Page 19 of If I Could Say Goodbye
‘Get her a chocolate-chip cookie, she can’t resist a cookie.’
I return to the table. Nessa is tapping it repeatedly.
‘I’ve never been in here before,’ I tell her, trying to force a conversation across the table along with her cookie.
‘Me neither.’ The conversation slides back towards me.
‘Seriously? That’s what you’re going with? Do you come here often?’Kerry snorts from the seat opposite me, next to Nessa, spraying bits of chocolate muffin all over her blue-and-white-striped shirt: the shirt we had her cremated in.
‘Where are you staying? Back at the flat?’
Nessa’s skin pales as she breaks the cookie in half. ‘No. I’ve left the flat. I’m renting a house. I put K—’ . . . the name Kerry seems too hard for her to say and she gulps it back down, ‘her things into storage. I’ll take them to your mum and dad’s when—’
‘The dust settles?’ I hear myself saying. The image of Kerry’s ashes seems to float between us, like motes dancing in the sunlight, before gravity pulls them down and they crash from the air, landing like a mound of dirt.
She nods.
‘How’s Erica?’
‘She’s OK. I don’t think she understands that Kerry is not . . . not . . . coming back. She was used to her staying over and then not being there for a few days. Even though I’ve tried to explain, she keeps forgetting and will ask if Kerry’s coming over. It takes everything in me not to scream at her, you know?’
I nod my head, even though I don’t know. Kerry’s death has had the opposite effect on me; I can’t bear it when I’m not with the kids. They are the ones who brought me back when I didn’t think I would ever shake off the grief.
‘Where did you go, Ness? After the funeral.’
‘Dad’s.’
‘Scotland?’
She nods. ‘I just needed to be away. From here, from you and Ed and the kids and Kerry’s ghost, I guess.’
‘Well, that’s rude.’Kerry crosses her arms and wears a mock annoyed expression.
‘Are you sleeping?’ I find myself asking.
Nessa shakes her head, confirming the negative, her eyes meeting mine, a thousand nightmares and night sweats shared between us with one look.
‘Are you still thinking about getting a job?’ Nessa changes the subject. Before Kerry died, I had been looking into going back to work since Oscar had started school.
I shake my head, remembering how I had tried to fill in applications. ‘I tried to, but when Kerry . . . when she died and I, well, I . . . it’s a long story.’ I dismiss my months of crippling grief with a waft of my hand. ‘Are you managing to—’ Work, breathe? Live? My mouth opens and closes, chewing on empty words: ‘Work?’
‘Not yet. I’ve written a few reviews but not submitted them yet, I think they may well be a bit crap.’
‘The films or the reviews?’ I ask, trying to make light of the idea that not being immersed in her job as a film critic for the local paper is normal behaviour for her, when we both know that her job is as much part of her as Kerry was.
Nessa drains her coffee and wipes the cookie crumbs from her jeans; they are expensive, ripped in all the right places, faded with expensive dye. Kerry had loved the way Nessa dressed. ‘Dress messily, see the dress, dress beautifully, see the woman.’ I ignore Kerry as she manages to misquote both Coco Chanel andWorking Girlin one go.
The vibration of Nessa’s phone and the face of Erica flashing up from the screen attract our attention. Across Erica’s smiling face are the words ‘Erica’s School’. Nessa’s body folds, her shoulders slump as she reaches for the handset.
‘Hello?’
I try to look like I’m not listening, which is hard when your dead sister is leaning her head towards your companion’s phone.
‘It doesn’t sound good,’ she whispers.
Why are you whispering? She can’t hear you.
‘OK. I’ll come and fetch her.’ She hangs up the phone. ‘I have to go, Erica is acting up. She didn’t settle in the school in Glasgow and now she’s bitten another kid. Thanks for the—’
