Page 92 of How Much Wine Will Fix My Broken Heart?
Both of them look at each other. ‘We liked busy. It was fun meeting all those people and seeing all our aunties and uncles. We want to do it more.’
‘Really?’ They nod enthusiastically. ‘Are you saying our normal lives are boring then?’ I laugh.
Cleo comes to sit on the edge of the bed. ‘It was nice seeing you going out and having fun. Sometimes we worry you just stay at home all the time and drink wine.’
I laugh. ‘I sometimes also drink other drinks.’
‘Yeah, like tea, and you put face masks on and watch your shows,’ Maya says.
‘When you talked about travelling today, you said you weren’t good at it… Why?’ Cleo asks.
‘I wasn’t like Tom. He could throw on a rucksack and put on his trainers and go anywhere. I’m a bit more…’
‘Scared?’ Maya says.
‘That’s part of it. I just think travel, on your own, can be strange,’ I explain. ‘I saw so many wonderful new things but really all my memories of my travels are to do with people. It’s people, not places, that make every day an adventure.’
Cleo grips onto my hand tightly. ‘Does that mean we’re your adventure?’
‘My bestest one.’
Maya sits up on her knees. ‘Well, can we make our adventure bigger? Maybe instead of memorials, every year we should go to somewhere new. For Uncle Tom. Just the three of us… make you better at travelling.’
As she says it, I see a look of mischief behind her eyes. That’s definitely not from me – maybe her parents, maybe Linh, maybe Lucy, maybe her very own brain – but it makes me so very happy.
‘That’s a pretty awesome idea. I guess it’ll be better than me sitting in this house…’
‘In your Huggly.’
‘You have Hugglies too. They are awesome.’
‘Yeah,’ Maya says, laughing. ‘But you wear yours all the time… You look like a big woolly mammoth…’ I tickle her and she collapses onto the bed, Cleo joining in.
‘Well, this looks like fun.’ A figure at the door gets our attention. Linh stands there, looking at this three-headed mass of limbs all entangled, and walks over to sit on the edge of the bed. Cleo jumps into her arms.
‘Can we visit Ba Linh more too?’ Cleo asks.
‘I think we can manage that,’ I say. Linh studies my face and there are knowing looks between the both of us. I think she understands today was therapeutic for me, that I feel lighter, more at peace with my own emotions.
‘Well, we are all out of milk so I was going to send Mama to the shops and maybe I can tuck you both in?’ she says.
I nod and watch as she crouches between both beds. She never reads stories, she tells them, and I adore this, the very artistry of it. I stand for a moment to hear some words in the faint light of the hallway before I head downstairs. Linh has promised to stay for another month. We’ll finally go to Brighton in the week so she can visit her friend. I can’t wait to take her on the bumper cars at the pier. But I also want to link arms with her and look out onto the sea, catch a new horizon.
Today felt like a wake, but not a wake, a party but not. Once the last sausage roll had been eaten and that boy had packed his tuba away, once they cut the ribbon to the new wing and I read the words under Tom’s picture, we all gathered in small parties for photos and selfies and the exchange of more stories. People drifted out of that place to go back into their corners of the world. They stacked the chairs, they turned off the lights. By that point, I was exhausted. I had used all my words. Linh saw it too so, when people proposed more drinks, dinners and such, she allowed me to use her as an excuse and we came back here to the quiet of my house. I fed the girls rice and chicken and I bathed them and allowed for some form of reset. It’s almost like it never happened.
At the bottom of the stairs, I put on my coat, beanie and trainers and slip out the door. It’s not a complete look but it’s milk. I should really get some bread in too so I’ll head to the bigger supermarket and take a stroll down Whiteladies Road to digest the day. I said all those words, didn’t I? I remember when Tom died, I didn’t even tell a grief counsellor that much. But maybe it was because she wore very coral lipstick and I couldn’t really focus on how she was trying to counsel me. It wasn’t a natural colour.
My feet take me to the main road and I turn right into the main streets. What am I doing? It’s Sunday and it’s late. Nothing is open. The traffic flitters up and down the road and the only light seems to be from restaurants and cafes. Looking up, I see the large grey expanse of Richer Sounds. Talk about something that has outlived my days in Bristol, it’s this music store. Do people still buy speakers the size of buses? Obviously they do in this city.
I stand here for a moment to think about a time when Tom and I were trying to make our way back from a nightclub and took cover here because of the rain. A moment when he told me he’d give me a piggyback all the way to our halls of residence, definitely a good thirty-minute walk, in the rain, uphill. He managed ten steps. I can’t for the life of me think of the number of times I trod this road as a student in the first year, up and down, across the Downs and over to my halls. To lectures to nights out to back again, a carrier bag of groceries in the crook of my arm, cheesy chips with garlic mayo in the other. I once ran it in heels because I was so drunk and thought I possessed the superhuman power to do so. I was fun, once.
Before I know it, my feet have taken me down towards Cotham Hill, past takeaways and pizza shops that have remained the same, even if their names have not. A jute shopper tucked under my arm, I walk until my feet reach the streets that hold the university buildings. It’s literally a street of houses that all belong to different departments. The streets here are quieter, still. In term time, on a weekday, say about 11 a.m., there’s a throng of people that bring it all to life; it’s filled with earnest, hungover students with their rucksacks and textbooks tucked under arms.
By the time I’ve got to Park Street, the traffic and crowds have picked up a bit more and I seem to be driven by momentum, some nervous energy hanging in my veins like electricity. I mean, it’s mostly downhill, right? I can find somewhere that sells milk and bread around here. There will be somewhere open. But I just keep walking. It’s why I like Bristol, that walkability factor, how you can just float around this city and be sucked into its little shops and corners. It’s always felt like a city with pockets. Pockets of magic.
At the bottom of Park Street, it makes sense to walk just that bit further. A little trek more. Past the waterfront on to King Street, which is tucked just behind it. King Street is cobbled so I’m glad for the trainers, to be fair. As you walk down it, there’s a Chinese restaurant which again seems to have stood the test of time, something we’ll accredit to the fact it’s built in the style of an actual pagoda. Renato’s also keeps going (low ceilings, great garlic bread) and the Old Vic pub, which over the years has upped its modern status with a big glass-to-steel-ratio exterior. And then to my right, there it is.
It’s now a place called Kong’s. It wasn’t always this. It was a really bad nightclub that we used to frequent back in the day. We paid stupidly cheap prices to go in, get drunk and stagger back home again. It was where I met Tom. We were next to each other at the bar trying to flag down a bartender. I’d seen him in my halls but was put off by the fake-confidence. Was he the one we had to call the ambulance for because of that tequila night? The communal fridge cheese thief? Or the one who used to hang a fishing rod out of his window and literally ‘fish for gash’ (not my words, obviously).
