Page 15 of If I Could Say Goodbye
‘Sorry,’she says, popping a segment into her mouth.‘Carry on . . . it makes you feel?’
Alive.
‘Lucky you,’she retorts as tears sting my eyes.
Chapter Ten
Ed
What person likes to be told that they’re doing something wrong in the sack? And how the smeg was I supposed to know that she doesn’t like it when I kiss her ears? That it sounds – and feels (let’s not forget that!) – like an eel slithering around in her ear drum. Well for your information, Jen, I don’t like it when you, when you . . . OK. So I can’t really complain about her in the bedroom . . . especially lately when she’s become so, um, flexible, but I can complain about her complaining. Can’t I?
Yes. In fact, that is what I am going to do right now. She’s in the bath, the kids are asleep, so now is as good a time as any. I take a deep breath and open the door, but as the door swings open, I don’t see my wife lying in the bubbles, a glass of wine by her side and a book in her hands. I see her sitting up, knees hugged between her arms as she sobs.
I sit on the end of the bath. I try to rub the top of her arms, but it feels like I’m tapping an old friend who has had some bad news. She needs more than that. I step into the bath behind her, fully clothed, my jeans sticking to my skin, the water rising until it is almost overflowing. I gather her towards me, wrapping my soaking, clothed arms around her. She lets out the tiniest hint of laughter and then the sobs take over her body.
Chapter Eleven
Jennifer
I open the door to let Mum in, but she is hiding behind a tower of brown cardboard boxes.
‘Hello?’ I greet her, taking one of the boxes and leading the way into the lounge. ‘Are you moving in?’ I throw over my shoulder as I place the box on the table. She lowers hers with an ‘oof!’ then turns to hug me.
‘I thought it was time.’
‘Time for what?’
‘Time to go through these. Let’s open a bottle of wine first, shall we? I think we’ll need it.’
My stomach cramps as I realise what is in the boxes . . . Kerry’s notebooks.
Throughout our childhood, Kerry had a pen in one hand and a notebook in the other. Kerry was never happy until she had excelled; she was always pushing herself to do more, to work harder, to get the perfect outcome.
I’ve drained half of my glass before I reach for one of the books. The cover is purple.
‘She had this one for Christmas, it was in her stocking,’ I say. My fingers run over the indentations made with her pen: ‘Kerry Hargreaves 2002’. ‘She was wearing her lilac fleecy pyjamas and had a big gap in the middle of her bottom row of teeth.’
‘How do you remember that?’
‘She liked that she had a gap in her teeth like me.’
‘Oh goodness, I’d forgotten that, she’d been furious when her new tooth grew . . . do you remember her trying to pull it back out? She’d tied string around it and the door handle.’
I open the first page; the writing blurs and I take a second to wipe my eyes, take another sip of wine and a deep breath.
‘The best cartweel.’
Mum points to Kerry’s misspelt word and chuckles.
‘This was when she was going through her gymnastic phase,’ Mum explains.
1. Starting positions – scores out of ten.
Feet together – 4/10 I fell on my bum five times AND Jen is moody and wont cartweel today.
Feet apart. 5/10 my legs hurt and Jen laughed and said I looked like a frog.
‘I don’t remember this,’ I say, my finger sliding down the page to the ‘cartweel’ that scored the highest.
