One Day in December(80)

‘In my experience, she’s tougher than she looks, but not so tough that she doesn’t break sometimes.’ I remember back to the day I saw her break, when I kissed her in a snowstorm. ‘Ask her how she’s feeling, don’t let her bottle it up.’

‘But I don’t know what to say.’

‘Nobody does, Oscar. But something, anything, is better than nothing.’

‘You always seem to know what to say.’ He sighs and shakes his head, thinking. ‘That speech you made at our wedding, for example.’ He pauses, watching me, and I think, oh fuck, because this isn’t something he and I should ever talk about.

‘What about it?’ I look at him sharply.

He leans back and drapes his arm along the back of the bench. ‘I’ll level with you, Jack. I’ve sometimes wondered if your feelings for Laurie are entirely platonic.’

I laugh as I look away and drain the beer in one. ‘Of all the days, you choose the day she buried her father to talk about this?’

‘It’s a simple enough question,’ he says, reasonable as always. ‘I’m asking you if you have feelings for my wife, Jack. And I think I’ve been patient long enough.’

A simple enough question? Patient long enough? I don’t think he even realizes how patronizing he sounds. If this wasn’t Laurie’s dad’s funeral, then this would probably be the day when Oscar and I finally stopped pretending to like each other. As it is, I dignify his simple enough question with a simple enough answer.

‘Yes.’

‘Beer?’

I look up at Sarah half an hour later. ‘What are you people trying to do, get me drunk? First Oscar, now you.’

She looks upset. ‘Sorry. I can leave you alone if you’d prefer?’

‘No,’ I sigh, accepting the beer from her outstretched hand. ‘Sorry, Sar, that was rude. Sit down. Come and talk to me a while.’

She slides in next to me, warm in black fake fur. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asks, sipping red wine. ‘Beside the obvious.’

It takes me a moment to understand that by ‘the obvious’, she means the fact that we’re at a wake.

‘Just the obvious,’ I say. ‘It gets to me, makes me remember stuff I’d rather not think about, you know.’

‘I do,’ she says. ‘You’re probably the most qualified of all of us to talk to Laurie.’

I drop my arm round her shoulders and steal her warmth. ‘I don’t think it’ll make it easier for her to hear I miss my dad every damn day.’

She leans into me. ‘I’m sorry if I didn’t ask you enough about him.’

‘You don’t need to be sorry for anything,’ I say. ‘You were marvellous and I was a shit.’

She laughs softly. ‘Well, I’m glad we finally got that straight.’

‘Damn straight.’

We sit in contemplative silence, the clink and hubbub of glasses coming from the house behind us, the low babble of the brook in front of us.

‘Are you ever going to tell me what happened between you and Lu? Tell me I’m wrong if you like, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a family emergency that kept you from her wedding.’

Her mouth twists as she considers my question. ‘I don’t think there’s much point in dragging it all up. It’s in the past.’

I don’t push the point. ‘Still with Luke?’

She can’t keep the light from her eyes as she nods. She tries, but I see it.

‘Is he good to you?’

She laughs under her breath. ‘He definitely isn’t a shit.’

‘Good.’

‘I think he might be my one hundred per cent.’

I look at her, so bright, so vibrant, and I feel nothing but love and gladness for her. It’s proof enough that we did the right thing, even if it ripped our hearts out at the time. She takes my hand. ‘He’s asked me to go out to Australia with him.’

‘To live?’

She swallows, nods, then kind of shrugs. ‘It’s a big decision.’

‘I’ll bet.’ I can’t imagine her leaving all she’s worked for here to start again in Oz. ‘Is he worth upheaving your whole life for?’

‘If I have to choose between him and here, I’d choose him.’

Wow. ‘I’m really happy for you, Sar.’ It’s true. I think of her now on the first day we met, and then again on that awful freezing night in Laurie and Oscar’s garden, and on all of our days in between. We were each other’s chrysalis love, we grew together until we couldn’t grow together any more. ‘Laurie tells me he flies search and rescue helicopters.’

She smiles, and it’s the loveliest thing I’ve seen all day. ‘Yes.’

‘Proper fucking hero,’ I mutter, but I sort of mean it. I clink my beer against her wine glass, and we drink to them.

‘What about you and Amanda?’

I’m impressed she’s remembered Amanda’s name from the occasional texts we’ve swapped; it’s taken me a while to work my way through to a woman I can stick with.

‘I like her.’

‘Like isn’t much of a word,’ she says.

‘She’s nice.’