Postscript(49)

‘I am leaving my comfort zone, Gerry. I’m marrying you, you absolute psycho.’

‘Nice,’ he says, straightening up.

He leaves the flat and I don’t see him for two days.

I’m still daydreaming on the couch when my phone rings and Denise’s profile image, wide-eyed, with a chocolate profiterole stuffed halfway into her mouth, fills my screen.

‘The package has been delivered,’ she says, mysteriously.

‘Thanks, Dee Nee, I appreciate it. I hope Ginika was OK with you. She’s not comfortable with anyone other than herself being with Jewel. She’s at the early stages with a foster family and she’s understandably struggling.’

‘God love her, it breaks my heart. She seems excited about the lessons though.’

‘Really? That’s good, but I’m not sure how we’re doing, because I don’t actually know what I’m doing. I’m following the textbooks but I’d really prefer for her sake if she went to a tutor.’

‘Why don’t you help her write the words from the letter? Why do you have to teach her from scratch?’

‘Because that’s what she wants. She doesn’t want anybody to know the contents of the letter, and she wants to achieve this herself.’

‘The learning is almost as big as the letter itself. It means she has control over something in her life for once. And if, when the time comes and she can’t write the letter entirely by herself, you can always help her. Don’t feel like this is the only goal here.’

‘True.’

Silence, apart from the indicator as she drives.

‘Denise?’

‘Yep.’

‘Do you know why Gerry sent us to Lanzarote?’

‘Wow. Your mind is travelling tonight.’

‘Ginika asked me something that got me thinking.’

‘Well, let me think …’ She clears her throat.

It was the July letter. The fifth letter. A simple Have a good Holly day! PS, I Love You … with instructions to visit a specific travel agent. He’d booked a holiday for me, Denise and Sharon, through a travel agent on 28 November, a day during a time that he should not have left his bed. He had a taxi waiting outside the travel agent. Barbara the travel agent had told me the story, under duress, more than twenty times.

‘Didn’t you tell us it was where you were both going to go on honeymoon? It was like he was giving you a second honeymoon? Am I right?’

‘It’s where I wanted to go on our honeymoon.’

‘Yeah. That’s nice.’

Silence.

‘And the dolphins. The next letter was about seeing dolphins.’

The August letter. He’d led me to a spot where you could view them from the beach.

‘I can’t quite remember the reason for that one, did you always want to see dolphins?’

‘No. See, that’s the thing. I didn’t want to see dolphins. He did.’

‘Well, you didn’t want to do karaoke again either, as far as I remember.’

‘No.’

‘I suppose the point of some of his letters was to take you out of your comfort zone.’

The phrase jolts me.

You need to leave your comfort zone, Holly. Be braver! Be exciting! Open your mind!

I muse on the concerns I’ve never shared with anyone before, concerns I’ve always brushed aside until the past few months when I’ve been forced to re-examine Gerry’s letters for the sole purpose of guiding the PS, I Love You Club. The process is making me see his letters differently, in ways that mostly make me feel uncomfortable. ‘Do you think that that particular letter, and that trip, was like a “fuck you”?’ Why dolphins?

‘How could it be?’

‘Like a remember the time you wouldn’t do the stuff I wanted to do?’

‘Holly you went to South Africa on safari for him. You slept in a hotel with giraffes. You let him see plenty. He got exactly the honeymoon he wanted in the end.’

‘In the end.’

Silence.

‘So no, I don’t think it was a “fuck you”. That wasn’t Gerry’s style. Not the Gerry I knew, anyway. And wasn’t it the place you wanted to go to? I see it as a gift. Why are you thinking this after all this time?’

We’re both silent. I notice her car engine has stopped running, that the background is quiet. I stand and move to the window and I see Denise sitting in her car, outside in my driveway. The car’s inside light is on, revealing her.

‘I think,’ she continues after a long pause. ‘That if anything, he was compromising. Maybe he realised he made you do something you didn’t want to do and he felt guilty. Or maybe he didn’t feel guilty at all but it was like a do-over.’

I lean my forehead against the cold window. ‘Denise, why are you staking out my house?’

She looks up and sees me at the window. ‘Well, aren’t you the spooky sleuth.’

‘I’m OK, you know. You don’t have to worry about me.’

‘I know, Holly, but do we always have to remind you that everything is not all about you?’ She gets out of the car with a large bag in her hand. She walks up the drive, looking at me as she speaks into the phone. ‘I left Tom. Can I stay with you tonight?’