Page 114 of If I Could Say Goodbye
I wake up with a start. A door slam? I reach out for Jen, but the bed is empty. Her side is cold.
‘Jen?’ My voice is hoarse. My hand fumbles around for the light switch and the room fills with it. ‘Jen?’
Chapter Eighty-One
Jennifer
‘Jen?’I stir and roll over. ‘Jen? Wake up.’ I open my eyes to see Kerry sitting beside me on the bed.
I’m tired. Go back to sleep.
‘Jen-ni-fer . . . I need to show you something.’
Ed is snoring gently beside me. The green dress is draped languorously over the armchair; you aren’t tired, are you, darling? The night is still young, it seems to say. I glance towards my case, to where my jeans and boots are enclosed, but think of the zip and sounds it will make.
‘Just put the dress on, we won’t be long, I promise.’
I step back into it, watching Ed’s back rise and fall, deep in the clutches of sleep, and grab the throw.
Where are we going?
She hops on her foot as she pulls on her boots.‘I just need some fresh air.’
I slip my fingers into the shoes and leave the room quietly. The hotel is sleeping, the lights are dim, the sounds quieted.
We follow a path down through the gardens to the remains of an outbuilding. The floodlights are low now: dozing. I come to a wall, half-awake, half-asleep. Like me. Peeking over the wall is the sea; it rolls over, tosses and turns, throwing off its cover before pulling it back on. My hands run along the stones of the wall, stopping to watch the turmoil of the water below. I let my fingers follow the grooves around the bricks, the passing of time sewn into each downward pull, each scrape of the trowel.
To the left, there is a path that climbs the steep bank of a cliff, a wooden fence guarding it against the insomniac sea.
‘Come on.’ Kerry pulls at my hand. ‘The view must be immense from up there.’
I pull my throw tighter around my shoulders and follow her, my hands gliding over the smooth wood. I hesitate as the fence banks inwards, away from the edge of the cliff face, keeping spectators safe from harm.
My thoughts are consumed by Ed; how much better he looks now that I’m ‘better’. I hadn’t noticed how much I had taken from him since Kerry’s death until tonight. Until I watched him talking and laughing. I hadn’t realised the emptiness that he’d been hiding from me until I saw how full of life he now is. It’s hard to see the volume inside something, isn’t it? To calculate how much space there is? But if you tried to fill, say, a cavern with water . . . suddenly, you would have a sense of how empty it was before. That is what it’s been like tonight: I could see how full Ed is, full of love for me, for Hailey and Oscar, full of the life we have ahead of us.
As we continue, I notice the fence has a slight wobble, a discrepancy in the integrity of the wood; I stop and look at the spot where I’m standing. The wood has split in several places: tired of its job, lowly paid, long hours. This piece of wood has had enough; it wants to break free, to escape the confines it has been allocated: to feel the power of the water’s grip, to be caressed and played with as it swims to far-off lands, places with a new view, new cliffs to stand sentry. I push the wood a little, hear its groan of relief, hear its back crack, shackles falling to the ground as it leaps from the cliff edge. Free. Falling. No longer trapped by duty.
Kerry holds my hands as we watch it hit the water, the waves welcoming it, embracing it, offering to show it the secrets below.
I know why she has brought me here.
‘It’s time, Jen, it’s time for me to go.’
She turns and steps towards the edge of the cliff and faces the water.
Chapter Eighty-Two
Ed
I’m in that moment you’re in when it takes your brain a few moments to shuffle your thoughts and organise themselves as my hand taps Jen’s side of the bed, my eyes resting on the space beside me. ‘Jen?’
Something doesn’t feel right. Like that feeling when you wake up after a night out and you know you’ve acted like a dick, but you can’t quite remember what it was that you did.
I get up and push open the door to the bathroom, but it’s empty. Even as I call her name again, I know there will be no reply, because Jen isn’t here. I glance over to where her dress had been discarded last night: it’s missing. My heart is beating hard inside my chest as I call her number, but her phone is beside the bed, my face smiling up from the screen like a joke. Pulling back the curtain, I look down into the castle grounds, but I can’t see her down there. Maybe she went to the bar? I’m trying to convince myself that this is a possibility, even though deep down, I know I’m kidding myself. Something in my bones is telling me that this feels wrong.
My clothes are all over the floor and I push my feet into my trouser legs while simultaneously grabbing the room key and reaching for my shirt. Quietly, I descend the steps. The bar is closed; the hotel is so quiet as I make my way out into the grounds.
‘Jen?’ My voice comes out in a whispered shout; it hurts my throat. I continue calling her name, hurrying through the gardens and narrowing my eyes out towards the sea, towards the cliffs. My breath is hot in my throat as I see it: a flash of green high up on the ridge.
