The Two Lives of Lydia Bird(15)

‘Don’t do it,’ I blurt, too loud, too panicky.

They both look at me, startled by my unexpected outburst.

‘Spur of the moment decision. There was a “for sale” photo pinned to the board in the staffroom,’ he says, looking slowly away from me to Freddie, choosing to let my words go uncommented on. He must think I’ve lost it. ‘Off Gripper Grimes, of all people.’

Freddie barks with laughter. ‘You’re buying a motorbike off Gripper Grimes?’

Gripper Grimes taught us all maths. He earned his nickname from the way he picked kids up by the scruff of their shirt collar to haul them out of class; Freddie most often of all. It’s strange hearing Jonah speak of the teachers who terrorized us as kids as his colleagues now.

‘You won’t believe this thing when you see it.’ Jonah’s eyes glow. ‘Classic Norton Manx. He’s barely had it out the garage since he bought it new.’

From what I recall of Gripper Grimes, he wasn’t exactly a wind-in-his-sideburns, open-roads kind of man.

‘He always drove that knackered old white Volvo,’ Freddie recalls.

Jonah nods. ‘Still does, mate.’

‘No way!’

Jonah nods again. ‘Serviced twice a year and looked after. Made to last, like his wife, he says.’

I’m amazed Gripper is even still alive, let alone making seventies-style jokes about the long-suffering Mrs Grimes. He must have sailed past retirement age back when he taught us; that he’s still teaching, and even more that he’s still driving, is a shock.

Freddie flicks the TV over to the pre-match warm-up, the pundits on the sidelines with competitively big microphones interviewing anyone they can lay their hands on. I’m suddenly hot and feel as if I might be sick; a hangover and talking to your dead fiancé will do that to a girl. Lurching to my feet, I mumble something about the bathroom and make a dash for the stairs.

Ten minutes later I grab the sink and haul myself up off my knees, relieved to have flushed the contents of my stomach down the loo. I rinse my mouth out and stare at my reflection in the mirrored cabinet over the sink. Christ, I look hideous. Fresh tear tracks from throwing up streak through the mascara stains already on my cheeks. And that’s when I notice I’m wearing the tiny enamel bluebird pendant my mum gave me for my eighteenth. I didn’t put it on this morning. I couldn’t have.

I lost it five years ago.

‘Better?’ Freddie says, glancing up at me when I go back downstairs.

I nod and raise a lack-lustre smile. ‘Need something to eat, I think.’

‘Line your stomach,’ Freddie says, his attention already back on the game.

‘Pizza?’ Jonah nods towards the box flipped open on the coffee table.

The sight of congealing cheese sets my stomach churning again. ‘Think I better stick to toast,’ I say, my fingertips clutched around the bluebird nestled in the space between my collarbones. I’m so glad to see it again. I lost it in a club; I didn’t even miss it until the next day. It wasn’t especially valuable to anyone except me, but of course no one had handed it in. My brain is trying to piece together what it means that I still have it here.

Sitting at the kitchen table, I lay my head on my folded arms and just listen; to Freddie’s animated match commentary and Jonah laughingly telling him to calm down before he has a heart attack, to the clink of beer bottles being opened and slid on to the glass coffee table Freddie loved and I never really liked, the life I used to take for granted carrying on regardless of the fact that Freddie died fifty-eight days ago.

It’s too much for my hung-over brain to handle. I don’t want toast, or water, or to wake up and find he isn’t here, so I just go back through to the living room and sit on the floor beside Freddie’s chair, my head against his knee. He absently strokes my hair and makes a joke about me not being able to hold my drink, and he’s too engrossed in the game to notice the damp patch on the knee of his jeans from my tears. I hide my face in my hair and close my eyes, too tired to do anything but press myself against his warm solidity. I don’t think there can be much time left in the football match; I try to focus on my watch, but my eyes are bleary. Go home, Jonah Jones, I think. Go home so I can lie out on the sofa beside Freddie and ask him about his day; I need to listen to the rumble of his chest against my ear as he speaks. He winds my hair around his fingers, and I battle, properly battle, not to fall asleep, but it’s no good. My eyelids are lead-lined. I can’t seem to lift them, even though I’m desperate to stay awake, because I’m missing him already.





Saturday 12 May


This is hideous. I’ve just woken up alone in the living room, water rather than beers on the table, no cold pizza and no Freddie. This. This is why I don’t go to sleep. Because waking up and remembering that he’s dead all over again is too cruel, too harrowing. The price of dreaming about him is higher than I could ever hope to pay; it’s a higher price than anyone should ever have to pay. For no logical reason, fragments of Tennyson’s most famous poem still lodged in my brain from school roll around inside my head as I lie on the sofa trying to summon the will to get up: ‘’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’ – that one, the only one everyone knows. Well, Tennyson my friend, I bet your wife didn’t wrap herself around a tree and leave you all Billy-no-mates, did she? Because if she had, you might have thought it more prudent not to love at all. I sigh, feeling uncharitable, because I also recall from my studies that Tennyson wrote the poem while grieving for his beloved best friend, so perhaps his heart did go through the wringer somewhat too. I wonder if he cried as much as I have. It’s cathartic sometimes, crying, and at other times it’s the loneliest thing in the world, knowing no one is coming to give me a consolation hug. I don’t fight it when tears run down my face again right now, for poor old Tennyson, and for poor old me.