was a long pause. It was only when she spoke again that I realized she’d wanted an answer to that question. ‘Anyway,’ she looked a bit embarrassed that her foray into conversation hadn’t been more productive, ‘that needn’t be a problem. You can have a look at what the wreath might look like here – I have some in the back – and then we can contact an Interflora branch near where the funeral is being held.’
I felt my shoulders relax. ‘That would be great, thank you.’ Then, as I watched her bustle into the back of the shop, the nagging guilt crept in.
‘I had no idea, I’m sorry. Now I do.’ Joe had said in his message. But he did have an idea, even at sixteen. Whilst other lads in his year were worrying about popping cherries, getting it on with Tania Richardson, Joe was dealing with me, posing as his sane-and-together girlfriend but who, inside, was collapsing with grief. Now here I was, copping out of his mother’s funeral.
I was kicking myself for even joining Facebook, because if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be in this position, and Joe would never have found me. I only have fifteen Facebook friends, as it is, most of whom are work colleagues. I say things to my sister, Niamh, like: ‘Why does this person I did swimming with twenty years ago want to be my friend?’ Which she thinks is hilarious. Niamh is nine years younger than me, the accidental result of a drunken, food-themed fancy-dress party for my parents’ fifteenth wedding anniversary – yep, my sister was conceived whilst my parents were dressed as a ‘prawn cocktail’: Mum as the prawn and Dad as Tom Cruise in Cocktail – and therefore thinks I am geriatric. ‘It’s a social-networking site, dumb-ass. You social-network on it,’ she says. I don’t think I’ll ever like it, though: I don’t want blasts-from-my-past being able to find me, or to see pictures of the sorts of drunken states my sister gets herself into. I worry about her. She turned twenty-three in January and I still worry about her.
I picked up some freesias and inhaled their lovely scent, wondering how long you could leave a message like Joe’s before you answered it, and decided two days was already too long.
‘Here we are …’ The lady clattered through the plastic strips of curtain separating the shop from the back, carrying a peach-flowered wreath. ‘It’s pretty, isn’t it?’ she said, holding it up. ‘They’ll be able to make you one up like this in no time.’
I sniffed it.
‘Yes, it’s lovely. How much?’
‘They start at seventy-five pounds and go up to a hundred.’
‘Seventy-five pounds?’ It flew out of my mouth before I could stop it.
‘It is expensive, but then when you think of what it’s for … what those flowers say. Your personal goodbye.’
As if I didn’t feel guilty enough already.
Going in person would say a hell of a lot more, I knew that. I knew that for much less, fifty quid perhaps, I could get a train ticket up to Kilterdale, or fill up my car with petrol. So, I wouldn’t even be able to plead poverty if I sent the flowers.
‘I’ll have a think about it,’ I said, having decided to do nothing of the sort.
‘Okay, well don’t leave it too late to order.’ She went a bit frosty after that. ‘They need time to make it up.’
I made a swift exit out of there.
Honestly, sometimes I wonder if Eva – my Polish, hoarding next-door neighbour – lies in wait for me. I’d made it into the lobby of my block. I’d even got so far as leaning across the mound of bin bags that block her entrance and, as each day passes, mine, to put my key in the lock, when she swung open her door.
‘Ah, Missus King …’ She was wearing a mustard-yellow sun dress, which clung to her form like clingfilm around an enormous block of cheese. ‘I very happy I sin you, I bin worried sick of you. I not seen you for days.’
Behind her, an avalanche of more bin bags stretched back and up, indefinitely.
‘Eva, you saw me yesterday, remember?’ I said, peering past her shoulder. I was always fascinated about how she might sleep: wedged between shelves like you saw on those Channel 4 documentaries about chronic hoarders? Up against an ironing board? ‘We were discussing when you might ring the council for someone to help you come and move this stuff so I can get to my front door without straining a muscle.’
I just gave it to her straight these days. I was over being subtle, even polite.
She looked me up and down through those dark, hooded eyes then: ‘You look thin,’ she sniffed, ignoring me. ‘You still pining for zis, zis little man?’
I laughed. ‘Andy, you mean? No, Eva, I’m fine, it was for the best, but thanks for asking,’ I said, pushing the bags aside with my foot.
‘He no good enough for you,’ she said, as I managed to get close enough to my door to open it. ‘He too old. He no give you enough attention …!’
‘Don’t worry, Eva, I’m really okay,’ I said, then, before I closed the door, ‘Now promise me you’ll ring the council about those bags!’
I locked the door and leaned against it for a second, just closing my eyes. Silence. The thing was, Eva was right: I was pining for Andy – not pining so much as missing him; I was in an ‘Andy mood’. Joe’s message had caught me off guard and I suddenly craved the familiarity of him.
I went into the living room and turned on the TV for company – since Andy and I finished last month, I’ve done this every day – then I ran a bath. I’m also the cleanest I’ve ever been.
It’s funny; when I bought this place – a slightly shabby, ground-floor, two-bed in a small, 1930s block – four years ago with the money Mum left me, I relished coming home to an empty flat. After spending all day talking to people – often about their suicide plans: how they had the vodka and the Temazepam at the ready – I relished having a place to myself; a sanctuary from all the madness. I’d often just sit there when I got in, in silence, take the phone off the hook, read a book, eat sweetcorn straight from the can. Then, a year ago, along came Andy and changed all that. For the first time in four years, I had a boyfriend; and, what’s more, I liked it.
I made sure the bath was as hot as it could be without actually scalding me, then I got in. It was 6 p.m. – 6 p.m.! What the hell was I supposed to fill the rest of the evening with? There’s only so much lying in a bath and exfoliating you can do, after all. I thought about poor Joe – about those awful few days of bereavement, the shock, the need for people around you. Then I thought about the reality of going back to Kilterdale and seeing him after all this time, the feelings it might unearth, the memories I’d boxed up for sixteen years now. It made me so anxious.
I thought about Andy – familiar, benign Andy, who was so wrapped up in himself it made it impossible for you to think about anything else – about calling him and inviting him over, just to ‘veg’, as he put it. I imagined sitting next to him on the sofa, watching Dragon’s Den, and sharing a kedgeree (Yes, Andy was a big fan of a smoked-fish item, I thought fondly). What harm could it do?
I met Andy on a speed-dating night. I’d gone with Kaye from work – God, I love Kaye. She always
