Page 41 of Things We Never Said
My newfound self-esteem took a bit of a hit over Theresa, I think, but that too, I suppose, was a necessary part of growing up. You meet people and sometimes they’re more important to you than you are to them. Sometimes you just have to give thanks for all the ways knowing them has changed you, and watch them walk away to pastures new.
You know, even now, when I think about Theresa, when I think about how quickly she moved on from one group of friends to another, I can still feel almost tearful about it. I can still feel quite angry, too.
Maggie’s weather forecast turns out to be spot on. It’s a beautiful June Sunday.
After listening to this week’s tape, Sean heads down the garden to the shed, where he drags the old lawnmower from beneath the other gardening tools. He then hunts for the extension lead for almost an hour.
About a month after Catherine died, Sean had decided to be brave and clear her clothes from the wardrobe. Seeing them every morning had been upsetting him, but he had got no further than bagging them up. They had sat in the bedroom for weeks, and then the hallway for a few weeks more, before finally migrating to the cupboard under the stairs. It is under these bin bags of clothes that he finally discovers the extension cable.
He is just finishing a sandwich when Maggie arrives. He’s still sucking the crumbs from his teeth as he opens the front door to find her brandishing pruning shears.
‘Hi Mags,’ he says. ‘You’re looking scary.’
‘I know!’ Maggie replies, stepping into the hallway, snipping at the air with her secateurs.
‘Have you eaten?’ Sean asks. ‘Because I can make you a sandwich if you want.’
‘I brunched quite late,’ Maggie explains. ‘So let’s just get on with it, eh?’ She pauses to look at the pile of bin bags next to the stair cupboard. ‘Having a clear out?’
Sean sighs and pulls a pained expression. ‘It’s Catherine’s stuff,’ he says. ‘I bagged it all up ages ago, but I’ve been struggling to actually get any further than that.’
Maggie nods thoughtfully. ‘Yeah, that’s got to be a tough one. I can take them when I go, if you want. There’s an Oxfam shop just round the corner from me. If that helps?’
‘That would be great, Maggie,’ Sean says. ‘Thanks.’ He leads the way through the kitchen towards the back door. ‘You’re sure you don’t want something to eat? Or a drink?’
‘Totally sure,’ Maggie says as she follows Sean into the backyard. She stands with her hands on her hips and surveys the long, thin garden. ‘So, I’m thinking, you do the mowing while I prune that forsythia. How does that sound?’
‘Great,’ Sean says, then, ‘Which one’s the forsythia?’
Maggie points with the shears. ‘That bush over there. It had yellow flowers until recently, but they’re all gone now, so it’s time to prune.’
Sean nods. ‘OK,’ he says. ‘I would have started earlier on the lawn, but I couldn’t find the extension lead.’
‘Under the stairs?’ Maggie asks.
Sean smiles. ‘How could you possibly know that?’
‘It’s just where we keep ours,’ Maggie says, already starting to snip at the forsythia.
‘Right,’ Sean says. ‘So! Mowing!’
The grass is too long – much too long – for their feeble electric mower, so Sean has to heave and lift and push to get it to advance down the garden. Even though the lawn occupies a plot of land no larger than the width of the house, by the time Sean has mowed a single strip, he’s broken out in a sweat. He switches the mower off and heads inside to change.
When he returns, in shorts and a vest, Maggie looks up from her pruning and scans him slowly from head to toe. ‘That’s right,’ she says. ‘Let those rays in!’
‘First time this year,’ Sean tells her, feeling self-conscious. ‘I was overheating in jeans.’
‘It’s lovely, isn’t it?’ Maggie says, smiling up at the blue sky. ‘It’s the longest day next week. The first day of summer.’
‘I always think that’s strange,’ Sean tells her, ‘that the longest day is the start of summer, rather than the middle of it.’
‘I just consider myself lucky when we get any summer at all,’ Maggie says.
By the time the lawn has been mowed, Maggie has pruned three bushes and weeded the flower beds. ‘That looks much better,’ she says as Sean wrestles the mower back into the shed.
‘It does,’ he agrees. ‘But you were right. I should have mowed it before. I left it too long. The mower ended up ripping it all up.’
‘It’s fine. Tea break?’
