coordinated universal time because the Earth’s rotation speed changes irregularly. A positive leap second is inserted between second 23:59:59 and second 00:00:00 of the following date, offering an extra second in our lives. News articles and magazine features have posed the question, what can happen in a second? What can we achieve with this extra time?
In one second, almost two and a half million emails are sent, the universe expands fifteen kilometres and thirty stars explode, a honey bee can flap its wings two hundred times, the fastest snail travels 1.3 centimetres, objects can fall sixteen feet, and ‘Will you marry me?’ can change a life.
Four babies are born. Two people die.
One second can be the difference between life and death.
Their expectant faces peer up at me, waiting, hoping.
‘Let’s give her time to think about it,’ Joy says softly, but her disappointment is obvious. They all back off.
Rage has returned and it rushes through me. I am angry, I am seething. I want to scream. I need to shout it off, cry it off, exorcise it before I cycle home. My bicycle could surely not take the extra weight, couldn’t cope with the ever-shifting emotional imbalance. I cycle out of sight of Joy’s home, dismount, lazily discard the bike on the ground, and hunker down, leaning against a painted white popcorn wall that digs into my back. The PS, I Love You Club are not Gerry but they do represent him, his journey, his struggles, his intent. I always felt in my heart that the point of Gerry’s letters was to guide me, and yet the motivation for these people is fear of being forgotten. It breaks my heart and makes me furious. Because, Gerry, my love, how could you ever feel that I’d forget you, that I could forget you?
Perhaps the root of my rage is that I lied to Ciara about not still feeling his presence. I could never forget him, but Gerry is blurring. Though he lives on in the stories we share and in my memory, it is becoming harder to summon the vivid living, moving, fluid, animated Gerry to mind. I don’t want to forget him, but the more I move on and the more new experiences I have, the more the old memories get pushed aside. Selling the house, moving in with Gabriel … Life won’t let me stay still and remember. No. I made a decision that I wouldn’t allow myself to stay still and remember. Waiting … waiting for what, a reunion in death that I don’t even know will happen?
‘Hi.’ I hear a voice beside me and I jump to my feet, startled.
‘Ginika, hi, you gave me a fright.’
She examines my bike, where I’m standing, the way I’m standing. Perhaps she recognises a hiding place when she sees one. ‘You’re not coming back, are you?’
‘I said that I’d think about it,’ I reply weakly. I’m pissed off, I’m agitated. I don’t know what the hell I want.
‘Nah. You’re not. It’s OK. It’s all a bit weird anyway, isn’t it? Us lot? Still, it gives us something to do. Something to focus on, thinking about our letters.’
I exhale slowly. I can’t be angry at Ginika. ‘Do you have an idea of what you want to do?’
‘Yeah,’ she adjusts her grip on Jewel’s thigh as the baby sits on her hip. ‘But it’s not, like, smart the way the others’ ideas are.’
‘It doesn’t have to be smart, just yours. What’s your idea?’
She’s embarrassed and avoids eye contact. ‘It’s a letter, that’s all. One letter. From me to Jewel.’
‘That’s lovely. It’s perfect.’
She seems to prepare herself to say something and I brace myself. She’s firm, strong, shoots from the hip, a hip loaded with a baby she made.
‘You weren’t right in there, what you said, about everyone remembering us when we’re gone. She won’t remember me.’ She holds her baby tighter. ‘She won’t remember anything about me. Not my smell or nothing of the things you said. She’s not going to look at anything and think of me. Whether it’s good or bad. Ever.’
She’s right. I hadn’t considered that.
‘That’s why I have to tell her everything. Everything from the start, all the things about me that she knows now but won’t remember, and all the things about her as a baby, because there’ll be no one to tell her. Because if I don’t write it all down about her, then she’ll never know. All she’ll have of me is one letter for the rest of her life, and that letter has to be from me. About me and her. Everything about us that only we know and that she won’t remember.’
‘That’s a beautiful idea, Ginika, it’s perfect. I’m sure Jewel will treasure it.’ These are feathery kinds of words in response to the weight of her reality but I have to say something.
‘I can’t write it.’
‘Of course you can.’
‘No, I mean. I can’t write. I can barely read. I can’t do it.’
‘Oh.’
‘I left school. I didn’t, couldn’t keep up’ She looks around, embarrassed. ‘I can’t even read that sign up there.’
I look up at the road sign. I’m about to tell her that it says No Through Road but I realise it doesn’t matter.
‘Can’t read my baby bedtime stories. Can’t read the instructions on my medication. Can’t read the hospital paperwork. Can’t read directions. Can’t read buses. I know you’re so smart and all, you probably don’t understand.’
‘I’m really not smart Ginika,’ I say, with a bitter laugh. If I had been smart I wouldn’t have gone to Joy’s house today, I wouldn’t be in this position now. If I was smart, if I could think clearly through the mush and the fog, then I would know exactly what to do next, instead of standing here, feeling completely emotionally incapacitated, this supposedly experienced adult facing a teenager, unable to aid or guide. I’m reaching out and grasping for golden nuggets of advice and inspiration, but my hands flail uselessly in the emptiness. Too wrapped up trying to clean the shit off my own wings instead of helping a younger woman to fly.
‘I don’t ask for help,’ Ginika says. ‘I’ve always been able to do everything myself. Don’t need no one else.’ She shifts Jewel’s weight to her left hip. ‘But I need help writing the letter,’ she says it as though she’s pushing it out through her teeth, it’s that hard for her to say.
‘Why don’t you ask somebody in the club to write the letter for you?’ I suggest, trying to weasel myself out of the equation. ‘I’m sure Joy would be wonderful. You can tell her exactly what you want to say and she can write it down, exactly as you want. You can trust her.’
‘No. I want to write it myself. I want to learn how to write this letter for her. Then she’ll know that I done something good for her, because of her. And I don’t want to ask any of them. They mean well, but they haven’t a clue. I’m asking you to help me.’
I look at her, feeling stunned, frozen, by the magnitude of this request. ‘You want me to teach you how to write?’ I ask slowly.
‘Can
