yes; I know that I shouldn’t.
‘Can I …’ I begin nervously, then shut down my emotions, the desire to protect myself is too great. ‘I’d like to take some time to think about it.’
Ginika’s shoulders drop instantly, her demeanour slackens. She has swallowed her pride and asked for help and, selfish coward that I am, I can’t bring myself to say yes.
I know it’s prosaic, I know it’s tedious to say this after so much time has passed, when everything is OK, when I am more than a woman in grief, but sometimes something sets me off and everything gets tilted. I lose him all over again and all I am is a woman in grief.
The smashing of his favourite Star Wars mug. Discarding our bedsheets. When his clothes lost his smell. The broken coffee machine, the sun we’d rotated every day like two desperate planets. Small losses but huge. We all have something that unexpectedly derails us when we are motoring smoothly, blissfully, ardently. This encounter with the club is mine. And it hurts.
My instinct is to move inward, recoil, curl in a ball like a hedgehog, but never hide or run. Problems are excellent hunters with their flaring nostrils and sharp teeth; their special sensory organs ensure there is no place they can’t find you. They like nothing more than to be in control, on top, predator to you the prey. Hiding from them gives them power, even feeds their strength. A face-to-face meeting is what is required, but on your own terms, in your own territory. I go to the place where I process and acknowledge what is happening. I ask for help; I ask it of myself. I know the only person who can ultimately cure me is me. It’s in our nature. My troubled mind calls out to my roots to dig deep and steady myself.
I cycle away from Ginika, my heart pounding, my legs feeling shaky, but I don’t go home. As if I’m a homing pigeon, an inner compass takes over and I find myself at the graveyard staring at a Columbarium Wall. I read the familiar words of one of Gerry’s favourite phrases, and wonder just how and when the past started chasing me, when I started running, and the moment it caught me. I wonder how on earth all that I worked so hard to build up has so suddenly come crashing down.
Damn you, Gerry. You came back.
I watch the ‘For Sale’ sign being hammered into the soil in the front garden.
‘I’m glad we finally got to do this,’ the estate agent breaks into my thoughts.
I’d made the decision to sell the house in January, and it’s now April. I’d cancelled our appointment a few times, a representation of the yin-yang pendulum swinging in my newly altered state of mind, though I told Gabriel it was because the estate agent kept cancelling. I had to arm-wrestle his phone to the floor when he threatened to give her a piece of his mind. My reluctance has not been because I’ve changed my mind, but because I seem to have lost the ability to focus my mind on ordinary tasks. Though as I watch the ‘For Sale’ sign’s violent disturbance of the peaceful daffodil beds, I acknowledge this task is not ordinary.
‘I’m sorry, Helen, my schedule kept changing.’
‘I understand. We all lead busy lives. The good news is I have a list of very interested people – it’s the ideal starter home. So I’ll be in touch with you very soon to organise viewings.’
A starter home. I look out the window at the sign. I’ll miss the garden, not miss doing the physical work which I delegated to my landscaper brother Richard anyway, but I’ll miss the view and the escape. He created a haven for me, one that I could disappear to when I craved it. He will miss this garden and I will miss the connection we have because of this garden; it binds us together. Gabriel’s house has a courtyard in the back, with a beautiful lone mature pink cherry blossom tree. I sit and gaze at it from his conservatory, captivated by it when in bloom and willing it on in winter. I wonder if I should grow new plants, how Gabriel will feel about a pot of sunflowers, in keeping with my annual tradition since Gerry sent me the seeds in one of his ten letters. If this is my starter home, does that mean Gabriel’s house is the main event? Or is there a third course with him or another person that I have to look forward to?
Helen is staring at me. ‘Can I ask a question? It’s about the podcast. It was wonderful, incredibly moving, I had no idea what you’d been through.’
I’m put out, not ready for the sudden veering into my personal life and thoughts in the middle of a regular life moment.
‘My sister’s husband died. Heart attack, out of the blue. Only fifty-four.’
Twenty-four more years than Gerry had. I used to do that; a calculation of how many more years people had with their loved ones than I managed. It’s cold but it used to help feed the bitterness that occasionally came to life and chomped at every hopeful thing around it. Apparently the gift has returned to me.
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Thanks. I was wondering … did you meet somebody else?’
I’m taken aback.
‘In your husband’s final letter, he gave you consent, his permission to meet somebody else. That seems so … unusual. I can’t imagine my brother-in-law doing that. I can’t imagine her with anyone else anyway. Xavier and Janine. Just rolls off the tongue, you know.’
Not quite, but that’s the point, isn’t it. People who don’t fit together suddenly do and then you can’t imagine anyone else fitting at all. Circumstance and happenstance collide to synchronise two people who until then repelled each other, so they find themselves pulled into a net electric field. Love; as natural as shifting tectonic plates with seismic results.
‘No.’
She seems uncomfortable at having asked, starts to backtrack. ‘I suppose there’s only one real true love. You’re lucky you had him at all,’ she blurts. ‘At least, that’s what my sister says. OK, so I’ll get this in motion, and I’ll call you as soon as I have viewings arranged.’
It may seem like a lie, that I’m a Judas to my Gabriel, but I didn’t mean to tell her that I haven’t found love again. It was her paraphrasing of Gerry’s final letter that I took issue with. I did not receive nor did I need Gerry’s consent or permission to fall in love again; that human right to choose who I love and when I love has always lain with me. What Gerry did was provide a blessing, and it was this blessing that boomed the loudest in the scared, excited Greek chorus of my mind when I began dating again. His blessing fed a desire that already lived within me. Humans possess insatiable longings for wealth, status, and power, but are hungry, most of all, for love.
‘Which room did it happen in?’ she asks.
‘His death?’ I ask, in surprise.
‘No!’ she says, aghast. ‘Where were they written, or discovered, or read? I thought that might help with the tour of the house. It’s always nice to have a little story. The room where the wonderful PS, I Love You letters were written,’ she says, grinning, her salesperson head on full blast.
‘It was the dining room,’ I say, making it up. I don’t know where Gerry wrote the letters, I’ll never know, and I read them in every room, all the time, over and over again. ‘The same room he died in. You can tell them that too.’
His breath, hot, against my face. His sunken cheeks, his pale
