Page 24 of If I Could Say Goodbye
‘No! Yes! No.’
‘Well which one is it? Yes or no?’
‘Both. You need to tell me what is going on with you. You’ve changed, you’re like a different person.’
‘Well of course I’m a different person! I watched my sister die in front of me. This time last year, Ed . . . do you know what we were doing? It’s the third of May.’ His eyebrows furrow, the date not ringing a bell with him. ‘This time last year, we went to that festival in the park, the one with all the tribute artists.’ His eyes seem to clear as the memory hits him. ‘Kerry pretended to be pregnant and hid all our booze in her bump under the maternity dress.’ He smiles at the memory, but I don’t.
‘Yeah, that was a fun day . . . what I can remember of it. I fell in some bushes, didn’t I?’
‘You did. Nessa had to pull you out while me and Kerry pushed our way to the front of “Take This” and tried to grab fake fat Gary Barlow’s hand even though we found out after that he was in his fifties and was a plumber.’
‘Good times.’ Ed laughs.
And here is the problem. He can talk about this without ice creeping through his veins, without his breath feeling heavy in his lungs. He doesn’t get it; he doesn’t get what Nessa and I are going through. He is able to remember this and laugh and smile. He hasn’t been glancing at his watch every few minutes and thinking about where he was on that day. I know that right now, as I’m having these thoughts, we were making our way to see Mick Astley, that Kerry’s festival wellies were rubbing the back of the heels that—
‘Oh for fuck’s sake. Can you hear yourself? Get over it already. Seriously, Jen, you’re thinking about my blisters. Can you hear how pathetic that sounds?’
‘I miss her so much, Ed.’ I hide my face further into his T-shirt on the verge of tears, but my tears turn to laughter because I’m remembering that while Mick Astley was never gonna give us up, Kerry had farted and was wafting her hand in front of her face and looking at the woman next to her dressed in a ‘Frankie Says Relax’ T-shirt with disgust, when in fact, it was Kerry who had dealt a silent but violent.
I retell the story to Ed. It feels good to be talking about her.
I sit up on my knees and wipe my face with the back of my hand. ‘Let’s go somewhere, Ed. We’ve got the day to ourselves, thanks to global warming it’s as warm as the Med . . . let’s pack a picnic and go somewhere.’
Ed shields his eyes from the sun. ‘Where?’
‘I’ve got an idea.’
My feet slip into my flip-flops as I go through the kitchen and into the bleakness of the garage. My hand slides across the wall until I find the light switch, casting artificial orange light onto the toolboxes and old board games until I find what I am looking for. I flick the switch back off, the board games and toolboxes once again hidden in darkness.
The AAMap of the British Islesdrops onto the grass. Ed reaches for it with an unsure smile. ‘I didn’t know we still had this.’
I kneel behind him and cover his eyes with my hands. ‘Do you remember when we used to do this?’ I whisper into his ear, passing a drawing pin into his palm. My eyes follow the line of goose bumps crawling up his arm as he twists his head away.
‘Argh, you know it gives me goose bumps when you talk in my ear.’
‘Yeah but you like it really.’ I pull the end of his earlobe with my teeth.
He grabs my hands from his eyes and pulls me onto his lap, kissing me on the mouth.
‘Ow!’ I shift as the drawing pin digs into my hip. ‘You’re supposed to stick that in the map, not me!’
‘So I’ve been doing it wrong all these years? I’m not supposed to stick it in you?’
‘Ha ha, very funny.’ I reach for the map. ‘Choose a number.’
‘Sixty-nine.’
I roll my eyes. ‘That wasn’t predictable at all. Pick another.’
He chooses twenty-five, and I open the page showing part of Wales and return to my position behind him, once more covering his eyes as he plunges the drawing pin. I scurry to his side and scrutinise where the pin has landed. Pembrokeshire fills the page.
‘Ooh. We’ve never been there, have we?’ I ask.
‘No, but—’
‘What?’ I tilt my head and smile at him. ‘Come on . . . let’s have an adventure. We’ve got the whole of Saturday to ourselves.’ I scour the map and point to a coastal town, which I Google. ‘Look, there are some beautiful beaches. We could go skinny dipping.’ I wink.
‘Jen?’
