Page 71 of Things We Never Said
‘Obviously,’ Sean repeats.
They have reached the bright orange door of unit 3F. ‘Here we are,’ she says, sliding the key in the lock and pushing the door open.
Sean starts to frown even as he steps over the doormat. Because the floor plan, he can see, has been modified. The apartment-width wall, which originally divided the living space into living room at the front and bedrooms at the back, has been removed and replaced by a long wall running from the front window to the rear wall.
‘Now, this unit is quite unique, as it happens,’ Emily continues, ‘because the rooms run front to back so that they get both morning and evening light.’
‘At the cost of making them very long and thin and removing the utility of the retracting front picture window,’ Sean points out, savagely.
‘Yes, well, you can still open the one on the lounge side,’ Emily explains.
‘Well, thank God for that,’ Sean comments, extrapolating, as he penetrates further into the apartment, that the original kitchen must also have been removed. He wonders, briefly, if his heart is strong enough to acknowledge such destruction, then braces himself and steps through the dividing wall. He breathes in sharply as he takes in the utterly standard oak-fronted kitchen units in the narrow galley kitchen they have created on the other side.
‘These are all brand new,’ Emily says, running her finger across the worktop, ‘so that’s lovely for you.’
‘Yes,’ Sean says, flatly. ‘Lovely.’ He’s already attempting to tot up in his mind how much it would cost to put the walls back where they belong and restore the original kitchen units. He’s not sure the workshop, out in Fen Ditton, even exists anymore. ‘So, on price,’ he says, ‘how much room for manoeuvre is there?’
Emily looks at, or more specifically pretends to look at, a sheet of paper in her ring binder. ‘I’m afraid the answer to that one is none at all,’ she replies. ‘It’s only been listed for three weeks and we’ve already had more than ten offers, all of which have been refused. It’s a seller’s market, I’m afraid. People sometimes offer more than the asking price to secure unique properties such as this one. I’m not sure how well you know Cambridge, but these riverfront properties are few and far between.’
‘Right,’ Sean says, ‘then I’m sorry to have wasted your time.’ It has suddenly become urgent for him to leave this building. Because more and more modifications that have been done are popping into his consciousness the more time he spends here, and not one of them is, to his eyes, an improvement. ‘My budget is more in the five fifty bracket,’ he adds, starting to move towards the front door.
‘Ah,’ Emily says. ‘Then unless one of the one-bed units comes onto the market – which is frankly a once-a-decade kind of event ...’
‘There are two bedrooms here?’ Sean asks, just for fun.
‘Oh, no ... No, they’ve been knocked into one. As you can see. But this was a two-bedroom, originally. Which it’s why it’s ninety square metres. The one-bed units are nearly all seventy square metres.’
‘Sixty-six,’ Sean says.
Emily glances at him and half frowns, half smiles as she says, ‘Yes. That’s right. Sixty-six.’
When Sean gets home, he makes a mug of coffee before heading out to the back garden. He sits in the tatty old deckchair and looks back at the house.
It’s probably for the best, he thinks with a sigh. He’s not, if he’s being honest with himself, ready to move at all. It would feel like a kind of infidelity towards Catherine, a sort of treason towards April, who still, after all, has her bedroom upstairs.
Pages, the universe seems to be whispering, cannot be turned this quickly. If only they could.
He glances up at the top rear window and pictures little April peering out. A memory surfaces of one sultry summer afternoon when he had fallen asleep on a sun lounger only to be woken by the unexpected sensation of raindrops. April and Catherine, hysterical with laughter, had been squirting a water pistol at him from April’s bedroom.
Now April is going to be a mother in her own right and Catherine has ceased, quite simply, to exist. And yet this still does not feel like a collection of bricks and mortar to be quoted and traded. It still feels like home. And not just his home. Their home.
Sean covers his mouth with one hand and exhales sharply. He has a lump in his throat and his vision is blurring. ‘God, this is hard,’ he mutters as an unexpected convulsion of grief rises from deep within his chest and sweeps, like a wave, through his body. He swipes at the corners of his eyes. ‘Jesus,’ he says.
Cantabrigian Rise continues to play upon his mind and he finds himself sketching the modified floor plan and the original. He finds himself mentally listing costs and delays and the names of potential contractors who might owe him a favour. He dreams of restoring 3F to its former glory. But he knows that it’s nothing more than a daydream. The place is too expensive, even before factoring in all of the renovations.
Yet, despite all of his rationalisations, the idea is still floating around on Sunday afternoon as he pulls the shoebox from the kitchen cabinet.
‘What do you think?’ he asks the box, as if it might somehow reply. He lifts the lid. He waits. He listens. The air inside imparts no wisdom.
But then, just as he reaches for the next envelope, he thinks,Wait. When the time is right, you’ll know it. When the time is right you won’t have to force anything. So wait.
It’s something Catherine could have said. In fact, these are the exact words that Catherine would have said. And in some strange way, it suddenly doesn’t seem to matter whether Catherine still exists, in heaven, or in the ether, or merely as a well-known, much-loved construct inside Sean’s own mind.
It’s not something that he could easily explain – more of a feeling, really – but in that instant, they amount to the same thing. In that instant, whether Catherine exists or doesn’t exist outside of Sean is immaterial, because it seems to him that all we ever see of each other is the representation we hold inside our own minds. And Catherine does still exist inside Sean’s mind. He still knows her favourite flavour of ice cream and he still knows that she doesn’t like his carrot soup, and he can still hear her saying, as if she were here beside him looking at the box, thinking about his dilemma, ‘Wait. When the time is right, you’ll know it, Sean. So wait.’
Snapshot #23
35mm format, colour. Two women of different generations and a child are standing at the end of a jetty. Behind them, the sky is wispy blue, but their wild hair conveys the fact that a savage wind had been blowing that day.
