Page 75 of If I Could Say Goodbye
His question has startled me slightly. ‘She’s . . . fine, thank you. She’s sitting on the edge of your desk.’
He tilts his head and smiles at me. ‘You seem pleased that she’s here with you?’
I bite my bottom lip and consider the correct response. He seems to instinctively know that I’m being careful of my words. ‘It’s OK to say you’re pleased she’s here. If I had the chance to talk to my best friend who died of meningitis eleven years ago, I would be smiling too.’ He gets up and gestures to the coffee pot; I nod as he pours me a cup. ‘Milk? Sugar?’
‘Just milk, please.’
He passes me the cup and sits back down again. ‘I’d imagine it must be good to see your sister again after losing her so tragically?’
I nod and take a sip of my coffee.
‘Can you tell me how it feels? To be able to talk to her again?’
I take a moment and try to explain how I feel. The fist of anxiety which is knitted inside my chest flexes as I begin to talk.
‘When Kerry died . . .’
Kerry is miming: her two hands are careering towards each other, fists colliding, as she fakes her own death by closing her eyes, her tongue lolling out of the corner of her mouth. She looks up and grins before giving me a ‘go on’ nod of her head.
‘. . . all I could think about was the logistics of her death. How her chest wouldn’t ever move because her lungs weren’t breathing, how her eyelids would never blink, how I would never hear her laugh. I would think about the gap she had created in our lives, how she wouldn’t be on the end of the phone after I had a bad day or if I heard something funny. For months after she died, these were the things that I thought about. But eventually, those thoughts started to subside and I felt like I was coming to terms with her death, you know?’
He leans back and takes a sip of his coffee.
‘And then I started having these memories of her and they were so vivid that her loss started to feel a little less painful.’ I lean forward and put the cup on the desk. ‘I’d read this article about healthy grieving and it said that you shouldn’t be scared to let yourself remember the good times, so that’s what I did. Every time I saw her, it felt like I was getting a bit better, that I was getting on with life. And seeing her makes me . . .’
Kerry grins over at me from where she is straightening a landscape picture that is slightly wonky.
‘Happy?’ he questions. Tears prickle behind my eyelids as I admit to this stranger what I haven’t been able to admit to my husband. Seeing Kerry makes me happy, even though seeing her is tearing my life apart.
‘Yes.’ The word comes out in a whisper.
‘Your sister died in a car crash, yes?’
‘Yes.’ I clear my throat. ‘I mean no . . . she was hit by a car, but we, we were crossing the road. On a zebra crossing. She pushed me out of the way.’ I look over to where Kerry has her back turned and is looking out of the window. ‘I can’t get the image out of my head. Sometimes it’s the first thing I see when I wake up.’ I close my eyes as I describe it to him. ‘Her body flying backwards, her arms and feet in front of her as though she was trying to touch her toes, her blue eyes staring straight ahead, the clothes she was wearing.’ I open my eyes and meet his. ‘A red coat, red boots and the sound of the brakes screaming.’ I wipe away a tear that is rolling down my cheek.
‘You know, Jennifer, we have a long road ahead of us. It may be that the tablets aren’t the right ones for you, it may be that they take away your hallucinations but replace them with other symptoms. It may be that they don’t work at all. We don’t have a diagnosis for you yet, it’s very early days. But I can tell you that grief is an incredibly powerful emotion, it can affect your mental health in many ways. You’ve suffered some of these already, sleep deprivation for instance, which then interferes with your ability to think clearly, it can hamper how you make decisions, so problem-solving can become difficult.’
I nod as he reels off these things like a shopping list.
‘Have you ever heard of complicated grief?’
‘Isn’t all grief complicated?’ I ask with a sad smile.
He nods. ‘It is, but for some, complicated grief can be like clinical depression, it even resembles post-traumatic stress disorder, even though it is neither of these things. Jennifer, it is clear that you are grieving deeply for your sister, for Kerry, but what you are also dealing with is guilt . . . and guilt can be just as hard to eradicate as ghosts.’
‘So, what’s it like being away from home for so long?’
I reach down to the side of the sun lounger and reach for the sun hat Nessa is passing me – a huge floppy white one, more suited to Audrey Hepburn than me. ‘It’s . . . quiet. I’m reading a book for the first time in ages.’
She straightens the scarlet cups of her bikini, unravels the hosepipe and begins filling the paddling pool in preparation for the kids’ arrival. It’s large, half-way between a hot tub and a small swimming pool, and sits in a neat square of lawn. The yellow nozzle coughs and splutters before a surge of water spews from its mouth and pounds against the turquoise plastic of the pool. ‘And Ed? How’s Ed doing?’
‘Fine. I think.’
Nessa steps into the pool.
‘I don’t know really. I mean, I get the feeling if things were bad, he wouldn’t tell me anyway.’
‘What do you mean?’
