Page 80 of If I Could Say Goodbye
‘What else did she do when she was a little girl, Mummy?’ Hailey waits for Erica to finish gluing her wallpaper.
‘Hales, time to go, sweetheart,’ Ed interrupts. Erica quickly passes the glue stick to Hailey. My time with them has gone so quickly, and the tug of longing for my old life almost takes my breath away.
‘Well . . .’ I reach forward and wipe a blob of jam away from Hailey’s cheek.
‘I liked to blow bubble gum.’
‘She liked to blow bubble gum,’ I continue, trying to hold on to the last few minutes before Ed takes them home. ‘Great big bubbles, not your usual ones. She would try out lots of different types and record them in her notepad. There were pictures of the wrappers and a chart of how big the bubbles were, if they popped on her nose they only scored a five. If they hit her nose, that was a ten, and if they made it all the way to her cheeks, they got fifteen. She even started mixing them – adding quarter of a stick of Juicy Fruit was her winning combination.’
‘You never let me have bubble gum, Mummy.’
‘Ah . . .’ I tap the end of her freckled nose and she wrinkles it, her freckles hiding beneath the creases, ‘that’s because once . . . just once, she scored a twenty. She blew and blew, but because she was concentrating so hard on blowing her bubble, she couldn’t speak and she wanted to show me. Aunty Kerry ran towards me, her cheeks were red and the bubble was bouncing up and down, but she tripped and fell. Her face hit the slabs and the bubble gum was all over her nose and she couldn’t breathe. I remember pulling it and pulling it free . . . I was so scared.’
‘What did Aunty Kerry do?’
‘Well . . .’ I pull Hailey onto my knee and stroke her face. ‘She was really scared too, and her chin was all grazed and bleeding, but do you know what the first thing she said was?’
‘Did you see? It was a twenty,’ we say in unison.
‘Did she get another twenty?’
I shake my head. ‘No . . . Grandma wouldn’t let us have bubble gum after that. She loved making those lists, there was one about her insect houses, whether her ladybirds preferred purple or pink.’
‘Hales!’ Ed shouts again, and again disappointment pinches the edges of my smile.
‘Right then, poppet. Let’s put this somewhere to dry and next weekend we can paint the doors with proper grown-up paint. What colour would you like?’
‘Yellow, please.’
‘Yellow it is.’ I kiss the top of her head as she shimmies off my knee and runs over to her dad. I follow her, passing the cardboard house to Ed, careful not to let it fall into the chasm. I hop over and bend down to give Oscar a nose-to-nose kiss. He smells like summer, like plastic, water and cheap ice lollies.
‘Be good for Daddy and I’ll speak to you later. Shall I read you the rest ofA Dinosaur Ate My Homework?’
‘No, it’s OK. Daddy has read it to me and tonight he’s reading me . . .’ he cups his mouth and leans into my ear, ‘Captain Underpants.’ And then he dissolves into a fit of giggles.
I stand, and Ed gives me a brief kiss on the cheek, the type of kiss he would give my mother, both of our feet teetering close to the edge of the rift that slices the ground between us. My skin feels cold where his lips have been.
‘I’ll see you at the doctor’s on Wednesday?’ he asks.
‘Oh, um I thought we were going for lunch on Tuesday?’
‘I can’t, Jen. I’m taking too much time off work as it is.’
‘Right, yes, of course. What time shall I be ready?’
‘Can I meet you at the doctor’s?’
‘I can go with her if you want?’ Nessa offers. ‘I’ve got a screening at eleven but I’m free after then?’
‘No.’ The abruptness of his tone smashes through the sounds of summer, through the pop music on the radio, through the wind-up sound of the crocodile who is lopsidedly circling the inside of the pool.
Nessa holds her hands up defensively. ‘Oh-kay . . . I was just offering.’ She rolls her eyes and after the kids hug goodbye she takes Erica inside to get changed, ready for when Daniel picks her up.
‘She was only trying to help,’ I say quietly, folding my arms across my chest.
‘I know. Sorry, I’m just tired and . . .’ I can’t see his expression behind his sunglasses. ‘Never mind. I’ll see you Wednesday.’ The cold kiss is applied again as I watch my family walk away from me, pulling a part of me with them.
Nessa’s hand lands on my shoulder as the gate closes and I reach up to hold it. Daniel arrives moments later, early for once, and I excuse myself, lock myself in the bathroom and cry. I hear the engine of Daniel’s car quieten down the road, blow my nose and return to the garden.
