Don’t You Forget About Me(31)

‘I’m not sure I want to wank on about myself. What do my problems matter? Plenty of people have lost a parent,’ I said, as Rav keyed my number into his phone.

‘Don’t be so bloody British,’ he said. ‘This country. We’d rather quietly kill ourselves over something than be any bother. Not that I’m suggesting you’re suicidal.’

I went to Fay for a year and she helped a lot. Enough that I lay flowers at Dad’s headstone now on his birthday. I have a quiet chat with him – if there’s no one around in hearing range – and pat the cold curve of the laser-engraved graphite. I gaze at those implacable start and finish dates, that I wish I’d been warned about.

It’d be very useful if everyone in your life could supply those. You could pace yourself.

Death is on my mind still, a week after Danny’s wake. And I have nothing to do until Devlin does or doesn’t call me (yes I could be proactive and start putting irons in fires elsewhere, but then I’d not be a Roomba), plus the aftershock slump of seeing Lucas McCarthy, and Lucas McCarthy not seeing me, has plunged me into a mule-ish funk.

So I buy a bunch of ￡4.99 gaudy lilies the colour of Turkish Delight from the supermarket (‘To moulder on a plot of land a mile away? You are odd. That’s the price of two pints you’re wasting. Just swipe some from an accident blackspot,’ – Make Believe Dad) and walk to Tinsley Park cemetery. It’s well populated, if that’s the word, and I have to wander quite a way to find Dad.

I like moody old headstones covered in emerald lichen, with dates from the 1800s and families taken by the scurvy. Modern, gleaming ones make me nervous.

When I reach JOHN HORSPOOL, the monument to the fact it actually happened, I feel the puckering of stomach.

I ponder the hypocrisy of the words engraved on his stone: Beloved Husband, Father And Brother. Two out of the three aren’t true.

After the funeral, Uncle Peter couldn’t have returned to Spain any faster if he’d used Floo Powder. I could hear Dad making some sarcastic aside about how he was a man who lit up a room by leaving it.

His put-downs about the dourness of ex-pat Uncle Pete – ‘He’s as welcome as finding cat shit in your house, when you don’t own a cat’ – always made me shake with laughter. Then as soon as the thought occurred, it was followed by the realisation that I’d never hear his voice or his opinion on anything ever again. Make believe was all I had left forever. Pastiche, weak riffs based on nostalgia, a pale imitation. I was so bereft, it nearly made my knees buckle.

I said to Clem, two years after he was gone, it didn’t feel real. I was constantly waiting for it to fully dawn on me, for the other shoe to drop. She lost her dad when she was fourteen. We’d met in a McDonalds at 1 a.m. when she was being hassled by a dubious man and Jo and I had intervened and invited her back in our taxi. We ended up eating quarter pounders at mine and having more drink we definitely didn’t need.

Clem said: ‘I don’t know what to tell you, George. It never feels real or finally sinks in. That moment never arrives. The world continues, but with a bit always missing. And meanwhile you’re getting on with it, until it’s found.’

This makes sense. Everything feels temporary now. Because it always was, I just didn’t know it.

I clear my throat, glance around: ‘Hi, Dad.’

‘That’s us up to date then,’ I mutter, feeling foolish, despite my evident solitude in the flat landscape, headstones like rows of dominoes into the horizon. I look up, as if a drone might be hovering nearby, picking up any of my banalities.

I mentioned, in low tone, meeting Lucas, how he was someone back in the day I’d hoped to introduce to him. And the departure of Robin. I try to picture whether Robin would’ve been received any better by Dad than he was by Esther and Mum. My gut says: Dad would’ve tried harder, seeing what I was aiming for, but come to the conclusion that I’d missed.

My fingers have gone numb, still holding the crush of cellophane from the now-unwrapped flowers, and I shove them alternately in my pockets. Make Believe Dad: Why are you in that thing the colour of dentist’s mouthwash? It looks like you murdered a Muppet.

‘See you when you don’t turn sixty-five, I guess. I’ve discussed it with Esther and we’re going to bring Milo to that one. So no blue language or downing Rusty Nails.’ His Christmas tipple. Another sharp blade in the stomach. I lurch forward to prop the flowers against his stone, wave with one hand and give a weak smile.

Mum won’t visit the grave. Esther and I have our theories about her reluctance.

I’m stumping towards the exit when, unbidden, a thought rears up and confronts me.

It’s like Oscar the Grouch hidden in the garbage can, flopping two tufted green paws over the edge and shooting up, beetling browed and googly eyed: It’s been a week, you can stop waiting for Devlin to ring you now. You IDIOT.

I pause, stare across the field of gravestones as if they literally contain this unwelcome truth in their earthy depths, then slam onwards.

Rejection on this occasion was always going to cause existential feelings. Yet something makes me sad, aside from the fact that Lucas McCarthy didn’t remember me and/or intervened to block my path, and suggested I was best fitted to serve sticky ribs and wings while wearing a vest and orange shorts.

When I examine my disappointment, I discover it’s that I really, genuinely liked Devlin, and hopefully vice versa. It’s not often that happens these days, I realise. And not calling someone when you’ve told them you will call them is shabby. Let me down, but do it in a way that lets me still like you.