Page 19 of How Much Wine Will Fix My Broken Heart?
You. You made me feel safe. That or I’d get you to talk accounting to me, that always worked.
Piss off.
These conversations are always filled with our repartee and in-jokes. They don’t make me sad; they’re a comfort blanket when I’m alone, gazing into the darkness. They’re spoken in small whispers, though I am now conscious Cleo’s heard them. Has she told anyone else I speak to pictures? People will question my sanity. In these chats I sometimes think of alternative realities where Tom didn’t have cancer and instead we travelled to Vietnam, picked up these girls of ours and raised them together. God, they would have loved Tom. The bedtime stories would have been theatrical events. I see him sitting by a toy kitchen having tea parties with Maya and her stuffed animals; he’d have actually sung to them. He had an awful singing voice, like an extremely drunk Ed Sheeran, but he’d have sung loud and hard.
The room is swallowed in grey, the streams of light tipping in from the street lamps, and I pick up my phone and scroll through the usual suspects: social media, emails, news sites. I add a laugh emoji to a picture of a tree trunk Lucy posted that she thinks looks like a snatch. I send Beth a heart emoji in response to a gorgeous photo of Joe playing football. An advert tells me I need something in my life that is a cross between a rug, a sleeping bag and pyjamas. It’s like they’re mocking my inability to sleep. I read a thread on the school group where mums discuss the traffic at the school gate. The answer is simple, Jenny. Don’t find a bit of kerb and stop your car. That is why people are coming out of their houses and leaving angry notes on your Qashqai. Next, I read a message from Sam. It’s not a proper message. We seem to communicate via the power of meme. It’s a GIF of a cat playing a piano, wearing a T-shirt. I smile. I won’t go back to sleep so I dig around on the floor to find my slippers and dressing gown. I could binge-watch something. I could have a coffee. I could iron. No, I’m not that desperate, not yet.
I head downstairs ensuring I don’t wake the girls, using my phone as a torch. Sometimes when I do this, I tiptoe through the house pretending I’m an explorer in an Egyptian pyramid. This sounds sadder than it is. In the kitchen, I put the kettle on and get a mug out of the cupboard. Tom used to joke about my mugs. I like mugs that match, I am fussy over well-sized handles and I don’t like see-through ones. There’s nothing attractive about the colour of tea or coffee. My phone suddenly glows on the counter, illuminating the gloom.
What on earth are you doing awake? You’re not looking after yourself.
I smile to see the message and the recipient.
How did you know I was awake?
You checked your WhatsApp. It said ‘last seen three minutes ago.’
Stop stalking me. How are you? What is the weather like in Vietnam?
Beautiful. I’m having your favourite dragonfruit for breakfast too.
The message is accompanied by a picture of said fruit and her delicate hand next to it. Linh.
When Tom died, his will was detailed to the letter and there was a proviso in there that we make a contribution to a school and orphanage that he used to work at in Vietnam. I was given explicit instructions.Get to Saigon. Get a taxi and go to this place. I remember that taxi ride well, a foreign pop song playing on full volume, air conditioning that gave me goose bumps. My car stuck in sweltering dusty streets, surrounded by rickety food stalls with Perspex windows and rows of tangerine plastic stools, swarms of mopeds surrounding us, almost carrying us to our destination. I couldn’t take it all in; every corner had life, detail, noise. And then the car turned into the courtyard of a low-rise building, the window frames and doors painted yellow, the wonderful buzz of children chattering, playing. I felt strangely nervous stepping out into the heat. I was greeted by a dog. He had one ear. Of course, I immediately thought about rabies but patted him on the head, hoping my kindliness would save me. Inside, I got swallowed by the cool of the shade, the patterned tiles on the floor. A lady emerged with a walking stick.Hello? Can I help you?And then she took pause to study my face.You’re Grace.I nodded.I’m Linh.My eyes teared up. By her side were two young children. Their names were Cleo and Maya.
The story of these little girls is a sad one as well. Cleo and Maya’s mother was British Vietnamese, a wonderful, kind girl called Cam who was married to a French teacher called Olivier. Tom had got to know both of them in Vietnam where they volunteered in a school and lived in the same house. After Tom left, they started their own family, and Tom kept in touch with them on the socials. Then one night, they both were killed in a car accident.
It was the most tragic of news and I remember being there. I remember Tom getting that call and falling to his knees in our then kitchen, the telephone bouncing across the tiles. He went out for the funerals, to help, to say his goodbyes. He came back from that trip tired. More tired than usual. He blamed jet lag and his infinite levels of sadness to have lost two dear friends. To see two little girls without parents, one who was practically months old. He didn’t think it could be anything else. He really didn’t but it turned out he was very ill, very ill indeed.
Cam and Olivier’s girls stayed in Vietnam with their grandmother Linh after their parents’ death and I met them on my travels, staying with them for a few months. Those months were transformative. All four of us seemed to be bonded by our grief, our shared experience of losing loved ones before their time. Linh was in her late sixties but serene, so incredibly kind and funny. She had moved to the UK as an immigrant in the 1970s and had trained and worked as a nurse. The day we met, she embraced me so hard. She grabbed me by both shoulders and loved me from that first moment.
I got your invitation to Tom’s memorial.
Good. You are coming, yes? Come down for an extended stay and see the girls?
Grace, I’ve already booked tickets. How are my girlies?
Wonderful. They’ve drawn you some pictures, I’ll send them over. Maya is biting people.
She might get that from her mother. Tell her to aim for the soft bits.
I may phrase it differently.
Don’t you dare.
How are you? How’s your heart?
I’m on a new medication. It makes my ankles swell up.
Good excuse to put them up?
I’ll do that if you promise to sleep more.
Agreed.
Has it really been three years? It feels like a lifetime without them, doesn’t it?
I take pause to rewind all those years in my mind. It’s often felt like that. Like a different life. After Linh lost her daughter, she took on her grandchildren but, by the time I visited her, it was clear looking after these young girls had become a struggle. She was suffering with acute angina, arthritis threatening her mobility. For all the ways she loved them, her health was failing her and she was consumed by worry of what would happen if she wasn’t around. I’ll always remember her words to me.I want a different life for them. Their mother wanted them to live in Europe and have the same education she had. I want them to be safe if I am not here. Please help me look after these girls.
