Chapter Sixteen
Abbey
The darkness surrounded me as soon as the light from my phone shut down. I took a deep breath, and it stuttered in my chest. It almost felt impossible that she was not in the world any-more. How could someone so large in our lives be suddenly gone?
We had lost people before, Kate and I. Our mum passed away the year before Kate left school. She’d had a stroke in her sleep and never woke up. Then Dad had a heart attack the year after Ella was born.
The difference was that Gran had been there for us. She had been there every day of our lives.
Grief could sometimes take its time. You could think you were doing fine, only for it to kick your arse unexpectedly, always at the wrong time, like being overcome by tears reaching for pasta sauce or explaining your mum’s lasagne recipe to a work colleague.
Or, like Nick, grief could hold you and you could build your life around it, protecting its vice-like grip, thinking that in doing so you would never let it touch you again.
But, really, it was just that you had never let it go.
I unlocked my screen and my hand hovered over his name.
The temptation to call him and let him comfort me almost overwhelmed me.
I knew he would come. He was in love with me, he just couldn’t say it.
I would bury myself in his arms and I could let him take care of the details.
Let him rescue me, save me, prop me up. It would not change anything between us, though.
It was not enough for me to know I was loved. I wanted to hear it and feel it every day. I wanted his bravery and his vulnerability. I wanted him fun and sad. Silly and smart.
The walls he had built around his life for his protection were impenetrable from the outside – he had to want to take them down from the inside of his safe, sad space. It was not something I could do for him.
He needed to decide. To choose me. He needed to choose to be loved and to know those choices were worth the risk of losing everything, that I was worth the risk. But only he could make those choices. I could not make them for him.
I had made the mistake of moulding myself and my needs in a relationship before.
Pretending everything was fine when it wasn’t.
Thinking that being easygoing meant letting go of things that were important to me.
I was dreadfully unhappy in that relationship, and Peter was miserable.
And, I don’t know, if he hadn’t had the affair, maybe it would have taken me years to work that out. What a bloody, horrifying thought.
I would not do the same thing again. It was time for me to find someone in my life who loved me as I was, even when I did not agree with them, even when I needed space.
I’d hoped with every cell in my body it would be Nick, but I could not control that he had chosen to avoid a life of being loved, fulfilled and cared for. He had chosen his grief.
I looked at my phone again, deciding to call Kate soon but not yet, as she would be sleeping.
Gran was so wrong about Kate, thinking she would be unemotional.
Kate and Gran were sidekicks, partners in crime.
Gran thought Kate was the younger version of her, and Kate thought that too, but I knew Kate had this huge molten centre. She would be devastated.
I climbed out of bed, wrapping myself in a cardigan and pulling on socks against the chill of the morning, and padded silently down the hall to Ella’s room.
I slid under the covers, wrapping my arms around her while she slept in oblivious peace.
I watched her steady breath rising and falling, just as I had watched her as a newborn.
She had been the most perfect baby: chubby and content.
She would yawn the minute I began to wrap her.
She loved routine and rules, but she loved cuddles above all things.
I felt an ache in my heart for tiny hands and feet, the baby I had grown within me, this perfect, perfect child, who was now growing into this extraordinary woman.
There was a little bit of Iris in her for certain, a little bit of Kate too.
There was a little bit of me and then there was just her.
I would spend every day for the rest of my life telling her that the bits that were her were the most important and beautiful things in the world and that she should never, ever change them for a boy.
Even one she loved. Especially one she loved.
Ella’s eyelashes fluttered, and she woke up slowly. She had always been a good sleeper, and she took her time opening her eyes, sensing my body and then snuggling into it.
‘Hi, Mumma,’ she whispered. ‘Is everything okay?’
‘Morning, baby.’ I pressed a kiss into her golden hair. She smelled like strawberries from a body oil she was currently obsessed with.
‘Have I slept in?’ Ella croaked out, confused.
‘No, baby, you don’t need to go to school today.’ I took a breath, preparing myself to say it out loud for the first time, making it real. ‘Ella, Gran passed away in her sleep this morning, honey. I’m so sorry, baby.’
‘Gran’s gone?’
‘Yeah, hon.’
‘Was it cardiac arrest, Mum?’
‘I don’t know, sweetheart. It probably was, though.’
‘Too many racy novels.’
‘Too many husbands. Maybe her heart did too much loving.’
‘Yeah, I don’t think medically that is the case, though, Mum. Oh, this is the worst. I miss her already.’ Ella snuggled deeper, throwing an arm around me tight. She took a huge sniffle, and I brushed her hair with my hand, tucking her under my chin. ‘Will we sit shivah, Mum?’
‘We’re not Jewish, Ella.’
‘Obviously. I know. But they did it on Grey’s Anatomy. It’s seven days of mourning. The family together. Don’t you think that’s nice?’
‘It does sound like a nice thing. I’m not sure about seven days all together. Maybe we’ll sit shivah today then.’
‘I think you’re supposed to have a funeral first.’
‘Baby, Grandma Iris did not want a funeral. She wanted a party, with good-looking waiters serving cocktail food.’
‘Oh, that sounds like Gran.’
‘Yeah.’ I smiled and held back tears. ‘Are you okay, Ella? You can come and talk to me anytime if you’re sad. It’s okay to be sad, honey.’
‘What happens when you’re sad, Mum? Who do you talk to?’
I sighed. ‘I guess I have Aunt Kate.’
‘What about Nick, Mum?’
Nick.
‘I’ve got to call your Aunty Kate, babe, and then she’ll be here soon. You stay in bed snuggled up and I’ll bring you a hot chocolate.’
In the end, the call to Kate was brief. She choked out that she would head straight over. I phoned Peter to let him know what was going on and then Monica, to let her know that I would not be in and leave some instructions.
I showered, standing under the water for the longest time, letting my sorrow drain a little.
Kate arrived about forty minutes later, with bags of groceries and floods of tears, determined to cook each of Iris’s favourite things for us. Another hour later there were batches of biscuits cooling, a cake in the oven and a soup on the stove.
‘Abbey, it’s your birthday tomorrow,’ Kate said sadly.
‘There’ll be other years to celebrate,’ I said, not even remotely sad to forego celebrating forty-three.
The doorbell rang, and the three of us looked at each other. I could see us all calculating who on earth it could be, given that everyone who was required there by blood was already present.
I found myself getting annoyed, thinking it was Peter, who I definitely did not want to see today, and I marched to the door to get rid of him.
When I opened the door, I stood shocked and then I was overcome with emotion. Ollie was there on the porch, his wheelchair being pushed by Jacinta, the nanny, with Evelyn and Summer behind him and Lionel in between them, resting on his walking frame.
‘Oh, Abs. I’m so sorry. She was a fantastic old girl. We’re here to sit shivah. Ella invited Summer. I didn’t know you were Jewish,’ Ollie said.
I scanned their faces, looking for him, but he wasn’t there, and I had to swallow my disappointment and grief over that.
‘Oh, Abs, I’m sorry. He left for England this morning. I rang him, but he must have already been on the plane. He would have been here if he had known. I hope you know that.’
So he was gone then. Weird. I thought I would be able to feel it in myself when we were no longer on the same continent. Fuck. Losing the two of them in one day. That was a lot.
I felt my eyes fill with tears and then I reached over and hugged Ollie, mostly because I couldn’t hug Nick, but also because, after everything, I loved him like family.
I let them in, greeting each of them with hugs and kisses, especially Lionel.
I did not know how on earth the Northbys had broken him out for the day, but I suspected he was better off here amongst other people who loved Iris as much as he had.
Evelyn immediately made herself at home in the kitchen and started making tea to go with Kate’s ‘lovely biscuits’, and when we sat down to eat and drink, the mood became solemn for the briefest of times.
But everyone seemed to lift a little with each bite of biscuit or cake, and Kate and I began to tell stories of Iris from our childhood.
Spending summers with her on the south coast, how she was absolutely, fabulously lucky while fishing and how she would just turn up to a wharf with all the equipment, appear slightly confused for about a minute and then some random friendly fisher-bloke would come over and bait us all up.
How she took us to the doctor on our sixteenth birthday so we could get birth control and gave us talks about sexual freedom and body confidence.
How she introduced us to old black-and-white movies and gothic literature.
Lionel spoke about how the nursing home’s book club and artistry association would sorely miss her. And he would miss her for the rest of his life.