Page 50 of How Much Wine Will Fix My Broken Heart?
‘Like Aretha Franklin?’ I reply.
She keels over like that might be the best joke she’s ever heard.
‘The time we had together,’ she says, ‘I will always hold that close. I think about it all the time.’
This always feels the hardest part of my grief: that it’s not mine alone, I’ll always have to share Tom. He was someone’s friend, son, nephew, colleague or neighbour. We all knew different parts of him, in different moments in time. It is sometimes difficult to comprehend this; sometimes I feel we exist solely as him and me, Grace and Tom. Just us.
‘I just can’t believe that someone I slept with is actually dead.’
The words fall out of her so easily. I halt for a moment.You know who I am, right?
‘Are you OK, honey?’ she asks, as she notices the blood draining from my face.
‘You slept with him? In Japan?’
My tone gives the game away and she stops walking, the mixture of that revelation and the late-night air sobering her up quite quickly. Naoko, who is in earshot, comes over to intervene, putting a hand to my back.
‘Grace, Robyn – let’s go back to the hostel.’
‘But thousands of miles away in reality. We didn’t sleep together for a long time, it was a fling. It lasted weeks.’
Naoko looks to her feet and the only thing I can think is that she knew this information too. I think that’s the problem with Tom dying. He can get away with shit like this and I can’t hunt him down and hit him around the head with a large stick. He hid that well from me. All the time he was in Japan, we weren’t ‘together’ as such but he used to make these grand gestures of love, he used to write me long notes and phone me at strange hours for chats. He left out the sleeping-with-other-people bit. Robyn still has enough alcohol in her system for the guilt to suddenly stake at her but another of her colleagues comes over to console her. Naoko can see it’s hit me for six.
‘Grace?’
‘Did everyone here know?’ I ask her.
She nods, guiltily. I suddenly feel stupidly embarrassed. I know, I’ll organise dinner and entertainment for your fuck buddy and a group of people I don’t really know. We can sit and pretend we’re bonded in our grief, in our experience of knowing you and your penis.
‘But he loved you,’ Naoko whispers, taking my hand. ‘She was nothing to him. All the teachers, they come to me, they get drunk and do stupid things. I see it all the time. All the while, he never stopped loving you. Your picture always stayed on their fridge.’
I lean over to embrace her but still feel the emotion deep in my shoulders.
‘I need to go, Naoko. You guys know where the hostel is, yes? Just down this road and you’ll see the waterfront. I’m sorry. I just…’
She looks into my eyes and down at the group of people scattered and staggering down the street. Someone is throwing up next to a line of bicycles.
‘I had a good night, Grace. I’ll see you soon, yes?’
I nod.
‘Just make sure they don’t drop Susan or she’ll roll.’
* * *
It takes longer than it should for me to walk home. I stroll through the Bristol streets thinking about Tom with Robyn and how stupidly angry that makes me. After his death, these little things pop up from time to time. I once got a letter from the library telling me he had six overdue library books and his fines ran into hundreds of pounds. I found those books, stormed to the library to give them back and settle the bill. The librarian told me off and I apologised. I apologised for a dead person. I didn’t say anything else. He did this at times. He could be reckless and immature, especially during those years when the status of our relationship was so fuzzy.
It wasn’t cheating, Grace. We weren’t even together at that point.
You used to call me and sing to me down the phone. What was that? You sent out all these mixed messages about what I meant to you. I stayed single thinking you still loved me. I had my sex with a vibrator.
What am I doing? I’m having an imaginary fight with a man who isn’t even here. Outside the Everyman Cinema. I storm up the street, imagining all the other indiscretions he probably hid from me. How many other Robyns are out there who think that they shared a moment with my husband? No. They can piss off. He was my husband. He was mine.
By the time I get home, all the anger has simmered off me and any glow I felt from being drunk has been extinguished. I now crave cheesy chips and tea. I also want to punch something. As I put the key in the front door, I notice the kitchen light is on and Linh is sitting there on her phone. I creep into the kitchen to see her in my dressing gown, her reading glasses perched on her forehead.
‘Linh, what are you doing? It’s so late. Are you unwell?’ I say. I look down at the phone and she’s playing a word game, a cup of Ovaltine on the table.
‘I don’t sleep much any more. How was it? How were the Japanese contingent?’ she asks.
