The Day She Came Back(13)
‘I know. I think I should feel more, but I just feel empty and cold, as if everything is tamped down in my gut and there’s this layer, a weight keeping it there and it muffles everything inside me, even sound.’
‘I’ll go and get your dressing gown.’ Daksha disappeared and returned with her old grey fleece dressing gown, which had seen better days, with its baggy, misshapen pockets and bald patches on the arms where they rested on the old pine kitchen table when she read.
‘Thank you.’ She slipped into it and pulled it tightly around her. It helped a little. Victoria sipped her tea; it was hot and perfect. ‘What was it you were thinking about saying to me when we arrived, but instead opted for the tea filler?’
Daksha sat on the small pink, button-backed boudoir chair and faced her friend. She took her time.
‘I wanted to say that Prim was fine when we left yesterday. She was happy, talkative and mischievous as ever. Chatting about Gerald and eating her pear. There was nothing you could have done and nothing you should have done. But I know you, and I don’t want you to worry or beat yourself up over things you might have done differently.’
Victoria took a deep breath. ‘I was thinking that I should have been here with her. I could have held her hand or . . .’ She didn’t really know what she would have done. But the guilt sat like a fine dust on her shoulders nonetheless. ‘And I can’t remember if I made her the cup of Earl Grey she wanted or whether I left and she had to do it herself, and that’s bothering me.’
Daksha spoke firmly, calmly. ‘I don’t think she would have wanted to know that everything was her last. Knowing Prim, she would have wanted a happy day in the sunshine with you, and that’s exactly what she got. My mum said it was a blessing, really, to fall asleep in her chair and not to have suffered with an illness, like some.’
Victoria nodded again, not letting on that she had heard the whole exchange.
‘I did think one thing, though.’ Daksha bit the inside of her cheek as if unsure whether to share the thought or not.
‘What?’ Victoria sat up on the bed and leaned back against the pillows, resting her bare feet on the bedding.
‘I don’t know if I should say.’ Her friend looked at her lap.
‘Say it!’ She clucked her impatience, wanting to feel something, and anger seemed easiest to reach.
‘It’s just that Prim was such a classy lady, charming and cultured.’
‘Yes, she was.’ Victoria ran her fingers over the exquisite ivory counterpane.
‘And I bet she would be mortified over her last words.’
‘Her last words?’ Victoria wrinkled her brow.
‘Yes, I think Prim might have imagined a refined exit – you know the way she used to wave her hand or adjust her beads or pat her hair, I think she might have liked to have done something like that and said simply, “Adieu, darlings!”’
‘I guess . . .’ Victoria felt a small smile play on her lips as she pictured just this.
‘But instead . . .’ Daksha paused. ‘The last thing she said to you was, “Grab me a balaclava or two!”’ The laughter bubbled from her friend’s mouth, and Victoria followed suit. It was quite hilarious, Daksha was right. Her glamorous, elegant grandma had shouted, ‘Grab me a balaclava or two!’ Hardly the most delicate of phrases or topics. Victoria placed her hand over her mouth to stifle the giggle, which felt illicit. Her laughter found a way to squeeze past the weight that filled her gut, burbling from deep inside until she was bent double, and it was only when rendered quite weak with something close to hysteria that her tears came. Finally. And once she started crying, it felt like she might never stop.
Daksha rushed forward and took the mug of tea from her hand before placing it on the nightstand. She then wrapped her friend in a hug, and there they sat on Prim’s bed, enveloped in the smell of her perfume, with chins resting on each other’s shoulders, as Victoria sobbed until she could barely take a breath and Daksha whispered, ‘Shh . . .’ in the way a mother might do. Although this Victoria could only guess at, as her mother had injected heroin into her veins and left the Earth without so much as an ‘adieu!’ before Victoria had even got the chance to know her. And yet, strangely, today she missed her more than ever.
The sound of the front doorbell jolted them apart.
‘I’ll go.’ Daksha jumped up and thundered down the stairs. Victoria blew her nose and wiped her eyes, before her friend hollered up the stairs, ‘Vic! Gerald is here!’
Of course.
She hadn’t considered what this meeting with Prim’s boyfriend would be like, hadn’t really thought about how others might be grieving, and she had never seen Gerald without Prim in touching distance. She didn’t like the thought of it; more proof, as if that were needed, of how her world had changed. Painting on the best smile she could manage, Victoria gripped the bannister, wary of her wobbly knees and shaky legs as she trod the stairs. There was something about the sight of the impeccably groomed Gerald, the side part to his grey hair and the stiff crease to the front of his slacks, that tore at her heart. At first glance, he looked as he always did, dressed to impress the woman he wooed, but there was something slightly altered about him: he looked a little stooped, a little gaunt. And in truth she found his grief a comfort, to know that someone shared her loss, the thing that united them. Victoria knew she needed all the allies she could find.