Chapter Nineteen
Grace arrived at the appointed place fifteen minutes later.
Annie had asked to meet at Wrattens on the High Street – a shop selling clothes, jewellery and all kind of ephemera in the front portion, and a café at the back.
She wound her way past a glass display cabinet and through the narrow aisle with colour-coordinated clothes on rails, sidestepping a woman holding a pretty floral shirt against her chest.
‘Sorry,’ said the woman. ‘I’m getting in the way, aren’t I? What do you think?’ She held out the shirt, then screwed up her nose. ‘Too young for me?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Grace, both surprised and flattered to be asked her opinion by a perfect stranger. ‘I think it would suit you beautifully. The greens bring out your eyes.’ She shocked herself with this effusive response, no idea where it came from.
‘Really?’ The woman smiled shyly as she assessed the shirt with narrowed eyes.
Feeling bolder, Grace said, ‘And there’s no such thing as “too young” in my opinion, only clothes you like and clothes you don’t.
I think it suits you, for what it’s worth.
’ The woman’s broadening smile lit a warm candle inside her.
She realized giving another person a boost was rewarding for her too.
Frank did it all the time. If there was a kind word to be said, Frank would be the first one out with it.
Perhaps that’s why Grace never felt the need to speak up before; Frank had it covered.
But he wasn’t here and the world was poorer for it, so it was only right Grace should try to shine out some of the glow she’d always basked in when he was alive.
‘Thank you. I think I’m going to get it. Have a lovely day.’
The woman wandered off to the till and Grace made her way past the clothes rails to the café. She spied Annie sitting at a far table, staring at her phone, an anxious expression on her face. She glanced up and saw Grace. Her lips lifted in a smile as she waved.
Annie stood and hugged Grace, making her feel like a small child. Her face only reached the shoulder of Annie’s striped T-shirt. She smelled her scent of fresh laundry, which mingled with the coffee Grace could smell from the machine behind the counter.
‘Another one?’ asked Grace, pointing at the tall latte glass on the table in front of Annie.
‘No, thank you. I’d be so wired I wouldn’t be able to sit still if I had another.’
‘I know what you mean,’ said Grace. ‘Frank used to have a coffee before he went to bed. Said it was relaxing. Madness.’
Annie nodded vigorously. ‘I know. He’d have coffee at book club, and I’d tell him I’d be up all night because of the caffeine if I had one that late.’
‘It never seemed to affect him at all, strange man.’ Grace smiled at Annie. It was lovely to be able to talk about Frank with someone other than her family.
A few minutes later she came back from the counter with a pot of tea, cup and small jug of milk on a tray, and sat opposite Annie.
Her phone was out on the table, and she was staring at it with glassy eyes.
‘Everything all right?’ Grace was chewing over whether to ask about the urgency of this meeting.
It was possible Annie was simply at a loose end, but it didn’t feel like it.
‘I just needed to get out of the house.’
‘I know that feeling.’ Grace poured a splash of milk into the bottom of the cup, then tried the tea.
As she suspected, it wasn’t yet stewed and dribbled out in a pale brown stream.
She lifted the lid and stirred the bag in the hot water with a teaspoon.
She glanced up at Annie, then back at the job in hand.
‘Forgive me if I’m wrong, but you don’t seem quite yourself.
’ That might have been overstepping the mark.
She didn’t know what Annie was ordinarily like, only that she had an air of sadness about her now which Grace hadn’t detected before.
Annie let out a sigh. ‘I don’t want to be a moaning Minnie.’
‘It’s not moaning if it’s telling a friend how you feel,’ said Grace, once again hoping she wasn’t being presumptuous.
‘I’ve tried to keep it in,’ said Annie. ‘No one wants to spend time with someone who’s always down, do they? There’s that thing about people either being drains or radiators, isn’t there? Do you know what I mean?’
‘Some people suck away your life force and others give out energy?’ Grace wondered which one she was.
‘Yes, that’s it. I always try to be a radiator, but …’ Annie seemed to deflate. ‘I’m finding it a bit harder at the moment.’
‘If it helps, the few times I’ve met you, you’ve given off nothing but radiator vibes, as my grandson might say.’
Annie smiled. ‘That’s nice, thank you.’
‘So, the room’s already warm because of your general radiator-ness. If you need to open the door and let a little heat out, that’s okay.’ Grace shook her head. ‘That’s not a great metaphor, but I hope you get my gist.’
‘I think it’s an excellent metaphor,’ said Annie, sitting a little straighter.
‘Get ready for the draught.’ They both laughed, turning when a toddler shrieked.
Grace saw a red-faced mother trying to manhandle the child into a highchair.
Every time one chubby leg was successfully manoeuvred into place, the other would pop out, kicking its little red shoe.
Grace caught the woman’s eyes as she glanced nervously around the café and gave her a warm smile, hoping it conveyed ‘don’t worry, we’ve all been there’ vibes.
She turned her attention back to Annie, who took a deep breath. ‘It’s my Jack.’
Grace nodded. She’d suspected as much.
‘He’s depressed.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ Questions swirled in Grace’s head, but she stayed quiet and waited for Annie to say more.
‘He’s a master carpenter and he loved his job, but the company he worked for mainly made stuff to order from abroad, and after Brexit …
anyway, he was made redundant, and he’s fifty-seven years old with a dying trade to his name and …
’ She rubbed a finger between her eyebrows.
‘The depression. It’s not like he’s just sad, it’s like …
like he’s disappearing in front of my eyes. ’
‘Disappearing?’
‘Like everything that made him “him” has seeped away leaving an empty shell behind. It sounds weird, I know, and I shouldn’t complain, not when your Frank …’
‘It’s not a competition,’ Grace said. ‘A wise man once told me that if someone is going through something painful, just because someone else is suffering something objectively more traumatic, it doesn’t negate the feelings of the first person.’
‘Was that wise man Frank?’
Grace smiled. ‘How did you guess? Now, tell me more about Jack. If you want to, that is.’
Annie’s eyes filmed with tears. ‘I knew he was very low before the end of the spring term. I’m a classroom assistant, by the way, up at Red Hill Primary, that’s why I’m around at four in the afternoon.’
Grace nodded. She could clearly imagine Annie perched on a tiny school chair, helping small children with their numbers and reading.
‘He was made redundant soon after Christmas, and even though it was hard on him, I thought he’d bounce back, you know?
But he got a couple of knock-backs when he applied for jobs, and then he just stopped trying.
By Easter, I hardly recognized him. He stopped shaving, started to stay in bed longer in the mornings.
Now he hardly even talks.’ She stirred a long spoon around the remnants of her latte.
‘And it’s just getting worse.’ She looked at her phone.
‘I messaged him when I got here, asking if he was up and if he needed anything from the shops, but he hasn’t replied. ’
That explained why she’d been scrutinizing her phone. ‘What have the doctors said?’
Annie closed her eyes. ‘He won’t go.’
‘But—’
Annie put her hand up. ‘I know. I know. I’ve tried everything I can, but he refuses.
He’s a proud man. Whenever I say he’s got to see someone, he says he’ll battle through it himself.
“Give me time,” he says. “I’ll get there.
I’ll pull myself together, just let me do it my way,” but it’s not as simple as that, is it?
Depression isn’t about pulling yourself together. ’
Grace shook her head. ‘It’s about brain chemistry as much as anything else.
’ She thought again about Jude. Was his condition brain chemistry?
It couldn’t just be that because of what the doctor said about hypermobility.
She’d already done some scrolling on the topic and decided to do more research to find out.
‘Exactly.’ Annie flung her arm out, surprising the woman to her left, who jumped, then went back to her slab of chocolate cake. ‘He seems to think it’s weakness, like he should be able to sort his own head out, but I’ve told him, sometimes we all need a bit of help.’
‘If he had a broken leg, he’d go to the doctor.’
‘Yes.’ Annie flung her arm out again and the woman eating the chocolate cake shuffled her chair further away. ‘I knew you’d understand.’
‘Jude’s been diagnosed with ADHD,’ said Grace, ashamed that she still had to force herself to make the disclosure. ‘So brain chemistry and all that comes with it has rather come to the fore in my family too.’
‘Has he? Bless him. I bet you wish he’d got that diagnosis years ago, don’t you? Better late than never. A few of my little ones at work have it and it’s good that we know what’s going on so we can make sure they’re learning the best way for them.’
Why hadn’t that been Grace’s response? Of course it was a good thing.
Jude said he felt better now he was taking the medication.
What a fool she’d been for resisting it and even more so in being ashamed, and complicit in the stigma.
Right-minded people like Annie saw it for what it was, just a difference, and one that more people needed to be made aware of.
‘Yes, the meds have been good for him. He’s doing brilliantly. Now, what can I do to help you?’
Annie’s shoulders dropped. ‘I wish I knew. I haven’t told anyone because it feels like I’m being disloyal, do you know what I mean?’
Grace nodded. She understood.
‘I didn’t want to tell people at work because the teachers have got enough on with thirty-two kids running around and every parent thinking theirs is the only one in the class.
’ She took a sip of coffee. ‘Not that I’m criticizing.
We decided not to have kids, but I can imagine you’re bound to think your own is the be-all and end-all. It’s only natural, isn’t it?’
Grace smiled. She didn’t interject because Annie’s words felt like they were being flushed out, like they’d been held in too long and now the stream was free-flowing at last.
‘And, if I’m being completely honest, I’m a bit ashamed myself. That’s awful, isn’t it?’
Grace understood the sentiment completely and was in awe of Annie being brave enough to admit it. ‘It’s not awful. It’s just human.’
Annie carried on, ‘I was always dead proud of my Jack. He was a good-looking man, and he never talked a lot, but what he said was worth listening to, you know? But now I don’t want to bring anyone to the house because he would feel like he had to make conversation and he’s not up to it at the moment.
’ She lowered her voice. ‘And he keeps wearing these awful jogging bottoms. If I ask him to get changed, he says there’s no point because he isn’t going anywhere.
’ Her voice cracked. Grace placed her hand on top of Annie’s.
‘But I want him to want to make the effort not only for himself, but for me. I want to be worth sticking a pair of jeans on for. I’m not asking him to wear a dinner suit and dickie-bow, a clean T-shirt’d do.’
Grace squeezed Annie’s hand. ‘I understand.’
There were tears in Annie’s eyes. ‘I knew you would. I don’t know why, but I just knew.’
‘What can I do to help?’
Annie sat back and ran her hand through her grey-blonde hair.
‘I wish I knew. If you think of something, I’m all ears, but short of getting him sectioned so he’d have no choice but to see a doctor, I can’t think of anything anyone can do.
’ She leaned forwards and lowered her voice.
‘I don’t think you can get someone sectioned for wearing manky trousers, although if I had my way, that’d be top of the list.’ There was the hint of a smile on her lips.
‘The very top,’ said Grace conspiratorially, hoping her eyes conveyed the sympathy she felt.
‘I feel better for just talking to you,’ said Annie.
‘I know it’s a cliché, but it feels like a weight’s been lifted.
I’m sure he’ll be all right. He needs a bit of time, that’s all.
It’s the least I can give him after all the good years we’ve had.
It’ll be fine. I really do feel better for getting that off my chest. Thanks, Grace. ’
Grace looked into the eyes of her new friend, and she could see it was true.
If she’d tried to share her feelings over the last twelve months, would she have been able to climb out of the darkness a little sooner?
She would never know. But she had the opportunity to share Annie’s load now, and even the thought of it made the room seem a little brighter.