Postscript(67)

We melted and remoulded together. I watched it happen, I felt it happen. He was in my arms. He was in me.

Sex, death, love, life.

I’m sixteen. Gerry’s seventeen. Everything that breaks around us, glues us together even tighter, because no matter how chaotic, everyone has to find their hiding place or you can’t hear yourself think. Our hiding place is each other.

We create our space, and we live in it.





30


The bag of frozen peas defrosted overnight and left a damp patch at the end of the bed. The damp spot pervades my dreams; whenever my feet brush the wet area, I dream of my feet immersed in water, first a gentle walk on a beach, smooth spongey sand and sparkling water lapping in and out, then later poolside, my legs dangling, moving freely beneath the blue. Later, in a deeper darker sleep, I am held by the ankle, a tight grip on my sore throbbing spot, being dipped head first into the water like Achilles. The act is supposed to be making me stronger, but whoever is holding me by the ankle gets distracted, they dangle me for too long. I can’t breathe.

I awake with a fright, out of breath. Summer has brought a bright morning, birdsong, and a searing path of sunlight that pierces directly through the glass and on to my face as though a giant is crouched above me holding a magnifying glass. I block my eyes and try to fill my parched mouth with saliva. The sky is blue, a car alarm sounds nearby, a bird begins to echo the car alarm. A wood pigeon responds, a child laughs, a baby cries, a football is pummelled against a garden wall.

It has been a restless night. Thrown by Bert’s funeral and by feeling Gerry’s presence, I’m once again flattened by loss.

This is the problem with loving and losing, with holding on and letting go, with being held and then released, reconnecting and then disconnecting. There’s always another side to the coin, there is no middle ground. But I must find it. I can’t lose myself again. I must rationalise, I must locate myself, ground myself, put everything in perspective. I must not make everything about me, my feelings, my needs, my desires, my losses. I must stop feeling so deeply but I must not be numb; I must move on but I must not forget; I must be happy but not reject sadness; I must embrace, but not cling; I must deal with but not dwell on; I must confront but not attack; I must eliminate but not annihilate; I must be gentle with myself but I must be strong. How can my mind be at one when my heart is in two? So many things to be and not be; I am nothing but I’m everything, yet I must, I must, I must.

There’s more I can do, more that I should do. Letters are not enough. I must learn from Bert, I can do more for Ginika and I owe it to Jewel. That is where I’ll start and this throbbing, this pain from my head to my toe will surely, eventually go. It must, and I must make it so. I am motionless but not powerless. Move, Holly, move.

Denise knocks gently on the door. I wrap the duvet around my neck, pretend to be asleep and hope she’ll go away. The door opens slowly and she creeps in. I feel her near me, checking on me. I hear ceramic against my bedside table as she places something down. I smell coffee and buttery toast.

‘Thanks,’ I speak for the first time and it comes out as a croak.

‘Are you OK?’

‘Yes. I’ve had a spiritual awakening.’

‘Oh, that’s nice.’

I smile.

‘I spoke to Ciara, she told me it went well at Bert’s wake yesterday.’

I finally open my eyes to study her, to see if she’s hiding a laugh, but she’s not. She’s empathetic, compassionate, considerate Denise.

‘My part could have gone better,’ I sit up. ‘But it was well received, which is the main thing.’ I look to the bedside locker and I’m right about the food. Creamy buttery scrambled eggs sit atop the slice of brown bread and my stomach reminds me I haven’t eaten since this time yesterday before work. ‘Thank you for this.’

‘I have to earn my keep.’ She smiles sadly.

‘Did something happen?’

She picks at her cuticle. ‘I went to see Tom yesterday. I told him I was sorry. That I made a mistake, I panicked.’

‘And?’

‘He told me to go fuck myself.’

I wince. ‘Tom is angry, he’s within his rights to lash out, but he’ll come round.’

‘I hope so. I have to woo him. I’m not really a woo-er. I can bribe him with gifts, any ideas?’

My mind has wandered as she spoke. ‘Have you ever thought of adoption?’

‘You think me adopting a baby will woo him?’

‘What? No. I was thinking about adoption, fostering. I know it’s not the same thing, it’s not a baby born of you and Tom, and that’s what you desire, but look how you’ve been with Jewel, look how loving and caring and wonderful you have been with her. Imagine how many babies are out there, needing the kind of love you are willing to give.’ I pause, my mind wandering, as a new thought takes hold. ‘Denise,’ I say, wide-eyed.

‘Don’t,’ she says, stopping me. ‘I know what you’re thinking. I already looked into it.’

‘You have?’

‘It takes eighteen months to do the course and even then, if by some wild miracle I could further topple Jewel’s life on its head and traumatise her by removing her from a new home she’s settled into after eighteen months, it’s not like you can go and pick the child you want. Social services decide who goes where.’