So come on, let’s get out there and smash it.
Abbie:
We’ve got this. Purple frocks on, chins up, tits out. Those of us that have any tits to speak of, that is.
Kate:
First I need to decide which purple frock to wear. I ordered six off The Outnet and I haven’t tried them on yet.
Rowan:
Give Daniel a fashion show and let him decide.
Naomi:
Hope you bought purple underwear to match.
Kate:
Actually, I hate to admit this but I did. Mad OTT but…
And then Abbie, Rowan and I all typed the same thing at the same time, almost as if we’d been practising.
It’s what Andy would have wanted.
To my amazement, when I put down my phone and went up to get ready, I was actually smiling.