Page 4 of If I Could Say Goodbye
Mummy is busy.
How often have I said that? How often have I missed moments to play with my children because I’m putting the washing out or making the dinner or reading a magazine about celebrities that I will never meet? Why should I care if they have split up when I could be playing with my children, holding them, making them laugh?
I hesitate, looking at the little Tupperware boxes waiting to be filled with nuts and seeds and dried fruit, looking at the pile of salad leaves, cucumber and ham. Is this more important than Tumbling Monkeys? I push the salad to one side, open the cupboard and reach for the chocolate spread, smearing it quickly over the bread and cutting it into uneven triangles. I wrap them in clingfilm, add crisps and an apple into their lunchboxes and turn towards them. Oscar has milk dribbling from his chin and Hailey is scooping out the raisins in her granola. Her systematic approach to eating has driven me to distraction before, but now . . . why shouldn’t she eat things in a certain order?
I clap my hands together.
‘We can play a quick game before school if you get dressed as soon as you’ve finished your breakfast . . . what do you think?’
‘Yessss!’ He shovels in his food, milk splurging out of the corners of his mouth.
‘But what if we’re late for school?’ Hailey asks, anxiety creasing a path between her eyebrows.
‘We won’t be late . . . I promise.’
But we are.
I’m going to have to organise my precious time better than this.
Chapter Two
Ed
I was eighteen the first time I saw Jen. It was for a minute, max. I was on the train and a bloke was getting off with a bike. The noise of the handlebars had clattered against the doorway, bringing my attention away from the other side of the carriage where I had been studying a man’s tattoo that ran along his throat, it was either a fox or an angry cat. Once the man and bike had landed on the platform, there she was. Her mouth was slightly open – like she was about to say something – and her tongue was resting in front of the slight gap between her two front teeth: her Madonna look, she calls it. Her hair was wet from the rain pouring down and her mascara was smudged beneath her eyes. But then the doors closed and that was that . . . it was three years until I saw her again.
During that time, she became a myth, a vision that I had built up in my head: The Perfect Woman. She became the star in ‘The Woman I’m Going to Marry’ story that I would regale over drinks in the student union bar. My mates used to get sick of hearing about the girl in the blue dress and, even though I’d never tell Jen this, I didn’t believe for one minute that I would ever actually marry her. I didn’t think I would be lucky enough.
I came out of uni with a broken nose (a result of falling over a kerb while running down one of Nottingham’s high streets in a pair of gold Speedos), a mediocre degree in marketing and a questionable penchant for army jackets. I moved into a small flat above a bookie’s in town, let my dark blond hair grow into a tangle of curls and spent the next year trying and failing to find a job that I was good at. And then, on an unremarkable day, three remarkable things happened.
Remarkable thing number one: I went into a florist’s.
I had never been in a florist’s before, but it was Mum’s fiftieth birthday and I felt that the usual box of Dairy Milk wouldn’t cut it. I remember hovering by the door and thinking how pleased she would be to have an actual bunch of proper flowers for a change.
Remarkable thing number two: I hit a woman with a door.
You see, such was my excitement about finally settling on a present for Mum, I had opened the door into the shop – complete with tinkling bell – with more gumption than a trip to the florist’s really warranted, so as the bell tinkled, it was immediately followed with a thud as the door connected with Jen’s forehead. She was wearing a pair of dark blue denim dungarees and had been trying to do up one of the buckles. I remember her dungarees had tiny stars on them. That was my opening line: ‘Well at least we can both see stars.’ This brings me nicely to:
Remarkable thing number three: even after that line, the girl let me take her home.
The florist had guided Jen to a chair while I, flustered, ran into the Co-op across the road, garbling something about concussion, grabbed a bag of frozen peas and, inexplicably, a Toblerone. Even after that debacle, by some miracle, the girl from my story let me walk her home.
The reason I’m explaining all of this is because I never thought I’d have that gap in my life again, a life without Jen in it, but the past three months have felt like that. Like I have been waiting to see the love of my life again. And now, I think she’s coming back to me. I mean, don’t get me wrong, anyone can see that she has been here the whole time, still smiling at the kids when they did something funny, still functioning and keeping the house in this perfect state that has always seemed so important to her, but it’s felt like she’s been missing, all the same.
It was a shock to me when we first moved in together – just eighteen months after I hit her with the door – how a woman who grew up in a house filled with mismatched furniture and cupboards overflowing with board games seemed to want to create a home that looked like it was from a magazine spread. I tried to help at first, but my suggestions were always met with a look of alarm, a pull at the corner of her mouth. In the beginning, we tried to decorate as a team. She put up a shelf, I hung a mirror, both of us smiling as we created the beginnings of our home. That was until the bookshelf I had assembled collapsed, the picture I had hung remained slanted, no matter how many times I tried to straighten it, and the lamp blew the electrics out after I had replaced a fuse. The final nail in my decorating coffin was when the curtain pole bracket came away from the wall, and the curtain slid into a pool of material on the floor.
But whereas Jen is happiest with a duster in one hand and a hammer in the other, I am happiest outside. Gardening is something she hates with a passion. She would try to convince me that she liked it as much as I did, but after the first few months of living together, I swear she developed a permanent crease between her eyebrows from the look of scorn she would throw at the weeds and overgrown borders.
Life slipped into a routine of sorts; the inside of the house was pretty much Jen’s domain, the outside mine.
I watch as Jennifer hums while making something involving mince. This is the first time she’s cooked in months; cooking is another thing that she loves. I can cook, don’t get me wrong – I mean, full disclosure, I did once burn a boiled egg, but that was before the Jamie Oliver cookbook – but I don’t love it, not like Jen did. Does. Like Jen does. I smile as she hums along to the radio that is on for the first time in weeks; it’s like she can finally see that our life will carry on without Kerry. She had me worried.
I’m sniffing the air appreciatively, hoping for shepherd’s pie. Although we don’t ever have lamb mince, so it’s not really shep—
She is talking to me.
‘Hmmmm?’ I question, raising my eyebrows.
‘What shall we watch later?’ she asks, opening the oven door and turning her head away to avoid the blast of heat.
