Page 40 of The Good Boy

“I’d say, What were you playing at, you stupid git? Not telling anyone you had chest pains?” she says, with a sort of cross sob.

“And what else?” Rory asks.

“I’d say that the last year has been nothing but gray and cold since he left. Don’t matter if the sun is out or if it’s snowing. Every day is the same, miserable and lonely. I try, for the kids and the grandkids, I try to keep my chin up, you know? But all I can think of is the conversations that we are not having, and all I can feel is the empty space where he used to be, and I miss him so much. I don’t know how to keep going.”

It feels to me like this is getting out of hand. This poor woman is expecting a professional not a puppy, but still, she is gripping on to Rory’s hand, and he is gazing into her eyes. And what I see there stops me from intervening. He is listening to her, really listening. As if he is feeling every word.

“And what would he say to you?” Rory asks.

“He’d tell me not to carry on so,” she says with a faint, remembering smile. “He’d say, I was always getting under your feetanyway.” Her eyes brighten just a little. “And then he’d say, Do you know I love you, Dolly? Just as much as I did the day I married you? And that won’t ever change, girl.”

Dolly bows her head, tears sliding down her face onto the back of Rory’s hand. He doesn’t try to withdraw it.

“But how do I keep going, Jack?” she asks Rory as if he is her husband. “How do I keep going without you hanging around, getting in the way? Bringing me home a bar of Cadbury’s milk chocolate on a Friday night?”

“You just keep going,” Rory says. “And one day the cold and dark hours will start to have little sunny warm minutes happening. And the minutes will turn into hours and then even whole days and weeks. The dark cold days will still be there, and the sadness. But Jack isn’t the only person who loves you. Your kids and your grandkids do too. And all your friends, I bet, and that dog you left tied up outside though you could have brought her in, because we have a well-behaved-dogs-welcome policy. She loves you very much, that dog.”

“And I love her,” Dolly sniffs. “Saved my life, she has.”

“You might feel alone,” Rory says, “and sad and scared, but people love you and there are a lot of really good ones who care about you. And when one day you go over the rainbow bridge you will see Jack. He will come running down the big green hill full of long, good-smelling grass, and he’ll leap into your arms and you will roll about in the flowers and it will be epic.”

“Epic,” Dolly echoes with a faint smile. “Jack’s favorite word. He picked it up off the grandkids and kept using it, even when they told him it wasn’t cool anymore. Oh, thank you, thank you. Thank you so much.”

Then something really weird happens. I hear a voice, a local accent and male. Conversational and calm, just like there’s someone standing next to me. Only there is not.

“Um, also just to add,” I say as the voice repeats itself. “The gold cuff links that Jack wanted to give to your grandson are in his lockbox under the wonky floorboard in the spare room and he loves you.”

“That’s where they are? I’ve looked everywhere!” Dolly exclaims, bursting into happy tears. “Oh, Jack, you are still looking out for me, aren’t you?”

Always, Dolly, love.

“He says always. Would you like a tissue?” I offer a box of three-ply enclosed in a plastic gold box while I consider if swimming in the North Sea at night can lead to delusions. Or tinnitus. It’s probably tinnitus.

“Thanks, love. Thank you so much.” Dolly hugs me tightly. “How much will that be, please?”

“No charge,” I say.

“But—” She looks from me to Rory. “You’ve made my day, my year!”

“You’re our millionth seeker of the light,” I say, using one of Nanna Maria’s phrases. “So no charge. You have a nice day, now.”

“You wait till I tell my Alison what her dad said,” she says as she leaves the shop.

“You are a very kind human,” I say, sitting down and looking at Rory. “But we probably shouldn’t do that again. We were lucky that she took what you said and turned it into a message from beyond.”

“It wasn’t me that got a message from Jack,” Rory tells me. “AllI did was ask her what her human would say to her, and she knew. He did talk, through her memory and her love for him. She just needed someone to listen so that she could hear it too.”

For a moment I just sit there looking into Rory’s mismatched eyes, and wonder at how, after only forty-eight hours, he is so much better at this than me with thirty years under my elasticated waistband.

“It was you who got a message from a dead person,” he says.

“That’s not what happened,” I insist. “It was auditory pareidolia. I’ve just got a bit of seawater in my ears.”

“Oh yes, that’s definitely what happened,” Rory says, glancing at a spot over my shoulder and giving a thumbs-up. “Really lucky it made sense to Dolly, right?”

“Right,” I say, resisting the urge to look where he is looking.

“Anyway, good job, Genie,” he says. “You deserve a treat!”

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