Page 58 of If I Could Say Goodbye
‘Oscar!’ Hailey shouts, chasing after him. He turns and runs back to his sister, who smooths down his hair, rubs the corner of his mouth with her thumb and straightens his collar, her plaits and blue bows swinging, her glasses perched behind her protruding ears.
I’ve got a lump in my throat as I watch this. Why didn’t I do that? It should have been me, us, that makes sure our son is ready for school. Hailey comes back and I have to clear my throat before I can speak to her.
‘OK, pudding?’ I manage to ask. She grins at me. The summer has brought out freckles across her nose, two of her teeth are missing and her glasses are smeared. I reach over, take them from the bridge of her nose and wipe them with a tissue from my pocket. She takes them from me, stands on tiptoes as I bend down, and kisses me on the cheek.
‘Bye, Daddy! Have a good day at work!’ She heads past the lower-school building and rounds the corner to the upper school. I follow her around the perimeter; the green crosshatch fence dissects my view, but I watch her. She walks past the clusters of girls gossiping, past the boys reluctantly picking up their football and hanging their bags on their shoulders. She doesn’t speak to anyone. And nobody speaks to her. I hook my fingers through the diamonds of green plastic and watch as she disappears through the doors.
Jen’s not the only one having a crisis.
Chapter Forty
Jennifer
Ed says we need to talk. Kerry repeats him and stands by his side as he sits next to me on the sofa. He takes my hand.
‘This all sounds very serious. You’re not dying, are you?’ I try to joke. It’s not a good joke.
‘This isn’t a joke,’ he confirms, dropping my hand.
I try not to laugh at the joke-less joke, but the fact that I keep thinking of the word joke makes me giggle.
‘You need help, Jen.’ Again, Kerry and Ed speak in unison, their words echoing each other. This stops my giggling.
‘Around the house?’
He takes my hand again, ignoring my attempt at humour. ‘Do you remember when we were first together? How we couldn’t bear to be apart? How we told each other everything?’
I nod. ‘I still can’t bear to be apart from you, Ed.’ I lean my forehead towards his.
He takes a deep breath and pulls away from me. ‘This is . . .’ he clears his throat, ‘This is part of why we need to talk.’
‘I don’t understand. Isn’t that a good thing? That after all this time I still want to be with you?’
Kerry puts her hand on his shoulder.
‘It is, but it’s not because of that you didn’t want me to go to work the other morning, is it?’
‘Oh, that. I just . . . I just had a horrid feeling, you know? Like a premonition, like something was going to happen to you.’
‘I get that, but—’
‘I just panicked, Ed. It’s no big deal.’
‘No. That in itself isn’t. When Kerry died, I used to feel like that sometimes too, I was scared that something would happen to you, that a car might hit you or the kids, but—’
‘There you go then,’ I say, as though this concludes the matter.
‘It’s not just that. Jen, your moods swings are—’
My eyebrows shoot up a couple of notches.
‘Hear him out, Jen, you know exactly what he is trying to say.’Just like she did when he tried to convince me that going back to work after Oscar was born was a good thing. I look over at her and roll my eyes. I’m about to reply, but I don’t.
Why are you here?
It’s a question, not spoken out loud, because she isn’t on my sofa. Half of her is buried beneath a headstone, the rest of her released on the crest of a hill that we used to have picnics on when we were kids: nothing but microscopic pieces of ash being carried on the breeze like a bird.
‘If I’m a bird, then you’re a bird.’
