The Two Lives of Lydia Bird(29)

Grief is an odd thing. It’s mine and no one can do it for me, but there’s been this whole supporting cast of silent actors around me in the wings. I mentally add my colleagues to the list of people I need to thank properly somewhere down the line. My mum and Elle are in capitals at the top, of course, and all my neighbours who nip in for a cuppa, and now Julia, Dawn, Ryan and Phil. A casserole from the family three doors down, a ‘How are you coping, lass?’ card from the old man over the road who lost his wife not long after we moved in. Even Jonah dragging me to that damned grief workshop.

‘I was serious about that biscuit,’ Ryan says, handing me my pink plastic box when we all decamp to the canteen for lunch. There are five mismatched chairs around the table, and after we’re all seated, Phil raises his mug of tea.

‘Good not to have an empty seat any more,’ he says, and they all nod and lift their cups. Hot tears prickle my eyes, and to cover I open my lunchbox and toss the biscuit to Ryan.

‘Don’t tell my mum I gave you that,’ I say, sticking the straw in my Ribena. The taste takes me straight back to school, to lunch with Freddie and Jonah, and today I choose to smile rather than let the tears slide down my cheeks. If I’m the lead actor, then the show must go on.





Saturday 23 June


‘I’ve been back at work for three weeks already,’ I say, sitting cross-legged on the sun-scorched cemetery grass. It’s shaping up to be an unusually reliable summer. There are mutterings of a hosepipe ban if the weather doesn’t break soon.

‘In some ways it feels as if I’ve never been away. Ryan’s on his third date in as many weeks and Julia’s still cracking the whip.’

Freddie had a bit of a love–hate relationship with Julia. His loud conviviality irritated the hell out of her, and her ruthless, get-it-done-yesterday streak wound him up – probably because he was actually quite similar. Underneath it all, though, lay mutual affection; she mothered him and he charmed her. He always reckoned she was one of those women who liked her man to wear a collar and lead in the bedroom, which I have to admit I can easily imagine.

‘Mum’s finally stopped making my lunch too,’ I laugh softly. ‘Good job. I was getting addicted to Ribena.’

I’ve brought hydrangeas from Elle’s garden today, blowsy pink and purple blooms.

‘Phil’s asked me to be Ryan’s line manager,’ I say, poking a flower into the vase. ‘I think he’s trying to make me feel indispensable.’ I’m nervous about it, but I’m still trying to channel Meghan Markle. I might have to invest in a jacket with shoulder pads.

‘I had my hair cut last week.’ I take the band out and shake my head, letting my hair fall heavy around my shoulders. ‘Just a trim, really. No one’s noticed.’ I didn’t expect anyone to; I only had the ends off, same as always. Any more than that and I’d have an identity crisis.

‘I haven’t seen anything of Jonah lately,’ I say, because I feel obliged to update him with news of his best friend. I’ve had the benefit of a few weeks to turn over Jonah’s revelations at the grief session and look at them from every angle, and I can grudgingly understand why he did what he did. No one else was hurt or otherwise involved; the only thing that stood to be permanently tarnished by the truth was Freddie’s memory. Loyal to the end, Jonah didn’t want his friend to receive a dishonourable discharge from life.

‘I left a voice message for him last week, but he hasn’t replied.’

I’m not all that surprised, to be honest. My message on Jonah’s mobile was short to the point of curt; I just couldn’t summon the right words to express myself. I think I apologized for not being in touch sooner, and I almost certainly said something ambiguous about understanding what he’d done. It probably sounded pious, as if I thought he needed my absolution or something, which wasn’t my intention at all, but I didn’t have it in me to delete and rerecord.

‘I’m just so angry at the needlessness, Freddie,’ I whisper. It’s been a huge mental adjustment to come to terms with the idea that Freddie’s own carelessness was a contributor to his death. He’s still gone however you look at it, but there was something almost comforting about blaming it on the weather.

‘I haven’t told anyone else,’ I say. ‘Not Mum, or Elle.’

What would be the point? I haven’t felt any better for knowing the truth, so why burden them with it too? They’ll just worry about me even more, and I hate the idea of them thinking even a millionth of a per cent less of Freddie. So I’ve sealed the news up and tossed it into the oceans in my head, a message in a bottle that will hopefully never wash up on the shore for anyone else to read.

‘I should probably go,’ I say, sprinkling the leftover water in my bottle over the parched earth around Freddie’s stone. ‘I’m going into town with Elle this afternoon.’

As I sit in the silence, I wonder what we’re doing now in my other life. So much happens there that I’m not privy to, my weekly visits are partly spent trying to subtly catch up on what I’ve missed. I lay my hand on the granite stone and close my eyes, conjuring up Freddie’s face, his scent, his smile. I imagine his arms around me, his kiss warm on the back of my neck.

‘See you soon, my love.’

It’s so hot in here. In fact, I think we can all just declare that we live in a hot country now. We’re basically Spain, except we drink more tea and eat dinner earlier. There will be no more winter coats or perpetual moans about the weather because we live in a world of wall-to-wall sunshine and itsy-bitsy clothes.