After the End(108)

“I know.”

We eat our picnic, then Grace becomes restless, and I send her with Max to run down the hill to the playground. I put away the food, and tip out Grace’s leftover juice, and when everything is tidy, and I’ve checked the ground for rubbish, I sit on Dylan’s bench. A butterfly flits across the top of a cowslip.

“I took your trike out of the loft for Gracie. Do you remember it? It had a handle on the back, so we could push you around when your legs got tired. Grace loves it. I told her it was yours. I talk to her about you all the time, you know. She doesn’t understand—not yet—but she will.” I look down the hill to the playground, where Grace is perched on the roundabout. Max is pushing her slowly round, one hand on her shoulder. I imagine her telling him More, Dada, more!

“I wish . . .” I rub my thumb across the grain of the bench. “I wish I knew for certain what would have happened.” I think of Dr. Leila Khalili, sitting in the café around the corner from the hospital. I could have been wrong . . . But I could have been right. “Should we have taken you to America?” My voice rises a notch. “Would the treatment have worked? Would I be buying you a new bike for your birthday, instead of—”

I break off. This isn’t what I want this place to be. I want this bench to be a happy place, where Max and I—and Grace, when she’s older—can come alone, or together, and think about the happy times we had with our beautiful boy. I want people to pause awhile, resting their legs after the climb from the park, enjoying the flowers that wouldn’t be here if Dylan had lived. And if they notice the silver plaque, and if they take in the dates, and realise our boy was little more than a baby, then I hope it reminds them that life is short, and that tonight they will hug their own children a little tighter. Because I would give anything for one more cuddle with my boy.



* * *





In the playground Grace has made a friend—a boy a little younger than her—whose mother stands nearby, talking on her phone. They dig in the bark chippings, making piles and then running around them until they fall over. Max and I lean on the railings and watch.

“All this play equipment, and she wants to play in the dirt,” he says, secretly delighted. And then, from nowhere, “Chester wants me to head up the US office. It’s a promotion, of sorts. Less travelling, more strategy.”

I’m silent for a while. “What will you say?”

“No, of course. Grace is here.” But he answered too fast, too unequivocally, and if he had no doubt, then why tell me at all?

“What does Blair think?”

Max digs the tip of his shoe into the bark chippings. “I spend as much time with her as I can, but she finds it hard, not living together all the time. It’s . . .” He looks for the word that will explain the situation to me without being disloyal. “It puts a strain on our relationship.”

“Do you want the job?” I see Max about to speak, and I hold up my hand. “Ignoring the location, is the actual job something you want to do?”

“Hell yes. It’s perfect. I’m sick of travelling, Pip, sick of living out of a suitcase. I want to wake up in the same place every day, play soccer . . .”

I look at Grace. She already talks to Max on Skype when he’s away, or at his flat. Would it be any different if Max were in Chicago? “You should take it.”

“No. It wouldn’t be fair.”

“It’s where you’re from, Max. Where your parents are. You moved to England because you married me, but . . .” But we’re not married any more. “Grace and I could visit all the time—I can use my staff travel passes.” I touch his arm and he looks at me. “Don’t say no just because of us. You need to live your own life, too.”

“What about you, then? How’s Lars?” As always, it sounds strange to hear Max say his name.

“He’s fine. We just booked a holiday, actually. We’re going camping in the Lake District.”

“We never did do that, did we?” There’s a touch of bitterness in Max’s voice, and I feel like a bitch. I didn’t need to tell him where we were going—didn’t need to remind him he’d promised to take me. I cast around for something to say to level the scales.

“He wants us to get married, but I don’t want to.” I’m stretching the truth. Lars has talked about marriage, on several occasions, but he’s never put pressure on me, and I’ve never given a definitive no. I suppose I just want to show Max that not everything is green on my side of the fence, either.

“Why not?”

I shrug. If I haven’t been able to give Lars a convincing reason, I doubt I can give Max one.

“You need to live your own life, too.” He gives me a lopsided grin.

“Touché.” I laugh. “Look at us, being all grown-up. Like the poster couple for amicable divorce.”

Max doesn’t join in. He turns away and looks at Grace, playing so nicely with her new friend, and I know that in his head it isn’t a stranger’s son playing with her, but our son. Our Dylan. Because that’s what I’m seeing, too.

“I wish things had been different.”

“The doctors did what they thought—”

Max turns. “No, not Dylan. You and me.” He looks away again. “I wish things had been different for us.”