Postscript(30)

Once upon a time I wanted to die.

When Gerry died, I wanted to be dead.

When he died, a piece of me did die, but a part of me was born too.

But in the midst of my grief, if I had been faced with a speeding oncoming car, I would have wanted to live. Perhaps it is not death that angers or scares us, it’s the fact that we have no control over it. Life cannot just be taken away from us without our consent. Given time, and our permission having been granted, we would accept our fate and plot our own timely deaths. But we can’t. All of which thinking brings me back again and again to the PS, I Love You Club.

Play dead to survive.

Play at living while dead.

We want to control our deaths, our goodbye to the world, and if we can’t control it, we can at least control how we leave it behind.





14


Gabriel is quiet at breakfast. I arrived at his house late last night, just as he was going to bed, and I joined him, thankful there were no stairs to negotiate. At my parents’ home I’d been going upstairs on my bum nightly like Gretl von Trapp singing ‘So Long, Farewell’. We didn’t talk, at least not about what we last argued about, and then I slept, Gabriel didn’t. I could tell each time I opened my eyes and found him sitting up reading through his phone. Either my accident has affected him deeply, or our argument, or I’m being na?ve and there’s something else on his mind. He stands at the island, naked from the waist up, concentrating intently on his boiled eggs.

‘Are you OK?’

He doesn’t answer.

‘Gabriel?’

‘Hmm?’ He looks up.

‘Everything OK?’

‘My boiled eggs are hard,’ he says, studying them again. His toast pops. It’s burnt. He sighs dramatically, joking, ‘It’s going to be this kind of day.’

I smile. He butters the toast, sending cremated crumbs all over the counter.

‘You’re going to help the PS, I Love You Club, aren’t you?’ he says, sensing my thoughts.

‘Yes.’

He’s silent. He moves his boiled eggs and toast to the breakfast bar at the edge of the island and sits on a high stool. Calm face, busy head. He picks up the toast that’s been cut into neat soldiers and dips it into the egg. The toast bends. It doesn’t dip into the yolk as he likes, doesn’t send it oozing down the side of the shell and cup for his finger to wipe and lick.

‘Fuck,’ he says angrily, and drops the toast.

His outburst gives me a fright, though I was dreading this reaction from my usually cool-headed boyfriend.

‘I have to get dressed,’ he says, then makes his way to the bedroom.

‘Don’t you want to talk about it?’

He stops midway. ‘You’ve already decided. I’ve figured you out. Long silences and not talking for months on end means you’re making your own decisions. That’s fine, that’s how you and me will function from now on. Let’s just do our own thing and let each other know after.’

He disappears into the bedroom. As I am breathing out slowly, he appears in the doorway to the living room, top still off. ‘Not so long ago you got hit by a car, Holly, probably because you were thinking about this club and weren’t paying attention to what you were doing. You shouldn’t make rash decisions after something like that.’

‘It’s not rash. It was over a week ago, and sometimes frights make you think faster, with more focus. I can see it more clearly than ever. There is absolutely no reason why helping them would make me revert to who I was. It’s an entirely different set of circumstances. I can help them. And anyway, the accident wasn’t my fault, the taxi pulled out, I couldn’t have avoided it.’

‘What did you tell me the night you came home from the podcast? If I ever decide to do this again, stop me. I remember that, you might not. You’ve been through enough. God knows what the hell you’re thinking after what happened to you.’

‘I think that this will help me.’

‘You’re doing this for you? Or for them?’

‘For all of us.’

He throws his arms up. ‘You almost got run over by a car!’

‘It bumped me. I hurt my ankle, not my head! But at least my recuperation has given you more time to spend with Kate and Ava,’ I snap.

My catty response is not quite how I wanted to mention the amount of time Gabriel has been spending with his daughter and ex-wife since the accident. I shouldn’t throw it at him as a negative because I know time with his daughter is what he’s been craving since I met him. Though it was my decision to stay with Mum and Dad for the week, it grated on my nerves a little bit more each time he was out with them.

‘I’m not getting back together with Kate, if you’re jealous.’

‘And I’m not getting back with Gerry, if you’re jealous.’

He calms and smiles at that. He runs his hand through his hair.

‘But why?’ he asks simply. ‘Why do you choose to be surrounded by so much … death?’

‘I’m not going to run away from it and pretend that it hasn’t affected me. I see this as a positive way of dealing with it. Gabriel, I’m not going to let this club affect us, if that’s what you’re worried about?’

‘Yet we’re arguing. Now. About us. Because of them.’