One Day in December(77)
Is it terrible to say I feel slightly more relaxed since I waved him off? He’s never anything but complimentary about my parents, yet still I always feel slightly awkward when we’re all together, as if without me there’d just be three strangers in a room. I spent a chunk of our train journey pretending to sleep, when actually what I was doing was assembling a small selection of subjects I could bring up. Holidays, work (mine more than Oscar’s, for obvious reasons), the new colour we’re painting the bathroom, that kind of thing. I hadn’t counted on baby Tom, of course. There’s no conversational lulls with a baby around, so all in all it’s been a pleasant family weekend. I find that I almost don’t want to go back to London tomorrow, back to our lonely, quiet flat.
‘Take this through to your dad, will you, love?’ Mum rolls her eyes as she hands me a mug of tea. ‘He’s in the den watching football.’
Dad’s an avid Aston Villa fan; if they’re on screen he’s watching it, even on his grandson’s birthday, it would seem. I take the mug and escape down the hall, glad of an excuse to get out of the ‘when will Laurie have a baby’ conversation. The answer is when – and if – Laurie is ready.
‘Dad?’ I push the den door, startled when it won’t open. It can’t be locked; it doesn’t even have a lock on it. I push again. There’s something wedged behind it. ‘Dad?’ I call out again. My heart starts to race when he doesn’t answer. Panicked, I shoulder the door, slopping tea on to Mum’s new beige carpet, and this time it opens an inch or so. Then everything seems to stop, and I hear someone who sounds like me, but can’t possibly be, yelling out for help again and again.
13 October
Laurie
‘I’ve given her something to help her sleep, she’s exhausted.’
I try to smile at the doctor when he comes downstairs but my face won’t do it. ‘Thank you.’
Dr Freeman lives across the street from my mum and dad, and over the years he’s been in and out of our house for both social and medical reasons. Christmas parties, broken bones. He came the second Daryl banged on his front door yesterday, yelling for help, and he’s here again now to see how things are.
‘I’m so sorry, Laurie.’ He squeezes my shoulder. ‘If there’s anything I can do, just pick up the phone, day or night.’
Daryl sees him out, and then we sit together at the dining table in our parents’ too-quiet house. Anna has taken the baby home, and Oscar is stuck in Brussels until tomorrow afternoon at least. He feels desperate about it, but to be honest there isn’t anything he, or anyone else, can do or say.
My dad died yesterday. Here one minute, and then gone, with no one at his side to hold his hand or kiss him goodbye. I’m plagued by the thought that we might have been able to do something to help if only we’d been with him. If Daryl or I had taken the time to watch the game with him like we used to as kids, even though neither of us are big into football. If Mum had made his tea ten minutes earlier. If, if, if. The ambulance crew who arrived and declared him dead tried their best to assure us otherwise, that it bore all the hallmarks of a massive heart attack and it would have taken him regardless. But what if he called out and no one heard him? Daryl pushes the tissues towards me and I realize I’m crying again. I don’t think I’ve stopped today. Don’t they say that human beings are seventy per cent water or something crazy like that? It must be true, because it’s flooding from me like a tap left on in an abandoned house.
‘We need to make funeral arrangements.’ Daryl’s voice is hollow.
‘I don’t know how,’ I say.
He squeezes my hand until his knuckles are white. ‘Me neither, but we’ll sort it out, you and me. Mum needs us to do it.’
I nod, still seeping tears. He’s right, of course; Mum is in bits, there’s no way she’s going to be able to do anything. I’ll never forget as long as I live the sight of her scrabbling on her knees to get to Dad. She came running, panic-stricken, as soon as I yelled, as if some sixth sense had alerted her to the fact that the love of her life was in trouble. They’ve been together since they were fifteen years old. I can still hear it now: the sound of her screaming his name when she couldn’t rouse him, the low wail of grief as the ambulance crew recorded the time of his death and gently moved her away from his body. And since then, nothing. She’s barely talking, she won’t eat, she hasn’t slept. It’s as if she’s shut down, as if she can’t be here now that he isn’t. Dr Freeman said it’s okay that she’s reacted this way, that everyone reacts differently and to just give her time. But I don’t honestly know if she’ll ever get over this. If any of us will.
‘We’ll go tomorrow,’ Daryl says. ‘Anna will come and sit with Mum.’
‘Okay.’
We fall back into silence in the immaculate, quiet room. This is the house where we grew up, and this is the room where we always ate dinner together, always in our same places round the table. Our family of five barely survived becoming a family of four after Ginny died; always an empty chair. I look towards my dad’s empty chair now, crying again. I can’t fathom how we can go on as a family of three. It’s too few.
Jack
‘Whoever you are, fuck off.’